Borders & Belonging

Welcome to Season 5 of Borders & Belonging — the podcast that explores migration through bold research, new ideas, and stories that connect those findings to the real world. This season, we’re exploring spaces where migration and digital technologies collide. As conversations about AI take over popular discourse, we’re taking a step back to see how the ever expanding menu of advanced digital technologies is being used by migrants, civil society, and governments to facilitate, restrict, and shape global mobility.
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In this bonus episode, Sandra Leitner and Michaela Potančoková unpack the logic behind labour force modelling and what it reveals about Europe's demographic and migration future. 
Drawing on the Link4Skills Navigator, a tool built to map labour market data, skills partnerships, and demographic trends across countries, they discuss why migration is not a panacea for population aging, how Germany's long-declining fertility rates are quietly driving one of the EU's most urgent labour shortages, and why today's migrant-sending countries like Poland and Romania will soon confront shortages of their own. The conversation also turns to the gap between research and policy, and why long-term evidence so often struggles to keep pace with short-term political cycles. 
Guests: Sandra Leitner, Senior Economist, Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies; Michaela Potančoková, Senior Research Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis; Justyna Szalanska, Manager, Skills Alliance Poland.
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From growing up in a changing Greece to becoming one of the leading voices in migration research, Anna Triandafyllidou reflects on how her work on migration governance, identity and belonging took shape. She is joined by Letizia Palumbo, whose work on labour and exploitation brings into focus how policies shape and often constrain the everyday realities of migrant life. Together, they discuss why migration policies often fail to reflect lived realities, and how labour systems and identity narratives shape that divide.
Guests: Anna Triandafyllidou, Scientific Director, Global Migration Institute, Toronto Metropolitan University; Letizia Palumbo, Researcher, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.
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What happens when migration can no longer be understood within the borders of a single nation-state? Nina Glick Schiller reflects on the ideas and experiences that shaped her pioneering work on transnationalism and the power structures that shape mobility. She is joined by Karina Quintanilha, whose research explores how law, labour and inequality shape migrant lives across local and global scales.

Together, they discuss why migrants are never simply “between” places and how transnational ties are structured by power and inequality.

Guests: Nina Glick Schiller, Professor Emeritus, University of Manchester and University of New Hampshire; Karina Quintanilha, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of São Paulo.
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From dreaming of Olympic glory on the track to reshaping how migration studies thinks about space and knowledge, sociologist Andreas Pott reflects on the intellectual detours and shifting perspectives that led him to question the very categories migration researchers take for granted.
He is joined by Christine Lang, whose work on skilled migration in the health sector illustrates what it looks like to step back from dominant policy framings and study how migration and the spaces around it are socially produced in the first place.
Guests: Andreas Pott, Professor of Geography and Deputy Director, Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, University of Osnabrück; Christine Lang, Researcher in Migration and Urban Studies, Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies, University of Osnabrück.
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🌎 Have a question or episode idea? Email bordersandbelonging@gmail.com.