30. October 2006 17:07
ESF awards 2006 European Latsis Prize to Professor Rainer Bauböck, Visionary in Migration Issues
The European Science Foundation (ESF) awarded this year’s European Latsis Prize to Professor Rainer Bauböck from the Institute of European Integration Research in Austria for his contribution and in-depth research on migration issues.
The European Latsis Prize, valued at 100,000 Swiss francs (€65,000) is financed by the Geneva-based Latsis Foundation and awarded by the ESF to an individual or group who, in the opinion of their peers, has made the greatest contribution to a particular field of European research. The chosen field for the 2006 prize was Immigration and Social Cohesion in Modern Societies.
Professor Bauböck received the European Latsis Prize in a ceremony held at ESF’s annual General Assembly in Strasbourg on November 30 2006. He said afterward, "How I feel? On a scale from one to 10, I’m at 11."
Despite the public policy debate in which migration issues are constantly embroiled, the studying of the issue is often at the margin of scientific disciplines, according to Professor Bauböck. Devoting the Latsis Prize to this theme contributes to strengthening its recognition as an academic field.
“Since 1999, the European Latsis Prize has rewarded researchers who have made outstanding progress in European research. Professor Bauböck is at the forefront of the migration field and his contribution to this area is unprecedented,” commented ESF President Ian Halliday, who presented the prize. “Professor Bauböck’s works have not only affected how European societies relate to each other they have also become a critical but constructive voice in many debates on immigrations polices."
"The European Latsis Prize ties very much into ESF’s mission. It shows how committed we are to encouraging science in a very wide range of fields, " Halliday added.
Bauböck, who is a political scientist and senior researcher at the Austrian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for European Integration Research, acknowledged the European Latsis Prize is by far the “strongest recognition” for his work. “I suspect that people who choose an academic career are generally driven by a strong desire for recognition by their peers. This is what the Latsis Prize means to me personally,” said Bauböck.
Bauböck is also the vice-chair of the Commission for Migration and Integration Research at the Academy of Sciences in Austria. His research interests are in normative political theory and comparative research on democratic citizenship, European integration, migration, nationalism and minority rights.
His works have been focusing on the question of how migration challenges and changes conceptions and boundaries of democratic citizenship. His effort has combined comparative research of migrants’ legal status and rights with a political theory of citizenship and the boundaries of political community.
Bauböck said there are two major reasons for the need to strengthen migration research, as the field not only addresses one of the most important contemporary challenges for European societies, but contributes also to the evolution of the social sciences overall. Migration research is often innovative because it requires interdisciplinary approaches and challenges traditional perspectives that still operate with background assumptions about closed national societies.
To demonstrate he doesn’t just talk the talks Bauböck plans to contribute part of his prize award to advance migration study.
“I will use part of the prize money to encourage promising young social scientists to study migration,” said Bauböck.
He announced at the ceremony that he will put aside €22,000 to sponsor a prize for the best Austrian dissertation in migration research and he will also donate €10,000 to Austrian NGOs that work with refugees and migrants or combat racism and xenophobia in the Austrian society.
As for Bauböck himself he will embark on a new journey for a new position at the European University Institute in Florence in January next year where he has been offered a chair in social and political theory.
From 1986 to 1999 Bauböck was assistant professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna. He has taught at the Universities of Vienna and Innsbruck and is a recurrent visiting professor at Central European University Budapest. He has also been a visiting academic at Yale University, the University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, the University of Bristol, University of Malmö, the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and the University of Warwick. In 2003-2005, Rainer Bauböck was president of the Austrian Association of Political Science.
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