Preliminary list of conference panels

Please note that some panels listed here are closed, meaning that they already have papers associated with them. These have 5-6 paper abstracts listed. If you wish to try to join these panels, please write to us beforehand at NMR2022@hum.ku.dk.  

1. Access at stake. Exploring gatekeeping and its practices across migration and border studies
2. Becoming a “good citizen”? Civic education policies and practices for newly arrived migrants in the Nordic Countries
3. Camps as Carceral Junctions
4. EVICTABILITY: Understanding the nexus of migration and urban displacements
5. Histories of Refugeedom in the Nordic Countries
6. Interactive Roundtable: Exploring researcher positionalities in fieldwork: mobility and intersectionality
7. Migration Policies and Governance in Crisis Situations
8. Migration RE:PRESENTED 
9. Mobile and Migrant childhoods
10. Postmigration – a new perspective to re:frame migration studies?
11. Rebuilding futures: migrant mobilities, urban rescaling and urban identities
12. Re:Conceptualization: Migration, diversity-another gaze, the third space
13. Re:constructing diasporic communities Theme: RE:BUILD. Infrastructures and materiality 
14. RE:LATE. Families, intimacies, relationships "Emotions and affect in deportation: The transformative power of social relationships"
15. RE:LATE. Families, intimacies, relationships: Understanding family violence in the context of migration and settlement
16. Re-location and/or transit: Migrant workers on the threshold of the Danish labor market
17. RE:Localise labour market inclusion
18. RE:MOTE – On migration and remoteness
19. RE:PAIR Looking at health care among migrants in a Norwegian context”
20. RE:SEARCH & RE:POSITION Avoiding falling down the rabbit hole of ethnicity: de-migranticization, the post-migrant condition and what else?
21. RE:SEARCH & RE:STRICT Migration Research and The Politics of Deterrence 
22. Re-thinking Temporary Protection in the Context of the Return Turn in Asylum in Europe: ‘Concept, practice, principle’
23. RE:VIVE. Religion and spirituality
24. RE:WORK – Labour and economy The Nexus of Transnational Labour Migration and Digital Platforms 
25. Teaching migration studies (in highly politicized environments)
26. Urban encounters with difference

1. Access at stake. Exploring gatekeeping and its practices across migration and border studies

Gatekeeping appears as a dynamic and ubiquitous metaphor and concept across disciplines and fields. Starting its trajectory in psychology (Lewin1943), gatekeeping has travelled across a great variety of disciplines (media studies, interactional sociolinguistics, history, political science, etc.) before reaching migration and border studies in the 2000s. The concept conveys an idea of control operated at an intersection, whether related to filtering of information or state control of the circulation of citizens, funds, and resources across national borders. Border studies scholars deployed the concept of “gatekeeper states” to examine the role of various small states and islands as gatekeepers of EU borders (Hills2004; Kim2018, Mainwaring2019; Luša2021). Triandafylliodou (2014) defines gate-keeping as specific strategies and policies that aim at restricting practical legal access to a nation and its institutions. Thus, gatekeeping has been analyzed as activities performed by political parties, policy-makers (Breunig & Luedtke2008) as well as social workers and municipal authorities (Tervonen & Enache2017). Adopting the micro level and actor-oriented perspective, migration scholars have analyzed various ‘street-level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky1969) as gate-keepers, including border bureaucrats, and immigration and visa officers (Wong2017; Iacovetta2006; Pellander2015). This focus is important as those actors have the duty and discretionary power to monitor, select, and grant access to territory, visa, national citizenship, rights, social services or legal status (Satzewich2014).

This panel looks at gatekeepers in charge of migration and integration policy implementation whose everyday practices have a significant impact for both individual migrants and host communities. It brings together original contributions based on field studies bringing to light what gatekeeping may help us to understand from different social and political practices and settings. We are interested in papers that focus especially on everyday ‘gatekeeping practices’ (Hönke2018) performed by (state and non-state) actors engaged in policy implementation or public service provision.

Panel conveners

Eric Komlavi Hahonou komlavi@ruc.dk, Dr. Tatiana Fogelman fogelman@ruc.dk

2. Becoming a “good citizen”? Civic education policies and practices for newly arrived migrants in the Nordic Countries

Civic integration of migrants has become a key policy objective giving rise to significant public discussion across Europe. This integration policy trend has come to be described as a ‘civic turn’ in the literature. Across different countries, migrants are obliged to attend an integration programme consisting of a language course and a course in societal knowledge in order to learn about the norms and values of the host societies. At its heart, civic education is designed to produce “good citizens”. The Nordic countries are no exception and civic orientation educational programmes have been established with a view to ensuring that newly adult arrived migrants experience a fast transition to education, work and integration into society.

In this panel, we are interested in exploring the occurrence, establishment, content and implementation of different kinds of civic orientation educational programmes for adult migrants. Thus, we encourage the submission of papers looking into the broad spectrum of social integration and education policies and programmes in order to deepen and nuance the debate on the “civic turn” and its meaning in the Nordic countries.

Within the general theme of the conference on Re: Migration, the panel welcomes empirical as well as theoretical and methodological contributions in relation to the “civic turn”. These could include.

