Author Archives: halvarak

Lunch seminar 23.05: The im/mobility of Afghan migrants in Europe

What happens with Afghan migrants after they have received a negative decision on their asylum application in Norway? This is the topic of our next IMER seminar, with Halvar Andreassen Kjærre.  For several years, Kjærre has followed a group of Afghan migrants around Europe. After their asylum application was rejected in Norway, he sought them out in Italy, Greece, France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden.

This approach makes it possible to understand how various aspects of the migrant’s lives change over time, and between different places in their migration trajectories. Identity, living conditions, social status, legal status, social relations, and desires and hopes are not constant. All of this changes along with their journeys. Following mobile people over time also gives insights into their migratory tactics, and the burden that is imposed upon them by different sovereign states.

The seminar takes place at the seminar room at the ground floor of Sosiologisk institutt, Rosenberggaten 39 the 23rd of may 2017 at 12.30. A light lunch will be served.

 

IMG_7137Halvar Andreassen Kjærre is a PhD candidate at IMER Bergen / Department of social Anthropology (UiB). His main field of interest is irregular migration, asylum regimes, migration control and mobility studies. The topic of his PhD thesis is the intra-European mobility of Afghan migrants in Europe.

IMER LUNCH SEMINAR: Marte Knag Fylkesnes – From the parents point of view: Child welfare and social justice in Norway

December 1. 2015 @ 12.00 to 13.30 @ UNI Rokkan center (6 etg) Nygårdsgaten 5, 5020 BERGEN

Child welfare spassbildeervices in Norway are currently internationally debated. A key question relates to multicultural challenges, whether services are sensitive to cultural differences and ethnic minority families specific challenges. As part of a larger research project, we interviewed parents with refugee backgrounds about their experiences of contact with child welfare services in Norway. Despite parents describing both positive and negative experiences, and trust as well as distrust, we found that fear of the child welfare services was a central theme. The paper will focus on the representations of the child welfare services that fear was related to. The theoretical framework will be Axel Honneth and Nancy Fraser’s understandings of recognition and social justice.

IMER Lunch Seminar with Johannes Servan – On social distance – the idea of justice and different levels of social interaction

Tuesday, September 22, 2015 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm, UNI Rokkan senteret (6 etg) Nygårdsgaten 5, 5015 Bergen

In the tradition from Hegel we have become accustomed to think of marginalized subjects as a source of critique and moral development. Concerning immigrants we find a similar idea in Giorgio Agamben’s suggestion on taking the paperless migrants as a paradigm for political reform. Considering extensively debated cases in the Norwegian public, such as the case of Nathan, we might ask whether this reforming potential is part of the picture. How should we conceive the relation between our imagined societies, the “human interest”-stories and the political engagement of non-citizens in cases like this? Based on Alfred Schutz’s analysis of different types of social interaction, this question can be explored in principle as a matter of interconnections between different levels of social distance. If we accept that there is a certain continuity in the moral development from ingroups based on face-to-face interaction to imagined nation-state societies, the central problem could be formulated like this: Should we assume that our obligations to all human beings (non-citizens included) comes out of and is an extension of the kind of sympathy experienced in exclusive ingroups?

Bilde Johannes ServanJohannes Servan is a PhD-student at Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen (UiB). His thesis “Phenomenology of the citizen” (working title) discusses migration as a phenomenon that brings to the foreground a certain tension in our social imaginaries of universal human rights and nation-state citizenship. More specifically it is concerned with the epistemological relevance of the perspective of foreigners to the parochial biases in our social imaginaries and policy-making of a specific nation-state.

 

A light lunch will be served.

IMER LUNCH SEMINAR: Thomas Solomon – The Play of Colors: Staging Multiculturalism in Norway

Tuesday 1. September at 12.00Thomas Solomon - outdoors photo to 13.30 – UNI Rokkan centre (6 etg), Nygårdsgaten 5, BERGEN

Fargespill (lit. “play of colors”) is a series of musical performances in Norway that have been staged from 2004 to the present. Each performance consists of a sequence of musical and dance numbers performed by children from different minority and immigrant groups, many of whom came to Norway as refugees, together with white Norwegian children. The songs and choreographies represent the home countries of the children who perform, and have included for example music and dance from Somalia, Myanmar (Burma), Rwanda, Kurdistan, and Eritrea, combined together with Norwegian folk music in often elaborate production numbers with colorful costumes and complex musical arrangements. Continue reading

Booklaunch: Eksepsjonell velferd? Irregulære migranter i det norske velferdssamfunnet.

omsl.PMTO-2

Vi minner om at PROVIR boken Eksepsjonell velferd? Irregulære migranter i det norske velferdssamfunnet er ute i butikkene og at det blir en slippmarkering tirsdag 23. juni kl. 12.00 til 14.00 ved UNI Rokkansenteret (Nygårdsgaten 5 (6 etg), Bergen). Det vil bli forfriskninger og lett servering, og bokens redaktører vil holde korte innlegg.

Om boken: Irregulære immigranter har på noen områder full tilgang til velferdsytelser, men på mange områder er tilgangen svært begrenset enten i form av rettsregler eller andre barrierer. Denne antologien undersøker forholdet mellom rettslig rammeverk, institusjonell praksis og hvordan irregulære migranter selv erfarer sin situasjon.

Med en unik kombinasjon av juridisk og antropologisk blikk, går boken regelverket nærmere i sømmene, drøfter gatebyråkraters utfordringer og hverdagslivet til irregulære migranter og deres barn.

Hvilke regelverk får konsekvenser for irregulære migranters levevilkår? Hvordan blir dette regelverket forstått og etterfulgt av gatebyråkrater? Og hvordan blir hverdagslivet til irregulære migranter og deres barn påvirket av regelverket og dets fortolkning?

