PROVIR closing conference: Registration deadline 01.10.2014:
Conference registration deadline is 1st of October. Send abstract and registration details to Marry-Anne.Karlsen@uni.noMore information about the PROVIR-project is available at http://rokkan.uni.no/sites/provir/ To register and pay registration fee, please use the following link: https://provir.hoopla.no/sales/#1609368930/
Closing conference PROVIR: “Exceptional welfare: Dilemmas in/of irregular migration”
How do states respond to the physical presence and needs of people it officially has excluded? To what extent do international human rights provide protection? How does migration control and welfare policy affect irregular migrants’ experiences and subjectivities?Physically present, but legally excluded, irregular migrants’ present societies with particular dilemmas relating to both sovereignty and human suffering. European countries increasingly involve welfare services in migration control, either by restricting access, or by using welfare services to detect/expose irregular migrants. This raises important questions concerning not only how migrants’ legal status influences their capacity to access services, but also the practical and ethical implications for service providers. Furthermore, it challenges the extent to which human rights actually limit the exclusionary powers of states and as such whether human rights are viable outside the confines of citizenship.
Provision of Welfare to Irregular Migrants (PROVIR) will be organizing its closing conference at the University of Bergen, 19th – 21th of November 2014. As an interdisciplinary project, the PROVIR research group and its international partners have combined a legal and social science approach to the provision of welfare to ‘irregular migrants’ in Norway, and comparatively in Europe, looking particularly at health care and education. The aim of the project has been to investigate the complex relationship between law, institutional practice, and migrants’ lived experience.
The closing conference aims to bring together researchers from various disciplines who are interested in the interplay between migration control and welfare policy. At the conference, findings from the PROVIR-project will be presented by the research team. In addition to presentations by key note speakers, the PROVIR research team also welcomes papers to be presented at workshops. The topics adressed will be:
- Irregular migrants’ legal situation regarding access to welfare provisions, either in national or international law.
- Institutional practices and responses by service providers.
- Migrants’ experiences, agency and embodiment.
PROGRAM:
Wednesday 19th of November Venue: Det Akademiske Kvarter
18.00-19.30: Letter to the king Film by Hisham Zaman
Letter to the King portrays five people on a day trip from a refugee camp to Oslo, a welcome change in an otherwise monotonous life. But we soon realize that each and every one of them has an agenda for their trip. All five will make decisive choices on this day, as they discover happiness, humiliation, love or fulfill a long-awaited revenge. The five stories are tied together by a letter, written by eighty-three year old Mirza. Mirza wants to hand over the letter to the King personally.
19.30-21.00: Mediating irregular migration
The phenomenon of irregular migration is inextricably linked to its forms of mediation. Researchers, artists, authors, journalists and others contribute to the proliferation of images of the lives, and deaths, of those who migrate without proper authorization from the state. While stereotypical accounts of victims/criminals proliferate in mainstream media – (counter) representations that challenge such stereotyping also exist. The speakers in this panel discussion have all participated in producing and/or analysing images of irregular migration. Taking as their point of departure the film “Letter to the King”, they will discuss the poetics and politics of mediating irregular migration. What (im)possibilities does such mediation offer for current border struggles?
Plenary panel discussion with:
Hisham Zaman, Director (To be confirmed)
Shahram Khosravi, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm
Synnøve N. Bendixsen, Post-doctoral fellow PROVIR and Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen
Film and panel discussion organized in cooperation with Studentersamfunnet i Bergen (http://samfunnet.sib.no/)
Thursday 20th of November Venue: Faculty of Law, Magnus Lagabøtes plass 1, University of Bergen
09.30-10.00: Tea, coffee and registrations
10.00-10.15: Welcome address
10.15-11.45: Precarious inclusion: Provision of welfare to irregular migrants in Norway
Presentation of PROVIR research findings by
Christine M. Jacobsen, Karl Harald Søvig, Synnøve Bendixsen, Andrea Sussman and Marry-Anne Karlsen
11.45-12.00: Coffee break
12.00-13.00: Care Beyond Welfare?
