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Borders & Belonging

CERC Migration
Borders & Belonging
Latest episode

53 episodes

  • Borders & Belonging

    The Link4skills Navigator and Demographic modelling, feat. Sandra Leitner and Michaela Potančoková

    30/06/2026 | 33 mins.
    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.
    🎧 Follow Borders & Belonging on LinkedIn.
    🌎 Have a question or episode idea? Email bordersandbelonging@gmail.com.
  • Borders & Belonging

    Anna Triandafyllidou on migration governance, feat. Letizia Palumbo

    21/04/2026 | 40 mins.
    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.
    🎧 Follow Borders & Belonging on LinkedIn.
    🌎 Have a question or episode idea? Email bordersandbelonging@gmail.com.
  • Borders & Belonging

    Nina Glick Schiller on transnationalism, feat. Karina Quintanilha

    07/04/2026 | 41 mins.
    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.
    🎧 Follow Borders & Belonging on LinkedIn.
    🌎 Have a question or episode idea? Email bordersandbelonging@gmail.com.
  • Borders & Belonging

    Andreas Pott on spatial reflexivity, feat. Christine Lang

    24/03/2026 | 36 mins.
    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.
    🎧 Follow Borders & Belonging on LinkedIn.
    🌎 Have a question or episode idea? Email bordersandbelonging@gmail.com.
  • Borders & Belonging

    Gracia Liu-Farrer on the social construction of skill, feat. Helena Hof

    10/03/2026 | 35 mins.
    What happens when a visa category becomes a verdict on your worth? Gracia Liu-Farrer reflects on the ideas and experiences that shaped her influential work on migration, labour markets and the social construction of skill. She is joined by Helena Hof, whose research examines how labels like "high-skilled" and "low-skilled" are assigned, contested and recognised across cities, institutions and borders. 
    Together, they discuss why skill is never simply what you know or what you can do, how power and place determine whose abilities get recognised, and what it would mean to think about talent as something cultivated rather than possessed.
    Guests: Gracia Liu-Farrer, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute of Asian Migration, Waseda University; Helena Hof, Senior Research Fellow, University of Zurich.
    🎧 Follow Borders & Belonging on LinkedIn.
    🌎 Have a question or episode idea? Email bordersandbelonging@gmail.com.
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About Borders & Belonging
Migration is a complex phenomenon – for individuals, it is a personal journey that can result in struggle or triumph depending on life circumstances; and for countries, it can be an economic driver, or a source of social tension or even conflict.Host Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University, explores the complexity of migration with the help of leading academics and professionals working with migrants on the ground.Season 4 of Borders & Belonging explores reflexivity: the practice of turning research back on itself to examine how we know what we know.This season draws on the lived experiences of pioneering scholars whose work has transformed how we understand human movement across borders. We then ask each scholar to nominate an up-and-coming scholar they admire, whose research builds on, challenges, or complements their own. Join us as we trace the threads connecting scholarship across time, experience, and perspective.For show notes and transcripts, visit: https://www.torontomu.ca/cerc-migration/borders-and-belonging/Signal Award wins in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
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