Migration Governance and Migrant Masculinities International Academic Workshop

Nancy Clark is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health, School of Nursing at the University of Victoria, Canada. Her research focuses on immigrant and refugee mental health, social determinants of health, and equity-oriented health and social care policy. She works with refugee communities and settlement organizations using intersectionality, arts-based methods, and gender-based analysis. She is a senior researcher at the ERC MENBELONG Project.

Suzanne Huot is an Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Science & Occupational Therapy at the University of British Columbia and, beginning September 1, 2025, the Interim Co-Director of the UBC Centre for Migration Studies (CMS) for a 12-month term. Her research program centers on the axes of occupation (such as employment), immigration, and Francophone minority communities. She primarily addresses the occupational implications of international migration to Canada through focused, critical examination of governmental legislation, policies, and discourses; the roles of service providers; and the experiences of individual immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Using research approaches informed by occupational science, critical social theory, and qualitative methodologies, Suzanne specifically examines ways in which governmental decisions and actions are experienced at the local scale in relation to people’s daily occupations, interrogating the effect of these high-level decisions on people’ integration, belonging, and sense of community cohesion. Her ongoing research focuses on equity issues that newcomers confront within contemporary policy contexts as they navigate post-migratory transitions within their host communities.

Anna Triandafyllidou is the Director of TMU’s Global Migration Institute and the Scientific Director of Bridging Divides, a $98.4 mln multi- University and multi-partner Program funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. Prior joining TMU in 2019 as the Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) in Migration and Integration, she held a Robert Schuman Chair at the European University Institute, in Florence, Italy. Anna chairs the Metropolis International Migration Network and is Editor of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. In 2021, the University of Liège awarded Triandafyllidou a doctorate honoris causa in recognition of her contribution to migration scholarship. Anna has published widely in the field of migration governance, migration and national identity, and migrant integration in comparative perspectives. She was part of the OECD Network of International Migration Experts from 2010 to 2018 and has provided expert opinions for the Senate of Canada, Immigration Refuges and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the European Parliament, and the European Commission.

Gökçe Yurdakul is Georg Simmel Professor of Diversity and Social Conflict at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She served as Director of the Berlin Institute of Migration and Integration Research (BIM) from 2022 to 2024. Her publications address debates on the headscarf, so-called “honour-based” violence, and public stigma against Muslim men. She is Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant Belonging for Single Migrant Men: A Cross-Country Comparative Perspective (2026–31) and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on Intersectional Approaches to Migration, Gender, and Sexuality (2026).

Silindile Nanzile Mlilo is a Senior Research Associate at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she works with the Bridging Divides project under the Citizenship and Participation theme. Her research focuses on migration governance, citizenship, and belonging in postcolonial African contexts, with particular attention to xenophobia, migrant exclusion, and everyday experiences of non-belonging in Southern Africa. She previously led research within the Xeno watch project at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she was responsible for collecting and analyzing data on xenophobic discrimination across South Africa. Her broader research interests include regional mobility regimes, urban belonging, and the governance of migrant exclusion in the Global South.

Authors: Susan Beth Rottmann and Dilek Üstünalan, Özyegin University

Abstract: This article examines how Türkiye’s migration governance regime produces and legitimizes gendered stigmas of Syrian and Afghan men as criminals, hypersexual, cowards, traitors, and uncivilized others. Rather than approaching governance through formal policy analysis alone, the study investigates how governance operates discursively, creating public anxiety by shaping culturally specific understandings of masculinity, morality, and belonging. It asks: How do stigmas projected onto migrants reflect broader societal anxieties about Turkish gendered ideals? Further, how does political polarization shape the rationalization of these stigmas across ideological divides? Empirically, the article draws on qualitative discourse analysis of content from self-identified secular and religious-conservative media spheres (2011-2025). We argue that political polarization in Türkiye does not generate opposing representations, but rather distinct moral registers through which similar gendered and racialized stigmas are articulated. While secular outlets frame migrant masculinity through tropes of hypersexuality and cultural backwardness, religious outlets emphasize moral deficiency and threats to the family. Stigmas are further reinforced by anxieties around shifting gender roles within migrant households, particularly when migrant women enter paid work. The article argues that migrant masculinities become central symbolic sites through which governance, social anxiety, and contested gender norms are debated in everyday life.

