Discussing Key Challenges to Today’s Globalized World: Tensions Between Migration and the National Welfare State.

The second Welfare State Futures (WSF) Thematic Workshop for 2017 took place at The Hague on March 16-17. After a short introduction by organizer Helga de Valk, Head of the WSF Project MobileWelfare and Theme Leader for Migration and Migrants at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI), the workshop started with individual project presentations by Project Leaders Marcel Lubbers (MIFARE),  Susanne Schmidt (TransJudFare), Anna Amelina (TRANSWEL), Jenny Phillimore (UPWEB) and Helga de Valk (MobileWelfare).

Freshly brought up to date on project content and progress, workshop participants could listen to the Lecture “A Close Look at the Welfare Magnet Hypothesis” by  Prof. Alicia Adserà, Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs (Princeton University), one of two Keynotes for the workshop at The Hague.
After a networking lunch the workshop was continued with the Masterclass – individual paper presentations by PhD students and Postdocs from the different WSF Projects. In addition to the reflections and feedback by senior scholar Prof. Alicia Adserà, workshop participants were assigned to comment on and discuss each others scientific output. Parallel to the Masterclass, the participating projects’ Principal Investigators engaged in discussion on migration and the welfare state.

The first workshop day closed with a networking dinner and great expections for the second workshop day which offered another Keynote by Prof. Jean-Michel Lafleur, Université de Liège, who currently holds a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to work on a project entitled “Migration and Transnational Social Protection in Post-crisis Europe”. Furthermore, the second workshop day focused on stakeholder communication. Susanne Maris, an experienced trainer and coach, specialized in talent development of high potentials in higher education, led a seminar for Masterclass students to understand the importance of targeted stakeholder communication – adapting the way of presenting research findings to the non-scientific community.

More information and opinions at welfarestatefutures.org