CPG Online Academy

“Migration and Displacement –

Concepts, Realities, Management”
9-19 May 2022 (via Zoom)

jointly hosted with the

Asian Governance Foundation (AGF) and Hanns Seidel Foundation

I. Event description

1. Background

While migration has accompanied human history since its very beginnings posing the same
problems for thousands of years, contemporary movement of people from one place in the world
to another has reached scale and speed turning it into a critical issue of global dimension posing
challenges not only challenges to humanitarian law and policy but also constitutional politics,
geo-strategy, and regional order. To grasp the urgency of the issue it is noteworthy that,
according to the 2022 World Migration Report of the International Organization for Migration
the number of migrants in 2020 stood at estimated 281 million, with 4,400 migrant deaths
worldwide in 2021. This does not include possibly up to 4 million refugees from Ukraine the
European Union expects to leave country because of the war with Russia.

Besides wars, natural disasters linked to climate change destroy the basis of existence of entire
populations and force people to leave their countries not to seek a better life, but to secure their
bare survival. This puts the global society, regional frameworks and governments under
increasing stress to provide adequate responses.

At the same time, the issue of migration affects core questions of the human rights concept and
the values by which we might define us as a society. This development is accompanied on the
regional and national level by a growing politicization of the debate about how to tackle
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migration and related challenges. Especially in Europe and America anti-migrant sentiments
frequently shape or even dominate political discourses and campaigns, polarizing societies, and
deciding outcomes of national elections. In the current presidential campaign in France migration
has become a core issue with far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour of the Reconquête
party making the “great replacement” – the claim that the native populations of France and other
Western countries are being overrun by non-white immigrants – his main campaign issue.

Against this background, CPG’s Migration Academy addresses migration as complex and
multifaceted phenomenon from a wide range of legal, political, anthropological, social, and
economic perspectives and approaches, seeking to impart participants a sense of the
overwhelming, but underrated magnitude of change and challenge which comes along migration.

2. Course content/topics

Among the major topics taught and discussed at the Academy are

• causes and drivers of migration

• impacts of migration on regional and national politics, societal developments and
economy
• migration governance (global, regional and national level)
• migration and development
• integration of migrants in societies and labor markets
• citizenship and integration
• asylum and refugee protection
• conceptual challenges posed by migration for basic values under conditions of scarce
resources

3. Teaching and learning formats

The academy is an intensive online course conducted on the basis of an exchange- and discussion-
oriented method of teaching, learning and reflection, featuring

• pre-recorded lectures, interviews, background videos, papers

• live plenary inter-active lectures, workshops and debates,
• break-out group-based sessions with assignments for independent study and research

Course instructors will be academics and policy professionals.

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4. Participants

With its multi-disciplinary course program, the Academy invites everyone interested in the topic,
commanding a sufficient English language level and eager to actively participate in small groups.
The number of participants is limited to 25 people to ensure the discussion-oriented and
interactive nature of the Academy. Participants will be selected on the basis of their application
documents and on interview, if needed.

5. Outcome

Participants will acquire a deeper understanding and analytical skills to critically reflect on the
phenomenon, the causes and the consequences of migration based on insights from political,
economic, sociological, legal and anthropological approaches to the topic.

The participants also establish a network with other participants and experts from countries
across the world.

6. Dates and duration

The Academy is a seven-day certificated online intensive course to be held from May 9 through
19, 2022, covering seven teaching days with an average of six hours per day and including group-
based sessions, with assignments for independent study or research arranged, taking into
consideration different time zones of group members.

Furthermore, there will be a session prior to the ‘official’ program start held to introduce to the
program and logistics of the Academy and to provide an opportunity to the participants to get to
know each other.

For further information and application, visit our website at

https://www.cpg-online.de/cpg-event/cpgs-online-academy-2022-on-migration-and-
displacement-concepts-realities-management/.

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II. Teaching team

Members of the teaching team include

• Dr. Diego Acosta, Professor of European and Migration Law at

University of Bristol Law School. At the core of his research is an
interdisciplinary, practically significant and theoretically
sophisticated inquiry into International, Human Rights, European
and Comparative Migration and Citizenship law, discussing
Migration law as a central aspect of globalization and analyzing
various processes of inclusion and exclusion and their implications
for the rule of law in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.

• Kristian Benestad, Senior Legal Advisor at the Center for Asylum

Protection, a legal aid organization for asylum-seekers and refugees.
In this role, he primarily assists asylum-seekers whose refugee claims
are adjudicated by UNHCR in Thailand by preparing statements, legal
briefs, and country of origin information, and prepares and observes
their interviews.

• Dr. Giuseppi Campesi, Associate Professor in Law and Society at the

Department of Political Sciences of the University of Bari. His
research cuts across different disciplines focusing mainly on
contemporary social theory, critical legal studies, critical
criminology, border controls and migration policies.

• Abbey Burke, Acting Senior Lawyer at Asylum Seeker Resource

Centre, Melbourne, where she supervises a team of lawyers and
migration agents providing pro bono representation at asylum
interviews and appeals and leadings a team of volunteer researchers
preparing country-of-origin research to support asylum casework.

• Dr. Marcia Vera-Espinoza, Lecturer in Human Geography at Queen

Mary University of London and Senior Research Fellow at the Queen
Mary University’s Institute for Global Health and Development. Her
research interests lie in the study of migration and refugee
dynamics, experiences of inclusion, and migration governance in
Latin America.

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• Henning Glaser, Founding Director of the German-Southeast Asian
Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (CPG)
and Executive Director and chairman of the board of directors of the
Asian Governance Foundation (AGF). He teaches German-,
comparative- and Thai public law at the Faculty of Law of Thammasat
University, where CPG is located. His research areas cover, among
others, comparative public law and politics, constitutional law global
governance and geopolitics. He regularly serves as a consultant to governmental and
nongovernmental agencies in Europe, America, and Asia in various fields of law and
governance.

• Madeline Gleeson, lawyer and Senior Research Fellow at the

Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the
University of New South Wales Sydney, where she directs the
Offshore Processing and Regional Protection projects. She
specializes in international human rights and refugee law, focusing
on the law of State responsibility, extraterritorial human rights
obligations, offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island, and
refugee protection in the Asia-Pacific region.

• Themba Lewis, trustee at AMERA International and Co-Head at

Borderless360. He has taught on refugee rights in Bulgaria and Egypt,
provided legal representation for detained asylum seekers in the
United Kingdom, and has worked with the US Refugee Admissions
Program in Nairobi, Kenya. Most recently he held the position of
General Secretary at the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network, based
in Bangkok, Thailand.

• Dr. Deniz S. Sert, Associate Professor at the Department of

International Relations, Ozyegin University, Istanbul. An expert on
migration issues in Turkey and globally, she has taught and
researched at several institutions domestically and abroad. She
received her PhD in Comparative Politics from the City University of
New York. She has published extensively on international migration
within Turkey and its regions.

• Dr. Melissa Siegel, Professor of Migration Studies at the Maastricht

Graduate School of Governance and United Nations University -
Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation
and Technology. Her main research areas cover causes and

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 consequences of migration, with a focus on the linkages between migration and
development. She is regularly involved in migration-related trainings/capacity building for
governments and international organizations.

III. Program overview (Time table is given in Indochina Time (ICT).)

Self-study reading material will be provided in advance to allow participants from countries of
other time zones to prepare on an earlier day.