• Empirical studies on civic orientation programmes/courses for adult migrants
• Theoretical reflections on civic integration policies and requirements
• Methodological reflections on research in the field of the “civic turn” 

Panel conveners

Kerstin Von Brömssen (HV) kerstin.von-bromssen@hv.se, Tommaso Milani Andrea tommaso.milani@svenska.gu.se, Andrea Spehar Speharandrea.spehar@pol.gu.se

3. Camps as Carceral Junctions

The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has demonstrated the widespread use of encampments as a response to migration. It also demonstrated the ways in which individuals navigate this terrain of the encampment. These holding sites, temporary shelters, registration, accommodation and deportation centres are isolated and isolating spaces, distinct and disconnected from ordinary spaces. Simultaneously though camps are also connected to spaces beyond them through flows of bodies, through social media and through the knowledge and practices of those who create and manage them. The key point is that camps are at once sites of confinement and of junctions that connect and enable mobility.

In order to understand this paradox of connectedness and incarceration, we have put forward the concept of carceral junctions (Whyte & Turner, forthcoming). Conceptualizing camps as carceral junctions means examining the double sense of “moving camps”: On the one hand, camps shape, detain, and enable specific forms of movement for migrants, as they move between camps and cultivate networks in hopes of viable futures. On the other hand, camps themselves are also mobile in the sense that models of encampment travel and shift within and between states. By proposing the concept of carceral junctions we intend to draw on but also critique conceptualizations and theories that either reify the confining nature of camps as places of exception or overly celebrate the agency of migrant mobility. The term is coined to grasp the mobilities of knowledge, power and bodies that characterize camps, as well as their interfaces and connectedness in a context where states adopt increasingly restrictive refugee policies.

In this panel, we invite contributions to further reflect on this comprehensive nature of camps and challenge common sense dichotomies of confinement/freedom, mobility/immobility and structure/agency in a bid to understand the policies of the encampment and refugee mobility as more than opposing processes.

Panel conveners

Simon Turner s.turner@hum.ku.dk, Cecilie Odgaard Jakobsen coj@hum.ku.dk   

4. EVICTABILITY: Understanding the nexus of migration and urban displacements

Recently, scholars have brought attention to urban forms of displacement that affect differently politicized subjects beyond the general division of “migrants” and “citizens” (Darling, 2016; De Genova et al., 2021). Migrants, and some who are formally citizens, are increasingly affected by various forms of internal and urban displacements, such as evictions and homelessness (cf. Soederberg, 2018). This panel addresses practices of displacement at different scales, interpreted through the concept of “evictability” (van Baar, 2016). While eviction refers to the organised removal of people through forfeiture, confiscation or destruction of property, “evictability” (analogous to “deportability”) refers to the state of constantly being threatened by such practices. Defined as “the possibility of being removed from a sheltering space” (van Baar, 2016, 214), “evictability” has been introduced to highlight the role of urban displacements in the governance of “unwanted” migrants and citizens alike - and in an effort to de-nationalise the concepts and methods of migration and border studies. Here, we want to elaborate on the concept of evictability by testing it empirically at the urban scale while also considering multifarious experiences in different geographical contexts. We welcome contributions on the following topics and beyond:

• The interplay between migration policies and housing policies in cities, including migrant reception and accommodation policy, and the role of evictions and housing insecurity in this context.
• Evictions of makeshift migrant camps and seasonal workers' accommodation.
• The role of non-state actors, including both corporate and grassroots actors, in effecting and challenging evictability (e.g. how far-right vigilante groups as well as pro-migrant activists, relate to and act with regard to makeshift shelters and squats).
• Embodied evictabilities - how living under the threat of eviction impacts the everyday lives of people.
• Theoretical and methodological elaboration on evictability and its relation to similar concepts such as expulsion, displacement, and un-homing.

Panel conveners

Maria Persdotter maria.persdotter@liu.se, Mauricio Rogat and Valeria Raimondi, valeria.raimondi@gssi.it, mauricio.rogat@gu.se

5. Histories of Refugeedom in the Nordic Countries

Present-day academic and public discussions on forced migrations have a tendency to overlook the past. Meanwhile, conventional historical narratives of the Nordic societies have near-systematically omitted refugees, deportations, and other forms of forced migration. This open workshop aims to counter these tendencies by examining histories of forced migrations in the Nordic countries, and their effects on the formation and imagining of the Nordic societies from the 19th century to the present. While a majority of population displacements have taken place in the context of war, all Nordic states have also engaged in deportations of ‘undesirable’ individuals and groups. Hence, the workshop focuses not only on wartime forced migrations but also on other, more ‘mundane’ involuntary movements. It explores gaps and silences in histories of forced migration and how memory politics influence what is memorized (or forgotten) over time in regard to these movements. We invite papers examining, in broad terms, the Nordic histories of refugeedom, by which we refer to a matrix of administrative practices, legal norms, social relations and refugees’ experiences. The panel is organized as a part of a NOS-HS-funded Nordic workshop series ‘Histories of Refugeedom in the Nordic Countries’ (2020-2022) that aims to take the first steps towards understanding how histories of forced migrations have shaped the Nordic region.

Panel conveners

Miika Tervonen miika.tervonen@migrationinstitute.fi,  Johanna Leinonen, (johanna.leinonen@oulu.fi  

6. Interactive Roundtable: Exploring researcher positionalities in fieldwork: mobility and intersectionality

Our positionalities as migration researchers matter in fieldwork. For instance, we might have experiences of migration or be part of a “host society” who have never been migrants. These experiences intersect with other markers of difference, enabling or constraining our access to our areas of study and directing our attention to specific questions and perspectives. Consequently, as migration researchers, we are ourselves implicated in the phenomena we are studying and the knowledge we are producing. In this roundtable, we explore how researcher positionalities matter in migration research, especially in the Nordic context, focusing on how (im)mobility experiences intersect with positionalities related to the intersections of class/gender/race/ethnicity/religion/sexuality etc. Format: The first session will introduce the topic and offer initial reflections from the panellists. These will be followed by questions and comments from the audience. In the second session, the roundtable will take on a more interactive form, inviting all the participants to discuss and reflect on their positionalities as researchers in a more intimate exchange-conducive format. Thus continuing the conversation, we will focus on dilemmas and productive tensions tied to researcher positionality, and the potentials and constraints these offer for future research and collaborations.

