Director Hourani attended the Fifth IMISCOE Annual Conference, Bilbao, Spain

September 9-12, 2008

The Fifth IMISCOE Annual Conference was held at the University of Deusto in Bilbao, Spain, from 9th to 12th September, 2008. The conference began with a plenary session on immigration in Spain. Then the participants joined their respective clusters to begin their workshops. Ms. Hourani joined her cluster (B3), which dealt with migration and citizenship from the perspective of legal status, mobilization and political participation. The second day of the conference also began with a plenary session, this time on Latin American Migration to Europe and subsequently the participants returned to their clusters to continue their workshops.

For two consecutive days Ms. Hourani listened to the presentations and participated in the discussions on issues related to research and data needs in quantitative research on legal status of immigrants, acquisition of nationality, and political participation, as well as on governing diasporas and co-ethnic citizenship policies towards expatriates in Europe.

From right to left: Director Hourani, Dr. Irina Molodikova, and two other participants, Bilbao, 2008

The conference was the result of cooperation between the Research Unit on Migration, Management of Diversity and Social Cohesion of the University of Deusto, which is a 30-team group of researchers, doctoral students and grant-funded researchers, and the International Migration Integration and Social Cohesion (IMISCOE) which is a Network of Excellence uniting twenty-three established European research institutes, over 500 researchers from all European countries and various branches of the economic and social sciences, the humanities and law in pursuit of studies under the themes of international migration, integration and social cohesion.