Eriselda SHKOPI

Eriselda Shkopi is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice [GSPS-05/A (SPS/07); GSPS-07/A (SPS/11); GSPS-08/B (SPS/10)].

She is the Principal Investigator of the Horizon-MSCA Global Postdoctoral Fellowship Mig.Pro. - Migrants’ protests: How the borders of citizenship are conceived, mobilised and constructed by migrants’ farm workers protests. This prestigious project involves a comparative analysis between Italy and Canada, conducted in collaboration with the Arthur Labatt School of Nursing at Western University (Ontario, Canada) and Ca’ Foscari University. Her research lies at the intersection of migration, border, labour, and social movement studies, mapping the resistance practices and rights-claiming processes of migrant workers. A specific intersectional lens is applied to understand how the resistance and mobilization of migrant women are shaped by overlapping systems of power and labour precarity.

The project has benefited from a visiting fellowship at the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration (CERC Migration), Toronto Metropolitan University, and a five-month secondment at the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos), Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence.

Methodologically, the study is inspired by Participatory Action Research (PAR), aiming to move toward a full PAR approach in mapping the practices of struggle and resistance adopted by migrant workers to claim access to rights and redefine the boundaries of citizenship in Italy and Canada. After obtaining her PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Padua in 2016—with a dissertation on citizenship and political participation of Albanian migrants in Italy and the UK—she developed extensive expertise in migration studies, labour exploitation, social inclusion, and the collective and individual resistance practices of people with migratory backgrounds in urban and rural contexts through both formal and informal participation practices. Her academic journey includes a Master’s in Immigration from Ca’ Foscari University and a period as a visiting researcher at the Open University (UK) with the supervision of Prof. Steve Garner.

Her research career is marked by significant involvement in international and national projects. From 2019 to 2020, she was a Research Fellow at the UNESCO Chair (SSIIM) of Iuav University of Venice, focusing on the IMPACT Veneto project (FAMI) concerning migrants' access to housing. She subsequently served as an outreach worker and researcher for the FARm project (FAMI), coordinated by the University of Verona, aimed at preventing labour exploitation and caporalato in agriculture. In 2022, she collaborated with the MEDI’ Research Centre on projects regarding migrant solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting "gift-giving" practices within the Bangladeshi community in Venice towards both the local and the origin communities.

Through her MSCA fellowship, Eriselda is committed to positioning research as a public good, aiming not only to advance theoretical frameworks but to build transformative bridges between academia and migrant-led activism. Her work aims at facilitating a circular flow of knowledge, ensuring that research insights empower both migrant communities and local social fabrics in their entirety.

Her primary research interests include: international migration, resistance studies, ecofeminism, political participation, labour exploitation, housing rights, citizenship, and decolonial and participatory methodologies.

Eriselda has presented her research at several international conferences, including IMISCOE, RC21, the British Sociological Association, COSMOS (Scuola Normale Superiore), and SISEC. Moreover, in her capacity as Principal Investigator, she has organized several international workshops and seminars aimed at fostering dialogue between academia and civil society:

• Decolonial collective knowledge creation (2025). Two-day international workshop, Ca’ Foscari University. Role: Organiser and facilitator.
• Doing participatory research: migrant activists speak (2025). Side event for the final MSCA Conference, Ca’ Foscari.
• Food Production and Institutionalised Exploitation (2025). Final Mig.Pro. Conference, Ca’ Foscari. Role: Lead organiser and speaker.
• Launch of Policy Recommendations for Migrant Workers in Agriculture (2025). Webinar series disseminated through channels such as ASGI, Mediterranean Hope, and Ca’ Foscari media.

For a complete list of events and materials related to the Mig.Pro. project, please visit the project website here: https://pric.unive.it/projects/migpro/home

Scientific Publications: She has published articles in international and national peer-reviewed journals, including Frontiers in Public Health, Nordic Journal of Migration Research, Archivio di studi urbani e regionali, The Lab’s Quarterly, and Review of European and Russian Affairs. Recently, her research has expanded into health conditions and legal support systems for migrant agricultural workers from a comparative perspective. She is currently co-editing the book Migrant labour resistance and struggles in agriculture in an era of polycrisis (with Reena Kukreja and Fabio Perocco). She is also working on two solo-authored articles presenting findings on mobilisation strategies and support networks for migrant agricultural workers in Canada, and two co-authored articles focused on seasonal labour programs and the right to unionisation in Italy and Canada. In addition she serves as a peer reviewer for several prestigious international journals, including Inequalities, Journal of Critical Inequality Studies, Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, Mobilization: An International Quarterly, and Economia e Società Regionale.