Projects with keyword: Migration

The project traces the politics of European citizenship as it has unfolded since the beginning of the European integration project in the 1950s to the present day. The main focus, though, lies with the more contemporary developments, stretching from the mid-1980s, or the commencement of the EU's Single Market project, until the present. The overall purpose is to critically conceptualize and empirically analyze the historical development of EU citizenship as it has developed alongside the deepening cleavage between the power of EU institutions on the one hand and popular legitimacy among its citizenry on the other; charting its long-range movements vis-à-vis the broader transformations of the EU integration project. This results in an integrated analysis of EU citizenship, one that carefully scrutinizes the deeply interrelated processes of migration, socio-economic transformation and resurgence of ethno-nationalist sentiments at all levels of the EU polity.

This dissertation is an ethnographic interview study analyzing narratives of queer partner migration, i.e., a family-tie migration in which one partner of a relationship has migrated in order for the partners to be together, and where the partners queer the migration in the sense that they have a non-normative sexuality and/or gender identity. The purpose is to examine how queer partner migrants and their non-migrating Swedish partners experience the migration process by analyzing what emotions and feelings ‘do’ to the relationship and how emotions and feelings structure the migration process. The study analyzes the work three different emotions – love, loss, and belonging – carry out in these migration processes, and how this work is described in participant narratives. Migrant participants have migrated from different parts of the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America), making it possible to analyze what emotions and feelings do in this particular migration process from the point of view of nationality and, in particular, proximity to ‘Western-ness,’ race, and language as well as how privileges connected to these positions come to matter in the process.

This project aims at investigating shifting migration regimes and how employment and labor differentiates categories of migrants in Sweden. Relations between employers and migrants become increasingly crucial for opportunities and restraints in migrant life situations in systems of managed migration. Employers also become engaged in global economic relations and at the same time negotiate the relations between the nation and the migrant workers.

Previous research has demonstrated differences in health between immigrants and natives in Sweden along several dimensions, e.g. regarding self-reported health, hospitalisation rates, as well as mortality rates. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of early life conditions in the country of birth and current socioeconomic conditions in adult life in Sweden on severe morbidity (leading to hospitalisation) and on mortality from cardiovascular disease, cancers, and other causes, among immigrants and natives in Sweden.
The study uses two large-scale databases; SMD (Social Medicine Data Base) and SLI (Swedish Longitudinal Immigrant Database) Results show that when controlling for demographic characteristics only, most immigrant groups display higher rates of hospitalisation and higher all-cause mortality than native Swedes, but when socio-economic factors are introduced, only Nordic immigrants display rates that are significantly higher than for Swedish born.
The effects of current adult life socioeconomic conditions in Sweden on mortality are both stronger and more straightforward than the effects of early life conditions.

This thesis seeks to make both theoretical and empirical contributions to the understanding of intra-EU mobility, with a focus on labour migration from Lithuania to Sweden. The thesis aims to help to explain the dynamics and individual decision-making behind mass labour emigration from the Baltic states, its socioeconomic consequences and policy responses.
The dissertation shows that the consequences of the neoliberal policies of the post-communist and post-crisis transformations, together with the construction of formal migration channels after EU accession, constitute various migrant categories. Individual strategies of actively looking for channels to exit and enter, combining them in different ways at various points of the migratory process and establishing informal social networks are re-constituting who can be and who is a migrant. Furthermore, following the economic crisis and austerity measures, the decision to emigrate extends beyond individual survival strategies, instead becoming bound to an individual’s perception of the (ine)quality of life and pursuit of a better quality of life for oneself and one’s family across time and in different places.

In Swedish public discourse, retirees born in the 1940s are considered a growing cohort of relatively wealthy consumers, with more cosmopolitan preferences and habits, and different demands compared to previous generations. Swedish retirees are part of a growing stream of Northern Europeans who migrate to Southern Europe to retire in the sun.
Exploring the relations between streams of migrants who meet in Spain, and their intermediaries, this project explores issues of mobility and the globalization of care/service, of crucial importance to welfare states and the future of work, elderly care and retirement conditions in Ageing Europe.