Denne boken er aktuell for velferdsprofesjoner som møter irregulære migranter som en del av sin yrkesutøvelse. Både leger, sykepleiere, helsesekretærer, lærere, helsesøstre, skolerådgivere, sosialarbeidere, sosionomer og barnevernspedagoger vil ha god nytte av Eksepsjonell velferd? Irregulære migranter i det norske velferdssamfunnet. Boken retter seg også mot frivillige organisasjoner som jobber med ulike aspekter ved migranters situasjon i Norge og andre som er engasjert i temaet.

IMER lunch seminar: Cindy Horst – Active citizenship in culturally and religiously diverse societies.

May 26, 2015 @ 12:00 pm – 1:30 pm @ UNI Rokkan centre (6 etg), Nygårdsgaten 5, Bergen

In debates on citizenship in Europe, the need for active participation  among citizens is increasingly stressed. But do normative ideas of what active citizenship is, reflect people’s lived experiences in present-day Europe? While the low electoral participation of young people is often highlighted as an indication of reduced civic participation, various studies show increased social media use leads to increased political and social debates and mobilization. And while politicians often lament the lack of civil-political engagement among immigrants particularly, many new citizens volunteer, work as activists, take up political causes, or set up associations in both their countries of residence and origin. In Europe’s culturally and religiously diverse societies, citizens have different frameworks for how they act and interact with their close and distant surroundings. The ACT project studies this diversified citizen participation through empirical data collection on (local, national and transnational) active citizenship in neighbourhoods in Oslo and Copenhagen.

Skjermbilde 2015-02-17 kl. 22.33.04Cindy Horst is Research Director and Research Professor in Migration and Refugee Studies at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Her current research interests include: mobility in conflict; diaspora; humanitarianism; refugee protection; (transnational) civic engagement; and theorizing on social transformation.

Download poster here

Emerging Urbanities Lunch Seminar: Sara Kohne: The experience of change in culturally diverse urban areas. Examples from two districts in Berlin and Oslo.

 12. May 2015 kl.12.00 – 13.30 @ UNI Rokkansenteret, Bergen (6 etg, Nygårdsgaten 5)

During the last two decades, central inner city areas have constantly become more attractive to the middle class as places for living and leisure. It is especially because of their history and cultural diversity that these urban districts gain ”new” popularity. This development is, among other things, connected to larger processes of economic and societal change, such as globalisation and de-industrialisation, and it is often called gentrification – a process of urban transformation that results in the physical, sociocultural and economic upgrading of city districts. Continue reading

Two lunch seminars Tuesday April 28th at 12.00 – UNI Rokkan Centre

Lisa Kings: Contesting urban management regimes: The rise of urban justice movements in Sweden

Skjermbilde 2015-02-17 kl. 13.51.26LISA KINGS holds a PhD in Sociology at Søderthorn University College. Her researh interests are urban theory, social movements, inequality and everyday life.  (lisa.kings@sh.se)

Vanja Lozic: Problematizing parents, governing troubled youth

Skjermbilde 2015-02-17 kl. 13.53.40Vanja Lozic holds a PhD in history and issenior lecturer in Science of Education at Kristianstad University, Sweden. His research deals with issues in education from the perspectives of ethnicity, multiculturalism, gender, disability, youth cultures and work integrated learning. At present, he is participating in a research project “Cooperation, education and inclusion in multi-ethnic urban settings”, which concerns the connections between institutional restructuring, youth resistance and strategies for social inclusion. The aim is to investigate the measures for social inclusion within schools, local institutions and civil society actors in socioeconomically deprived areas of large cities in Sweden

Read more…

IMER Lunch: Astrid Ouahyb Sundsbø – Social mixing policies: What You Want and What You Get

Friday 13.03.15 12.00-13.30 @ UNI Rokkan centre, Nygårdsgaten 5, Bergen (6 etg)

In the publSkjermbilde 2015-02-13 kl. 09.15.27ic debate and contemporary social policies in Norway as well as in other countries, concentrations of “immigrants” in certain areas of a city are considered to be unfortunate and something which needs to be fought against (see i.e. Gakkestad 2003; Akerhaug 2012). It is anticipated that spatial concentrations of “immigrants” enforces the social isolation of “immigrants” and triggers criminal activities, among other aspects. This becomes very obvious when a “high percentage of immigrants” in an area serves as basis for referring to that area as a “ghetto” or “insecure” (see i.e. Sæter 2005; Vassenden: 2007; cf. Akerhaug 2012).

Continue reading

Next IMER Seminar: Susanne Bygnes: Mistillitens migrasjon – Europeisk sør-nord mobilitet i kjølvannet av krisa

Tuesday 3rd March at 12.00 to 13.00 at UNI Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5 (6 etg.), Bergen

SusanneBygnesTema for innlegget er den nye Europeiske sør-nord migrasjonen. Den empiriske analysen er basert på dybdeintervjuer med noen av dem som har reist fra Spania til Norge etter kriseåret 2008. Innlegget vil belyse hvordan sør-nord migrasjonen i kjølvannet av krisa er mer enn en desperat flukt fra arbeidsledighet i hjemlandet. Den vidtrekkende mistilliten til det politiske systemet og følelsen av en dyptgripende håpløshet i hjemlandet er viktige migrasjonsfaktorer i tillegg til jobbmuligheter for dem som kommer til Norge.

Susanne Bygnes (phd) er postdoktor ved universitetet i Bergen. Hun leder det fireårige prosjektet Labour Migration in Uncertain Times: Migration from Spain to Norway after 2008, finansiert av forskningsrådets VAM-program. Hun har publisert en rekke internasjonale artikler på tema som mangfold og likestilling, blant annet Ambivalent Multiculturalism (2012) i tidsskriftet Sociology.

Continue reading