Category Archives: Sociology

IMER Webinar 29.05: The Promise of Babette’s Feast: Facilitated Encounters between Locals and Refugees in Norway

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 Geography. 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.

 

 

 

Time: Friday 29th of May 2020, 11.00 – 12.00

Join us on Zoom

IMER Lunch Seminar 25.02: Aspirations among Women seeking Asylum in Norway: A Longitudinal Perspective from the Asylum Centre and Onwards

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.

Time: Tuesday 25th of February 2020, 12.30 – 13.30

Place: Rosenbergsgaten 39, Seminar room 112, first floor 

IMER Lunch Seminar 15.01: Crimmigration: Criminal Justice and Border Control

‘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.

Lunch seminar 14.02: Transmission of values between generations

Are values transmitted from one generation to the other, or do they change? Are there differences between groups in how values are transmitted between generations? For this lunch seminar, Rebecca Dyer Ånensen will present findings from her PhD-project, which is part of a larger study on the transition to adulthood in Norway and the UK. The broader study looks at three-generation families, and investigates the transmission of values between these generations. Ånensen’s project adds an immigrant perspective, by investigating inter-generational value transmission in families of immigrant origin (from Pakistan and Vietnam). How does the transmission of values look in these families, and how does it compare with the transmission of values in families from majority population?

The seminar takes place at the seminar room at Sosiologisk institutt, Rosenberggata 39, from 12.30 to 14.00. A lunch will be served.

picture-20739-1432818668Rebecca Dyer Ånensen is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, UiB.

Communicating migration seminar: Caroline Knowles – The Children of the Revolution: Reflections on Chinese London and how to Theorise these New Forms of Migration

The Children of the Revolution: Reflections on Chinese London and how to Theorise these New Forms of Migration

IMG_0305This paper explores some of the London data from a three-city investigation of migration. The other two cities are Beijing and Hong Kong, and in each city we are exploring young (23-39) graduate migrants from the other two cities in order to understand how global mobility features in young professionals’ life and career planning. Little has been written about UK migrants in Hong Kong and Beijing, and the existing literature on Chinese migrants in London is centred on long-term (often depicted as poor and illegal) migrants from Hong Kong. Such studies do not Continue reading

Communicating Migration Seminar: Lise W. Isaksen -Mobility, moral and migration: “Familism” in Norwegian and Italian Contexts”

«Mobilitet, moral og migrasjon:  familisme – begrepet i norske og italienske kontekster.»

LiseWSeminaret tar for seg hvordan middelhavslandenes familisme – begrep konstrueres og erfares i migrasjons-kontekster blant nordmenn i Italia og italienere i Norge. Dagens familisme utfordres både av «post-moderne” endringer i familie-strukturen, slik som lav fertilitet og stigende skilsmisse-rater, og av finanskrise og migrasjon.I Sør-Europa eksisterer lav fertilitet side om side med tradisjonelle omsorgs-organiseringer og parallelt med kontant-tunge velferdsprogrammer og begrenset produksjon av tjenester for de unge og de eldre. Continue reading