This project examines circular movement in Southern Africa in the context of entrepreneurship, multiple logics of legitimacy, and everyday interaction between travelers and state functionaries. The project builds on the ideas of the human economy and embodiment as a way to investigate how movement can be understood by those that are involved in its everyday practice. The projects specifically focuses on the practice of private transporting of goods, people and ideas between South-Western Zimbabwe and South Africa. A focus on practices of movement has some implications for the understanding of migration in Southern Africa, of economic livelihoods and of the continued development of the African state in general.

Efforts to include refugees in Swedish society have changed since the Establishment reform was introduced in 2010. In this project, the implementation of the reform has been studied in the municipalities of Eskilstuna and Nyköping. The study shows that refugees have difficulties to decode the reception programs, due to the complexity of the reception system, composed of a mixture of different forms of governance: hierarchical governance, horizontal collaboration and market-based control. The centrally organized Employment service leaves relatively limited space for action at the local level. One of the conclusions is that the Establishment reform so far has not led to any development efforts for inclusion of refugees as the authorities have put the most efforts on solving administrative issues and build routines rather than to actively promote the inclusion of refugees.

Swedish retirees are part of a growing stream of Northern Europeans who migrate to Southern Europe to retire in the sun.
Exploring the relations between streams of migrants who meet in Spain, and their intermediaries, this project explores issues of mobility and the globalization of care/service, of crucial importance to welfare states and the future of work, elderly care and retirement conditions in Ageing Europe

How do Swedish migrants re-negotiate national identity upon returning to their home country? This project investigates re-constructions of national identity and processes of re-integration among Swedish migrant women after returning to Sweden. Statistics show that most Swedes living abroad choose to return to Sweden, a fact that makes them the single largest immigrant group to Sweden. Among Swedes who emigrate to Asia, the absolute majority returns within a couple of years, but fewer do so from the UK and the US. What are the gendered implications of Swedish return migration? In what ways has migration impacted on the womens working lives and family relations? What are the theoretical implications of Swedish return migration in understanding concepts of home, belonging and national identity? Special attention is directed at the women?s views on gender equality. Have their views on Sweden?s cultural and political projects on gender equality and social egalitarianism changed? From their perspectives, how has the Swedish society changed during their time abroad?

The migrant is often thought of as a non-westerner in search for a better future in Europe or the United States. From a multi-sited ethnography with Swedish migrant women in the US, Singapore and Spain, this project explores the intersections of racial and class privilege and gender vulnerabilities in contemporary feminized migration from or within the West. Through an analysis of white migration, I develop theoretical tools to understand the dynamics that shape the women?s lives as wealthy housewives, expatriate wives and lifestyle migrants. Using the concept of white capital, I approach whiteness as an embodied form of cultural capital that is interlinked with and upheld by (transnational) institutions, citizenships, a white (Western) habitus and other resources that are transferrable (but mediated differently) cross-nationally, yet complicated by gendered and heterosexual norms, and its dependencies and regulations. By shifting the gaze towards privileged migrants, I illustrate how race and whiteness shape contemporary transnational migration and how white privilege is reproduced globally.

The project explores the fundamental question of who is, and who is not, considered deserving of welfare services, how deservingness is negotiated and with what implications, in a context of increasing diversity driven by migration, welfare restructuring, and austerity. Such negotiations serve to draw boundaries between those migrants who have access to the support and services of the welfare state, or are believed to have access, and those who are excluded, e.g. because they are deemed as not belonging or are seen as responsible for their own neediness. Variation will be made visible and comparable by exploring how solidarities are informed by different constellations of welfare and migration regimes, in both urban areas and rural / small towns with varying degrees of diversity and migrant settlement. Our multi-sited ethnography in Denmark, Sweden, and the UK will focus on six welfare micropublics, local spaces where entitlements to support and services are negotiated. We focus on how deservingness is constituted according to migrants' generational status and according to spatial dimensions of the neighbourhood where migrants settle.

This project examines the utilization of biometrics and EU information technology systems in migration management, in the areas of asylum (EURODAC); borders (SIS II) and visas (VIS). The project builds on field research that revealed that authorities place great trust in biometric data, yet paradoxically, it also showed that the systems suffers from numerous insecurities and a lack of transparency.
The proposed project extend this earlier research by further probing its biopolitical implications posing three key research questions: (1) How do biometric technologies and the concerned EU IT systems enact identities along the lines of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age and ability?; (2) What patterns emerge around how Swedish migration and police authorities meet insecurities?; (3) How do the systems affect the everyday life of migrants living in Sweden and their travels to and across Europe?
Qualitative observations and interviews are employed to examine how migration and police authorities use and interpret the technologies; and interviews with migrants aim to grasp how the technologies impact on their lives.

