about us

General information, objectives:

ERCOMER is a European research centre with a strong interest in comparative research in the fields of international migration, ethnic relations, racism and ethnic conflict within the European context. We are based at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

ERCOMER draws its fellows from:

• the Department of General Social Sciences of Utrecht University,
• the Department of Sociology of Nijmegen University,
• the Department of Economics, Intitute for Sociological and Economic Research (ISEO), Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam,
• the Faculty of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam,
• the Department of Social Psychology, Institute of Sociology and Social Policy of Etvös Loránd University in Budapest and
• the Department of Political Science of Stanford University in the United States.
• the Department of Sociology of Trento University in Italy
• the Crimean Centre for Conflict Reseach
• An affiliated group of researchers from the Department of Cross-Cultural Studies of Utrecht University, focuses on family policy and family relations including also ethnic minority families.

ERCOMER's core activities are all related to the furthering and dissemination of comparative research in the fields of international migration, ethnic relations, racism and ethnic conflict. Research at ERCOMER is largely, but not exclusively, centred on Europe

Aims:

• to promote academic research, often in the form of comparative studies supported by scholarly networks. See our Running Research Projects

• to publish the results of research in the field (e.g.articles in journals or in the Joint series: Research in Migration and Ethnic Relations formerly the ERCOMER book series: Comparative Studies in Migration and Ethnic Relations .

• to assist young researchers with their work on international migration and ethnic relations within the European context, by acting as a host institute for young researchers supported by grants from EU or other external funding bodies (e.g. Marie Curie fellowships)

• to support communication between researchers in different countries by organizing seminars, lectures and annual conferences, and through this website and the WWW virtual library on Migration and Ethnic Relations which has been established as the authoritative gateway of nformation in the field. A new ERCOMER initiative is  the creation of an online   continuously updated scientific information system, highly focused on the current research in the field of Migration and Ethnic Relations, The ERIS-MER system