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Portrait of Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky

B. Nadya Jaworsky

Professor, Masaryk University
EducationPhD in Sociology, Yale University; Habilitation and Professorship, Masaryk University
Website  (external link) 

Visiting Toronto Metropolitan University

Winter 2026

Research focus while a CERC Scholar 

B. Nadya Jaworsky's current interests lie in the decentring of migration studies, which involves pursuing a conversation between the analytical lenses of decoloniality and critical cultural sociology. As a CERC Migration Scholar of Excellence, she will theorize this relationship and explore the ways in which it can be applied to a range of topics regarding migration. In addition, she will expand the concept of a "reverse sociology" of migration, as pioneered in their latest migration study, with a focus on making migrants the "mainstream" of research attention.

Career achievements

Nadya's current research project People Like Us? A Reverse Sociology of Migration in Czechia examines how people who have come to Czechia from abroad engage in symbolic boundary work when imagining what “people like us” means to them. Her prior work explored symbolic boundary work among the Czech public with regard to their attitudes towards migration.

She has published extensively in books, edited volumes, and peer-reviewed journals on the topics of migration and cultural sociology. Her books include A Critical Cultural Sociological Exploration of Attitudes toward Migration in Czechia: What Lies Beneath the Fear of the Thirteenth Migrant, Historicizing Roma in Central Europe: Between Critical Whiteness and Epistemic Injustice, and The Boundaries of Belonging: Online Work of Immigration-Related Social Movement Organizations. 

Nadya is the director of the Center for the Cultural Sociology of Migration, established in 2017 at Masaryk University, and Faculty Fellow at Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology.

Relevant publications

Jaworsky, B. N., Klvaňová, R., & Rapoš Božič, I. (forthcoming). “Incorporating urban residents’ perspectives into multilevel governance theories of migration: A case study of Brno.” In Migration Governance in Central and Eastern European Cities Post-2015. Edited by Karolina Łukasiewicz, Marta Pachocka, and Michał Nowosielski. IMISCOE Book Series, Springer Publishing.

Bozic, I. R., Klvaňová, R., & Jaworsky, B. N. (2025). You can't take it to heart: How Czech residents from MENA and sub-Saharan Africa make sense of ethnoracial othering. Cultural Sociology. https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755251336818 

Jaworsky, B. N. (2024). Connecting with connected migrants: Exploring the field of digital migration studies. In Research handbook on the sociology of migration (pp. 243-257). Edward Elgar Publishing. 

Jaworsky, B. N., Klvaňová, R., & Sidiropulu Janků, K. (2024). ‘I always felt i have something i must do in my life’: Meaning making in the political lives of refugee non-citizens. Identities, 31(2), 218-237. https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2023.2189374 

Jaworsky, B. N., Klvaňová, R., Rapoš Božič, I., Rétiová, A., & Krotký, J. (2023). A critical cultural sociological exploration of attitudes toward migration in Czechia: What lies beneath the fear of the thirteenth migrant. Lexington Books. 

Rapoš Božič, I., Klvaňová, R., & Jaworsky, B. N. (2023). Foreigner, migrant, or refugee? How laypeople label those who cross borders. Migration Studies, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1093/migration/mnac035 

Jaworsky, B. N., Rétiová, A., & Binder, W. (2022). ‘What do we see when we look at people on the move’? A visual intervention into civil sphere and symbolic boundary theory. Visual Studies, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2022.2145990 

Shmidt, V., & Jaworsky, B. N. (2022). The Ukrainian refugee “crisis” and the (re) production of whiteness in Austrian and Czech public politics. Journal of Nationalism, Memory & Language Politics, 16(02), 104-130. 

Jaworsky, B. N., Rétiová, A., & Binder, W. (2022). ‘What do we see when we look at people on the move’? A visual intervention into civil sphere and symbolic boundary theory. Visual Studies, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586X.2022.2145990 

Tognato, C., Jaworsky, B. N., & Alexander, J. C. (Eds.). (2021). The courage for civil repair. Narrating the righteousness in international migration. Palgrave Macmillan.