REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
Fortress Europe or E Pluribus Unum? : Multilevel governance,
migration and asylum policy in the EU
Conference to be held on September 22-24, 2016 in Chicago, IL
Submission deadline: March 5th, 2016
The European Union (EU) is facing an unprecedented crisis as hundreds of thousands of
refugees and migrants are risking their lives attempting to reach destinations across Europe.
The crisis has demonstrated that the EU’s existing system of governance for asylum and
migration is inadequate and fundamentally flawed. As member states - from Greece to
Finland to Hungary to Germany – adopt divergent responses, European policy frameworks
from the Dublin Regulations to the Schengen system are unraveling. The crisis is straining
all levels of European governance, from local authorities to the EU. Ill-equipped and underfunded municipalities have transformed into tent cities, while regional and national
governments are struggling to document and process thousands of applicants. At the EU
level, intense normative and economic conflicts have arisen concerning the appropriate
response to the inflow of refugees. Coming on the back of a long period of economic crisis
and austerity, the refugee crisis is sparking a battle over resources and a struggle over
competing visions of Europe: one that is accepting and tolerant and the other xenophobic
and ethnocentric. These clashes are testing the political foundations of the European Union
as they reveal powerful centrifugal trends that favor closed borders and narrowly defined
ethnic and national identities.
This academic symposium, a joint effort between the University of Illinois and Rutgers
University, will bring together scholars working of questions of EU governance as well as
migration policy to present their most recent research. The symposium is supported by a
generous grant from the European Union Studies Association (EUSA). We are currently
soliciting proposals touching on one or more of the following topics:
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How have policymakers across the EU, including at the supranational, national, and
sub-national levels, responded to the refugee crisis?
How is mass migration affecting the interaction between the different levels of EU
governance?
What are the possible long-term strategies to address the ongoing refugee crisis?
What does the combination of large migratory flows and politics of austerity mean for
European politics at the national, local and/or supranational level?
What does the past teach us about the current crisis in Europe? Do the exchange of
populations and refugee waves of the post-WWI era provide a lens for our
understanding of European political dynamics today?
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Is the crisis moving the EU in a more federalist, a more regionalist, or a more
nationalist direction? How might the crisis affect the shaping of European identity?
The symposium will take place on September 22-24th, 2016 at the University of Illinois,
Chicago campus. The deadline for submission of abstracts (300-500 words) is March 5th,
2016 via email to Amanda D’Urso, [email protected].
Travel and
accommodation will be covered for selected participants. Invitations to participate will be
extended by March 30. Invited participants will be expected to circulate an article-length
paper to the organizers and all participants by September 15th, 2016. We envision that this
workshop will result in a special issue of an academic journal or an edited volume
publication as well as long-term lasting collaborations among participants.
Contact the organizers with any questions:
Alexandra Filindra, University of Illinois, Chicago ([email protected])
Petia Kostadinova, University of Illinois, Chicago ([email protected])
R. Daniel Kelemen, Rutgers University ([email protected])