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.
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.
Christhard 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.
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.
Espen 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.
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
How 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
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
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.