WORKSHOP
Migration in Nordic societies: Recent perspectives
The workshop is organised as a collaboration between IMER Bergen and the Department of Sociology, UiB. It is open for all interested researchers and students.
Program:
09.00: Welcome by Lise Widding Isaksen (Dept. of Sociology, UiB).
09.15: Helle Stenum (Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen): “Bane and Boon, Gains and pains; Dos and Don’ts. Moral economy and flexible citizens in au pair migration”.
09.45: Coffee break.
10.00: Lise Widding Isaksen (Dept. of Sociology, UiB): “Domestic Workers and Political Agency”.
10.30: Mariya Bikova (Dept. of Sociology, UiB): “Au pair Migration Norway – Philippines”.
11.00: Discussion. Discussant: Christine M. Jacobsen (IMER Bergen and Dept. of Social Anthropology, UiB).
12.00 – 13.00: Lunch break.
13.00: Anna Gavanas (Institute for Future Studies, Stockholm): “Migration, in/formalization and the expanding domestic service sector in Sweden”.
13.30: Vera Galindabaeva (European University, St. Petersburg): “The Effects of Rural-Urban Migration on Transformation of Child Care Arrangemenst in Buryat Rural Families in Post-Soviet Russia”.
14.00: Coffee break.
14.15: Synnøve Bendixsen (IMER Bergen and Uni Rokkan Centre): Ethiopian Irregular Migrants’ demonstration in Oslo Cathedral.
14.45 -15.30: Discussion. Discussant: Lise Widding Isaksen (Dept. of Sociology, UiB).
Friday 7 October, 09.00-15.30.
Faculty of Law, Seminar room 1, Magnus Lagabøtesplass 1.
WORKSHOP POSTER
Master seminar
IMER Bergen has invited master students working within the field of International Migration and Ethnic Relations to present their fresh dissertations and ongoing projects:
MARI NEDREHAGEN (Sosiologisk Institutt):
”Samtaler med innvandrede kvinner med etnisk minoritetsbakgrunn om morsrollen – sett i lys av en feministisk- og likestillingspolitisk ramme”
STINE BØTHUN (Institutt for Sosialantropologi):
“Should I stay or should I go? An Anthropological study of migratory patterns of Puerto Ricans moving to the U.S. Mainland”
LARS ERIK BERNTZEN (Sosiologisk Institutt):
“Den eksistensielle trusselen: En sosiologisk studie av politisk motstand mot islam, muslimsk kultur og innvandring til Norge”.
MALIN VETTI (Institutt for Administrasjon og Organisasjonsvitenskap):
“Adgang og Integrering: vestlig innvandringspolitikk og det kanadiske eksempelet”
All interested are welcome.
Friday 21 October, 13.15-16.00
Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6th Floor
As cross-cultural migration increases democratic states face a particular challenge: how to grant equal rights and dignity to individuals while recognizing cultural distinctiveness. In response to the greater number of ethnic and religious minority groups, state policies seem to focus on managing cultural differences through planned pluralism. This book explores the dilemmas, paradoxes, and conflicts that emerge when differences are managed within this conceptual framework. After a critical investigation of the perceived logic of identity, indicative of Western nation-states and at the root of their pluralistic intentions, the author takes issue with both universalist notions of equality and cultural relativist notions of distinctiveness. However, without identity is it possible to participate in dialogue and form communities? Is there a way out of this impasse? The book argues in favor of communities based on nonidentitarian difference, developed and maintained through open and critical dialogue.
Randi Gressgård is a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK) at the University of Bergen. She is also affiliated with the research unit International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER) in Bergen. Her research interests focus on minority research, gender studies, and philosophy of science. Her publications include Fra identitet til forskjell [From Identity to Difference] (Spartacus/Scandinavian Academic Press, 2005) and Kjønnsteori[Gender Theory] (co-ed., Gyldendal Akademisk, 2008). Read more…
Empowering minority youth? a capability approach to anti-racist education
Frederique Brossard Børhaug (NLA)
In anti-racist education, it is important to reflect on the pitfalls of the ideal of equality in order to obtain greater social justice. Too narrow an understanding of equality without an acknowledgment of the individual’s ethnic identity provides fragile grounds when dealing with the social and cultural recognition of minority pupils. The capability approach contributes to discussing theoretically the anti-racist dialectical aim of equality and difference. In assessing the individual’s capability to combine his/her own substantive freedoms within his/her specific living, it also gives the possibility to evaluate the concrete social arrangements and resources available to minority pupils. If considering the curriculum as a resource, French and Norwegian school discourses in civic education offer few possibilities for minority youth to expand their capabilities in the multicultural society and to use their own voice in order to build self-governance based on self-articulation of concrete cultural and social aspirations.
