Conference Agenda

The Canary Islands are an important enclave for the reception of African migratory flows on the southern border of Europe. This generates certain external challenges: the importance of generating legal and safe access routes to avoid the high mortality of the Atlantic route; and internal: the socio-economic insertion of migrants, especially minors, combating hate speech among the local population, and the design of effective public policies. To this end, the SEIMLab project is a public-private proposal consisting of a social innovation laboratory to generate initiatives for mobility and socio-economic inclusion of migrants through of an intelligent and efficient model. Different three types of initiatives are created to achieve different purposes contemplating a comprehensive approach at origin and destination. First, to seek the full socio-economic inclusion of migrants in the Canary Islands and Cape Verde through the strengthening of the capacities and employability of migrant groups from African partner countries – Senegal, Gambia and Ivory Coast – with special emphasis on unaccompanied minors and women. Second, to change the perception of migrants and facilitate inclusion processes by combating hate speech. Third, to create knowledge management initiatives extracted from the results of the project and the exchange of experiences with the countries of origin that serve to guide the design of public policies in all partners of the project.

After a lengthy period of preparation and numerous delays, on 23 September 2020, the European Commission finally presented the New Pact on Migration and Asylum. On this occasion, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen asserted that the old system is no longer effective and that the Commission's package on migration and asylum offers a new beginning. Ultimately, the European Parliament adopted the Migration Pact on 10 April 2024, with new regulations set to come into effect in June of that year. Criticisms of the pact are numerous, emerging from various civil society and humanitarian organisations, primarily relating to concerns about human rights violations, given that the underlying logic is precisely tighter border controls and a reduction in entries. In reality, the pact perpetuates the logic of securitisation and externalisation, introducing mechanisms such as hotspots, fast-track procedures, flexible solidarity, and others that raise more questions—including those related to potential violations of the fundamental values of the EU itself—than providing answers. This proposal debates to what extent this long-awaited innovation in the EU asylum system is indeed an improvement that offers a fresh start, as argued by Von der Leyen, and to what extent it is a reaction to the growing anti-immigrant sentiments in individual member states, which have also found expression at a common European level.

This paper will explore innovative methods which we are using within the context of an

international research project with young people with experience of displacement and (im)mobility across borders (https://erc-grabs.univ-paris8.fr/). We aim to challenge colonialist and extractivist methods and practices of research on migration. We explore how to innovate in participatory research, reflecting on our experiences of organising workshops with young people to co-design our research methods and tools. Our project encourages young people to take ownership of the research, to ask questions and produce knowledge which is relevant to them. This can be particularly difficult in situations with young people on the move and in precarious and violent environments such as borders. In trying to innovate in our methods, the project attempts to challenge epistemological inequalities between researchers and those with lived experience of displacement, and also the colonial legacies of knowledge production within academia. The paper thus explores both opportunities and challenges for co-design and co-production of knowledge with young people on the move. This includes challenges of engaging with institutional ethics procedures, project funding and timelines.

This paper questions how digital tools designed for vulnerability assessment in asylum systems reproduce gendered assumptions and exclusions, while appearing to offer neutral or inclusive innovation. Drawing on feminist Science and Technology Studies (STS), I examine the European Union Agency for Asylum’s IPSN (Identification of Persons with Special Needs) tool as an emergent socio-technical artefact that mediates how asylum seekers are classified and treated. The analysis explores how vulnerability is operationalised through digital interfaces and what this reveals about the epistemologies of gender and intersectionality embedded in bureaucratic innovation. Grounded in long-term qualitative research on asylum governance in Germany and the UK, the paper combines document analysis, stakeholder mapping, and participant observation with policy actors. I contrast the EUAA’s “vulnerability toolkit”—still not formally required in EU member states—with national digital infrastructures, unpacking their affordances, constraints, and consequences for applicants deemed to be in “vulnerable situations.” I argue that digital tools risk narrowing the concept of vulnerability to fixed, decontextualised indicators, which may fail to address the uncertainties of users and reduce complex lived realities to tick-boxes and Global North definitions of gender identity, sexual violence, or exploitation. As such, these technologies may not only obscure masculinised and intersectional forms of harm but may also reproduce the very hierarchies they aim to dismantle—reinforcing dominant discourses of who counts as ‘deserving’ of protection. This paper contributes to debates on innovation in migration governance by foregrounding the need for reflexive, participatory, and multi-user design logics that prioritise epistemic justice and re-centre asylum seekers’ lived knowledge.