Migrants today must go through physical, emotional and social barriers as they make a new country home. These barriers are often created through technologies, practices, knowledge, and discourse that shape and make up human behavior. The world is also increasingly becoming digital, meaning barriers are also created through socio-technical means at multiple levels of society. Although the social nature of technology is evident, (critical) migration studies and technological sciences are two topics that are rarely discussed side to side. We aim to bring these two fields closer together in the 2025 ETMU conference organized at the University of Helsinki by Trust-M.
ETMU 2025 aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue, and invites scholars, policy makers, students and practitioners to explore different angles of inclusion and exclusion, how technologies affect points-of-entry to society in general, and different physical, emotional, psychological, or social barriers to society. Sessions should touch upon the conference theme and related topics around (but not limited to) different barriers that limit inclusion in societies, accessibility, ethics in technologization, how these barriers are created/dismantled, and the role of AI in public services. The sessions can be more intra-disciplinary in nature, but should be open to perspectives from other disciplines. The sessions are not limited to traditional academic proposals, and we warmly invite more creative/arts-based workshops, exhibitions or demos of novel technology around the topic of migration and digitalization and sessions that promote interdisciplinary dialogue and discussion. Session conveners will be responsible for reviewing and selecting abstracts for their workshops and facilitating the presentations of their contributors.
Important days and information
- The deadline for submissions of sessions: May 4th 23.59, 2025
- Notification of acceptance: June 6th 12.00, 2025
- The deadline for submissions of abstracts: August 3rd 23.59, 2025
- Notification of acceptance: September 10th, 2025
- The programme will be released: September 17th, 2025
- Registration opens: September 17th, 2025
Photo by Rūta Šerpytytė