Calendar

Nov
29
Fri
NEW RESEARCH TOPICS WITHIN IMER BERGEN @ UNI Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6. etg (5th Floor)
Nov 29 @ 1:15 pm – 3:00 pm


Halvar A. Kjærre
: “Politics and Mobilities”

Tarje I. Wanvik: “Migration and Social Inequalities”

Halvar A. Kjærre (Department of Social Anthropology, UiB) and Tarje I. Wanvik (Department of Geography, UiB) have recently been recruited to the IMER Bergen research unit as PhD candidates.
In this seminar they will present their PhD projects. After the presentation there will also be a presentation of IMERS new webpages.

Skjermbilde 2013-11-13 kl. 23.02.09

Apr
30
Wed
HANS LUCHT – The Station Hustle: Ghanian Migration Brokerage in a Disjointed World
Apr 30 @ 1:15 pm – 3:00 pm

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Niger, Hans Lucht discusses how stranded migrants have become facilitators of the very journey they have failed to make themselves. These connection men, or ‘pushers’ as they say themselves, are now key actors in high-risk migration across the Sahara Desert via Libya to Europe. They have somehow turned all their misfortunes into a form of capital, while awaiting a new chance to go to Europe.

prt_www40Hans Lucht is a senior researcher and journalist at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) in Copenhagen. He holds a PhD in anthropology from the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. His book on undocumented migration from West Africa to Europe (“Darkness before Daybreak – African Migrants Living on the Margins in Southern Italy Today”) won the 2012 Elliott P. Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology.

Seminar is held in cooperation between the Institute of Social anthropology and IMER BErgen.

May
12
Mon
COMMUNICATING MIGRATION SEMINARS: SEBASTIEN CHAUVIN – Sans-papiers into workers: how historic strikes changed the public face of undocumented migrants in France @ UNI Rokkansenteret 6 et/5the floor
May 12 @ 2:15 pm – 4:15 pm

Sans-papiers into workers: how historic strikes changed the public face of undocuemented migrants in France

From 2008 to 2010, with the support of a coalition of trade unions and immigrant rights groups under the leadership of the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), thousands of France’s undocumented migrant workers conducted strikes and occupied their workplaces, demanding that their employers sponsor their regulatisation applications. Unheard of in French migration and labour history, the mobilization was based on a recent change in legislation allowing employers to solicit the regularisation of a migrant by providing a formal job offer. While the French government’s original intent was to make access to legal status contingent on employer decision alone, union action broadened its scope by bringing the whole employment relationship into the process, including the stakeholders and labour rights built into it by decades of social struggles, such as the right to strike and the right for striking workers to occupy their company without police intrusion. Based on three years of extensive participant observation and more than a hundred in-depth interviews with migrant workers, union and civil rights organization staff and activists, employers in the restaurant, cleaning, temporary staffing and construction industries, and French national and local government officials, our paper considers the strategic challenges encountered by this innovative movement which broke simultaneously with the more traditional repertoires of both French trade unions and the ‘sans-papiers’ movements of the preceding decade.

Related to the topic Chavin has also worked on a documentary film that he will bring with him:
http://www.vezfilm.org/comingforavisit/
http://vimeo.com/53048336

sc_profile-webSébastien Chauvin is assistant professor of Sociology at the the University of Amsterdam and a researcher at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science
Research. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Chicago from 2003 to 2006 and a
lecturer in sociology at the Université Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne from 2006 to 2008. He
conducted in-depth ethnographic fieldwork with mostly undocumented Hispanic immigrant
day laborers in the Chicago region, including the staffing industry that employed them, and
the social movements in which they mobilized, as part of his PhD dissertation (EHESS Paris,
2007). Since late 2007, he has been working on a collective study exploring the labor market
experience and following the union-supported mobilization of undocumented immigrant
workers in France. His main research deals with the relationship between civic inequality and
precarious work. He also keeps an active interest in gender and sexuality studies, social capital
and the sociology of elites, social theory, and the sociology of knowledge. He is the author
of a number of articles and book chapters, as well as Les agences de la précarité. Journaliers à Chicago (Paris: Le Seuil, 2010), Introduction aux études sur le genre (with L. Bereni, A. Jaunait, and A.Revillard ; Brussels : De Boeck, 2012, 2nd edition), and On bosse ici, on reste ici: La grève des sans-papiers: une aventure inédite (with P. Barron, A. Bory, N. Jounin, and L. Tourette ; Paris : La découverte, 2011).