Questions that we will be exploring will include:

1. How do our own (im)mobility (hi)stories both drive and constrain our research foci? And why and how does it matter, including in relation to other aspects of our positionalities?
2. How do we navigate insider and outsider positions, multiple research contexts and scales, different power dynamics and inequalities?
3. What implications do these reflections have for designing and undertaking future research?

Panel conveners

Dr. Tatiana Fogelman fogelman@ruc.dk, Dr. Linda Lapina llapina@ruc.dk

7. Migration Policies and Governance in Crisis Situations

The panel aims to present the vulnerabilities of migrants in the midst of a disaster or pandemic and the various mechanisms they employed to cope with its impacts.  How do host countries in Asia respond to the crisis and what are the policy implications of this on the integration, migratory status, and access to various types of welfare support by migrants and returnees? Findings from the selected research studies illustrate the various outcomes and challenges for migrants as businesses are shuttered during the crisis and access to basic services and employment remains limited. Current policy frameworks to address crisis situations resulting from a disaster or pandemic are evaluated to identify the extent to which the responses consider the needs and vulnerabilities of migrants.

Abstracts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Panel convener

Mary Rose Sarausad, maryrose.sarausad@gmail.com

8. Migration RE:PRESENTED 

This open panel focuses on questions of representation of, in and from migratory contexts. In various transnational and diasporic groups, the questions of belonging, identity, memory and representations are highly politicized.

To grasp the multiple forms of ‘imagined presence’ (Ellliott/Urry 2010), we have to be aware that there is not a single metanarrative, but a heterogeneous and diverse construct of various pasts.

Herein politics of representation, thus the power and ability to exercise control over images and interpretations will be discussed (Barnard/Spencer 2003). Imaginaries dealing with migration are social imaginaries, embedded in polysemic cultural formations (Adey et al. 2014).

The panel will tackle questions of representations of marginalised groups, the writing of alternative histories and concerns about 'permissions to narrate‘. Representational concerns encompass discussions about the possibility of political participation, as well as shifting identities and allegiances (Boccagni et al. 2016). Of specific concern herein are multidirectional memories and representations, which are connected to multiple temporalities.

This panel focuses specifically on visual forms of representation, whether and how photographs/films/documentaries and artworks are forms of (mediated) transcultural memories (Brunow 2015) and can have a life on their own. Representation of the self in the present and one's near past is closely connected with memory regimes and memory work. Herein images can be sources of friction and discomfort. Visual/ and arts-based representations can enable participatory work, creating spaces for remembrance and possibilities for negotiating belonging and identity.

Panel convener

Dr Maria Six-Hohenbalken, Maria.Six-Hohenbalken@oeaw.ac.at

9. Mobile and Migrant childhoods

Children and young people are one of the most central actors and participants in the mobility and migration flows. Arriving in a new country at a young age is a crucial phase in children’s life course, marked by the complexity of experiences trigged by migration, with a potential to transform children’s lives even when they become adults. The diversity of children’s migration experiences, within different national and international regulations, has increasingly been acknowledged in contemporary academic debates. However, their inner subjectivities and experiences of arriving, settling and (re)constructing their transnational identities and sense of belonging, not the least in these uncertain times influenced by the ongoing pandemic, require constant re:conceptualisations.

Within this panel, we are interested to grasp children´s and youth’s own voices and experiences about being mobile and living in different countries during their childhood and transition to adulthood. We encourage the submission of papers looking into the role of age, gender, class, and legal status in (re)building intergenerational relationships and national identities over time, in acquiring new languages and building relationships and belonging in mobility. Another important topic is how children talk about their everyday lives and their futures in relation to place, education, religion, work, and own family building.

Within the general theme of the conference on Re: Migration, the panel on Mobile and migrant childhoods welcomes empirical studies, theoretical and epistemological reflections and methodological contributions. These could include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Empirical studies on children´s own experiences of mobility make visible that mobility and migration are shaped and conditioned by both inner subjectivities and structural conditions.
• Theoretical and epistemological reflections on children's migration research from different fields of studies
• Creative methodologies in research with migrant children, especially strengthening the life-course perspective and children´s own participation in the research process
• Impact of the pandemic on young people who are migrants

Panel conveners

Charlotte Melander, charlotte.melander@socwork.gu.se, Oksana Shmulyar Gréen, Kerstin von Brömssen, Oksana.shmulyar@socav.gu.se Kerstin.von-bromssen@hv.se 

10. Postmigration – a new perspective to re:frame migration studies?

In recent years, the concept of ‘postmigration’ has begun to gain traction across European academia, often challenging the existing discourse on migration and its consequences. Already in 2013, sociologist and professor in educational studies, Erol Yildiz, defined postmigration as a ‘radical questioning of the conventional view on migration’. The new concept does not, he argues already back then, refer to a state of “afterwards”’ in a temporal sense, it is rather about ‘retelling the history of migration and rethinking the whole field beyond the hegemonic discourse’. In the years to follow, the concept has started to circulate in different academic areas and disciplines, such as cultural studies, ethnology, sociology, educational studies, and refugee studies. Scholars such as Naika Foroutan, Regina Römhild, Riem Spielhaus, Juliane Karakayali and others started to explore the new concept as a means of moving beyond the widespread binary way of thinking about migration and migrants (e.g. juxtaposing us and them, self and other, uprootedness and rootedness, home culture and foreign culture, leaving and arriving etc.). Instead, they focused on the complex, ongoing struggles and processes of negotiation taking place in societies which have been, and still are being, shaped by past and ongoing movements of people. In our panel, we want to discuss the possibilities and restraints of this developing concept as a new approach in critical migration research. Can this particular concept help us to overcome some of the most persistent pitfalls of traditional migration studies, and can the concept help us to build bridges between different academic fields, such as educational studies and cultural studies? Do we need to understand the Nordic countries as ‘postmigrant societies’, and what do we gain by using this specific terminology? Can the concept help us to re:frame migration studies?

