SFB 1604:  Production of Migration

• Subject Area: Geosciences ; Humanities ; Social and Behavioural Sciences
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 501120656

The Collaborative Research Center (SFB) aims to change the way we look at migration. It assumes that migration is the product of a societal production process, which in turn fundamentally changes societies. Using concrete empirical constellations, the SFB investigates how individual, collective and institutional actors in different contexts practice, process and charge migration with meaning. This production of migration is understood as a dynamic negotiation: In a contested process marked by power asymmetries, migration is (de)thematized, (de)problematized, and linked to other societal developments. By this, the production of migration not only creates, stabilizes or changes physical movements of people, but also social orders and knowledge systems. The shared research questions of the interdisciplinary consortium are: 1) How and with which meanings is migration produced? Who is involved in which ways and with which interests, resources, instruments and practices? 2) How and why does the societal approach to migration change? 3) How does the production of migration influence perceptions? And what consequences does it have for social structures and processes of societal change? The production of migration and its meanings is based on categorizations of people, groups and practices. These are condensed into social figures, which in turn can influence processes of negotiation. Project Group A of the SFB is therefore dedicated to the figures of migration and their emergence, reproduction and effectiveness - both on individual and societal levels. The production of migration also requires specific infrastructures that create or restrict options for mobility and belonging. These infrastructures and the actors associated with them are the subject of Project Group B. Moreover, migratory movements always have a spatial dimension. The production of migration, too, creates and uses spaces and spatial imaginations. Project Group C therefore focuses on the spaces of migration. In the SFB, figures, infrastructures and spaces are understood as central media of the production of migration. By examining how migration is conceived, observed and attributed with meaning, and how in this process societal structures of migration are (re-)produced, the SFB conducts migration research as research of the society as a whole. Research and academia are involved in the production of migration, too, and they thus also become an object of study. The long-term goal of the Collaborative Research Centre is therefore to develop a reflexive theory of the social production of migration.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres

Current projects

• A01 - The Production of the ›Others‹: (De-)Thematizing Migration-Related Difference (Project Head Becker, Julia Christina )
• A02 - The Production of the Discriminated in Antiracist Movements (Project Head El-Mafaalani, Aladin )
• A03 - »You are guest worker children!« Science, School and the Production of Figures of Migration (Project Heads Rass, Christoph A. ;  Yildirim, Lale )
• A04 - Fragmented Worlds of Work in the (Post-)Pandemic: The Production of Inequality through Figures of Migrant Workers (Project Head Holst, Hajo )
• A05 - ›Refugees‹ and Others: The Production of Refugee-Related Figures since the 1970s (Project Heads Löhr, Ph.D., Isabella ;  Oltmer, Jochen )
• B01 - The Production of (Im-)Mobility: The Visa as Border Infrastructure (Project Head Groß, Thomas )
• B02 - The Production of Mobility Options: Migration and Border Management in the Framework of the Eastern Partnership of the European Union (Project Head Schneckener, Ulrich )
• B03 - The Production of Gender-Differentiating Migration Policies (Project Head Schwenken, Helen )
• B04 - Mosques and the Production of Belonging (Project Head Ceylan, Rauf )
• B05 - The multilingual hospital. The Production of Migration through Language as Communicative and Social Infrastructure (Project Head Dimroth, Christine )
• C01 - The Production of Urban Spaces of Migration by Local Administrations and Science (Project Heads Oltmer, Jochen ;  Pott, Andreas )
• C02 - ›Unmaking Migrants?‹ The Production of the EU’s Internal and External Borders and their Effects in Historical-Postcolonial Perspective (Project Head Reinecke, Christiane )
• C03 - The Production of Spaces of Skilled Migration: Recruitment and Mobility of Physicians (Project Head Lang, Christine )
• C04 - The Production of Climate Flight as an Occasion for Theorisation (Project Head Stierl, Maurice )
• C05 - The Production of Climate Flight as an Occasion for Theorisation (Project Heads Pott, Andreas ;  Scheffer, Thomas )
• MGK - Integrated Research Training Group (Project Heads Lang, Christine ;  Schwenken, Helen )
• T01 - Reflexive Migration Research in the Museum. Potentials and Perspectives of Virtual Realities (Project Heads Becker, Julia Christina ;  El-Mafaalani, Aladin ;  Rass, Christoph A. ;  Yildirim, Lale )
• Z - Central Task (Project Head Pott, Andreas )

• Applicant Institution: Universität Osnabrück
• Participating University: Europa-Universität Flensburg; Freie Universität Berlin; Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main; Universität Münster
• Business and Industry: DOMiD e.V.; – Dokumentationszentrum und Museum über die Migration in Deutschland
• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Andreas Pott