The digital conference “Inclusive Education in Times of Forced Migration and COVID-19: Exploring Intersectionality – Building Solidarities across EU-Turkey Borders” will take place November 11–12, 2020. The conference is organized by Ellen Kollender and Joanna  Krzeminska and hosted by the Mercator Foundation and Istanbul Policy Center at Sabancı University, with further partners such as the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation and the Migration Research Center of Koç University (Mirekoç). 

FAC Research is a partner organisation in the conference; co-directors Aila Spathopoulou and Anna Carastathis will act as discussants on two panels. Marina Liakis, director of Za’Atar NGO, is an invited speaker.

The conference seeks to encourage the debate about the multidimensional educational injustices faced by “refugee children” as well as complex challenges arising from the claim for an “education for all” during and after the pandemic. The event aims to bring together researchers, educational practitioners, activists, and civil society initiatives from Germany, Greece, and Turkey by focusing on the following areas:

1. Intersectionality and the ways in which multiple categories of dominance and marginality interact with each other when it comes to the situation of children seeking protection in Turkey and the EU.

2. The strengthening of symbolic and material borders due to the pandemic and how they affect children’s right to education and non-discrimination in education.

3. Concepts and practices of inclusive education that are able to overcome one-sided integration approaches and tackle current exclusionary dynamics in education.

4. Transnational solidarity and civil society networks across EU-Turkey borders, how they could look and be strengthened when addressing global educational inequalities in times of forced migration and COVID-19.