I) What do quantitative models can and cannot tell you about race, ethnicity and migration? with Carlos Vargas- Silva

The traditional datasets used in quantitative analysis of migration and race/ethnicity can provide rich and valuable information on these issues. However, there are key gaps that remain in most cases and these can have a major impact on our understanding of these issues.

II) Pandemic bordering, reshaped racisms and the challenges of reasonable fear with Gargi Bhatttacharyya

This short talk considers the impact of the pandemic on established bordering arrangements and attempts to trace the emergence of an adapted consciousness and set of practices of bordering arising in response to the challenges of pandemic. It seems likely that the current conjuncture will force scholars of migration to engage more fully with other ways of thinking about the ordering, containment and sifting of bodies, not least those arising from public health (and its bastardised misuse). Here I try to think a little about what this might mean for discussions within migration studies.

About the speakers:

Carlos Vargas-Silva is Director of the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) and Associate Professor at the University of Oxford. He is also the Director of the Doctoral Programme in Migration Studies and a co-founder and current Editor-in-Chief of the journal Migration Studies.

Gargi Bhattacharyya is Co-director of the Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London. She is the author or co-author of a number of books, including ‘Go Home: Mapping Immigration Controversy’ (MUP, 2017), ‘Crisis, austerity and everyday life’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), ‘Rethinking Racial Capitalism’ (Rowman and Littlefield, 2018) and ‘Media and the Making of Migrants’ (MUP, 2020).