Karin Krifors

In the context of an expansion of digital infrastructures driven by the impact and recovery of the pandemic, we bring together perspectives from queer feminist technoscience, migration and cultural studies, social and political theory, from the EU and the UK, in order to investigate how infrastructural imaginaries (re)configure democratic sovereignty, imagined communities, and practices of bordering of the European Union. We propose to think and investigate sovereignty through (a) infrastructural and entrepreneurial ways of constituting and imagining e?thnos and demos through technological innovations, and (b) conflicts that emerge where efforts to create new infrastructures meet existing ones. Is it possible, we ask, that new constitutionalities are being imagined, practiced, and produced here?

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.

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 is to explore antiracist ideas, practices and strategies, focusing on women and migrants doing antiracism and everyday practices of conviviality. Methodologically the project is inspired by institutional ethnography, extended case method and ?What?s the problem represented to be? (WPR). Indepth, focus group interviews and participant observation will be carried in two major and two rural municipalities, where 5 different organizations/networks will be studied (human rights, migrant; antiracist, feminists and religious).

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

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.

The project surveys, in international comparative perspective, changing welfare states and the transformation of their multiethnic societies through two complementary analytical lenses: on the one hand, the welfare state's capacity for accommodating migration and ethnic diversity through policies of border control and the allocation of rights of citizenship and, on the other hand, migration and ethnic diversity as a dynamic factor for change in the economic, political and cultural foundations of welfare states. It focuses on changing ethnic divisions of labour related to processes of social inclusion/exclusion and politics of European integration.

Rationale
The overall purpose of thi conference wasto reflect on knowledge and promote social dialogue on the role of labour unions and other organisations of civil society in the global governance of migration. These issues were discussed against the background of labour market restructuring and emerging international norms pertaining to labour rights as human rights. The conference was organised so as to systematipromote exchange of perspectives between leading scholars and representatives of international organisations, labour unions and activists in other civil society organisations on questions of migration, 'decent work' and global governance. Conference participants investigated jointly and elaborated on policy alternatives for promoting migrants', citizens', and labour rights, as well as conditions for equitable international coordination and a more inclusive role for civil society.
The conference was organised by the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University and the International Network for Migration and Development (INMD) in collaboration with the Swedish UNESCO-MOST Committee, Norrköping May 30-June 1st, 2012