Communicating Migration Seminar Series IMER Bergen spring and autumn 2014

The IMER seminar series for 2014 will cover how migration and ethnic relations are communicated in every-day encounters, in mass and social media, in politics and in 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 fit in with other topics and theories in the social sciences, and how do results from migration research inform public debate and policy development? Communicating migration will be discussed from various angles in our seminar series on international migration and ethnic relations during spring and autumn 2014. We welcome papers that touch upon this broad theme from different angles.  Historical analyses of change over time in regard to politics and public debate, research foci and disciplinary concerns are specifically welcomed.  The seminar series will end with a two-day conference in October/November 2014.

May
19
Mon
COMMUNICATING MIGRATION SEMINARS: SYNNØVE BENDIXEN OG HALVAR KJÆRRE: OUT-reach! Kommunikasjon av “frivillig retur” til irregulære migranter i Norge @ Institutet for social anthropology (8. etg), University of BErgen
May 19 @ 2:15 pm – 4:00 pm

Note: Venue has changed: Anthropology, not Rokkansenteret.

OUT-reach! – Kommunikasjon av «frivillig retur» til irregulære migranter i Norge.

Hvordan kan en stat på best mulig måte gi informasjon om ”frivillig retur” til irregulære migranter? Bør ikke-statlige organisasjoner delta i denne oppgaven, eller vil det å påta seg slike oppgaver undergrave andre funksjoner disse organisasjonene har? Hvordan kommuniseres frivillig retur i dag, og finnes det alternative bedre måter å gjøre dette på?

”Frivillig retur” har fått sterk kritikk av forskere, migranter og organisasjoner for at deltagelse i slike program ofte mangler nettopp det frivillige elementet. Innen forskningen har ‘frivillig retur’ blitt sett som tett knyttet opp til tvangsretur, deportasjon og institusjoner som opprettholder statens grenser. I et slikt perspektiv blir tilbud om «frivillig retur” gjerne sett på som ikke mer enn en mildere variant av tvangsretur og i beste fall en form for obligatorisk retur. «Frivillig retur» er altså tett knyttet opp mot mye av elementer som ikke-statlige organisasjoner ofte har stilt seg kritiske til. Hva er da rasjonale som ligger bak at ulike ikke-statlige hjelpe- og advocacyorganisasjoner eller ulike diaspora- og migrantorganisasjoner tar på seg ansvaret for å formidle ”frivillig retur”? Og på den annen side, er overnevnte årsaker den eneste grunnen til at enkelte organisasjoner ikke velger å gi slik informasjon?

Basert på forskning tilknyttet en kommende UDI rapport i regi av Uni Rokkansenteret vedrørende informasjon om ”frivillig retur” til irregulære migranter utenfor mottak i Norge utforsker Bendixen og Kjærre det etiske og moralske grenselandet som er konteksten for informasjon om frivillig retur, hvordan ulike aktører stiller seg til slikt informasjonsarbeid, og til slutt hvordan de irregulære migrantene selv ser på denne informasjonen i lys av deres livssituasjon i Norge.

Synnøve Kristine Nepstad Bendixsen er postdoktor ved sosial antropologisk institutt i Bergen, og forsker på Uni Rokkansenteret hvor hun er tilknyttet prosjektet Provision of Welfare to Irregular Migrants (PROVIR). Hun har tidligere studert på London Scool of Economics og har en PhD fra Humboldt universitetet (Berlin) og Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris). Hennes forskningsfelt er religiøsitetsutforming blant unge Muslimer i Berlin, samt flere forskningsprosjekter innen tema returmigrasjon og irregulær migrasjon, og hun har flere publikasjoner innen disse feltene.

 

Halvar Andreassen Kjærre er PhD stipendiat ved IMER/Sosialantropologisk institutt i Bergen og har publisert artikler og deltatt på flere forskningsprosjekter innen temaet irregulær/illegalisert migrasjon. Han er også tilknyttet prosjektet PROVIR og jobber for tiden med sin PhD om mobilitet blant irregulære migranter i Schengen/Europa. Tidligere prosjekter har vært ved NTNU samfunnsforskning i Trondheim, Sosiologisk institutt i Oslo, og han jobber nå sammen med Synnøve på overnevnt prosjekt ved Uni Rokkansenteret.