Keywords: masculinity, gendered stigmatization, political polarization, migration governance, Türkiye

Susan Beth Rottmann is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Özyeğin University in Istanbul, Türkiye. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research explores migration, belonging, gender, democracy and citizenship in Turkey and Europe, with a focus on everyday practices of inclusion and exclusion in transnational settings. She is a senior researcher at the ERC MENBELONG Project.

Dilek Üstünalan is a sociologist and postdoctoral researcher at the ERC MENBELONG Project. Her research focuses on the homemaking experiences of middle-class Syrian refugee women in Istanbul, through a multi- scalar and sensory ethnographic approach. She examines how forced migrants negotiate belonging through everyday material and sensory experiences

Authors: María Luisa Méndez Layera, Vania Reyes Muñoz and Carolina Stefoni, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Abstract: This study examines the reconfigurations of masculine identities among Haitian and Venezuelan migrants in Santiago de Chile, while paying particular attention to the entanglements of labour insertion and national ethnoracial hierarchies. Chile has become an important destination for South-South migration, yet migration governance has increasingly shifted towards securitization and criminalization. This study is grounded in a  qualitative methodological approach that uses 20 semi-structured interviews to explore how migrant men negotiated a segmented labour market that racialized their bodies and devalued their former professions. We examine the tension of conventional breadwinner roles; the nature of precarious employment and social exclusion, integrated for their ability to fulfil patriarchal ideals of financial provision to provoke a masculine identity crisis. We explore how family relationships in destination and origin regarding male provider roles are strained by both the racialization and criminalization processes they experience upon entering the labour market in Santiago, Chile.

Keywords: masculinities, migration governance, labour market

María Luisa Méndez is Full Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is the Director of the Nucleus Millennium of Insecurity and Urban Cohesion and Principal Investigator of the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES). She studies social stratification, urban inequality, and conflict in Chilean cities. Her work investigates how class and sociospatial inequalities shape urban space and social belonging. She is a senior researcher at the ERC MENBELONG Project.

Vania Reyes Muñoz conducts research on migration, racialization, belonging, and gender in urban spaces, focusing on Afro-descendant migrants in Santiago, Chile. She combines ethnographic, spatial, and visual approaches to understand how representations of the body, racial, national, and gender identities intersect in Latin American cities. She is part of the research group CAMINAR (Comparative Analysis of Migration and International Displacement in Las Américas). She is a postdoctoral researcher at the ERC MENBELONG Project.

Carolina Stefoni is currently a Full Professor at the University of Tarapacá, Chile, director of the PhD program in Social Sciences at the same university, and an associate researcher at the Center for the Study of Conflict and Social Cohesion (COES). Her research areas include human mobility, migration and borders in Latin America, gender and migration, coexistence, and discrimination.

Authors: Gökçe Yurdakul, Olha Lushankina, Hannah Carstanjen, and Alissa Tschee, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany

Abstract: This article examines how migrant men are differentially constructed and governed in Germany through legal frameworks, policy debates, and media discourses. Using the concept of gendered racialization, it argues that German migrant governance relies on the simultaneous racialization and gendering of migrant men, albeit in uneven and hierarchical ways. Migrant men are framed not only as risks or threats, but also as selectively deserving or suspect subjects, depending on nationality, religion, and geopolitical context. Empirically, the article analyzes German migration and integration laws, Bundestag debates, policy documents, and coverage in major German media outlets. It compares the representation and governance of Syrian, Afghan, Turkish, and Ukrainian men across key moments, including the 2015–16 refugee arrivals, debates following the Cologne New Year’s Eve events, and the reception of Ukrainians after 2022. While Syrian, Afghan, and Turkish men are frequently constructed as culturally incompatible, patriarchal, criminalized, or resistant to integration—often with reference to Islam and gender equality—Ukrainian men are framed through narratives of forced immobility, selective. protection, or suspicious absence due to conscription. The article shows how these differentiated constructions legitimize distinct legal statuses, policy interventions, and public responses. We show that gendered racialization operates as a central mechanism of migrant governance in Germany, governing who belongs and what kind of moral hierarchies exist among migrant men.

