migrants and objects: material practices of being and belonging in transnational social fields

Maja Povrzanović Frykman (Malmö University)

As migrants engage in a number of material practices that have little to do with their ethnicity and national origin, more attention should be devoted to what people actually do in order to maintain vital connections that constitute transnational social fields. These connections are facilitated by objects and engage the traffic of objects that migrants carry, send, receive, use or struggle with. Instead of a primary focus on discourses of identity and belonging, practices and lived experiences involving objects through which migrants accomplish incorporation in different locations can and should motivate research. This paper proposes a shift of focus from material representations of social relations to the very materiality of objects in transnational contexts of migration. It presents the vantage points of a project financed by The Swedish Research Council in 2011-13.

Maja Povrzanović Frykman is Associate Professor at the Malmö University. She holds a PhD in Enthnology from the University of Zagreb, and currently lectures at the Peace and Conflict Studies Programme at the Department of Global Political Studies in Malmö. Her reasearch interests include the semantics of diaspora and transnationalism, labour- and refugee-migration from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, exile narratives, and war-related identification processes.

Time: 23 September, 13.15-15.00
Venue: Uni Rokkansenteret, Nygårdsgaten 5, 6. etg (5th Floor)