Discussant

Moritz Schramm, Institute for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark

Abstracts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Panel conveners

Maja Povrzanović Frykman, GPS & MIM, Malmö University, maja.frykman@mau.se, Moritz Schramm, Institute for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, mosch@sdu.dk

Re:Conceptualization: Migration, diversity-another gaze, the third space

11. Rebuilding futures: migrant mobilities, urban rescaling and urban identities

The concept of moorings is well-established within studies of migration and global mobilities. Moorings can be airports, but they can also be neighbourhoods where migrants settle and live. Moorings are physical, and material (Hannam, Sheller & Urry, 2006). Such materiality is not only a necessity for mobility and the establishment of transnational social fields: It is also an aspect that city administrators are aware of in attempts to restructure and rescale cities (e.g. Schiller & Caglar 2009). The central question that we seek to address in this workshop is how materiality, not least in the shape of urban neighbourhoods and social housing areas, has become a keystone in both municipal and national integration policies. Integration may include a direct reconfiguration of large urban areas (tearing down building blocks, redesigning physical space), legally narrowing down who has the right to live in the area and labelling some areas as ghettos or parallel societies. Thus, our workshop will also delve into questions of (urban) identities and identifications. What are, for example, the implications of being identified as someone living in a ghetto? In this workshop, we want to discuss the implications of these spatial reconfigurations and legislation. One argument frequently applied is that these types of actions will further the social integration of immigrants and secure social cohesion. Is that the case?

Garbi Schmidt, Professor of Cultural Encounters, Department of Communication and Arts, Roskilde University, Denmark.

Abstracts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Panel convenor

Garbi Schmidt, garbi@ruc.dk

12. Re:Conceptualization: Migration, diversity-another gaze, the third space

The current challenges presented by the considerable migration from the Global South raise concerns in Western societies, including Danish, in the diverse domains. Questions of coexistence, social cohesion, and integration of the newcomers prevail in different public spaces, institutions, and labour markets. These complex realities, including immigration and the recent pandemic, increase social and economic inequality. In Denmark, the self-image of homogeneity counterweights the frail inclusion attempts from government and public institutions. In these contexts, research and interventions have often focused on explaining social ills, and addressing deficiencies, and rarely affect the lived experiences of exclusion, and systemic racism in public and personal spaces. Simultaneously, some researchers invoke inclusive spaces, among others, the ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 1994), a positive third space of hope (Dandekar, 2022) which engender new possibilities, and ameliorate exclusion, thus enabling people to move around and about complex issues. The liminal subject position ‘third space’, carved out by academics, enriched by experiences of migration, racialisation, and difference, negotiating personal, professional, and cultural belonging, is shown to drive knowledge-production and justice-orientated approaches. Consequently, there is a redefining of concepts and creating together, moving from non-belonging to multiple belongings, challenging the exclusionary processes, systems of privilege and power.

This workshop explores through the first-person voices, the lived experiences in diverse life domains, such as the higher education system, newly -arrived children in the Danish school system moving due to a range of parental reasons- forced migration to highly-skilled, privileged migration, so-called expatriates, dynamics of couples living apart together transnationally. The commonality of papers in this panel is the focus on another gaze on the lived experiences, on co-creation of the inclusionary ‘third space’. We invite you to join this partly- open panel with papers covering themes about migration, diversity in different life domains, diverse perspectives, visions and beyond.

Panel convenors

Berta Vishnivetz, PhD, and Rashmi Singla, PhD

13. Re:constructing diasporic communities Theme: RE:BUILD. Infrastructures and materiality 

What does it mean to construct infrastructural materialities as a migrant community? How are relations shaped within the migrant communities (locally as well as transnationally), between majority and minority communities, and between migrant communities and the state? What are the relations between the built materialities and experiences of belonging?

In this panel, we are interested in migrant communities that build infrastructure in their country of residence. Inspired by contemporary anthropological literature on infrastructure (Anand, Gupta and Appel 2018; Larkin 2013), we wish to investigate the specific materialities that connect, and perhaps also disconnect, migrant communities with their immediate as well as more distant surroundings How does the construction of a mosque, a temple, a school et cetera make a community visible, maintain and develop identity, as well as affect local and transregional networks?

Abstract

 

 

Panel convenors

Thomas Brandt Fibiger, thomas.fibiger@cas.au.dk, Marianne C Qvortrup Fibiger, mf@cas.au.dk, Cecil Marie Pallesen, etnocmsp@cas.au.dk

14. RE:LATE. Families, intimacies, relationships "Emotions and affect in deportation: The transformative power of social relationships"

In the wake of the ‘refugee reception crisis’ of 2015 deportations of non-citizens, asylum-seekers in particular, have become a divisive public issue in Europe’s migration management and the broader media discourse. The proposed multidisciplinary workshop rethinks a central assumption of the deportation regime: that the deportees’ social presence in Europe would cease after removal and that deportability need not concern citizens and other legal residents. How does deportability (De Genova 2002; Dreby 2010; Drotbohm & Hasselberg 2015; Khosravi 2018; Nyers 2003) – a condition entailing the possibility of the subject’s deportation at any moment – or the actual removal of a person affect specific communities in Europe? The workshop would examine this central question with regard to diverse facets of social life, crucial among them family, community, and the national public sphere. The workshop would discuss the affective and emotional dimensions of the actions following deportations and deportability by focusing on how emotions and their sharing at the community level and in the public sphere mobilise people and shape identities and relations of individuals and communities. From another perspective, public officials seeking to carry out deportations cultivate social relationships with origin state officials in order to obtain their permission to deport. Here, too, affect and emotion come into play.