Key note lecture by Miriam Ticktin, Associate Professor of Anthropology, The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College (US)
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-16.00: Workshops
16.00-16.15: Coffee break
16.15-17.15: Wrongs, Rights and Regularization
Key note lecture by Linda Bosniak, Distinguished Professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law–Camden (US)
19.00: Conference dinner
Nøsteboden
Friday 21st of November
Venue: Faculty of Law, Magnus Lagabøtes plass 1, University of Bergen
09.15-10.15: Limiting Health Care as a Tool of Immigration Policy: Ethnographic Insights into Deservingness and Responses by Civil Society
Key note lecture by Heide Castañeda, Associate Professor and Graduate Director, Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida (US)
10.15-10.30: Coffee break
10.30-13.00: Workshops
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-16.00: Excepted, excluded or precariously included? Dilemmas in/of irregular migration Roundtable discussion by PROVIR research team and international partners:
Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration and Citizenship and Deputy Director of Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford (UK)
Milena Chimienti, Professor, University of Applied Science Western Switzerland – Social Work, Haute Ecole Fribourgeoise de Travail Social (HETS) (Switzerland)
Henriette Abbing, (Emiratus) Professor of Health Law, University of Utrecht (the Netherlands)
Christine M. Jacobsen, Professor, PROVIR project leader and Director of Center for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK), University of Bergen (Norway)
Karl Harald Søvig, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Bergen (Norway)
Workshop Porgram:
Download workshop program here
The conference is open: No registration
The IMER seminar series for 2014 have covered how migration and ethnic relations are communicated in every-day encounters, in mass and social media, in art, in politics and in research and teaching at the universities. Has the way people talk about migration and migrants in different social contexts changed over time, and in which ways has it changed?
How does migration theory and research relate to other topics and theories in the social sciences, and how do results from migration research inform public debate and policy development? What are the challenges we encounter in communicating migration?
Thursday October 23. 2014
Lauritz Meltzers hus Fosswinkelsgate 6, 9. floor. (in English)
10.00 : Teaching race, Racism and Ethnicity: Education, politics and practice John Solomos
11.00: Studying race and discrimination in a colorblind society: the case of France Patrick Simon
12.00-13.00 Lunch
13.00: Migration and Integration in Norwegian Sociology Mette Andersson
13.30: Distinction Home and Abroad in Migration Research Tor Aase
14.00: Migration and Social Theory Randi Gressgård
14.30: Migration in Literature Studies Lene Johannessen
15.00:Migration in Political Science Hakan G. Sicakkan
15.30: Concluding Discussion
Friday October 24. 2014
Literature house Bergen, Østre skostredet 5, 2nd floor (in Norwegian)
10:00 – 10:15 Velkommen IMER leader Synnøve Bendixsen
10:15 – 10:40 IMDI: Fakta om innvandring til Norge v/ regionsdirektør Bente Blytt
10:45 – 12:00 Norsk-svensk innvandringskrangel– hva handlet den om, og hvor står debatten i dag? v/ Tidl. Statssekretær Ketil Rakes (N) og forfatter Henrik Arnstad (S)
12:00 – 13:00 Pause
13:00 – Å kommunisere migrasjon gjennom film og kunst. Diskusjon med kunstnerne Thomas Østbye og Shwan Dler Qaradaki sammen med antropolog Marry-Anne Karlsen.
14.00 Utstilling og film: Imaging Immanuel (2011. Regissør: Thomas Østbye. 52 min)
IMER Bergen, International Migration and Ethnic Relations, is a multidisciplinary research unit at Uni Research Rokkansenteret and the University of Bergen. The aim of IMER Bergen is to contribute to research-based knowledge about international migration, not least related to European countries, 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, both nationally and internationally, to the migration research field. IMER is a prioritized research area at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Bergen.
