The German ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius is calling for applications for “Settling Into Motion” – The Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarships in Migration Studies. The scholarship program seeks to address the ongoing transformations in societies where migration is just one factor among others generating change. For 2008 applications relating to migration and urban transformations are especially welcome.
Within this international program, the ZEIT-Stiftung grants six to eight pre-doctoral scholarships per year. Applicants must be Ph.D. students of – in a broad sense – social sciences. The scholarships involve a monthly stipend of 1.200 Euros as well as yearly conferences and workshops. The deadline for applications is 31 March 2008.
Scholarships are granted for up to 36 months. They can be used for research and writing periods but not for course work.
The world is in motion: people and ideas, products, technologies as well as diseases are travelling between regions and continents. Cities and cultures as well as family and labour market relations are changing in these processes of globalization. Regulatory competencies of nation states are also in question. The movement of people is only one factor among others generating change, but one whose importance will rise over the next years.
Migrants are settling into societies that are themselves transforming. Thus the meaning of integration is increasingly hard to pinpoint. Everyone needs to be prepared to embrace change. Some migrants will also keep multi-stranded relations with their countries of origin, thereby building transnational spaces; others will after little time move on to third countries. All of them settle into motion.
How can migrants and their receiving and sending countries
reap the benefits of this movement of people? Which structural and procedural conditions have to be in place to take advantage of diversity? And what are the challenges for the individual, the migrant family, the regions and countries migrants come from as well as the places of reception? The Bucerius Ph.D. Scholarship Program “Settling Into Motion” seeks to address these questions, each year focusing on a different topic.
For 2008, applications to study “Migration and Urban Transformations” are especially welcome. The majority of migrants live in urban areas. For a long time, cities were regarded as “integration machines” because of their capacity to incorporate people of different backgrounds in a functionally differentiated system. At the same time, cities are themselves focal points of economic, social and cultural transformations.
Applications for scholarships under this topic could study the following questions of (but are not limited to):
Super-diversity and the effects of rapid diversification on neighbourhoods
Housing careers of migrants
Policing and anti-discrimination policies
(Informal) economy and development of innovation
Governance issues at local level (including provision of welfare services)
Urban sprawl
Social and political participation at local level and the role of religious communities
Local school choice and the school-neighborhood nexus
Innovative approaches both in methodology and in research questions are highly encouraged.
The ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius is one of the major private foundations in Germany sponsoring academic research. Among other things, it founded and continues to financially support the Bucerius Law School, a Hamburg-based private law school that combines innovation in teaching with renowned research.
Please find further information as well as the online application at www.settling-into-motion.de