Abdelmalek Sayad Today: Emigration, Immigration and Neocolonial Borders
Abdelmalek Sayad Today
International symposium organized by the Chair of Transitions (IAS-UM6P) in partnership with Rosa-Luxemburg Stiftung North Africa Office and the Border Studies Research Group. May 14-15, 2026 at UM6P/Benguerir (Morocco).
Twenty-eight years after the passing of Abdelmalek Sayad, the current international migration landscape invites us more than ever to re-read and rethink his work. As a sociologist of emigration-immigration, a central witness to Algerian decolonization and postcolonial labor migration, Sayad developed a critical analytical framework of transnational and universalist scope: thinking migration as a “total social fact,” articulating the destructuring of societies of departure, the conditions of immigration, and the symbolic violence imposed on immigrants and their descendants.
This symposium proposes to interrogate the political relevance of contemporary migrations between Africa and Europe in light of Sayad’s methodological and theoretical contributions, and more broadly of the critical sociology of domination of which he is an heir and a major transmitter.
Abdelmalek Sayad Today: Emigration, Immigration and Neocolonial Borders
Doctoral Students’ Panel — Closing Session
About the Conference
As part of the international conference “Abdelmalek Sayad Today: Emigration, Immigration and Neocolonial Borders”, two presentation and discussion spaces for doctoral students’ work will be organized. These spaces are open to doctoral students whose research falls within the fields of sociology, anthropology, political science, history, law, geography, or any other field relevant to the study of migration, borders, and post-colonial dynamics.
Proposals may fall within one of the following four axes or propose a cross-cutting dialogue between them:
Axis 1 — Sayad’s Trajectory and African & Diasporic Receptions of His Thought
Works on Sayad’s intellectual biography, the reception of his work in African, Maghrebi or diasporic spaces, the relevance of his concepts in decolonial studies, or the use of his tools to analyze contemporary African migrations.
Axis 2 — Second Generations and Public Discourse: Symbolic Violence and Naming Policies
Analyses of political, media or administrative discourses on immigration descendants, inquiries into the subjective and social effects of categorizations, reflections on structural racism, stigmatization and new forms of persecution.
Axis 3 — The Border as Apparatus: Schengenization, Externalization and Migratory Mortality
Empirical or theoretical investigations on the evolution of European and African borders, the production of death at borders, externalization, migratory routes, or how the border can be conceptualized as a political and historical institution.
Axis 4 — Governing Through Immigration: Public Policies, Institutions and the Making of Categories
Works on contemporary migration policies, control mechanisms, asylum or integration programs, the administrative production of categories, state transformations and neocolonial governmentality.
Submission Guidelines
Submit a proposal of 300 to 500 words, accompanied by a short academic biography or CV.
Proposals may be written in French, English, or Arabic.
Selected papers will be presented in dedicated sessions, with methodological support and critical feedback from senior researchers attending the conference.
Deadline: April 10, 2026. Candidates will be notified by April 15, 2026.
You may also submit by email: borderstudies.group@gmail.com