IMER online: http://imer.w.uib.no
Visit IMER on Facebook
For contact, please send email to imer@uni.no
Additional information:
A short introduction to the debate on Friday:
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/meninger/sverige/kronikk-folkhemspopulismen/a/23297613/
Om diskusjonene om migrasjon i kunst og film:
IMER Bergen har som en del av Communicating Migration konferansen invitert to kunstnere til å snakke om sitt arbeid. Begge kunstnerne jobber med migrasjon som tema og i samtalen vil vi ta opp spørsmål som: Hvordan kan migrasjon kommuniseres gjennom kunsten? Hva er forholdet mellom politikk og kunst? Er det likheter mellom kunst og samfunnsfagene? Hvilke dilemmaer star man ovenfor når man representerer andre mennesker gjennom kunst, og hvordan kan man løse slike dilemma. Kan kunsten gi mennesker en stemme?
I foredraget vil antropolog Mary-Anne Karlsen snakke med kunstnerne Thomas Østbye og Shwan Dler Qaradaki.
Thomas Østby, kjent for å ha laget den prisbelønte filmen Imaging Emanuel som vi vises etter samtalen. Østby har også en rekke andre arbeider som har fått anerkjennelse både nasjonalt og internasjonalt. Les mer: http://www.plymserafin.com
Shwan Dler Qaradaki levde i mange som papirløs i Norge selv. Dette har preget hans kunstneriske uttrykk der han er opptatt av tematikk som flukt, konflikt, identitet, tilhørighet og mangfold. Les mer: http://dlerqaradaki.tumblr.com/
Film: Imaging Emanuel
Emanuel har ukjent identitet og oppholder seg illegalt i Norge. Han kom til landet i 2003, men ønsker ikke å leve som illegal, og har forsøkt å få returnere til sitt hjemland uten hell. Han hevder å komme fra Liberia, men norske myndigheter hevder derimot at Emanuel kommer fra Ghana, og har tvangssendt ham dit to ganger. Hver gang har Ghana returnert ham til Norge med beskjed om at han ikke er Ghaneser. Emanuel er dermed dømt til et liv i limbo, uten oppholdstillatelse og rettigheter, men også uten utreisemulighet. Thomas Østbye tilnærmer seg Emanuel ved hjelp av en rekke forskjellige dokumentarsjangere, og de forskjellige avbildningene gir oss ulike inntrykk av den samme mannen. Hvem er Emanuel? Hva er identitet? Hvordan kan identitet avbildes? Hvem besitter sannheten?
PROVIR closing conference: “Exceptional welfare: Dilemmas in/of irregular migration”
Wednesday 19th of November
Venue: Det Akademiske Kvarter
18.00-19.30: Letter to the king
Film by Hisham Zaman
Letter to the King portrays five people on a day trip from a refugee camp to Oslo, a welcome change in an otherwise monotonous life. But we soon realize that each and every one of them has an agenda for their trip. All five will make decisive choices on this day, as they discover happiness, humiliation, love or fulfill a long-awaited revenge. The five stories are tied together by a letter, written by eighty-three year old Mirza. Mirza wants to hand over the letter to the King personally.
19.30-21.00: Mediating irregular migration
Researchers, artists, authors, journalists and others contribute to the proliferation of images of the lives, and deaths, of those who migrate without proper authorization from the state. While stereotypical accounts of victims/criminals proliferate in mainstream media – (counter) representations that challenge such stereotyping also exist. The speakers in this panel discussion have all participated in producing and/or analysing images of irregular migration. Taking as their point of departure the film “Letter to the King”, they will discuss the poetics and politics of mediating irregular migration. What (im)possibilities does such mediation offer for current border struggles?
Plenary panel discussion with:
Mehmet Aktas, co-producer and scriptwriter, Letter to the king
Shahram Khosravi, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm
Synnøve N. Bendixsen, Post-doctoral fellow PROVIR and Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen
Film and panel discussion organized in cooperation with Studentersamfunnet i Bergen (http://samfunnet.sib.no/)
Thursday 20th of November
Venue: Faculty of Law, Magnus Lagabøtes plass 1, University of Bergen
09.30-10.00: Tea, coffee and registrations
10.00-10.15: Welcome address
10.15-11.45: Precarious inclusion: Provision of welfare to irregular migrants in Norway
Presentation of PROVIR research findings by
Christine M. Jacobsen, Karl Harald Søvig, Synnøve Bendixsen, Andrea Sussman and Marry-Anne Karlsen
11.45-12.00: Coffee break
12.00-13.00: Care Beyond Welfare?
