Dans le cadre de la 24ème conférence annuelle IMISCOE “United for Human Rights and Global Equity”, qui se tiendra du 6 au 9 Juillet 2027 à Bruxelles, Catherine Xhardez (Université de Montréal) et Mylene Coderre (Université Concordia) organisent le panel « Quotas, categories, and legitimacy: Comparative perspectives of immigration planning across OECD countries ». Les professeur.es, chercheur.es et étudiant.es des cycles supérieurs sont invité.es à soumettre une contribution qui s’inscrit dans le thème du panel avant le 26 septembre 2026.
Consignes :
Veuillez envoyer un résumé de 250 mots à catherine.xhardez@umontreal.ca d’ici le 26 septembre 2026, en détaillant la contribution que vous proposez pour ce panel. Merci d’indiquer votre affiliation institutionnelle actuelle ainsi que l’adresse électronique associée à votre compte IMISCOE. Si vous ne possédez pas de compte IMISCOE, veuillez en créer un ici (c’est gratuit et ne prend qu’une minute). Nous répondrons à toutes les propositions d’ici le 27 septembre 2026 et prévoyons de soumettre la proposition finale via le système électronique d’IMISCOE d’ici le 28 septembre 2026.
Call for contributions : Quotas, categories, and legitimacy: Comparative perspectives of immigration planning across OECD countries
Panel Proposal for the 24th IMISCOE Annual Conference, “United for Human Rights and Global Equity”, 6–9 July 2027, Brussels
Chairs: Catherine Xhardez, Université de Montréal, Canada; Mylene Coderre, Concordia University, Canada
Immigration planning and programming takes many forms across the globe. Historically a tool of the “settler societies” (Dauvergne 2016), the practice of setting explicit targets, quotas, or multi-year objectives for immigration has now spread well beyond that context: OECD countries such as the United Kingdom (Owen et al. 2019; Owen and Savur 2025), Italy (Il Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri 2025), and France (Non conformité partielle – réserve 2024) have adopted or are debating using similar tools. Yet while political debate tends to focus on identifying an “optimal number,” scholarship has repeatedly shown that no complete, uncontested scientific method exists for measuring a territory, province, or country’s ‘absorption’ or ‘reception capacity’ (e.g. Chaloff and Lemaître 2009; Fortin 2022; Doyle et al. 2025).
Today’s global migration context is marked by growing displacement and increasingly complex migration flows and trajectories (Triandafyllidou et al. 2024; McAuliffe and Oucho 2024). This latter dynamic is exemplified by so-called “two-step” immigration and the rapid growth of non-permanent residents (international students, temporary workers, asylum seekers) who were until recently largely absent from many countries’ immigration plans. These transformations are occurring against the backdrop of increasing politicization of migration in electoral campaigns and media discourse (Cantat et al. 2025; van der Brug et al. 2015). Together, these dynamics are reshaping, and often destabilizing, the traditional tools states rely on to govern who enters, who stays, and on what terms. Across the OECD, governments must reconcile long-term demographic needs with medium-term political considerations and short-term events framed as crises (Benton et al. 2025).
In this rapidly evolving context, this panel brings together experts working on diverse national cases to examine a shared question from multiple disciplinary perspectives: Through what processes can states plan immigration and design immigration programs while maintaining public and stakeholder trust?
Building on the conference’s broader concern with how migration intersects with colonial legacies and geopolitical asymmetries, this panel treats immigration planning itself as a site where inclusion, exclusion, and belonging are negotiated and institutionalized. Decisions about how many people to admit, under what conditions, and in which categories, are never merely technical or demographic; they are revealing of decisions about whose labor, presence, and rights are considered desirable or deserving (Barker 2010; Bialas et al. 2025; Massey 2017). We are particularly interested in how immigration planning instruments such as quotas, points systems, multi-year targets, and category-based programs reproduce or challenge the societal impacts of the politicization of migration, especially the differentiation of immigrants’ access to rights along racialized, gendered, and class lines.
The panel aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue across political science, demography, law, sociology, and migration studies, and welcomes comparative, single-case, and theoretically-driven contributions alike. We seek proposals that:
- Present planning and programming processes for economic and humanitarian immigration within OECD countries, including the actors, methodologies, and political negotiations involved in setting targets or quotas;
- Evaluate the effects of alternative planning models on public trust in immigration systems, across different local, national, and institutional contexts;
- Interrogate stratified rights regimes, asking how immigration planning and programming that grants different rights to different groups (e.g., “high-skilled” vs. “low-skilled” workers, permanent vs. temporary residents, asylum seekers vs. resettled refugees) reveals and entrenches underlying racial, colonial, and class-based inequalities in receiving societies;
- Analyze the political economy of immigration planning, including how labour market demands, employer lobbying, and capital interests shape who is selected and under what conditions of precarity or protection;
We particularly welcome contributions that combine empirical case studies with critical theoretical engagement, that bring perspectives from beyond “settler state” contexts, and that engage directly with questions of racial justice and human rights in migration governance.
