The Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Studies and the Ethnographic Museum of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences has published a collection entitled Between the Worlds: Migrants, Margins, and Social Environment. It is the result of an international academic conference held in Sofia, Bulgaria, on 1-2 December 2021.

The collection includes more than 15 multidisciplinary papers by authors from various countries. Their work is organised into several chapters that analyse migration from various angles.

One chapter, Integration and adaptation of refugees, combines a policy perspective with those of migrant communities. This sheds light on the discrepancies and correlations between the expectations and desires of these communities on the one hand, and the politics and objectives of institutional actors on the other. These are the main reason why, in countries that have socio-economic, political, and cultural profiles similar to those of Bulgaria, local institutional solutions (those of administrations, NGOs, and social services, for example) to the challenges of forced migration sho greater adaptational power than across-the-board, state-imposed policies.

The chapter includes three papers:

• Refugees in Bulgaria: Entrapped between politics and policies
• Beyond the local integration of asylum seekers/refugees: A case study of Harmanli, Bulgaria
• School experiences of children of Roma migrant returnees and refugees from the Middle East

In addition, the collection includes two other papers related to migrant integration in Bulgaria:

• Ukrainian immigration to Bulgaria in the last 30 years – from marital migration to labour mobility
• Rescuing animals in Bulgaria – or foreigners with causes