The places where refugees settle, and the moves they make between them, are central to their opportunities, wellbeing and social incorporation. Yet much research treats context effects as static or focuses narrowly on single outcomes, overlooking how selective residential mobility, exposure to neighborhood resources and enclave infrastructures interact over time to produce divergent, multidimensional integration trajectories.

Organised by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi), the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB), and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), this conference brings together scholars of migration, segregation, neighbourhood and context effects, social stratification and integration to advance a place‑sensitive understanding of migrants’ stratified outcomes.  

The Conference will be held at the Leibniz Institute for Educational Trajectories (LIfBi) in Bamberg. The keynote addresses will be delivered by Jenny Phillimore (University of Birmingham) and Wolfgang Dauth (IAB/University of Bamberg).

Call for papers:

We welcome qualitative or quantitative contributions from all disciplines considering the spatial dimension of refugee integration in host societies. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Interaction of residential mobility and neighborhood/place exposure in shaping language, social contacts, belonging, children’s education, labour market integration, health and wellbeing.
• Heterogeneity of context effects across place-attributes, individual characteristics, and dimensions of integration
• Theoretical advances on the spatial dimensions of integration and stratification
• Comparative studies of different legal and policy regimes (e.g., refugees arriving under different asylum regimes)
• Methodological and data innovations for studying spatial context and mobility: longitudinal, causal, experimental and mixed-method approaches

This workshop is organised within the Leibniz Project “Unequal Trajectories? Integration of Refugees in Education and the Labour Market (UNETRA)”. Further information about the project can be found here: https://unetra.wzb.eu/

Submission information
We invite extended abstracts of up to 1500 words (preferentially including results) to be submitted by 30 April 2026 to unetra@lifbi.de. Applicants will be notified of acceptance in early June 2026.

Call for Papers (PDF)