(B)OrderS and CfSM Annual Conference 2026 - Navigating Fractures: The Role of Place and Resistance in Shifting Migration Regimes
When: Monday, June 8, 2026 - Tuesday, June 9, 2026, 9:00 AM - 7:00 PM
Where: TBC
Queen Mary’s interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Migration and the (B)OrderS Centre for the Study of Borders, Migration and Displacement are co-hosting a two-day conference exploring the role of place and resistance in shifting migration regimes.
Our focus this year is on the urgent need to challenge anti-migrant rhetoric, action and disinformation. The systems shaping migration, border control, and related scholarship and practice are fracturing, as seen in widespread deportations, border violence, desensitisation, and brutality in the UK and beyond. In response, we propose a critical engagement with the concept of place to foster alternative forms of knowledge and to support a politics of resistance and solidarity grounded in compassion, empathy and hope. In so doing we seek to delineate foundational principles for a future beyond hostile border and immigration schemes.
Bringing together scholars, practitioners, and people with lived experiences of displacement, illegalisation and criminalisation, we remain committed to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and co-production of knowledge to redress epistemological imbalances in migration and border studies.
The conference will consist of plenary talks, presentations, and panel discussions with practitioners. We welcome diverse contributions, including but not limited to academic papers, posters, photo essays, art exhibitions, performances, spoken word, poetry, and film, on the following themes:
- Spatial politics of belonging, relationality and entanglements, and how place shapes compassion, empathy and hope.
- Mapping and thinking across place-based transformations in laws and policies.
- Critical reflection on engagements with the public, policymakers, funders, and subjects of our research.
- Envisioning how to build visible, constructive collaborations across academic, public, policy and praxis communities.
- Practices of prefiguration and resistance to regimes of cruelty and hostility.
- Critical methodologies that interrogate what we do and how we do it in research on migration and/ borders studies research.
- A space for broader conversations about our practice and outputs.
About (B)OrderS: Centre for the Legal Study of Borders, Migration and Displacement
Founded in 2022, the (B)Orders Centre focuses on the study of bordering, ordering and othering processes through law. It constitutes an excellence hub for intellectual collaboration and the evaluation of the role of law in the making and unmaking of borders and their impact on global (im)mobility. It connects scholars within and beyond Queen Mary Law School to harness existing inter- and multi-disciplinary research into law, borders and (im)mobility and shape future policy and research agendas in response to global challenges.