Centre for Migration Law
Colleen Boland has been with RUNOMI since late 2022 as a postdoctoral researcher, working on the platformization of care work and on the EU Horizon project Global Strategy for Skills Migration and Development. Her work relates to RUNOMI research topics on migrant integration and digitalization.
What is your research about and how does it relate to RUNOMI?
My research initially began looking at diversity management, citizenship and discrimination, then expanded to refugee and asylum flows to Europe, and now examines migrant workers, digitalization and inclusion. While I cover a range of topics and have worked in multiple social science disciplines, I have adopted a gendered and intersectional analysis throughout, often seeking the migrant or individual’s perspective in combination with the study of macro and meso level factors. For example, in my research on the platformization of work, I am looking at how migrant mothers use online platforms for childcare. It entails not only thinking about implications for both motherhood and migration experiences, but also about the consequences for migrant care workers and how family, class and gender intersect. Here the aspect of digitalization brings in interesting layers of belong and exclusion. Another example includes one of my research lines in the GS4S project, which involves asking stakeholders and migrant workers about perspectives on improving or updating working qualifications and skills; findings so far have pointed to how one’s perceived intersectional difference can create obstacles in European communities.
What challenges have you come across in your work?
Two things come immediately to mind. Firstly, both research and policy priorities have increasingly recognized the importance of inter- or transdisciplinary research, and I could not agree more. However, I find that disciplines or fields still remain siloed, and it can be ultimately difficult to communicate with each other or compromise on which theory or language to use. This often hampers the production or dissemination of valid and important findings that should be made available to everyone. Secondly, especially given my work on intersectional advantage or disadvantage, I find both theorizing and empirically capturing difference challenging, especially in light of the phenomena like discrimination and inequal treatment that RUNOMI tackles. The quandary of recognizing difference without reproducing systematic or institutional bias and power dynamics comes up repeatedly—especially as I conduct qualitative research and collect evidence of individuals’ varied perspectives, or experiences of differential treatment.
Selected outputs
Boland, C., Morente, D. and Sanchez‐Montijano, E. (2024). ‘Knowledge is confused’: Rethinking pull factors in light of asylum and refugee integration policies. International Migration. 10.1111/imig.13303.
Boland, C. (2023) Madrid’s Muslim Youth: What do Intersectional Discrimination and Resilience Mean for the Interculturalist Project?, Journal of Intercultural Studies, 10.1080/07256868.2023.2259819