How has the Scandinavian press covered immigration over the years? What themes, framings and agents have been emphasized in the media coverage of immigration in the last 50 years, and how this has changed? What differences are there across Scandinavian countries? As part of the SCANPUB project at UiB, Jan Fredrik Hovden and Hilmar Mjelde have studied and analyzed the immigration debate in 7 Scandinavian newspapers. While the results support the general claims about national differences in Scandinavian immigration debate including Danish press as more critical of immigration in contrast to Sweden which focuses more on racism, they also suggest some major developments, in particular the rise of immigration as an increasingly contentious issue debated by politicians. In his presentation, Jan will also discuss how the “immigration crisis” has been covered in Scandinavian and European press, highlighting the similarities and differences between the different cases.

 Jan Fredrik Hovden is a professor at the Department Information Science and Media Studies at UiB.

Time: Tuesday 3rd of December 2019, 12.30 – 13.30

Place: Bergen Global CMI/UiB, Jekteviksbakken 31

In recent years, sociologists have called attention to the everyday dynamics of ‘lived’ multiculture – the ‘local negotiations’ and ‘processes of cohabitation’ that have, it has been argued, made ethnic diversity an ‘ordinary feature’ of urban life – in Britain, and across mainland Europe.  In this seminar, Kieran Connell from Queen’s University Belfast will explore how we might interrogate the historical dimensions of these themes by focusing on Balsall Heath, an inner-city area of Birmingham, Britain’s second city.  As part of a wider project to examine the multicultural inner-city, Kieran makes the case for the importance of space in relation to what the cultural theorist Stuart Hall has called the process of multicultural ‘drift’. In this respect, sources such as photography offer a particularly useful way of getting at the topographical changes to the inner-city landscape brought about in the context of mass migration.

A light lunch will be served! All welcome!

Kieran Connell is Lecturer in Contemporary British History at Queen’s University Belfast.  He is a Fulbright Scholar and the co-editor of Cultural Studies 50 Years On.  His first monograph, Black Handsworth: race in 1980s Britain, was published by the University of California Press in February 2019.

Time: Monday 11th of November 2019, 12.30 – 13.30

Place: Bergen Global CMI/UiB, Jekteviksbakken 31