Symposium: Governing Migration

When: 11 - 12 June 2026 | Where: University for Continuing Education Krems & online

12 June 2026 marks the long-awaited entry into force of the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. Against this backdrop, questions of responsibility-sharing, solidarity, and national interests across the EU are coming under renewed scrutiny. States’ responses to forced displacement and irregular migration are deeply interdependent. As a result, decisions taken by one state on asylum procedures or on border control can generate significant externalities for others. Addressing these challenges, therefore, requires forms of international cooperation and responsibility-sharing. At the same time, migration governance remains deeply shaped by domestic political pressures and the primacy of national sovereignty, and in a context of open armed conflicts and geopolitical tensions, the scope and meaning of responsibility-sharing may itself be evolving. Governments face competing incentives and dilemmas: while the transnational nature of migration creates pressures for coordination and collective solutions, domestic political contestation often constrains states’ willingness to share responsibilities or commit to cooperative arrangements.

This online symposium, jointly organised by the University for Continuing Education Krems and the University of Geneva, examines how these tensions between domestic politics and international interdependence shape the politics of responsibility-sharing in migration governance. Bringing together scholars from political science, international relations and migration studies, the symposium seeks to advance theoretical and empirical understanding of why and under what conditions states contribute to collective migration governance. It also aims at developing a research agenda that addresses emerging forms of cooperation, conflict and differentiation among states.

Key questions include:

• How will the New Pact for Migration and Asylum address responsibility-sharing in Europe? And what are the challenges ahead? 
• How do states engage in responsibility-sharing in migration governance?
• How do domestic political dynamics and actors (parties, publics, courts) shape governments’ willingness to cooperate internationally?
• How are norms of responsibility-sharing negotiated across governance levels? 
• How can we conceptualise and measure “effective” responsibility-sharing?

Thursday, 11 June 2026

13.30 – 13.45   |  Welcome, introduction & project overview

13.45 – 15.15  |  Session 1