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IMER SEMINAR: Katrine Mellingen Bjerke: Elderly migrants in Norway

October 14th 2014, 2:15 – 4:00 pm UNI Rokkan centre, Nygårdsgaten 5, Bergen (6. etg.)
KatrineAging of the population raises a series of different challenges for the Norwegian elderly care system. One of the challenges is related to user differentiation, that is, the understanding that services should be adapted to each user’s individual needs. Related to this emphasis on user differentiation is an increasing cultural diversity amongst the elderly population as cohorts of labour migrants and refugees that came in the 1960s and 1970s are facing old age. This necessitates more knowledge about how these elderly migrants perceive of old age, and particularly how they experience and perceive Norwegian care services. This paper addresses how elderly immigrants with a Pakistani and Polish background perceive of aging in Norway, and how they experience and relate to the Norwegian welfare and care regime. What are their expectations? How do they go about covering their assistance needs, both formally (within the public welfare system) and informally (within their family and/or the community).

Katrine Mellingen Bjerke is a PhD candidate at the Department of Sociology, at the University of Bergen. She is also associated with IMER Bergen. Her PhD project explores how elderly migrants perceive of the public elderly care services in Norway.

IMER SEMINAR: Rolf Halse: Muslim characters in the television serial 24

Rolf Halse: Muslim characters in the television serial 24

Sept 30th 2014, 2:15 – 4:00 pm Rokkan centre, Nygårdsgate 5, Bergen (6 etg)

The presentRolf_Halseation will centre on my PhD thesis – a thesis that I according to plans will defend 7 November this year at the University of Bergen. The thesis presents an examination of the US television serial 24’s representation of Muslim characters, and it explores to what extent the perception of these characters can be determined by the cultural and ethnic belonging of the audience. The main reason for choosing to study 24 exclusively is that after 9/11 the serial played a central role in the public debate about whether Muslims are being stereotyped in US Continue reading

Call for papers “Exceptional welfare: Dilemmas in/of irregular migration” – Deadline Extended

The deadline for submitting abstracts has been extended to 1st of June 2014.

Provision of Welfare to Irregular Migrants (PROVIR) will be organizing its closing conference “Exceptional welfare: Dilemmas in/of irregular migration” at the University of Bergen, 19th – 21th of November 2014. The conference will bring together researchers from various disciplines and geographic regions who are interested in the interplay between migration control and welfare policy.

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COMMUNICATING MIGRATION SEMINAR SERIES: Hans Lucht – The station hustle

Based on ethnogrprt_www40aphic fieldwork in Niger, this 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. Continue reading

New IMER seminar in the making: Communicating migration

Would you like to contribute to IMER Spring Program, present your ideas, receive professional feedback and discuss with peers! For 2014, we are planning a seminar series called
Communicating Migration. This will be the topic for the seminar series at IMER Bergen spring and autumn 2014. The seminar series will end with a two-day conference in October/November 2014.

Skjermbilde 2013-12-14 kl. 01.13.06The seminar series 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 what ways has it changed? How does migration theory and research fit in within other topics and theories in the social sciences, and how do results from migration research inform public debate and policy development? Continue reading

IMER NEWSLETTER NR.9/2005

MER NEWSLETTER