The IMISCOE Network Office at the Centre for Ethnic and Migration Studies (CEDEM) of the University of Liège is delighted to cooperate with the Department for Migration and Globalisation (DEMIG) of the University for Continuing Education Krems for the organization of this 2025 IMISCOE Spring Conference. 

We wish to warmly thank our colleagues from DEMIG for hosting us in Krems and for having dedicated this IMISCOE Spring Conference to such an important topic: "The Regularity of Irregularity: Rethinking Migration Paradigms". This event has attracted an impressive interest from scholars researching this timely theme in different countries around the world and from different disciplinary perspectives. As such, the conference promises rich and stimulating discussions exploring often-overlooked aspects associated with the complex phenomenon of irregular migration. 

As highlighted in the conference programme, several keynote plenaries and roundtable discussions will invite us to further reflect on the regular/irregular (R/I) migration binary, the epistemology and ontology of irregular migration, the ethics and politics of knowledge production on migrant irregularity, as well as our scholarly approaches on the topic. Furthermore, the academic panels taking place both on-site and online will provide our research community an opportunity to delve into the multifaceted aspects of migrant irregularity. This includes, among others, processes and underlying factors, migrants’ experiences and decision-making mechanisms in the context of irregular migration, the role of the different actors involved in the governance of this complex phenomenon, as well as the consequences of different policy responses to the situation of persons with a precarious legal status. We are very grateful to all colleagues from the University for Continuing Education Krems and to all members of the Conference Committee who have worked with the IMISCOE governance bodies to ensure this much needed scholarly dialogue. 

This 2025 Spring Conference also provides us the opportunity to continue our exchanges on how to further strengthen and support the IMISCOE network. Since our last gathering at the 2024 IMISCOE Annual Conference in Lisbon, our research community has continued to expand in several ways, thanks to the fruitful collaboration we established with our Member Institutes, the individual members of our Network, as well as our Standing and Executive Committees. Over the past months, all our IMISCOE Standing Committees have been incredibly active in proposing a rich offer of events and activities to our scholarly community. We also had the immense pleasure to see our new Standing Committee on Forced Migration and Refugees (FMR) start its work, while IMISCOE members also warmly welcomed the activity plans of our newly revised Standing Committee on Families, Welfare, Care and the Life Course. Furthermore, our IMISCOE community of PhD students has continued to grow thanks to the remarkable work done in the PhD Network, the PhD Academy, and the Training Committee, while our highly-regarded IMISCOE book series has continued to publish manuscripts of an invaluable contribution to the field of migration studies. 

All of us in the IMISCOE Network Office at the University of Liège are strongly committed to continue these exchanges with our incredibly supportive community, in view of further enhancing IMISCOE’s role as an international and interdisciplinary network. 

We wish you all an excellent IMISCOE Spring Conference! 
 
Jean-Michel Lafleur and Daniela Vintila, IMISCOE Coordinators
Angeliki Konstantinidou, IMISCOE Network Officer
Carole Wenger, IMISCOE Communication Officer