Frédérique Brossard Børhaug is Associate Professor of Education at NLA School of Religion, Education and Intercultural Studies, Norway. She holds a Ph.D in education from the University of Oslo. Her field of specialization is intercultural education. She works on ethics and anti-racist education in French and Norwegian multicultural school contexts.
28 October, 13.15-15.00
Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6th Floor
SEMINAR POSTER
Dismantling the singular trusting subject: a comparative exploration of trust in guatemala and norway
Margit Ystanes (UiB)
The phenomenon of trust is receiving considerable attention today, in everyday talk about concerns over the economy and social coherence, as well as in social theory. However, there is little agreement among researchers as to what exactly trust is and how we can study it. It is therefore very unclear what we actually know about this phenomenon. A couple of features are nevertheless present in most trust research. Firstly, there is a tendency to assume that trust is essentially produced in the same way everywhere. The fundamental building blocks of the social, which constitute the conditions for trust in any context, are therefore often ignored or superficially treated in studies of trust. Secondly, it is often assumed that we can study trust with reference to a singular subject modelled on a generalised notion of a “Western” self, often referred to as the Truster. As I tried to find a conception of trust that would help me think about why trust is so precarious in the Guatemalan context I have worked, these features caused considerable problems. Guatemalan society is marked by hierarchical differences produced by complex notions of embodied superiority and inferiority, which can be traced back to the colonial encounter. This variety of hierarchised subject positions makes it impossible to analyse trust with reference to a singular trusting subject, and highlights the limitations produced by a superficial treatment of social orders in the study of social phenomena. The main argument of my talk is therefore that that if we are to understand trust as it appears ethnographically, we must dissolve the singularly conceived subject we often find in trust research. Instead, we must focus our attention on the very conditions for trust and its negation in specific, thickly conceived lifeworlds. I will mainly use ethnography from my work in Guatemala to exemplify this point, but will also make a tentative comparison with the Norwegian context.
Margit Ystanes is a researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen. Her recent PhD dissertation, Precarious Trust. Problems of Managing Self and Sociality in Guatemala (2011), explores the conditions for trust among ladino Guatemalans, spanning both intimate and public contexts.
Time: 25 November, 13.15-15.00
Venue: Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6th Floor
SEMINAR POSTER
Beyond stigmatisation: Some thoughts on how ethnicity obscures gender, and why an ethnography of cricket is an answer
Thomas Walle (Norsk Folkemuseum)
It has rightly been argued that minority masculinities are constituted in relation to the majority society, and that popular images of ethnic minority men must be analysed as a consequence of the majority’s self-imagination. In her book Stolen Honor: stigmatizing Muslim men in Berlin, Katherine P. Ewing argues that these popular images are part of the national imaginary in Europe: «stigmatization of Muslim masculinity is a form of abjection, in which the Muslim man’s sense of self and honour are represented in European national discourses as an uninhabitable way of being» (2008:3). While it is important to document and challenge such processes of stigmatisation and othering, it is argued in this presentation that we need to go beyond stigmatisation to get a sense of the complex ways that gender is constituted, lived and made meaningful.
Much research into the field of gender and ethnicity has placed too strong an emphasis on the relation between a dominant majority and subordinate ethnic groups. If we assert that ethnicity is dynamic, and comes into play in particular contexts, there are reasons to look for situations where ethnicity takes on lesser significance. This advises us to investigate masculinity formations as they take shape and are performed within various minority groups, without seeing them as constituted in a state of tension with the dominant form. Drawing on fieldwork in Oslo, it is asserted that the notion of a Pakistani identity is formative of the social space that organised cricket constitutes, and consequently presents both a site within which one can escape stigmatisation, and a means to express resistance against such stigmatisation. However, when it comes to the internal relations within cricket, there are in general few groups against which such ethnic markers are made relevant – the sport being dominated by players of Pakistani origin.
I will argue that the cricket playing men can be seen as a «muted group», in the sense that under the current dominant discourse it lacks ways to express its view of the world. To emphasise the significance of cricket in the constitution and performance of Norwegian Pakistani masculinities, is to allow the men agency and give voice to experiences that escape the hegemonic gaze.
Time: 1 December, 13.15-15.00
Venue: Seminar room, Department of Social Anthropology, Fosswinckels gate 6, 8th floor
Organised in collaboration with the Department of Social Anthropology, UiB.
