Workshop proposal: Decentring teaching on migration and race
22nd IMISCOE Annual Conference, 1-4 July 2025, Paris/Aubervilliers
Organisers: Fanny D’hondt (Gent) and Christine Lang (Osnabrueck),
Standing Committee Education and Social Inequality
Critical and reflexive perspectives on migration and race have become increasingly important in research debates in migration studies including in the IMISCOE network. Also in the activities of the SC Education and Social Inequality the topic of antiracism has played a central role in the past years. In this workshop, we want to go beyond discussing research on antiracism in education and focus on teaching – concretely on our own teaching in higher education. How can we include critical, reflexive and/or post- and decolonial perspectives in our teaching? What are effective approaches, tools and strategies to “mainstream” such perspectives in curricula, course designs, discussions, student assignments, etc.? What are the challenges and how to overcome these?
In discussing our own teaching practices, we aim to contribute to “decentring” migration studies in two ways: First, by focusing not only on our knowledge production through research but also on how we disseminate, discuss, and in fact co-produce knowledge with students in teaching-learning contexts. For many migration scholars, this is an everyday task and important responsibility. Second, by discussing how we can include perspectives in our teaching that “decentre” from traditional mainstream approaches in teaching and contribute to passing on critical and reflexive perspectives on race and migration to a next generation. Moreover, by highlighting our own teaching practices, we also aim to contribute to debates on how to create more inclusive higher education environments.
For the workshop, we are looking for participants who have already included critical, reflexive and/or post/decolonial approaches on race and migration in their teaching or currently developing new ideas on this. The concrete workshop format will be developed with the confirmed participants.
Within the general guiding questions, we are also interested in issues such as:
- How to address different types of student audiences (e.g. more vs. less diverse, BA vs. MA, large urban universities vs. smaller universities in more rural areas, future teachers / teacher training etc.)
- How to include such approaches in different types of courses (e.g. special courses on migration and race vs. introduction courses in a discipline) and in different disciplines?
- How to deal in our teaching with the current increasingly antimigrant, right-wing and racist debates in many countries? And how to deal with the backlash in many countries on critical race, post/decolonial perspectives?
People who are interested in participating in the workshop may contact Fanny D’hondt (