Submission details
Please send a 250-word abstract to catherine.xhardez@umontreal.ca by 26 September 2026 detailing your proposed contribution to the panel. Please include your current institutional affiliation and email address that corresponds to your IMISCOE account. If you do not have an IMISCOE account, please create one here (it is free and takes a minute). We will respond to all submissions by 27 September 2026 and plan to submit the final proposal through IMISCOE’s electronic system by 28 September 2026.
References:
Barker, Fiona. 2010. “Learning to Be a Majority: Negotiating Immigration, Integration and National Membership in Quebec.” Political Science 62 (1): 11–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032318710370585.
Benton, Meghan, Natalia Banulescu-Bogdan, and Kate Hooper. 2025. Migration Governance in Unsettled Time: How Policymakers Can Plan for Population Change. Migration Policy Institute.
Bialas, Ulrike, Johanna M. Lukate, and Steven Vertovec. 2025. “Contested Categories in the Context of International Migration: Introduction to the Special Issue.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 48 (4): 695–717. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2024.2404493.
Brug, Wouter van der, Gianni D’Amato, Joost Berkhout, and Didier Ruedin. 2015. “A Framework for Studying the Politicisation of Immigration.” In The Politicisation of Migration. Routledge.
Cantat, Céline, Antoine Pécoud, and Hélène Thiollet. 2025. “Migration as Crisis.” American Behavioral Scientist 69 (6): 627–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642231182889.
Chaloff, Jonathan, and Georges Lemaître. 2009. Gérer les migrations de travailleurs hautement qualifiés : Une analyse comparative des politiques migratoires et des enjeux des migrations dans les pays de l’OCDE. No. 79. Documents de travail de l’OCDE sur les questions sociales, l’emploi et les migrations. Éditions OCDE,. https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/225488071868.
Dauvergne, Catherine. 2016. The New Politics of Immigration and the End of Settler Societies. 1st ed. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107284357.
Décision 2023-863, FR:CC:2024:2023.863.DC (Conseil constitutionnel January 25, 2024). https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/juri/id/CONSTEXT000049184156.
Doyle, Matthew, Mikal Skuterud, and Christopher Worswick. 2025. “The Economics of Canadian Immigration Levels.” Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue Canadienne d’économique, ahead of print, January 26. https://doi.org/10.1111/caje.12760.
Fortin, Pierre. 2022. La politique d’immigration fédérale expansive : conséquences pour le Canada et pour le Québec. https://cdn-contenu.quebec.ca/cdn-contenu/adm/min/immigration/publications-adm/rapport/RapportMIFI_mai2022_PierreFortin.pdf.
Il Presidente del Consiglio dei Ministri. 2025. “Programmazione Dei Flussi Di Ingresso Legale in Italia Dei Lavoratori Stranieri per Il Triennio 2026–2028.” Decree. October 2. https://www.gazzettaufficiale.it/eli/id/2025/10/15/25A05656/sg.
Massey, Douglas S. 2017. “Migration and Categorical Inequality.” In Immigration and Categorical Inequality, edited by Ernesto Castañeda, vol. 1. Routledge.
McAuliffe, Marie, and Linda Adhiambo Oucho. 2024. État de La Migration Dans Le Monde 2024. PUB2023/070/L. Organisation internationale des migrations (OIM). https://publications.iom.int/books/etat-de-la-migration-dans-le-monde-2024.
Owen, Joe, Maddy Jack Thimont, Adela Lacobov, and Elliott Christensen. 2019. Managing Migration after Brexit. Institute for governement. https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/IfG-Migration-After-Brexit_4.pdf.
Owen, Joe, and Sachin Savur. 2025. “Why Government Should Introduce an Annual Migration Plan.” Institute for Government, 22.
Triandafyllidou, Anna, Marta Bivand Erdal, Sabrina Marchetti, et al. 2024. “Rethinking Migration Studies for 2050.” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies 22 (1): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/15562948.2023.2289116.
Pour plus de détails, nous vous invitons à consulter l’appel à contributions ci-dessous. Pour toute question, vous pouvez contacter les organisateur.rices via l’adresse eriqa@pol.umontreal.ca