Through this approach, the workshop would put forth a broader argument that affect and emotion are central to understanding deportations in contemporary Nordic societies. While the desire to deport might be evoked via the direction of a politicised collective fear, deportability yields not ontological security but other waves of fear in society at large. Deportations and deportability evoke emotions and affect not only in relation to individual deportees or on their behalf but also in relation to how the state is imagined, not least by its own public officials.

Abstracts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Panel conveners

Pirkkalainen, Päivi  paivi.m.pirkkalainen@jyu.fi,  Erlend Paasche, erlend.paasche@samfunnsforskning.no,  Kotilainen, Noora K,  noora.kotilainen@helsinki.fi

15. RE:LATE. Families, intimacies, relationships: Understanding family violence in the context of migration and settlement

This panel will explore the ways in which migration and settlement processes shape the dynamics of violence, conflict and abuse within families, the impact of such violence and conflict, the constructions of it and responses to it. This could include an exploration of family violence and conflict in the context of policy framings and bordering regimes in relation to migration; the construction of and practice responses to parenting and family relations within migrant families; and the ways in which (im)mobilities and the (trans)national legal systems can (re)shape both the nature of violence and abuse and conflict within families, and possible responses to it.

For example, we welcome papers that explore manifestations of family violence such as domestic violence, forced marriage or so-called honour-based violence within particular communities, domestic violence and family conflict across transnational spaces such as transnational marriage abandonment or child abduction and policy responses to such issues. Our approach seeks to move beyond and critique the essentialist construction of migrant families and relationships as inherently violent and of migrant women as always/already victims in order to explore the specificities in experiences of violence and conflict in the context of migration. This entails exploring how the experience of migration may (re)shape existing dynamics within families such as age-related norms that govern family relationships and gender relations, how the intersection of gender, (changing) class positions, age and constructions of race may shape the trajectory and outcomes of family conflict and violence and how dominant constructions of immigrant communities and families may shape practice responses to such conflict and violence. We also seek to widen the lens to understand such violence and conflict beyond individual, family and community to state policies and practices and transnational legal frameworks.

Abstracts

 

 

 

 

Panel convenors

Anika Liversage, ani@vive.dk  senior researcher, VIVE – the Danish Center for Social Science Research, Denmark, and Sundari Anitha, Professor of Gender, Violence and Work, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. 

16. Re-location and/or transit: Migrant workers on the threshold of the Danish labor market

Karen Valentin, DPU, Aarhus University Narges Ghandchi, DPU, Aarhus University

 This panel addresses the issue of Re-location due to life and work uncertainty among a wide range of migrants with diverse education and work experience in Denmark. Across the political spectrum, there is a recognition of an acute and anticipated future need for labour, but the proposed solutions to this differ: through re-skilling of the Danish workforce, incorporation of already residing skilled and highly-educated foreign workers in Denmark or recruitment of foreign labour from outside Denmark. While high-skilled ‘knowledge workers’ are widely recognized as assets to the Danish economy, the need for low-skilled workers is more controversial and speaks into existing debates on integration. A common concern, though, is the bureaucratic and inflexible immigration laws that make it difficult for companies to secure the workforce needed and for workers to make long-term plans for their lives. This panel focuses on the large group of skilled and highly-educated migrants, who have entered Denmark on various immigration schemes, as well as refugees who have gained study or work experiences through integration programs. Many have already invested a lot in education, language acquisition, network and bureaucracy to gain a foothold in the labour market. Meanwhile, the Danish immigration system has intensified the temporariness of migrants— particularly from non-European countries, compelling a potential group of workers to move on and seek opportunities elsewhere. Accordingly, Denmark becomes a dual transit country, both for the overlooked workforce and for the Danish state in constant need of labour. The panel takes a critical perspective on this dual character of re-location and transit (as discourse and practice) regarding migration in Denmark that has made the Danish labour market unattractive and difficult to access. We invite papers that across different categories of migrants reflect upon the relationship between labour market access, immigration bureaucracies and onwards migration (practised or imagined)

Abstracts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Panel convenors

Karen Valentin, kava@edu.au.dk Narges Ghandchi, ng@cas.au.dk

17. RE:Localise labour market inclusion

The labour market inclusion of foreign-born persons has puzzled policymakers and researchers for decades. Foreign-born citizens and refugees experience lower employment rates, lower incomes and worse employment conditions than native-born citizens. In response, labour market inclusion policies in Nordic countries have shifted in both content and organisation where responsibility has moved back and forth between the central and local levels. Simultaneously novel bottom-up initiatives have been developed, involving a multiplicity of local actors and multi-level sources of funding.  While organized in collaborative spaces, a good number of these bottom-up initiatives are led by the local government and include initiatives that range from public social procurement, job fairs and cooperatives to business incubators for social inclusion. 

