Emina Bužinkić (PhD) is a researcher, activist, and writer working at the intersections of migration, transnational solidarities, education, and feminist praxis. Her work challenges the rigidity of migration and border regimes, xeno-racism, ethno-nationalism, occupations, and colonial structures. Emina employs critical qualitative methodologies, including narrative inquiry, storytelling, feminist ethnographies, and critical discourse analysis, collaborating with and advocating for racialized and marginalized communities.She explores pathways to epistemic justice through community-accountable research and agitation. Actively reimagining and practicing migration justice, Emina contributes to organizing social movements and people’s tribunals. She is a member of the editorial collective for AGITATE! – Unsettling Knowledges and serves on the program committee of the Grounded Festival. Her publications span international journals, covering critical migration and border studies, critical race studies, public anthropology, education justice, and transnational feminism.Emina earned her doctorate in critical educational, cultural, feminist, and human rights studies from the University of Minnesota, USA. She is currently concluding her postdoctoral research at the Institute for Development and International Relations, with the project ENDURE – Inequalities, Community Resilience and New Governance Modalities in a Post-pandemic World, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation.

“Migrant work(ers) COUNTER economies in Croatia and Slovenia“

My research, Migrant Work(ers) COUNTER Economies in Croatia, maps the collective organizing of migrant workers and its socio-political impacts amid growing insecurity and precarity in the peripheries of the European Union. I focus on the conditions that enable and obstruct migrant workers’ collective responses to their racialized treatment as “surplus populations” (Mezzadra, 2022). This research positions migrant organizing as a crucial site for producing critical knowledge and driving socio-political transformation, resisting the extractive market logic of racial capitalism while emphasizing the labor agency of migrant workers.

I explore two key questions: 1) What critical junctures mobilize migrant workers into collective action? 2) How can we understand the epistemic and political positionality of migrant workers to foster strategic interventions for democratization and justice-based economies in the EU’s peripheries? To answer these questions, I will engage with migrant workers’ collectives and organizations, while mapping the policies and systems that regulate and exploit migrant labor—from immigration and work permits to working conditions, livelihoods, and unionization. In line with the fellowship call, I situate this research within a moment of converging crises: the rising number of migrant workers from former Yugoslav countries and the Global South into EU nations, and the deteriorating economic conditions threatening workers’ dignity and safety.