Norma Schemschat is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam, where she is a member of the program group Political Sociology: Power, Place and Difference.

Former member of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie network RE-CITY, she holds a B.A. and an M.A. in political science from the University of Hamburg in Germany, and a PhD from Ecole normale superieure (Ulm). In her doctoral research, she studied the obstacles and opportunities related to the reception of refugees in declining cities and investigated negotiations of place and belonging under conditions of urban shrinkage. Prior to that, her work focused on forced migration discourses, including discourses on climate-induced migration, racism in German elite discourse, and the discursive construction of the 2015 crise d’accueil. After graduation, she worked for various NGOs and foundations. Within the BROAD-ER network, her research focuses on how bottom-up practices and action shape urban migration governance.