All in all, we are witnessing increasing efforts to implement labour inclusion programs through multi-level and more interactive and collaborative forms of governance where the roles of local governments are both expanding and changing. As local governments are turning into procurers, employers, and entrepreneurs, to mention just a few of the many roles taken in labour market inclusion policy, the capacity and engagement of other actors is crucial. What this entails in terms of perspectives on societal inclusion, policy-making on all levels, and theoretical development, is understudied. We encourage submissions to discuss questions such as, but not limited to:

• How do novel bottom-up labour market inclusion initiatives in Nordic countries emerge, develop, and stabilize?
• What are the main similarities and differences between countries?
• What is the role and the characteristics of the local actors facilitating, supporting and anchoring these innovative interventions?
• What are the local policy pathways shaping the emergence and diffusion of these novel local initiatives?
• What are the normative and cognitive mechanisms, that provide a multi-level administrative and budgetary framework for these local initiatives to grow?
• How do these new practices contribute to developing new/old roles of local governments in labour market inclusion?
• How and why do the dissemination and scaling-up of initiatives succeed, i.e. how novel practices of labour market integration are communicated and become institutionalized, for example through network creation?
• What are the implications of these changing roles and the re:localisation of labour market inclusion on local governments, civil society and non-profit organizations, public and private organizations, and the recipients of these policies themselves?
• What is the role of territory and place in prompting and stabilizing these initiatives?

Panel convenors

Emma Ek Österberg, emma.ek@spa.gu.se, associate professor, School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg
Nanna Gillberg, nanna.gillberg@gu.se, lecturer and deputy director, Gothenburg Research Institute (GRI), University of Gothenburg
Maria Norbäck, maria.norback@handels.gu.se, associate professor, director of Work and Employment Research Centre (we.gu.se), Dpt of Business Administration, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg
Patrik Zapata, patrik.zapata@gu.se, professor, School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg
María José Zapata Campos, mj.zapata@handels.gu.se, associate professor, Dpt of Business Administration, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg

18. RE:MOTE – On migration and remoteness

This panel explores the ways in which migration and remoteness co-constitute one other. Drawing on work that takes “remoteness” to be less a geographical fact than a social relation (Ardener 1987, Harms et al 2014, Saxer and Andersson 2019), we call for papers that examine ways in which remoteness is practised, challenged, and shaped by migration – and vice versa.

Remoteness may be experienced and understood as precarious, for example in the context of protracted rural crisis and vulnerability, as demographic, political and economic changes reshape local lives. But it can also be experienced as a site of potential, where the social distance from centralizing states can open up more or less licit spaces of possibility and even utopia. One could even argue, that remoteness is established through co-existing experiences of both. In any case, migration is a fundamental part of these various ways in which remoteness comes into being as such. Remote areas – which can include a great variety of precarious and/or marginal spaces and not just rural settings (e.g. Ringel 2018) – have traditionally been conceived of as places that people primarily move away from, commonly to urban centres. However, they are not only spaces where national and international migrants move to for a variety of reasons, but their historical, social and economic linkages to other spaces are often fundamentally shaped by migration.

This panel welcomes papers on a wide variety of topics that relate to remoteness and migration, including

• The inclusion of newcomers in rural areas
• The experiences of migrants in remote spaces
• Refugee placement in the margins
• Relocation of jobs to rural sites
• International labour migration to rural spaces
• Infrastructural projects aimed at reshaping remoteness
• Political strategies for shaping migration in remote settings

Panel conveners

Trine Brinkmann (University College Copenhagen) TRBR@kp.dk and Zachary Whyte (University of Copenhagen) whyte@hum.ku.dk

19. RE:PAIR Looking at health care among migrants in a Norwegian context

 n effective provision and access to health care services are central to the migration process and the integration of migrants. Studies have found different health aspects of these issues, and how certain situations can affect the health of migrants (e.g., (Abebe et al., 2017; Dalgard & Thapa, 2007; Diaz & Kumar, 2014; Valeria Markova et al., 2020; V. Markova et al., 2020; Straiton et al., 2016; Thapa et al., 2007; Yang, 2021). Despite that these works have adequately addressed migration health issues, especially among refugee groups, there are still challenges in understanding different perspectives of mental health problems, the burden of mental disorders and risk factors, and the underutilization of health care services among migrants. In order to facilitate better health care provision and welcome different perceptions of migration health, recent projects in Norway have been looking at these issues in order to fulfil certain needs among migrants and the health institutions. Therefore, this panel is looking at health care and mental health among migrants in a Norwegian context. This RE:PAIR panel will explore the gaps in migration health and bring special attention to different perspectives and challenges found in our studies. This panel will present and discuss the important needs in migration health, also enhanced by the pandemic. Moreover, juxtapose against inequalities in the communities and previously misunderstood connections between the migration process and health. By closely examining the different perspectives and some of the findings from these projects, RE:PAIR will shed new light on these little recognized issues in migration health. Through various presentations from recent studies in Norway, this panel will cover the different aspects of mental health and general health among migrants.

The following shows a list of the panellists and discussants invited to our panel:

Discussant

Melanie Lindsay Straiton. Researcher. Department of Mental health and Suicide. Norwegian Institute of Public Health

Panellists and abstracts

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20. RE:SEARCH & RE:POSITION Avoiding falling down the rabbit hole of ethnicity: de-migranticization, the post-migrant condition and what else? 

