Elena Sanchez-Montijano, senior researcher at CIDOB and Montserrat Emperador, researcher at CIDOB and scientific coordinator of SAHWA project, have been selected to organize two panels at the next International Political Science Association Conference to be held in Istanbul on 23-28 July 2016. 

Two CALL FOR PAPERS have been opened. One call for the panel “The Role of Municipalities in Immigrants’ Integration: New Approaches, New Opportunities". The panel is hosted in the session RC14 Politics and Ethnicity. The other panel entitled “Collective action from the ‘margins’ in Middle East” is hosted in the session CS02 Identity Politics, Social and National Movements. 

Abstracts (250 words) have to be submitted before October 7 through the Conference website: https://istanbul2016.ipsa.org/events/congress/istanbul2016/submit-paper 

The Role of Municipalities in Immigrants’ Integration: New Approaches, New Opportunities. Local levels must deal with inequities and discrimination and, at the same time, must face cultural diversity. Municipalities play an important role in influencing outcomes; and they can successfully create strategies to strengthen immigrant socio-economic and political engagement. Immigrants’ integration must be the result of a collaborative process involving relationship building and dialogue with different stakeholders. In this framework, this panel will focus on the study of policies, programs or projects carried out by local administration in order to meet adequately society's needs. Particularly the panel is interested on analysing flexible, innovative and sustainable methods of working, where the cooperation between multilevel and transnational actors and stakeholders comprise as part of the initiatives.
Expected papers should include empirical findings on the role of the cities, with a relatively high level of international migration, in immigrants’ integration. Papers could be oriented towards the role of the municipalities and their public policies in the management of immigrants’ integration; the analysis of integration at the local level; the relation between local governments, community stakeholders, and/or immigrants’ origin country; or the role of the multilevel governance in immigrants’ integration. The panel will focus on new strategies and approaches to the integration which generate new opportunities. 

Collective action from the ‘margins’ in Middle East. The revolutionary events of 2011 in Tunisia and Egypt have challenged the patterns of social movements research in the region. In the very beginning, foreign influences were sought as critical factors of the outbursts: activists embedded in transnational networks, technology-driven activism or simply hidden economic and political interests were pointed as key factors of the revolt. Beyond this, other authors defend and highlight the significance that marginal groups have had in the demonstrations and social and political changes. Marginalization could be seen as a process in which some deviant attitudes, ideologies, values, practices and beliefs are ‘excluded’ in the society in contrast with the hegemonic procedures (Bayat, 2012). Nevertheless, at the same time, this marginalization allows to create social spaces and opportunities to establish and manage organized, territorially based movements aiming at achieving social transformation, emancipation or an alternative modernity. In consequence, their marginalized position in social structures permits, at same time, innovative and creative manners to manage their situation to change the society as a whole. These marginalized social groups, in their immediate day-to-day activities, struggle for a share of urban services, alternative economic strategies, alternative means of production and for ‘the right to the city’. We invite authors to send us their proposals of papers, ideally dealing with one of these questions: 1) How do the "marginalized" define themselves as a group?; 2) Is there a specific "repertoire" of the "marginalized"?; 3) What are the impacts of "marginalized" collective action or agency for social change?