Peo Hansen

This communication project will produce exhibitions and arrange lectures and conversations in the exhibition space to
communicate research and knowledge about the refugee situation in Europe and Sweden today. A particular focus is on the
problems and possibilities of municipal refugee reception. The project is thus not only about knowledge dissemination, but
also dialogue and communication between professional groups, the general public and researchers.
The overall aim of the project is to combat xenophobia by increasing knowledge and to contribute to a pro active
discussion about a sustainable refugee reception system which corresponds to the humans rights we as citizens and as a
political community have committed to.

Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences

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.

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.

The study focus on the role of the civil servants in the implementation process of social policies. The projects purpose is to study Swedish integration and labour market policies. Issues of how race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class are done in the meeting between civil servants and their clients are often absent in research on public administration. The study focuses on, from a race/ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality perspective, how labour market establishment of newly arrived Swedes are made.

Empirically, the material will be gathered at institutions that are responsible for the integration of newly arrived immigrants, i.e. employment offices.

The project has an intersectional approach and is theoretically framed within gender studies and ethnicity studies. The study also takes it theoretical point of departure in welfare state research and public administration studies. The methods used are participant observation, in-depth interviews and discourse analysis.

The main result of the project is a PhD dissertation on Ethnic and Migration Studies.

This project investigates the relation of European integration to colonialism by retrieving a once influential notion: Eurafrica. Through sources mainly in the EU's historical archives, it demonstrates that the incorporation into the EEC of the member states' colonial possessions was a necessary condition for the agreement on the Rome Treaty in 1957 and hence for the founding of today's EU. This by now forgotten fact is clarified by a historical investigation of how, from the 1920s until the late 1950s, practically all of the movements and institutions working towards European integration placed Africa's geopolitical and economic incorporation into the European enterprise as a key objective.

European societies have recently turned toward more austere political regimes. Evidence of this can be seen in budget cuts, management of the labor market and restrictions of welfare systems, as well as in new regimes of migration and citizenship. Against the backdrop of such processes, this project investigates how a current politics of austerity affects our cultural memory. This project seeks to extract the correlation between how minorities, migrants and their descendants are treated by present policies and how memories and experiences of migrants, minorities and colonized peoples are treated in historiography and historical pedagogy. The project is unique in the sense that it brings together social scientists analyzing ethnic relations and migration in contemporary Europe and historians studying Europe?s history and cultural memory. It is also potentially path breaking as it crosses borders between languages and academic traditions and initiates a truly inter-European academic discussion on scholarly and intellectual concerns that are deeply shared by most national communities of Europe but usually studied only in the contexts of the various nation states.

The project's purpose is to study the relation between colonialism/decolonization and European integration. EU research has yet to investigate how concerns about colonial dominance influenced the positions of the six states that signed the Rome Treaty in 1957, four of which were colonial powers at the time. To varying degrees, they emphasized integration either as an instrument for maintaining colonial control or as a compensation for their demise as colonial powers. Our project will analyze how the colonial system and the process of decolonization influenced this early phase of EU integration.To put our analysis of the relation of European integration and colonialism in its proper historical context, we will also discuss the various ideas on European integration and colonial expansion which emerged already in the interwar period and which acquired renewed interest in the 1940s and 1950s. To this historical approach we add a contemporary perspective, in which we explore how this influence is perceived in the current historiography of the EU.

Empirically, the material being investigated draws from academic accounts, media reporting and from accounts provided by the EU itself, including archival materials. The project thus rests on two research methodologies, the first one dealing with secondary sources in the scholarly and popular context, the second with EU documents and other primary sources in the political context.

The project is of a pioneering character: the first account to date that maps the neglected historical relationship between the EU and colonialism/decolonization. Conversely, it will also be the first account to inquire into how this nexus continues to impact on the EU of today, especially in its efforts to foster a European identity by disseminating a particular history of EU integration.

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.

Over the past decades, the literature on regionalism and regionalisation has grown considerably, and so has the literature on citizenship. But although globalisation, international migration, and processes of state rescaling, regionalism and regionalisation have vast implications for the formation of political, economic and social citizenship at regional levels, few explicit attempts have been made to bridge the literature on regionalism and regionalisation, with the literature on citizenship. Accordingly, the main aim of this project is to - empirically and theoretically elaborate on the concept of regional citizenship.