Keywords: Gendered Racialization, migrant masculinities, migration governance, moral hierarchies, Germany

Gökçe Yurdakul is Georg Simmel Professor of Diversity and Social Conflict at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She served as Director of the Berlin Institute of Migration and Integration Research (BIM) from 2022 to 2024. Her publications address debates on the headscarf, so-called “honour-based” violence, and public stigma against Muslim men. She is Principal Investigator of the ERC Advanced Grant Belonging for Single Migrant Men: A Cross-Country Comparative Perspective (2026–31) and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on Intersectional Approaches to Migration, Gender, and Sexuality (2026).

Olha Lushankina is an MA student in Sociology at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research examines the experiences of Ukrainian refugees in Germany, transformations in contemporary Ukrainian society, as well as the intersections of gender, migration, and work. She is a student researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she contributes to data collection for the MENBELONG project.

Hannah Carstanjen is an MA student in the Gender, Intersectionality and Politics program at Freie Universität Berlin. She is a student researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she contributes to data collection for the MENBELONG project. She studies social inclusion with a focus on disability, gender, and migration.

Alissa Tschee is a BA student in social sciences at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She is a student researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she contributes to data collection for the MENBELONG project. Her academic interests include migration, belonging, and diversity in contemporary European societies.

Author: Naika Foroutan, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Abstract: This article examines the persistent narrative closure surrounding Muslim immigrant men in European postmigrant societies, where representations of masculinity remain overwhelmingly framed through tropes of patriarchy, violence, and “toxic masculinity.” Drawing on empirical findings from qualitative and quantitative studies, the article demonstrates that individual achievements, everyday practices, and counter-narratives articulated by Muslim immigrant men rarely disrupt these dominant frames. Even practices aligned with egalitarian, caring, or reflexive masculinities tend to be reinterpreted through suspicion rather than recognition. Against this backdrop, the article argues for a global feminist and postmigrant analytical perspective that takes seriously the vulnerabilities, emotional labour, and experiences of discrimination faced by Muslim immigrant men. Rather than positioning them solely as objects of critique, the contribution proposes their inclusion as subjects within feminist and postmigrant debates on gender, power, and inequality. This shift, the article suggests, is crucial for understanding how racialization and masculinity intersect in contemporary plural societies. Keywords: Muslims, masculinity, vulnerability, racialization, postmigration.

Naika Foroutan is Director of the German Center for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM). She is a professor of integration research and social policy at Humboldt University in Berlin, where she heads a department at the Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research (BIM). Her research interests include the transformation of immigration countries into post-migrant societies, Islam and minority policies, and radicalization, racism, and Islamism. For her academic work, she has received several distinctions, including an honorary doctorate from Lund University (May 2025) and the Caroline von Humboldt Professorship (2025).