Irregular Migrants’ Right to Health Care in Europe: A Challenge for the Sociology of Human Rights
Milena Chimienti (City University London)
Debates about human rights have often crystallized dichotomized perspectives, opposing, for instance, universal rights and cultural pluralist rights; or more generally discrepancies between the normative grounding of human rights and their empirical reality. In this paper we argue that the discipline of sociology allows us to go beyond these binary or continuum conceptions of human rights. Through the case of irregular migrants’ access to healthcare in the UK and France we will explore these tensions. This paper focuses on four key issues: first, the extent to which healthcare policy is independent from immigration policy; second, the respective influence of international, national or community actors in the development of irregular migrants’ healthcare rights; third, how these rights are implemented in practice; finally, we look at the differences between nation states and what this tells us about the changing role of nation states in the field of human rights.
Key words: Sociology of human rights, irregular migration, healthcare, France, United Kingdom
MILENA CHIMIENTI is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at City University London where she lectures on human rights and social theories, migration studies and sociological theories. Her latest publications include: special issue ‘Irregular Migrants: Policy, politics, motives and everyday lives’ co-edited with Alice Bloch, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2011; ‘Social Movements of Irregular Migrants, Recognition, and Citizenship’. Globalizations, 2011, 8(3): 343-360; ‘Selling sex in order to migrate: The end of the migratory dream?’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2010, 36(1): 27 – 45.
Time: 9 December, 13.15-15.00
Venue: Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6th Floor
SEMINAR POSTER
Religious traditions and muslim youth in europe
Christine M. Jacobsen (UiB/Uni Rokkansenteret)
Jonas Otterbeck (University of Lund)
Synnøve Bendixsen (SKOK/Uni Rokkansenteret)
A major question regarding Islam in Europe concerns the religiosity of “Muslim youth” – a category currently epitomizing both the fears and hopes of multicultural Europe. At this seminar, researchers working in 3 European countries look at how Islamic traditions are engaged and reworked by young people, born and educated in European societies, and discuss the modes of religiosity that are shaped in a context of international migration, globalization, and secular modernity.
Christine M. Jacobsen launches her new book Islamic Traditions and Muslim youth in Norway in conversation with Jonas Otterbeck, the author of Samtidsislam: unga muslimer i Malmö och Köpenhamn and Synnøve Bendixsen, the author of “It’s like doing SMS to Allah” Young Female Muslims Crafting a Religious Self in Berlin.
Seminar and book launch.
Organised in collaboration with Department of Social Anthropology, UiB.
Time: Friday 21 January, 13.15-16.00.
Venue: Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6. etg (5th Floor)
global political economy, welfare state reforms and the governance of religion
Tuomas Martikainen (Åbo Akademi, Finland)
Time: 11 February 2011, 13.15-15.00 Venue: Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6. etg (5th Floor)
Cosmopolitanism and the colonial disease: Stories and belonging in Parisian slam poetry
Cicilie Fagerlid (UiO)
“I’ve sublimated the language of Molière without ever offending it… Which politician dares to tell me that I’m not French?” states the slam poet Souleymane Diamanka. Poetically, he calls himself “inhabitant of nowhere, originating from everywhere”. The more down-to-earth description he sometimes gives is “a Fulani from Bordeaux”. Souleymane is not the only poet on the Parisian slam scene who brings stories with him from elsewhere while firmly planted in French soil. Personal experiences like tracing one’s ancestors to Fulani storytellers or reworking the traumas of fleeing from the war in Cambodia are transformed into home-grown, however cosmopolitan Frenchness in the mouth of the locally situated and often streetwise poets.
The Parisian slam/performance poetry sessions take place in small bars and cafés. Here, young and old people of a variety of backgrounds come together to listen to each other’s short texts. Through the participatory and democratic ethos of “expressing oneself”, “sharing” and “listening to others” a space of cosmopolitan coexistence is created. In this presentation, I will explore how this space comes into being, what makes it cosmopolitan and what kinds of experiences it makes available for the people present. I will claim that cosmopolitanism should be understood as an orientation rather than an identity. It is an orientation that is capable of bringing about transformations in the self as well as in self-other relations, and it bothgenerates and is generated by openness in encounters. Can listening to other people’s stories of other places and other ways of being French cure the French colonial disease?
The presentation is based on 16 months of fieldwork in ethnically and socio-economically mixed North-eastern Paris, from the riots in the autumn 2005 until the presidential election in 2007.
Time: 25 February, 13.15-15.00
Venue: Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6. etg (5th Floor)
SEMINAR POSTER