About IMER Bergen

What is IMER Bergen?

IMER Bergen (International Migration and Ethnic Relations Researh Unit Bergen), is a interdisciplinary research unit associated with the University of Bergen, CMI, and NORCE. The aim of IMER Bergen is to contribute to research-based knowledge about international migration, including the consequences of immigration and emigration for societies. IMER Bergen started as a unit at the University of Bergen in 1996, and has since then been an important contributor to knowledge about migration and ethnicity, both in Norway and internationally. IMER is a prioritized research area at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Bergen.

Organization

IMER is made up of researchers and scholars from different departments at the University in Bergen and research institutions in Bergen. People who work with IMER related topics within these institutions are invited to participate and contribute to the IMER network/unit and can become part of the IMER Unit. Main decisions are taken by the IMER board which is made up of representatives from these institutions. The board consist of one representative from the Department of Social Anthropology, Department of Sociology, Department of Political Science, Department of Geography, and Centre for Women and Gender Research at the University of Bergen.

What do we do?

  • Researching migration and ethnic relations.
  • Arranging IMER seminars, a forum for presenting and discussing new research.
  • Arranging conferences and research courses.
  • Facilitating and assisting in developing project applications related to IMER related topics.
  • Administrating project follow-up.
  • Publishing a monthly newsletter.
  • Running IMER homepage and facebooksite.

IMER Research

Several themes are central to the IMER research in Bergen. The main focuses in contemporary IMER research are 1) Politics and Mobilities; and 2) Migration and Inequality:

1) Politics and Mobilities – Theorising and understanding modern mobility and its relation to contemporary politics, in everyday practices, formal politics and in the planning that structure, enable and govern mobility. Read more…

2) Migration and Social Inequality – Understanding the relationship between migration and social inequality and how migration relate to both historical structures of inequality, as well as how new forms of inequality are generated. Read more…

3) Global Dynamics – Studying processes and effects of selected features of globalization, especially as related to migration and its consequences. Transnationalism

4) Diversity, Citizenship and Public Sphere – Examining whether diversity necessitates new notions about political life, most prominently in citizenship and public sphere; religion and secularism.

5) People at Borders and Boundaries – Investigating the sociology of movement, processes of inclusion and exclusion, the construction and control of spaces. Read more…

6) Emerging Urbanities –  Investigating the plural city, planned pluralism, urban minority/migrant life, housing segregation, the global in the local, governance in ethnically plural cities, multicultural youth life in the city.