Migration, State and Pedagogy
Migration as prism for pedagogical studies of state formation processes
The overall aim of this research focus area is to develop new fields of study for educational research that can capture the intersections and dynamics between issues/objects of welfare work, migration and state (trans)formation processes across different national, regional, local and institutional settings and contexts.
The objective is to investigate how the welfare nation-state is (re)structured and (re)shaped when faced with intensified transnational as well as rural-urban migration. The (re)shaping of the welfare nation-state is studied across a variety of fields, where the migrant or the non-migrant is addressed as an object of pedagogical and social concern, and thus, a problematic of the welfare nation-state.
We depart from historical, sociological and ethnographic observations of competing and often contradicting representations and problematisations of migration and the (non-)migrant. Migration has been problematised, represented and articulated as an economic resource (e.g. in the form of high-skilled transnational labour migrants, social entrepreneurs, young apprentices in rural areas), a welfare burden (e.g. young addicts in rural areas, refugees, elderly immigrants, unemployed immigrants), a security treat (e.g. dropouts, radicalized Muslims) and/or a cultural problem (e.g. non-Western housewives, isolated immigrant children). These competing problematisations, representations and articulations of migrants and non-migrants and pedagogical interventions/welfare work addressing them offer unique opportunities to study the ambiguous (re)shaping of the welfare nation-state in a time of intensified global competition.
Below you can find abstracts of our current research projects:
-
Welfare Management of Corporate Transnational High-Skilled Labor Migrants and their Families by Marta Padovan-Özdemir
-
Multicultural challenges and transnational communication in national nursing homes by Anne Leonora Blaakilde
-
Networks of voluntary community work addressing the immigrant and refugee by Bolette Moldenhawer
The research projects of the four research focus area members are as diverse as ‘welfare management of corporate high-skilled transnational labour migrants and their families’, ‘life coping strategies of rural youth who stay behind’, ‘care work addresses elderly migrants’ and ‘networks of voluntary community work addressing the immigrant’. It is the ambition to maintain this diversity of research topics and empirical contexts, as we argue that it can broaden our understanding of how patterns of (non-)migration intersect with ‘pedagogical interventions and state (trans)formation processes in a globalizing world.
The research focus area is a forum for discussion and development of new historical, sociological and ethnographic understandings of migration and non-migration, public and private welfare work and the development of the welfare nation-state in a global perspective.
In order to qualify these discussions and conceptual and empirical understandings we seek to promote international scholarly exchanges of conceptions and ideas. This exchange will enable us to challenge local truisms. The research focus area welcomes interested Ph.d.-fellow and researchers for collaboration and sparring to contact Bolette Moldenhawer.
Contact
Events of the semester
News
Blaakilde, A. L. 2015. Where is ‘place’ in Aging in place? Transnational issues for the Danish state and its retirement migrants abroad. In print in Journal of Housing for the Elderly, 29(1-2).
Blaakilde, A. L. 2013. A challenge to the Danish welfare state: How international retirement migration and transnational health promotion clash with national policies. In Blaakilde Anne Leonora & Nilsson, Gabriella (Eds.), Nordic Seniors on the Move. Migration and Mobility in Later Life. Lund Studies in Arts and Cultural Sciences, vol 4; 177-202. Lund, Sweden.
Hansen, S. J. 2014. At komme fra ‘udkanten’: Om sted, stedsans og unges uddannelsesstrategier i et socialt rum under forandring – belyst gennem et casestudie af Hirtshals, en havneby på den nordjyske vestkyst [Coming from the ‘outskirt’: About place, sense of place and youngsters’ education strategies in a social space of transformation – analysed through a casestudy of Hirtshals, a port city in the North Jutland's west coast], Ph.D. Thesis, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Humanities.
Padovan-Özdemir, M. & Moldenhawer, B. ’Welfare Management of Immigrant Schoolchildren and their Families – Danish Welfare National State-Crafting Effects 1970-2015’, Submitted to the journal Race Ethnicity and Education on March 27 2015.