 

May
22
Thu
IMER Abroad: PROVIR Seminar – Precarious migrants and access to welfare: Between policy, law and practice @ COMPAS Oxford
May 22 – May 23 all-day

IMER Abroad: PROVIR Seminar – Precarious migrants and access to welfare: Between policy, law and practice

This workshop will discuss the legal and experienced dilemmas found in the encounter between migrants living in a legally precarious situation and the welfare state in which they reside. Participants will present ongoing empirically based research on migrants’ access to welfare in policy, law and practice in various European countries. They will also discuss the particular position of youth and children in vulnerable situations. The program is available here.

Jun
2
Mon
COMMUNICATIONG MIGRATION SEMINARS: CHRISTARD HOFFMANN – Lessons from the past: framing post-war immigration in Germany by historical analogies @ UNI Rokkansenteret 6 etg (5th floor)
Jun 2 @ 2:15 pm – 4:00 pm

Lessons from the past: framing post-war immigration in Germany by historical analogies

In many West European countries, the experience of mass immigration after 1945 was perceived as something basically new and unprecedented. In the lengthy process of coming to terms with the new situation and of developing a self-understanding as countries of immigration and of ethnic pluralism, historical arguments often played an important role. By placing present-day immigration into a historical perspective, by constructing narratives of continuity (and discontinuity) and not least by presenting persuasive historical analogies, historians (and others) introduced arguments that informed the debates of the day and allowed the experiences of immigration and multi-ethnicity to be integrated into (national) narratives of identity. The German case is particularly interesting in this respect, since a tradition of tolerance and successful integration had to be invented in spite of the fresh memories of the Nazi-past that were witness to the contrary.

personbilde_Copy_of_hoffmannChristhard Hoffmann (born 1952 in Luneburg, Germany) is a German historian and professor of modern European history at the University of Bergen. In the period 2007-2013 he was Head of the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion.

Hoffmann defended in 1986 his doctoral dissertation on German Antiquity historians’ representation of Jews and Judaism in the 19th and 20th centuries [1] at the Technische Universität Berlin, where he also worked as a researcher for many years. From 1994 to 1998 he was a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and since 1998 he has worked at the University of Bergen.

Hoffmann has an extensive list of publications in the fields of German-Jewish history and cultural history, history of anti-Semitism and migration history.

Communicating Migration Seminar series

The IMER seminar series for 2014 will cover how migration and ethnic relations are communicated in every-day encounters, in mass and social media, in politics and in 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 fit in with other topics and theories in the social sciences, and how do results from migration research inform public debate and policy development?

Communicating migration will be discussed from various angles in our seminar series on international migration and ethnic relations during spring and autumn 2014. We welcome papers that touch upon this broad theme from different angles.  Historical analyses of change over time in regard to politics and public debate, research foci and disciplinary concerns are specifically welcomed.

Jun
16
Mon
COMMUNICATING MIGRATION SEMINARS: ESPEN HELGESEN – “Your dad is looking for you” – Children’s perspectives on state intervention in immigrant families in Norway @ Rokkansenteret (5th floor, 6 etg)
Jun 16 @ 2:15 pm – 4:00 pm

 

COMMUNICATING MIGRATION SEMINARS: ESPEN HELGESEN – “Your dad is looking for you” – Children’s perspectives on state intervention in immigrant families in Norway

Several recent international news stories have described state-initiated forced separation of children and parents in Norway, illustrating how local decisions in the Child Welfare Service can have widespread ramifications outside the families involved. In this paper I draw on ethnographic fieldwork among immigrant families in Kristiansand, Norway, to show how a group of children responded when one of their friends suddenly disappeared. The secrecy surrounding the inner workings of the Child Welfare Service led the children to frame the incident as a “kidnapping”, and several children expressed fear that they, too, would be separated from their families. Frustrated with the lack of an explanation of what had happened to their friend, the children turned to online worlds, where they could express their fears and concerns by sharing artwork with friends outside the adult gaze.

personbilde_Espen_HelgesenEspen Helgesen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, currently finishing his thesis on technology-mediated sociality and self-formation among children of immigrants in Norway.

