Recent outreach activities ESR1 (Zvezda Vankova): July 2015 – June 2016

June 2016

The TRANSMIC PhD Researcher Zvezda Vankova was invited to act as an instructor for one of the on-line courses delivered by The Global Human Rights Education and Training Centre (HREA). She participated in the e-course Promoting Migrant and Refugee Integration, where she delivered the webinar “A secure status as the starting point: family reunification and long-term residence”. More information about the e-course can be found here.

April 2016

Zvezda Vankova was invited to participate in the European Migration Forum, organised by the EESC on 6-7 April 2016. The European Migration Forum serves as the civil society dialogue platform on migration, asylum and migrant integration. The Forum focused on the long-term approach to migration and integration. Vankova took part in the workshop devoted to the challenges for migrants in low and medium skilled sectors, such as domestic and care work.  She supported the view that a general EU framework of legislation should be adopted that tackles comprehensively the issues recognised in the workshop, protective of migrants’ rights across occupations. The report from the whole event can be found here.

March 2016

Vankova  gave an interview for the Bulgarian national radio, few days after the Brussels terrorist attacks on 22 March. She tried to debunk the misconceptions about the link between the current “refugee crisis” and the terrorist attacks and spoke about the reactions at the EU level and national level in Bulgaria. She also made links to her current doctoral project, claiming that more and more people live transnationally. Policies and legal frameworks, however, are lagging behind these process and do not provide an adequate opportunities for people on the move to circulate between their countries of destination and origin. (Link to the interview, in Bulgarian).

November 2015

Vankova participated in a two-day meeting of the Eastern Partnership Panel on Migration and Asylum, which took place on 26-27 November 2015 in Tbilisi, Georgia. The Panel gathered representatives of the EU Member States, Eastern Partnership countries, academia and international organizations to compare their policies, procedures and approaches to family reunification. She was invited to deliver a lecture on the EU legal framework on family reunification, which is one of the policy areas at stake with circular migration. She contextualized the concept of family reunification, placing it within the main policy and legal acts and explaining the EU approach to the issue. More information can be found here.

October 2015

Zvezda Vankova participated in the Civil Society Days of the Global Forum on Migration & Development 2015, which took place in Istanbul (12-13 October). The GFMD is an informal, non-binding and government-led process open to all States Members and Observers of the United Nations, to advance understanding and cooperation on the mutually reinforcing relationship between migration and development and to foster practical and action-oriented outcomes. This is one of the fora where the concept of circular migration was re-introduced as a potential migration management tool. Vankova participated in the sessions devoted to labour mobility, labour rights and decent work. A short report by the other participants from the UM can be found here.

(picture: courtesy to Özge Bilgili)

July 2015

Zvezda Vankova was invited to participate in the conference European Asylum policies – European variance” (“Europäisches Asylrecht – Europäische Varianz”) on the 27th and 28th of July at the Academy for Civic Education in Tutzing, Germany. She gave a lecture on the Bulgarian asylum and refugee integration policies. More information about the event (in German) can be found here.