Author: Anna Triandafyllidou, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada

Abstract: Immigration to Canada privileges individuals (and their families) with higher education and a high level of professional skills. Pathways to permanent residency are, in theory, clear and certain – the rules are transparent and the system highly regulated. However, in practice, such pathways can be quite complex and characterized by significant levels of uncertainty arising from (a) the competitive nature of the system (the highest-ranking applicants are selected), (b) frequent changes in the relevant policies during the last 5 years, privileging specific Labour market sectors or specific skills (e.g. French language knowledge) or Canadian experience or reducing drastically the overall numbers of slots available, (c) broader uncertainties such as the Covid-19 pandemic or situations of human insecurity arising from ethnic tensions or authoritarian regimes (e.g. Venezuela, Iran) which push people to move even if they do not opt for humanitarian pathways. This paper focuses on the drivers affecting decision making adopting an intersectional perspective focusing on migrant men. The paper analyses how different drivers (social, economic, political) intersect with perceptions of uncertainty and relate to gendered roles as  pater-familias or the main breadwinner in the household. The paper responds to the call of this Special Issue for a renewed gaze on migrant men, acknowledging the  role of complex intersectional realities and shifting models of masculinity. The paper is based on 60 qualitative interviews conducted in the period 2023-2024 with prospective permanent residents (who were either based in Canada with a temporary permit, or still abroad) from around the world.

Keywords: decision-making, migration drivers, Canada, uncertainty, masculinity, intersectionality

Anna Triandafyllidou is the Founding Director of the Global Migration Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University and the Scientific Director of Bridging Divides, a $98.4 mln multi- university and multi- partner program funded by the Canada First Research Excellence Fund. Prior to joining TMU as the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration in 2019, she held a Robert Schuman Chair at the European University Institute, in Florence, Italy. Anna chairs the Metropolis International Migration Network and is Editor of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. In 2021, the University of Liège awarded 

Triandafyllidou a doctorate honoris causa in recognition of her contribution to migration scholarship. Anna has published widely in the field of migration governance, migration and national identity, and migrant integration in comparative perspectives. She was part of the OECD Network of International Migration Experts from 2010 to 2018 and has provided expert opinions for the Senate of Canada, Immigration Refuges and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), the European Parliament, and the European Commission.

Authors: Nancy Clark and Abu Saleh Mohammad Sowad, University of Victoria, Canada

Abstract: This article examines how Canadian migration governance shapes Latinx migrant men’s experiences of health, care, and masculinity within gendered and racialized regimes of belonging. Situated within a cross-national comparative project, the study integrates legal, policy, and media analysis to trace how legal frameworks, temporary labour programs, and public narratives create everyday bordering practices that position migrant men as economically necessary yet socially marginal. As Latinx men are overrepresented in temporary and precarious labour streams within Canada’s foreign workers program, the analysis reveals how race, class, and migration status intersect with policies to produce distinctive forms of health vulnerability, institutional neglect, and moral oversight. The article also highlights how dominant ideas of self-reliant masculinity are reinforced and challenged through representations of responsibility, productivity, and risk across governance and media discourses. By foregrounding the symbolic and regulatory dimensions of belonging, this article exposes the structural and social inequities that perpetuate a cycle of disadvantages and heighten disparities at the intersection of gender, migration, and health. Intersectional and decolonial perspectives on migrant masculinities, connecting health, labour, and citizenship within migration governance, disrupt social constructions of migrant men as others. The findings situate the Canadian case within a broader comparative landscape, illustrating how economic structures and government policy regimes actively configure who is recognized as a legitimate subject of care and participation, with implications for creating more equitable, gender-responsive health and integration policies across diverse migration settings.

Keywords: migration governance; migrant masculinities; temporary labour migration; belonging; migrant health, intersectionality, caring masculinities

Nancy Clark is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health, School of Nursing at the University of Victoria, Canada. Her research focuses on immigrant and refugee mental health, social determinants of health, and equity-oriented health and social care policy. She works with refugee communities and settlement organizations   using intersectionality, arts-based methods, and gender-based analysis. She is a senior researcher at the ERC MENBELONG Project.

