This piece, originally shared on the Co-Imagine Project blog, offers insight from three ETMU Members (Liina Mustonen, Saara Toukolehto and Bruno Lefort) with respect to themes that emerged through ETMU’s 2025 Conference in Helsinki. While wondering what constitutes meaningful scholarship in a “time of monsters”, the authors reflect on a workshop they convened to interrogate invisible barriers and the impact of terminology of categories that is often used to describe various facets of human migration. Drawing on critical migration studies, the piece suggests that these categories represent epistemic violence. The authors call for deconstruction and revision of common assumptions of these categories among migration researchers. Using mapping and visual methods, workshop conveners encouraged inquiry into invisible barriers and alternative frameworks to offer researchers insight into expansion and ethical coordination of their research practice in migration studies. Check it out on the project blog, here!
Image Credit: Yorgos Konstantinou