Although heterogeneity permanently and substantially marks European societies, there is still a tendency in current political and academic debates to fall down the rabbit hole of ethnicity. That is, even if heterogeneity has become commonplace normality in most people’s everyday life, debates tend surrealistically to end up in the same place, namely, in explaining a diverse array of societal issues through the lenses of ethnicity and/or integration. In the last years, there has been an influx of new concepts and perspectives in academia aiming to make sense of the current societal condition and challenge mainstream conceptualisations. Concepts such as “de-migranticization” and “the post-migrant condition” have gained significant influence. In contributing to this development, this panel asks empirical, methodological, and conceptual questions about new ways to research the contemporary condition/society. How can we better understand inclusion and exclusion in societies where the division into a majority and minority population is obsolete? How are solidarities and discords formed beyond mainstream ethnic and cultural categorisations? How can we develop methodological approaches for exploring everyday heterogeneity? What kind of conceptual tools are required to analyse the present condition?

This panel invites contributors to explore concepts, methods, and empirical perspectives that confront and challenge status quo research on ethnicity and integration, and that aim to find alternative ways to grapple with the contemporary condition.

Panel convenors

Lisa Åkesson lisa.akesson@globalstudies.gu.se, Jörgen Hellman jorgen.hellman@globalstudies.gu.se, Signe Askersjö signe.askersjo@gu.se

21. RE:SEARCH & RE:STRICT Migration Research and The Politics of Deterrence 

Since the end of the Cold War, the politics of deterrence has grown into a dominant response to refugees arriving in the Global North (Gammeltoft Hansen & Tan 2017, 29). EU border and migration policy increasingly link ‘security’ to the deterrence and deportation of refugees introducing a range of measures, such as push-back actions, extraterritorial asylum processing, and return policies to prevent refugees from arriving in receiving countries. More indirect deterrence measures can also be observed, such as limitations on family reunification, cuts to social benefits, and the issuing of temporary forms of protection. In a Danish context, the politics of deterrence reflects most clearly in the so-called “Paradigm shift” which is an ongoing process away from the integration of newcomers and towards a focus on self-reliance and return policies. These developments put refugees under increased pressure and create ‘hyper-precarious’ conditions of existence (Shapiro & Jørgensen 2020). In Critical Border and Migration Research, these processes have been well theorized as the political production of ‘deportability’, which for refugees implies a constant fear of involuntary return (DeGenova 2013). There is however still an urgent need to critically discuss new approaches to the documentation and analysis of the consequences of the deterrence regime in practice. This panel aims to discuss innovative approaches to the study of the securitized deterrence regime in practice. Contributions can relate to one or more of the following questions:

• How is ‘deportability’ produced politically and socially, as well as legitimised in local practices, such as among social caseworkers and welfare professionals?
• How do the new measurements of deterrence have an impact on refugees as well as municipal frontline workers and civil society volunteers working with refugee relief?
• How can we explore the production of new subject positions during hyper-precarious circumstances? We invite papers that present new avenues in Critical Migration Research for studying and documenting the politics of deterrence in practice.

Panel conveners

Katrine Syppli Kohl and Marie Sandberg (AMIS), Rikke Egaa Jørgensen and Ditte Krogh Shapiro; Lise Hauge; Nana Folke, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, University of Copenhagen dish@pha.dk syppli@hum.ku.dk riej@pha.dk nafol@rodekors.dk sandberg@hum.ku.dk 

22. Re-thinking Temporary Protection in the Context of the Return Turn in Asylum in Europe: ‘Concept, practice, principle’

Temporary protection is typically associated with situations of generalized violence or mass human rights violations, which result in large-scale displacement. In Europe, a temporary protection status was extended by states in the 1990s to people escaping civil war in the Balkans, on the assumption that return within a short period of time would be viable.  By contrast, today many of these states have adopted asylum policies and practices that place time limits on protection for refugees even in the absence of sustainable return prospects. Refugees with temporary residence need to justify their continued need for protection without the guarantee of securing permanent residence. These policies and practices are embedded in broader policies of deterrence which also include strengthened measures for deportation, safe third country practices and extraterritorial processing (the ‘return turn’). Furthermore, temporary protection policies are often implemented using controversial interpretations of international refugee law.

Contributions to this panel will examine ‘temporary protection’ in the context of the return turn in an asylum in Europe. Given the plethora of measures that introduce precarity to refugees’ residence and the political agenda dominated by return, the panel asks what constitutes ‘temporary protection’, how they differ in their application across states and refugee groups, and how do refugees experience these measures.  To this end, inspired by legal scholar Jean-Francois Durieux’s characterisation of temporary protection as a ‘concept, practice, principle’, this panel will bring together multi-disciplinary analyses on temporary protection as a legal principle, a tool of migration governance, practices that destabilise residence, and refugee experiences of insecurity of residence. The topics the panel will address include: conceptualising temporal dimensions of protection as well as protecting itself; comparative and historical research on the return turn and temporary protection; methodologies and ethics of researching temporary protection; and the legal consciousness of service providers and refugees.

Panel convenors 

Dr Esra Kaytaz, Centre for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations, Coventry University, Dr Jessica Schultz, University of Bergen, (on behalf of Temporary Protection as a Durable Solution? The return turn in asylum policies in Europe (TemPro) 

23. RE:VIVE. Religion and spirituality

The experience of migration has been a defining one for several of the world’s religious traditions: The collective memory of the exile in Egypt and Babylon is at the core of the Jewish identity. Hijra – literally translated as “migration” – of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina marks such an important transition in the history of Islam that the Islamic calendar begins with it.

Religion emerged as a key topic of descriptions and debates of migrant populations in the early 21^st century. Whereas religion is sometimes a driver of migration, it is more often associated with family and communal life as well as cultural and societal integration in the new host society. Migration has greatly contributed to the diversification of religious life in many countries and led to novel transnational connections, including transnational marriage arrangements, travel of religious specialists and remittance flows for various purposes. Migrants themselves may also experience substantial changes in their religious lives that are often even greater across generations. While much religious life remains in the personal, family and community spheres, sometimes migrant religions become meaningful in educational and work organisations, political life and public opinion. For many religious communities and traditions, relocation also calls for theological reflection.

