CES Immigration Research Network Mini-Symposium, held at the 33rd International Conference of Europeanists, June 16-18, 2026, Leiden University.
The prevailing focus on refugees’ vulnerability and trauma produces them as the objects of global mourning, obscuring their agency and resilience as subjects. Along these lines, we aim to address two shortcomings in existing refugee studies: the treatment of refugees as a broad category unstratified by skillsets, education, careers, motivations, or agendas, and the neglect of their gendered, classed, and racialized lived experiences of displacement. Alternatively, this mini-symposium will explore the experiences and emotions of displaced people to focus on their neglected power as influential international actors. Challenging major disregard for human dimension in mainstream views of geopolitics, the panel centers the role of human agency and input of displaced people in analyzing power dynamics that shape world affairs. In your submission of the abstract to the Council of European Studies conference, please indicate that you are affiliated with the Immigration RN and that you would like to be considered as part of the Refugees as International Actors mini-symposium.
Please submit your paper abstracts via the CES conference portal by Oct 16. In your submission of the abstract to the Council of European Studies conference, please indicate that you are affiliated with the Immigration RN and that you would like to be considered as part of the Refugees as International Actors mini-symposium.