by Ivan Josipovic | Austrian Academy of Sciences

The reception of asylum seekers and their integration have been hotly debated topics in European Member States since the Long Summer of Migration in 2015. On day two of the RESPOND Conference 2020 (November 21st) we held an online session on the reception and integration regimes in Austria, Germany Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Alexander-Kenneth Nagel and Ayhan Kaya moderated a fruitful discussion between four experts who are professionally active in the field of asylum and immigrant support…

by RESPOND Project

The EC-funded international research project “RESPOND: Multilevel Governance of Mass Migration in Europe and Beyond” calls for human-rights responses to the explosive situation at the refugee camp “Moria” and in the Aegean region.

After another fire in which a woman was burnt to death, on Sunday 29 September 2019, the inhuman and volatile situation of the “hot-spot” Moria on the Greek island, Lesbos attracted further worldwide publicity. The woman’s death on Sunday was the third in the last two months.

by Ivan Josipovic & Ursula Reeger | Austrian Academy of Sciences

As we discussed in our first blog entry, the summer of migration in 2015 left a considerable mark on Austrian politics and led to multiple policy reforms. Political debates on refugees’ rights and duties continue to this day, while the number of new arrivals has steeply declined and the situation of reception has largely normalized. Under the framework of RESPOND, we spent the last months conducting interviews with eleven practitioners, who are active in the fields of asylum and integration.

The Austrian team of the RESPOND project is located at the Institute for Urban and Regional Research (ISR) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In this blog entry, we intend to tell a little bit more about the institution and its tasks and aims, the persons involved in the project, and how RESPOND evolved from our point of view. 

Austria has a long tradition as a destination country for migrants and refugees. It is a country that for decades promoted labour migration and admitted refugees during the communist era of Eastern Europe as well as during the Balkan Wars…