This session focuses on the diversity of outcomes, empirical findings and theoretical considerations at the intersection of religion, migration and integration. Recent changes in migration governance and migrant lived reality after both the European Refugee Crises of 2015 and the COVID-19 pandemic may provide fruitful platforms for reflections on the topic. We welcome contributions from disciplines including but not limited to the study of religions, theology, sociology, anthropology, history, and social psychology. Besides established religious traditions, the contributions may discuss non-organised religiosities and spiritual worldviews.

Panel convenors

Tuomas Martikainen, tuomas.martikainen@uef.fi ;  Teemu Pauha, teemu.pauha@helsinki.fi

24. RE:WORK – Labour and economy The Nexus of Transnational Labour Migration and Digital Platforms 

Like in the rest of the world, the Nordic countries have seen a rise in digital platforms that challenges their highly institutionalized labour markets. While providing app-based ordering for the national consumer, digital platforms mediate, organize and control labour relations through hyper-flexible employment contracts, minimal language requirements etc. While this leaves workers at the margins of the national labour market, it also provides migrant workers with easy access, especially to the highly institutionalized ones in the Nordic countries. Yet, the relationship between transnational labour migration and digital platforms remains largely unexplored. Through platforms such as Happy Helper, Wolt, Gorillas, migrants carry out digital platform work in terms of food delivery and services (cleaning, care work etc.). Here, the few language requirements and the flexibility of the work create seemingly easy access to the national labour markets. However, the influx of migrant workers is vital for the operations of platform companies not only occurs physically but also virtually. Workers around the globe conduct crowd work or microwork from home through different platforms such as Amazon’s Mechanical Turk or Upwork. This produces new forms of labour mobility that hinge on the proliferation of borders in the digital space. Together, this hints at the fact that digital platforms emerge as infrastructures not only for new forms of labour but also for new practices of mobility both locally, nationally, and transnationally. This panel aims to understand the (im)mobilities, logic and dynamics inherent to the relationship between transnational migration, labour, and digital platforms. We, therefore, invite papers focusing on the role of migration in platform labour both in the Nordic countries as well as other geographical locations. Themes could be but are not limited to:

• Migration and precarity on digital platforms
• Digital platforms and new forms of (im)mobility
• Migration and platform urbanism
• Migrant platform workers’ struggles for rights
• Digital platforms and national policies

Abstracts

 

 

 

 

Panel convenors

Postdoc Magnus Andersen maga@dps.aau.dk  and Associate Prof. Marlene Spanger, Aalborg University

25. Teaching migration studies (in highly politicized environments)

Transnational migration has become a ubiquitous topic, in research as in everyday life and politics. This is unsurprising in as far as actual cross-border mobilities have – at least until the covid19 pandemic - increased steadily, if geographically unevenly. Especially in those regions most impacted by such mobilities migration had become over the past two + decades a key problem of governance and a problem that states see as a subject for management. Such conceptualization had initially enabled the growth of advanced degree programs in migration studies, which itself as a field of study has leapt its intellectual silos and is now drawing interest from (at least) scholars of security, EU law and policy, international and human rights law, international relations, sociology, anthropology, theology, the humanities. Yet transnational migration remains also one of the most contested and polarizing political issues. In such environments, critical and reflexive turns in migration studies have come under political attacks in recent years. So while teaching migration studies and training students in migration issues continue to be relevant and important, it is simultaneously deeply politically fraught and challenged.

In this roundtable, migration scholars and practitioners discuss the potentials and challenges of teaching migration studies in the current, politicized climate. RUC and Bergen are developing a new interdisciplinary, dual-university master's degree in Nordic migration studies (“NOMAD”) and questions arise: How to balance teaching critical and reflexive thinking about migration with the commitment to educating employable migration practitioners? What can interdisciplinarity in migration studies programs offer in regard to such a balancing act, and what are its limits or drawbacks? How can we ensure that such programs contribute to reshaping the discourse surrounding migration rather than unwittingly reinforcing its problematic aspects? And how to communicate this complex navigation to students applying to such programs with expectations of gaining practical skills to work in migration and integration management fields? What kinds of scholarship and training are of greatest use for those who will go into the field and apply it?

Panel convenor

Kerstin Carlson carlson@ruc.dk

26. Urban encounters with difference

Over the past decade, urban encounters with migrants and minoritized differences have become an important area of inquiry that brings urban and migration studies together. This book panel will discuss two recent books from leading figures in this field:  Ruth Fincher, Kurt Iveson, Helga Leitner and Valerie Preston’s Everyday Equalities: Making Multicultures in Settler Colonial Cities, published in 2019 by the University of Minnesota Press, and Kirsten Simonsen and Lasse Koefoed's Geographies of Embodiment: Critical Phenomenology and the World of Strangers, published in 2020 by Sage.  While both are written by geographers that have been straddling urban and migration fields and have the concept of encounter grounded in everyday urban life at their centre, they examine – amongst other differences – cities from different geo-cultural and political contexts. We suggest these commonalities and differences offer a fertile ground for a productive encounter of an academic kind.  

Panellists

Dr Tatiana Fogelman & Professor David Pinder, Institute for People and Technology Roskilde University 

Third Discussant

Dr Aneta Piekut 

Authors

Lasse Koefoed, Kirsten Simonsen and Helga Leitner