Non-urban or peripheral spaces, whether defined geographically, economically, socially or politically, are increasingly recognised as important sites of migration governance: power is negotiated, authority contested, and state presence unevenly felt. Diverse forms of migration, including asylum, labour, and internal mobility, have reshaped non-urban spaces across Europe and beyond, transforming them into spaces of arrival and transit but also sites where struggles over resources and policy implementation unfold. This Workshop brings together scholars who explore how governance and politics play out in diverse non-urban spaces, reflecting on broader centre-periphery cleavages, debates over sovereignty, humanitarianism, and the governance of mobility.
While migration studies have largely centred on urban contexts, struggles over migration increasingly unfold outside major centres. Those non-urban or peripheral areas offer a critical lens through which to understand how power, authority and mobility intersect. While state presence might be fragmented, alternative governance actors emerge. Political and governance challenges are closely linked to patterns of outmigration, population decline, and the perceived decoupling of migration-integration policy frameworks. Alternatively, those areas emerge as experimental policy spaces, sites of innovation and community resilience. It is essential to approach these contexts not as passive recipients of national policy, but as active arenas in which broader migration and integration regimes are enacted, contested and reshaped.
In this light, there is a need to bring together insights from centre-periphery studies of political science and urban studies with the long tradition of migration studies, the more recent local turn in migration scholarship and its late shift to small and medium-sized towns and rural areas, with the aim to theoretically and empirically explore a broader understanding of the nexus between migration (broadly understood) and non-urban and peripheral spaces.
This Workshop examines how diverse non-urban and peripheral settings intersect with different forms of mobility, including refugee migration, labour migration and internal movement. Focusing on the actors, politics and governance at play, it investigates migration politics and governance within complex multi-level systems outside the urban realm.
The Workshop, co-directed by Miriam Haselbacher, Institute for Urban & Regional Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, lays the groundwork for a joint publication.
Bona, M., Bergamasco, G., Ravazzoli, E., (2021) Forced Migration to Mountain Regions: Empirical Evidence from Two Reception Projects in the Italian Alps. OMNES J Multicult Soc. 11(1):20-45. https://doi.org/10.14431/omnes.2021.01.11.1.20.
Barberis E., Pavolini, E. (2015). Settling Outside Gateways. The State of the Art, and the Issues At Stake. Sociologica, 2, 0–0. https://doi.org/10.2383/81426
Caponio, T., Borkert, M. (Eds.). (2010). The local dimension of migration policymaking. Amsterdam University Press.
Caponio, T., Scholten, P., Zapata-Barrero, R. (Eds.) (2020). The Routledge handbook of the governance of migration and diversity in cities. Routledge.
Caponio, T., Donatiello, D., Ponzo, I. (2021). Relational and reputational resources in the governance of top-down asylum seekers’ reception in Italian rural areas. Territory, Politics, Governance, 10(3), 407–425. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2021.1995479.
Carlbaum, S. (2021). Refugee women’s establishment in the rural north of Sweden: Cultural capital in meeting local labour market needs. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(5), 1210–1227. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2021.1933402.
Egea, I., Kreichauf, R. (2025). Regeneration, predatory inclusion, and migrant experiences in declining rural areas in Spain and Germany. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 51(5), 1228–1251. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2024.2402061
Engl, A., Wisthaler, V. (2018). Stress Test for the Policy-making Capability of Cross-border Spaces? Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the Euroregion Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino. Journal of Borderlands Studies, 35(3), 467–485. https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2018.1496466.
Haselbacher, M., Segarra, H. (2021). Politics of adjustment: rural mayors and the accommodation of refugees. Territory, Politics, Governance, 10(3), 346–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2021.1934101.
Jonitz, E., Schiller, M., Scholten, P. (2024). Are small towns a battleground for migration governance? Negotiating refugee integration in small towns in the Netherlands. Local Government Studies, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2024.2357306.
Kreichauf, R. (2023). Governing migration through small towns: dispersal and the production of spaces of transit. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 47(3), 349-367. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.13171.
Laine, J., Rauhut, D., Gruber, M. (2023) On the potential of immigration for the remote areas of Europe: an introduction, in: Jussi P. Laine & Daniel Rauhut & Marika Gruber (ed.), Assessing the Social Impact of Immigration in Europe, chapter 1, pages 1-25, Edward Elgar Publishing.
Phelps, N. A., Maginn, P. J., Keil, R. (2023). Centring the periphery in urban studies: Notes towards a research agenda on peripheral centralities. Urban Studies, 60(6), 1158–1176. https://doi.org/10.1177/00420980221135418.
Pettrachin, A., Caponio, T., Borgna, C. (2024). Who is responsible for migrant integration? Contextual political drivers of governance actors’ responsibility frames in small and medium European localities. Local Government Studies, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/03003930.2024.2401916.
Pettrachin, A. (2024). Integration Policy Networks and the Potential for Local Integration Policy Diffusion in European Small- and Medium-Sized Towns and Rural Areas: A Comparative Analysis. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, 26(5), 487–510. https://doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2024.2371419.
Pisarevskaya, A., & Scholten, P. (2022). Cities of Migration. In P. Scholten (Ed.), Introduction to Migration Studies (pp. 249–262). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-92377-8_16.
Rye, J. F., Scott, S. (2018). International Labour Migration and Food Production in Rural Europe: A Review of the Evidence. Sociologia Ruralis, 58(4), 928–952. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12208
Rye, J. F., & O’Reilly, K. (Eds.). (2021). International Labour Migration to Europe’s Rural Regions. Taylor & Francis.
Schneider, H. (2022). Local migration regimes in rural areas: The example of refugee reception in Saxony, Germany. Comparative Population Studies-Zeitschrift Für Bevölkerungswissenschaft. https://doi.org/10.12765/CPoS-2022-16.
Simsek-Caglar, A., Schiller, N. G. (2018). Migrants and city-making: Dispossession, Displacement, and Urban Regeneration. Duke University Press.
Stead, V., Butler, R., Mayes, C. (2023). Race and place-making in the rural Global North. Journal of Rural Studies, 97, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2022.10.009.
Weidinger, T., Kordel, S. (2023). Access to and exclusion from housing over time: Refugees' experiences in rural areas. International Migration, 61(3), 54–71. https://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12807.
Zapata-Barrero, R., Caponio, T., Scholten, P. (2017). Theorizing the ‘local turn’ in a multi-level governance framework of analysis: A case study in immigrant policies. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 83(2), 241–246, https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852316688426.
1: How can we construct and redefine non-urban/peripheral spaces in relation to migration governance?
2: How do different types of migration shape non-urban or peripheral contexts today?
3: What roles do migrants play in shaping governance in non-urban or peripheral areas?
4: How do multi-level tensions emerge in governance processes at the margins?
5: How are authority and agency over migration governance and politics negotiated in non-urban places?
1: Qualitative and quantitative as well as theoretical papers on non-urban spaces and migration.
2: Papers exploring the experiences of migrants in non-urban settings, focusing on obstacles and advantages.
3: Papers theorising or empirically exploring core-periphery relations in migration research.
4: Papers exploring various dimensions of non-urbanity, such as remoteness, borderlands, rurality etc.
5: Papers unpacking space-making as process, and its problems and opportunities in relation to migration.
6: Papers reflecting on actors and their role in migration governance and space-making.
7: Papers examining how processes of peripheralisation are addressed in relation to migration politics.