Key note lecture by Miriam Ticktin, Associate Professor of Anthropology, The New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College (US)
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-16.00: Workshops
16.00-16.15: Coffee break
16.15-17.15: Wrongs, Rights and Regularization
Key note lecture by Linda Bosniak, Distinguished Professor of Law, Rutgers School of Law–Camden (US)
19.00: Conference dinner
Nøsteboden
Friday 21st of November
Venue: Faculty of Law, Magnus Lagabøtes plass 1, University of Bergen
09.15-10.15: Limiting Health Care as a Tool of Immigration Policy: Ethnographic Insights into Deservingness and Responses by Civil Society
Key note lecture by Heide Castañeda, Associate Professor and Graduate Director, Department of Anthropology, University of South Florida (US)
10.15-10.30: Coffee break
10.30-12.30: Workshops
12.30-13.30: Lunch
13.30-15.30: Excepted, excluded or precariously included? Dilemmas in/of irregular migration
Roundtable discussion by PROVIR research team and international partners:
Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration and Citizenship and Deputy Director of Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford (UK)
Milena Chimienti, Professor, University of Applied Science Western Switzerland – Social Work, Haute Ecole Fribourgeoise de Travail Social (HETS) (Switzerland)
Henriette Abbing, (Emiratus) Professor of Health Law, University of Utrecht (the Netherlands)
Christine M. Jacobsen, Professor, PROVIR project leader and Director of Center for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK), University of Bergen (Norway)
Karl Harald Søvig, Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Bergen (Norway)
Workshop Porgram:
Download workshop program here
Film and panel discussion on the dilemmas of mediating irregular migration
Wednesday 19th of November
Venue: Tegleverket, Det Akademiske Kvarter, Bergen
18.00-19.30: Letter to the king
Film by Hisham Zaman
Letter to the King portrays five people on a day trip from a refugee camp to Oslo, a welcome change in an otherwise monotonous life. But we soon realize that each and every one of them has an agenda for their trip. All five will make decisive choices on this day, as they discover happiness, humiliation, love or fulfill a long-awaited revenge. The five stories are tied together by a letter, written by eighty-three year old Mirza. Mirza wants to hand over the letter to the King personally.
19.30-21.00: Mediating irregular migration
Researchers, artists, authors, journalists and others contribute to the proliferation of images of the lives, and deaths, of those who migrate without proper authorization from the state. While stereotypical accounts of victims/criminals proliferate in mainstream media – (counter) representations that challenge such stereotyping also exist. The speakers in this panel discussion have all participated in producing and/or analysing images of irregular migration. Taking as their point of departure the film “Letter to the King”, they will discuss the poetics and politics of mediating irregular migration. What (im)possibilities does such mediation offer for current border struggles?
Plenary panel discussion with:
Mehmet Aktas, co-producer and scriptwriter, Letter to the king
Shahram Khosravi, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm
Synnøve N. Bendixsen, Post-doctoral fellow PROVIR and Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen
Film and panel discussion is organized by IMER Bergen in cooperation with Studentersamfunnet i Bergen (http://samfunnet.sib.no/) and is part of the PROVIR-project’s closing conference.
Precarious inclusion: Provision of welfare to irregular migrants in Norway
The IMER Bergen-project Provision of welfare to irregular migrants (PROVIR) will present its research findings at this open event.
PROVIR combined legal and anthropological approaches to investigate the complex relationship between law, institutional practice, and irregular migrants’ lived experience. The research project aimed to cast light on living conditions and access to welfare of irregularized migrants.
You can find more information about the project at PROVIRs website: http://rokkan.uni.no/sites/provir/
Date: November 20th
Time: 10.00 to 11.45
Venue: Auditorium 4, Faculty of Law, University of Bergen
Mistillitens migrasjon: Europeisk sør-nord mobilitet i kjølvannet av krisa
Tema 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.