 

Communicating Migration Seminar Series IMER Bergen spring and autumn 2014

The IMER seminar series for 2014 will cover how migration and ethnic relations are communicated in every-day encounters, in mass and social media, in politics and in 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 fit in with other topics and theories in the social sciences, and how do results from migration research inform public debate and policy development? Communicating migration will be discussed from various angles in our seminar series on international migration and ethnic relations during spring and autumn 2014. We welcome papers that touch upon this broad theme from different angles.  Historical analyses of change over time in regard to politics and public debate, research foci and disciplinary concerns are specifically welcomed.  The seminar series will end with a two-day conference in October/November 2014.

Jun
22
Sun
Bergen research summer school @ University of Bergen
Jun 22 – Jul 4 all-day

BSRS 2014 Governance to meet Global Development Challenges

Welcome to BSRS2014!

The theme for BSRS2014 is Governance to meet Global Development Challenges. The event will take place from June 23rd to July 4th  2014 at the University of Bergen. Please find information about the courses, application form and other activities at the menu to your right side.

One of the courses is and IMER/SKOK PhD course.

Read more at:

http://www.uib.no/rs/bsrs/programme/bsrs-2014-governance-to-meet-global-development-challenges

Aug
20
Wed
SKOK seminar/PhD course: Race, Migration and kinship 20.-22. August 2014 @ Ida Bloms hus
Aug 20 – Aug 22 all-day

2713780-561172-human-tracks-return-journey_3How might we think about race as a paradoxically fungible yet persistent feature of human history? This mini seminar examines race as a global phenomenon with long and diverse histories. In its migrations, conceptions of race have repeatedly been marshaled, decried, dismissed, and repurposed, reformulating conceptions of kinship and social organization along the way. From ancient empires, medieval religious conflicts, and early modern accounts of “barbarians” and “strangers” to the longue durée of colonial settlement and slavery, and from the revolutions and uprisings of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries to more recent accounts of physiognomy, eugenics, and DNA, the phenomenon of race has interacted dynamically across time and space with conceptions of caste, color, class, language, identity, law, region, and religion. Our class will begin with a conventional genealogy of race as arising from the age of Atlantic Revolutions, the slave trade, and scientific thinking in Europe and the United States before complicating our understandings of the phenomenon as one shaped over centuries of contact and interchange. Our second session will examine a longer history of race and caste in relation to Iberian colonization of the East and West Indies and our third session will investigate race and the littoral in Indian Ocean studies. Registration deadline is August 8th, 2014.

More info:

http://www.uib.no/skok/77000/phd-kurs-rase-migrasjon-og-slektskap

http://www.uib.no/en/skok/77008/graduate-course-race-migration-and-kinship

Sep
16
Tue
IMER Seminar: Elaine Chase and Jenny Allsopp: The ‘tactics’ of time and status: Young people subject to immigration control making the transition to ‘adulthood’ in the UK
Sep 16 @ 2:15 pm – 4:00 pm

IMER Seminar:

Elaine Chase and Jenny Allsopp: The ‘tactics’ of time and status: Young people subject to immigration control making the transition to ‘adulthood’ in the UK

Young people who arrive in the UK from outside Europe without a parent or legal guardian are institutionally categorised according to a range of possible legal statuses and usually afforded time-limited Leave to Remain in the UK. These categorisations are associated with specific welfare entitlements which tend to diminish over time and become particularly uncertain as young people transition into ‘adulthood’.  Situated within a broader research programme examining the link between migration, ‘wellbeing’ and ‘futures’, this paper examines the multiple transitions imposed on young people subject to immigration control as they approach the age of 18 and beyond, (from child to ‘adult’, from being accorded a temporary residence permit to more permanent leave to remain or from legality to ‘illegality’) and the implications for their access to various dimensions of welfare provision. The paper shows how different components of the ‘state’ have time limitations at their disposal to control access to welfare and state support according to chronological age.  From young people’s perspectives, such ‘tactics’ fundamentally control their trajectories and future prospects unless they can formulate strategies of their own to counter such tactics.

Read more about Elaine Chase here

Read more about Jenny Allsopp here