Abu Saleh Mohammad Sowad is an Aspiration Postdoctoral Fellow with the ERC MENBELONG Project at the School of Nursing, University of Victoria. His research examines how transnational migration reshapes masculinity, belonging, and well-being among migrant men in diasporic contexts, using intersectional and critical qualitative approaches. He holds a PhD in Social and Cultural Analysis from Concordia University, an MSc in Gender, Development and Globalisation from the London School of Economics, and previously served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Author: Silindile Mlilo, Toronto Metropolitan University

Abstract: This article examines how migration governance in South Africa shapes the belonging of migrant men through gendered and racialized practices of policing, labour regulation, and public discourse. Drawing on policy analysis and qualitative narratives based on Xeno watch data, the paper analyzes how everyday governance practices produce and regulate migrant masculinities within post-apartheid urban contexts. Masculinities are approached not 

as fixed identities or demographic categories, but as effects of governance that emerge through criminalization, surveillance, and economic disposability. The article shows how migrant men are constructed as security threats, job competitors, and “illegal” urban subjects within state enforcement practices and anti-migrant mobilizations. These constructions operate as governance rationales that legitimize intensified police raids, workplace inspections, and discretionary documentation checks. Such practices structure migrant men’s access to employment, legal status, and social protection through heightened surveillance and informality, reinforcing gendered forms of precarity and exclusion from citizenship and belonging. The article argues that migration governance reproduces racialized hierarchies of belonging by regulating migrant men through policing and labour control. By foregrounding South Africa as a Global South case, the article contributes to comparative debates on migration governance and migrant masculinities, highlighting how gendered governance operates in contexts marked by inequality, informality, and contested citizenship across labour markets, local communities, and everyday encounters with state institutions.

Keywords: migration governance; migrant men; masculinities; South Africa; belonging

Silindile Nanzile Mlilo is a Senior Research Associate at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she works with the Bridging Divides project under the Citizenship and Participation theme. Her research focuses on migration governance, citizenship, and belonging in postcolonial African contexts, with particular attention to xenophobia, migrant exclusion, and everyday experiences of non-belonging in Southern Africa. She previously led research within the Xeno watch project at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she was responsible for collecting and analyzing data on xenophobic discrimination across South Africa. Her broader research interests include regional mobility regimes, urban belonging, and the governance of migrant exclusion in the Global South.

Authors: Sirijit Sunanta and Siripat Naknam, Mahidol University, Thailand

Abstract: Long-standing economic hardship and political instability have funneled millions of Myanmar citizens into Thailand, a migration corridor defined by a shared 2,400-kilometer border. The IOM estimates that 4.1 million Myanmar nationals currently reside in Thailand under diverse statuses, ranging from documented and undocumented laborers to residents of border refugee camps. While the majority work in the fishery, manufacturing, agriculture, and service sectors, recent internal conflicts and the implementation of a forced conscription law have driven a new wave of high-skilled Myanmar youth into the country. Drawing on this historically embedded cross-border mobility, this paper examines the dynamics of migration from Myanmar to Thailand through the lens of migration governance—defined here as the intersection of policy, legal frameworks, and implementation practices. Against this macro-level backdrop, the paper analyzes the representation of single Myanmar migrant men in the Thai media. Utilizing the NCX database, the study extracts and analyzes coverage from six leading Thai newspapers spanning 1990 to 2026. The findings reveal the specific mechanisms through which & Myanmar migrant masculinity has been constructed and evolved within Thai public discourse.

Keywords: Myanmar-Thailand migration, migration governance, migrant masculinity, mediarepresentation, single migrant men, discourse analysis

Sirijit Sunanta is an Associate Professor and Chair of the PhD Programme in Multicultural Studies at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia (RILCA), Mahidol University, Thailand. Her research examines gender and migration, globalization, and food cultures, with particular attention to care transnationalization and the dynamics of gendered labour within Thailand’s tourism and wellness sectors. She is a senior researcher at the ERC MENBELONG Project.

Siripat Naknam is a PhD student in the Multicultural Studies Program at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia (RILCA), Mahidol University, Thailand. Her research explores how gender and development intersect with migration, spirituality, and tourism in shaping everyday experiences of mobility and belonging in Southeast Asia. She is a doctoral researcher at the ERC MENBELONG Project.