BIRMM research projects
BIRMM members participate in more than 50 projects, funded primarily by Brussels, Belgian and European entities. Ongoing research projects at BIRMM can be categorized as fundamental research, or applied or policy-relevant research.
Fundamental Research
BIRMM seeks to facilitate the acquisition of fundamental research projects, which are then implemented at the departments and faculties of the participating members.
BIRMM researchers conduct more than 25 fundamental research projects funded by the national research foundation (FWO) which mostly provides PhD and postdoctoral funding.
Topics are as diverse as: coercive EU mobility rules, the intersection of immigration and federalism, the effects of violence against women in politics, perceptions of differentness, polarization, and dissatisfaction with representatives, intergenerational social mobility and welfare state regimes from a gendered perspective, the impact of Islam in Brussels prisons post-terrorist attacks, hybrid-fiction in migration narratives, the role of forced migration in urban development, cross-ethnic voting in Brussels, pan-Arab news satire, childcare needs of migrants, the affective epistemology of dislocated journalists, foreigners’ participation in prisons, distance education for detained Dutch citizens, social and ethnic inequalities in social mobility, local factors in rental discrimination, governing religious diversity, young asylum seekers' experiences, discretionary decision-making by (cr)immigration officers are analyzed, linguistic changes among moving Italians, the influence of English on Flemish emigrants, collaborative strategies of queer intellectuals, representations of Blackness in African American plays, and culturally competent care for patients with migration backgrounds.
Ongoing projects funded by the European Research Council (ERC) that are led by BIRMM members include:
REEL BORDERS: this project focuses on examining the impact of borders on people's lives and identities through participatory filmmaking. Led by Kevin Smets, it explores how borders influence daily experiences, migration, and media practices. It involves creating and analyzing films produced with local communities along various borders, such as the Irish and Spanish-Moroccan borders, to capture the nuanced realities and emotional landscapes of these regions.
MERLIT: this project, led by Eva Ulrike Pirker, is a systematic, diachronic and comparative investigation of meritocratic narratives in literature. Meritocratic thinking manifests itself in powerful narratives across the globe, from the constitutionally embedded “pursuit of happiness” to neoliberalnarratives of self-enhancement. MERLIT investigates forms of these narratives, which are embraced for their seemingly empowering and universalist appeal, but also criticised for their enmeshment with structures of domination and privilege. MERLIT explores how meritocratic narratives are written, how they are written into cultures, but also how they are written back to in text forms that have shaped the zeitgeist of particular moments respectively.
Applied and Policy-relevant Research
Most research projects at BIRMM are policy-research related to immigration policies, immigrant integration policies, anti-discrimination policies, language policies, security policies and urban (diversity) policies. These projects include large-scale ones such as projects funded under the EU’s Horizon2020 programme and the SBO-FWO funding (see below). BIRMM provides many platforms for organizing and valorizing applied and policy-relevant research and its outcomes.
BIRMM researchers are involved in several policy-oriented BELSPO (Belgian Science Policy) research projects:
- REGUIDE - A Holistic, Restorative and Gendered approach to Guide Returnees to their Home country
- DIGIPOL - Digitalizing the police: internal and external challenges for the police organization in an inclusive society
- FedDiverse - Ethnic diversity in federal public services in Belgium
- DIGICOJUST-2 - Military Violence and its (Dis)Contents in Colonial Congo: Sharing the Record, Writing the History
BIRMM researchers are currently coordinating or partnering in three SBO-FWO projects with a primary societal finality:
ENGINE - Tackling the EthNic Gap IN higher Education: this project aims to address ethnic inequality in Flemish higher education. It engages over 20 societal partners and 3 universitities (VUB - KULeuven - UHasselt).
From Camp to Campus: The research aim of “From Camp to Campus” is to develop an innovative ‘social investment approach’ for qualified refugees and newcomers through higher education.
Social well-being in Flemish primary schools: This research project aims to identify and tackle identity-based bullying in primary schools in Flanders.
BIRMM researchers are currently partnering in five H2020 projects:
WholeCOMM: this project explores the integration of post-2014 migrants in small and medium-sized towns and rural areas. The project studies the integration of these migrants through a Whole-of-Community perspective. The Whole-of-Community perspective conceives of migrant integration as an open-ended process that involves interactions between multiple actors – including citizens, long-term residents and newly arrived migrants as well as state, market and civil society actors – and that takes place in specific local contexts. You can read more about the project on the BIRMM Spotlight or on the project website.
BRIDGES ‘Assessing the production and impact of migration narratives’: this project aims to understand the causes and consequences of migration narratives in a context of increasing politicisation and polarisation. In this project, BIRMM partners with the Institute for Social Research in Norway to assess the influence of different types of narratives on the attitudes and decisions of (potential) migrants in The Gambia and Sudan. You can read more about the project here.
EqualStrength -From one closed door to another: The main contribution of EqualStrength is to investigate cumulative and structural forms of discrimination, outgroup prejudice and hate crimes against ethnic, racial and religious minorities from a cross-setting and intersectional perspective. EqualStrength is led by a consortium of ten European research institutions.
HumMingBird - Enhanced migration measures from a multidimensional perspective: the HumMingBird project aims to improve the mapping and understanding of changing migration flows. The research analyses patterns, motivations and new geographies, and tests new methods to forecast emerging and future trends.
Mirre-M - Measuring Irregular Migration and Related Policies: Mirre-M aims to establish how different quantifications of irregular migration can address particular stakeholder needs, and map different indicators and estimates concerning the irregular migrant population and other migrants with an unstable legal status. MIrreM will also analyse trends and outcomes of regularisation policies and practices in the EU, US and Canada, exploring in particular views of different stakeholders and reasons for the (non-) implementation of regularisation in the past decade.