Of House and Immigrants

It was the middle of March when our research team was requested to host a session in two weeks for a conference to be attended by people in the government and private sector. This request came at a busy time, when we were also co-organizing a workshop with the Municipality of Rotterdam. We thought maybe we could propose the “pre-packaged” workshop from the small project I am running. Excited for the prospect of conducting a workshop that uses reflective methods for this type of audience I began writing the session proposal. A week before the conference I received an email saying that it was not the kind of workshop they wanted. A phone call ensued in which I was told that the attendees were paying participants and were of a “high level”. I responded by saying I had done this workshop for the Dutch Enterprise Agency, which was attended by the Dutch Water Envoy, who appreciated this method. To cut the story short, I gave up. I was frustrated and it was exactly that frustration that led me to write a 500-word abstract in one sitting and send it to ISRF to apply to be part of the “Migration and Climate Change” conference long before the call-for-papers deadline. [...]