This project examines the transition from statelessness to naturalization and citizenship in the case of Syrian Kurds who have historically been denied their identity. The project explores the extent to which the statelessness of Syrian Kurds triggered their migration and how it affected their legal status, resettlement and integration in their countries of asylum, mainly Sweden and Germany. The aim is to understand how identity is perceived, negotiated and expressed during the transition from stateless to national or citizen alongside experiences of migration and exile. The purpose of this study is not only to clarify the complex relationship between statelessness, migration and identity of Syrian Kurds, but also to shed light on this relationship in a broader historical, political and social context.

In Germany and Sweden, portrayed as symbols of hospitality in 2015, politicians and policymakers have since then advocated efficiency and order in refugee reception. New infrastructures and spatial strategies are designed in order to better manage the mobility of newly arrived refugees, for instance through the implementation of arrival centres, refined screenings and mobility predictions in Germany, which is mirrored in recent policy suggestions for Sweden. This project asks whether this development can be understood as a logistification of migration: making the mobility of refugees compliant to needs and resources of national and local communities and labour markets through the art and science of logistics. Through interviews with German experts, policymakers and stakeholders, and ethnographic attention to everyday practices of policy design and coordination, I examine how arrival centres have been implemented as logistical hubs. Inspired by emerging literature on critical logistics the project will contribute with important perspectives on inconsistencies, vulnerabilities and unintended consequences of the logistic imagination of circulation and mobility as governable. Research

Housing plays a central role in the process of integrating refugees. A home offers stability, a place of resources in the city, which may serve as a platform for participating in society. Although the provision of adequate housing is vital for a transformation into sustainable and resilient communities in cities characterised by hope, such housing conditions have become less accessible in Sweden.

Refugees face a particularly difficult situation concerning housing as they are housed in less attractive residential areas, often in overcrowded and poorly maintained apartments. This situation has been further complicated by the restrictive turn in Swedish migration policy from 2016 and onwards. In sum, this policy turn consists of the introduction of temporary residence status, restrictions in family reunification, a refugee dispersal policy, and limitations in terms of choosing in which neighbourhood to reside.

Our interdisciplinary project aims to understand the impact of the restrictive policy turn on the contemporary housing situation for refugees. We do so by focusing on how the policy change influences actors that use, plan, develop, and organise housing for refugees.

As a consequence of the increasing instability and uncertainty around migrationpatterns, and sometimes populist fears about border control in Europe, governments increasingly turn to new information infrastructures, sources of digital data and forms of analysis like predictive algorithms.We ask: what are the implications of us in algorithms as redistribution keys for migrants? Drawing on the interdisciplinary convergences between Migration Studies and Science and Technology Studies, the aim of this project is to follow the implementation of one particular algorithm, developed as a pilot project by the Migration Agency in order to increase statistical precision of predicting migration to Sweden. Using a multisited ethnography, we also trace its connections with databases available in institutions across Germany to understand how algorithms are produced, implemented and received by different national and transnational institutions and actors(developers, case-managers, migrants, policymakers).This proposal seeks to reveal coordinations mediated by algorithms indifferent locations to understand how integration policies depend on information infrastructures and institutional processes.

The aim of the project (MI-GLOBE) is to investigate the development of an emerging global governance of migration (GGM) and the space, role, strategies, alliance making, and impact of a composite transnational civil society organisation (TCSOs) in pushing for an accountable rights-based approach to migration. In 2006 UN initiated a High Level Dialogue (UN-HLD) on International Migration and Development, and in 2007 the Global Forum on migration and development (GFMD).
Against the background of a critical review of the UN-HLD, GFMD meetings (2007- 2021), the factoring of migration into 2030 UN Development Agenda and the adoption of the UN Global Compacts for Migration (GCM), the research team will follow and analyse:
a) Global governance policy framing, focusing, on principal positions on and conflicts between with business-friendly migration management approach and the rights-based GGM;
b) Processes of deliberation, conflict mitigation and consensus making between governments, multilateral organisations and TCSOs, business actors within global and regional settings;
c) TCOs mobilisation, internal negotiations, strategies to challenge the marginalization of a rights-based GGM.