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Tenth Annual Research and Orientation Workshop on Cities, Migrants and Insecurities (18-22 November 2025) Concept Note In an increasingly urbanised world, cities have emerged as both beacons of opportunity and hotspots of social, economic, and political tensions. Cities are wrought by anxieties that manifest in various forms: competition over resources, cultural friction, policy ambiguity, and fears—both real and imagined—of insecurity. Understanding the interplay between cities, migration, and insecurity is vital for shaping inclusive, resilient urban futures. Cities represent economic hubs, cultural melting pots, and centres of innovation. These are sites that promise jobs, education, healthcare, and a higher quality of life; and despite their promise, cities are also spaces of vulnerability and conflict. For migrants fleeing rural poverty, climate change, conflict, or persecution, urban areas offer the hope of reinvention. Globally, over 56% of the world’s population now lives in urban areas, and this figure is expected to rise significantly. Rural-to-urban migration accounts for a large portion of growth in cities, with growing dependencies on infrastructure, housing, and public services. Migrants are an integral part of the socio-economic fabric of cities. From construction and domestic work to entrepreneurship, migrants fill essential roles that sustain urban economies, bringing in new languages, cuisines, traditions, and perspectives, enriching the cultural life of cities, though, entrenched stereotypes or systemic exclusion often leave such contributions unrecognised. The shift of the modern city from a site of industrial production to a site of knowledge-based economy, which requires a complex of place-based services makes for a site or reorganisation of space, faced with challenges of material practices and regimes of city-making (at times intolerance, absence of resources for combating diseases and the turmoil of climate change). Urban migration in India acts as one of the key factors contributing to growth of corporate functions, marked by the geographic dispersal of economic activities. The strategic role of the services that migrants offer as inputs for a city is matched by the growing informalisation of these services, even when connected with manufacturing or industrial services. Migration whether temporary or permanent, in many ways is a structural reality of modern cities. As urban populations diversify, the future of cities will depend on their ability to turn perceived insecurities into shared opportunities; and thereby, cities of the future can plan towards becoming not just spaces of survival, but homes of dignity, belonging, and collective progress. Calcutta Research Group (CRG) has been engaged in the study of migration, especially forced migration and the dignity of migrants in particular, for more than 25 years. The two declarations on the protection of refugees and migrants (Kolkata Declaration & Afghanistan Declaration) adopted during the Research and Orientation Workshops in 2018 and 2021 are evidences of the possibilities for the intervention of the Research and Orientation Workshops and Conferences of CRG. The Declarations addressed different dynamics of the contemporary global refugee crisis, its articulation in the South Asian milieu, its expression of solidarity with the victims of forced displacement, and its assessment of international efforts to improve the distress of such uprootedness. Prepared in the wake of the Global Compacts, the matters to which the Declaration turned their attention are fundamental to CRG’s research agenda and its valued association with its collaborating institutes. CRG’s attempt to deal with the issues through conducting workshops, conferences, drafting policy briefs and research articles, and the Annual Workshop, as part of its research programme ‘Justice, Security and Vulnerable Populations of South Asia’, on the newly imposed challenges and insecurities in cities, is aimed at engaging young scholars, academicians, teachers, journalists and activists, through exploration, research and discussion. The Research and Orientation Workshop is the flagship programme of this sustained study. This annual event is pivotal to CRG’s aspiration to voice the experiences, opinions and discontents of South Asia, and also in global discussions on the subject, while CRG continues to respond to the increased vulnerabilities of migrants. This workshop comprises a four and half-day event with deliberations that will centre on the following three modules:
Module A: Gender and Urban Insecurities;
Module B: Climate, Epidemiological Insecurities and the City;
Module C: Migrants, Insecurities and Sanctuary Cities;
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Tenth Annual Research and Orientation Workshop on Cities, Migrants and Insecurities
Kolkata, 18-22 November 2025
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