In recent years, a large number of Syrian refugees have settled in Europe. In the media, most of the debate concerning these refugees has been about how they impact their host societies. But how does this large Syrian diaspora impact politics in Syria itself?
For this IMER lunch seminar, we will be joined by Amany Selim and Espen Stokke, PhD candidates at sociology and comparative politics at UiB. They both do research projects where they explore the engagement of Syrian diaspora activists, and how these activists try to make a difference in the homeland. With their work on the Syrian case, they are hoping to contribute to the growing body of literature that attempts to bridge social movement theory and diaspora politics.
In the presentation, Selim and Stokke will give a brief overview of the field: What do we know about the activism of the Syrian diaspora? They will also present their own projects, and what they wish to add to the field.
‘Crimmigration’ has become a critical “catch all” concept for legal scholars, criminologists, and sociologists alike. The concept describes the way two previously separate state control spheres – border control and crime control – influence each other and are part of the same control mechanism experiences and developments. This concept, for example, helps understand Trump’s effort to legitimize the tightening of immigration policy. It refers to both the protection of American economy and jobs and the explicit intent to protect American citizens from terrorists, rapists, and gang members. For this IMER lunch seminar, Synnøve Jahnsen from Rokkansenteret will talk about the usefulness of crimmigration as a concept in other settings. She will draw on empirical examples from her research on prostitution and human trafficking, Norwegian labour market crime policies, and the policing of outlaw motorcycle clubs and youth gangs in Australia and Europe. She will also use the opportunity to promote her new co-edited book “Criminal Justice in the Era of Mass Mobility” and highlight some of the methodological challenges faced by researchers in her field.
A light lunch will be served. All welcome!
Synnøve Jahnsen is a postdoctoral research fellow at Rokkansenteret where she specializes in the sociology of law and criminal justice.
Since the refugee reception crisis in 2015, asylum seekers and refugees have often been at the centre of public and scholarly debate. However, the focus has frequently been on the problems they bring about for host countries. Less attention has been placed on asylum seekers’ aspirations, dreams and plans after arrival. Yet these are meaningful to study given that aspirations can have a significant impact on people’s future trajectories and hence, the ways they incorporate into their new homes. Furthermore, desire, despite having a strong agentic nature, is deeply entangled in the social structures and discourses that newcomers are surrounded by.
In this seminar, Zubia Willmann, will be presenting her article in which she explores how the aspirations of women who came to Norway as asylum seekers change over time, the elements that may be involved in such changes as well as how these women go about pursuing their aspirations. She draws on intermittent fieldwork for one and a half years (2017-2019) in which she followed women seeking asylum in Norway, from the stages in which they lived in asylum centres to the early stages of settlement in a Norwegian municipality.
A light lunch will be served! All welcome.
Zubia Willmann is a currently a PhD candidate at VID Specialized University, Stavanger with a project exploring how women seeking asylum in Norway go about starting their life in their new home. She has an interdisciplinary background, her main fields of interest being migration studies but also gender and religion studies among others. She has been recently a visiting scholar at the Migration and Diversity Centre at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. Zubia is also a member of the IMER Junior Scholars Network.
There is a deep-rooted cultural belief that encounters between strangers in local settings can bring about social change. Mette Strømsø, a researcher at the Sociology Department UiB, brings this aspect to the forefront in her study of local community initiatives established in the wake of the refugee influx in 2015. Mette will present her co-authored article with Susanne Bygnes whereby they strive to unpack the promise, inherent contradictions and transformative potential of the facilitated encounters in local communities where newcomers settled. The reference to Karen Blixen’s short story Babette’s feast indicate the cultural resonance of the promise in the facilitated encounters between newcomers and permanent residents.
Mette Strømsø is a researcher for IMEX at the department of Sociology, UiB. She holds a PhD in Human. Her research interests fall at the intersection of political geography and social and cultural geography, with a focus on everyday nationhood and especially the reconciliation between nation and diversity.
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