Experts Database

Current Position: Head of the interdisciplinary Research Group "The Production of Knowledge on Migration" at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS), University of Osnabrueck, Germany, and Adjunct Lecturer of Modern European History at the University of Leipzig.

I am a historian of Modern Europe, specialising in migration history, urban history and the history of the social sciences. In my work, I mostly focus on 19th- and 20th-century British, French and German history, whereby I seek to investigate these Western European histories as part of broader transnational processes such as globalization and decolonization. In my first book, Grenzen der Freizügigkeit: Migrationskontrolle in Großbritannien und Deutschland, 1880-1930 (München: Oldenbourg, 2010), I have explored the tension between globalized movement and state control in the late 19th and early 20th century. Comparing practices of immigration control in the British and German migration regime, I seek to understand how they helped produce ‘illegal migration’ as a new administrative category.
In my current book “Urban Problem Zones in (Post)Colonial France and West Germany” I investigate a shift from “class” to “race” and “ethnicity” in the construction of social problems in late 20th century-Western Europe. Focussing on different forms of urban marginality in peripheral shanty-towns, high-rise housing estates and so-called “migrant quarters”, the book is based on my habilitation thesis that I recently finished.

Education
PhD Humboldt-University Berlin (2008)
M.A. Humboldt-University, Berlin (Modern History and Modern German Literature, 2003)
M.A. University College London (Modern History, 2001)

Dr. Eveline Reisenauer is researcher at the Munich-based German Youth Institute (DJI). Previously, she was post-doc researcher in the RTG "Transnational Social Support" (TRANSSOS) at the University of Hildesheim, and research collaborator and assistant for research and teaching at the "Center for Migration, Citizenship and Development" (COMCAD) at the Faculty of Sociology at Bielefeld University.

Victoria Reitter is a PhD fellow at the Department of Sociology and Social Geography at the University of Salzburg. In her dissertation, she investigates administrative practices in Austrian state authorities regarding the identification of stateless persons in the context of (forced) migration to Europe. Her research is triggered by an interest in the production of difference, the governance of migration by legal status, policy implementation and institutional work in state authorities. She holds an MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology and in International Business Administration and worked as a research associate in two projects (on non-deported rejected asylum seekers) at the Department for Political Science at the University of Vienna and (on expectations of refugees in Vienna) at the Institute for Urban and Regional Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

I did my PhD at the University of Lausanne about the political and social treatment of old age in Switzerland. I did a postdoctoral research on retirement migration and inequalities in Europe and the U.S.A. I am now professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Art Western Switzerland, department of social work.

Bastien Revel has worked on the response to the Syrian refugee crisis for the past seven years, in Lebanon and Turkey, focusing on the social cohesion, livelihoods, municipal support, and the overall resilience dimension of the response. Bastien served as inter-agency sector lead for livelihoods and social cohesion for UNDP Lebanon and is now acting as Inter-Agency Coordinator for UNDP Turkey in charge of the resilience component of the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP).
Bastien has over thirteen years of experience working on peacebuilding and governance issues with various international organizations and NGOs. Prior to UNDP, Bastien worked on natural resource governance with the
NGO Global Witness in London, and for four years on municipal governance, democratization and human rights in Kosovo and North Macedonia. Bastien holds a Masters degree in Political Science and International Relations from
Institute of Political Science of Grenoble (France).

Léa Réville is a doctoral student on a CIFRE contract with the City of Paris, in the Housing Department, and a member of the UMR Géographie-cités. Her research combines urban geography and the sociology of migration through a study of temporary reception and accommodation facilities for exiles in Paris. Her PHD work, supervised by Camille Schmoll, is entitled: "The refuge city through the lens of temporary urbanism: analysis of a political initiative to open up public buildings to exiled populations in Paris".

Yvonne Riaño is an Associate Professor at the Geography Institute of the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland), and chairs the Swiss National Committee of the International Geographical Union (IGU). She is also a Research Project Leader at the Swiss National Centre for Competence in Research - The Migration-Mobility Nexus, and leads the 'Transnational Mobilities' Module. Yvonne Riaño obtained a PhD in Human Geography in 1996 from the University of Ottawa (Canada), and has since taught at Canadian, Austrian and Swiss universities. She specialises on Geographies of Inequality. Using a feminist perspective and participatory methodologies, her work contributes to understanding self-organisation in Latin American informal settlements; the role of geographical imaginations in international migration; love migration as search for gender equality; the critical places and moments shaping gender- and ethnic inequality in the labour-market, the role of migration policies in shaping unequal work opportunities, and the strategies of return migrants. Currently, she studies transnational migrant entrepreneurship in Colombia, Spain and Switzerland. Yvonne Riaño has being a Guest Editor for Globalisation, Societies and Education, Qualitative Research, and Géoregards. She has extensively published in international books and peer-reviewed journals including Environment and Planning A; Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; Journal of International Migration and Integration; Globalisation, Societies and Education; Diversities; Géoregards; Oxford Bibliographies, Population, Space and Place, and Qualitative Research.

My overarching research focuses on the dynamics of migration, transnationalism, social capital, and identities. My current project examines the political debates regarding Muslim marriage migrants' integration in Canada and Britain and reflect on how these perceived problems and state interventions are constructed on the intersections of gender, religion, class and national origin. My primary methodological approach – ethnography – sheds light on the voices of those often silenced within these matrixes.