| 1. |
- Petrogiannis, Vasileios, 1981-
(författare)
-
European Mobility and Spatial Belongings : Greek and Latvian migrants in Sweden
- 2020
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Nation-states and national identities are a product of European history and have been the most salient framework of spatial identification since the nineteenth century. In the past decades, however, the EU has attempted to foster a supplementary European sense of identity, embodied in the notion of European citizenship. Moreover, the European continent encompasses various macro-regions that have been presented as having certain historical significance and that play a role in identity politics. Two prominent examples are the Baltic and the Mediterranean regions.This study reconstructs through interviews the overlapping identifications of Latvian and Greek migrants, respectively – migrants who have moved to Sweden in different time periods after the Second World War up to the present. The interviews focus on issues related to integration, feelings of belonging and spatial identification with the countries of origin (Latvia, Greece) and residence (Sweden) in order to understand the significance of the nation in the current European context. Another aim is to examine how the idea of a common European identity, as an aggregate based on national and regional affiliation, works in practice. Furthermore, the interviews executed in this study give an account of how migrants position themselves in relation to the Baltic Sea region and the Mediterranean as well as to alternative macro regional spaces. The study of immigrants’ narratives about their social and everyday life, and their personal experience of coping with public authorities seeks to improve our understanding of the current phenomenon of internal European migration, which is still an under-researched field.The analysis shows that the nation, both that of origin and of residence, remains the most significant space of identification for the interviewed EU-migrants. It is obvious that the EU has not brought forth a European identity parallel to the national one. However, elements of European identification and belonging exist in the responses of the migrants, revolving around their benefitting from free mobility inside the EU. This study shows also that there barely is any particular identification with the Baltic and Mediterranean regions among the examined migrants. However, other macro regional identifications appeared, such as the Baltic States for Latvian and the Balkan for Greek interviewees.
|
|
| 2. |
- Svenonius, Ola, 1979-
(författare)
-
Sensitising Urban Transport Security : Surveillance and Policing in Berlin, Stockholm, and Warsaw
- 2011
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The city as a focal point of both domestic and international security policy is characteristic of the 21st century security landscape in Europe. Amidst the 'War on Terror' and the pan-European battle against organised crime, the city is the location where global processes are actually taking place. Urban security is the local policy response both to such global threats as terrorism and local ones, such as violent crime. Public transport systems in particular came under threat after the terrorist attacks in the United States in 2001, Madrid in 2004, and London in 2005. This doctoral thesis studies security policy in three public transport systems – Berlin, Stockholm, and Warsaw – from a comparative perspective focusing on the conditions that made new and very specific understandings of security possible.The study argues that urban transport security has undergone radical changes during the last ten years. While transport authorities and the police used to conceive security as related solely to crime rates, today the focus of security practices consists of passengers' perceptions. The study shows how this shift is paralleled by a new discourse of 'security as emotion', and how it came into being. It concentrates specifically on the central role that surveillance and private policing assumes as the security policy shifts objectives to the inner life of the passengers. Today, complex governance networks of both public and private actors manage security in the three cities. The analysis shows how passengers are constructed in the urban security policy as children, consumers, and citizens. These different 'roles' constitute the passenger in the eye of urban security governance characterised by technocracy, 'friendly security', and individual responsibility. The introduction of new governance models for public administration, the legacy of European communist regimes, and rising fear of crime are central conditions for this new, sensitised urban transport security.
|
|
| 3. |
- Ahlstedt, Sara, 1977-
(författare)
-
The Feeling of Migration : Narratives of Queer Intimacies and Partner Migration
- 2016
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation analyzes narratives of queer partner migration, that is, a family-tie migration in which one of the partners 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 of the study is to examine how queer partner migrants and their Swedish partners experience the migration process – which continues also once the administrative process has been completed – by analyzing the emotions and feelings that emerge in the process. The study is a contribution to research on privileged migration as well as intimate migration.The focus is the queer partner migration relationship, and what emotions and feelings ‘do’ to this relationship, but also how emotions and feelings structure the migration process. The study analyzes the work three different emotions – love, loss, and belonging – do in these migration processes, and how this work is described in the 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 dissertation is an ethnographic interview study in which both migrants and Swedish partners have been interviewed. The interview material consists of a combination of couple interviews and individual interviews.By using affect theories and the concept of queer phenomenology, the dissertation shows how the work that emotions and feelings do in migration processes is connected to gender identity, sexual identity, race and whiteness, nationality, perceived proximity to Western-ness, class, language, and the migration narrative the migrating partner is (or is not) written into by way of the country they have migrated from. This is analyzed in relation to the theoretical frameworks of entanglement, homonationalism, and intimate citizenship.The analysis shows that emotions and feelings structure the migration process for both more privileged and less privileged migrants, but in different ways. The understanding of who ‘is’ a migrant, and the preparedness for the feelings that arise in a migration process, are tied to the positions mentioned above and the privileges these positions give, or do not give, the migrant access to. By focusing on emotions and feelings and what these do, the study also illustrates how the migration process affects the non-migrating partner as this partner engages in emotional labour to ‘make’ the migrating partner ‘Swedish.’ Through their the migrating partner, the non-migrating partner is also aligned in a way that makes them a little bit less ‘Swedish,’ contributing to the non-migrating partner being ‘stopped’ in ways they have usually not experienced before. The study further shows how migration processes produces inequality, and the difficulties that arise when the couples try to live up to the Swedish ideal of the equal relationship.The interviews are analyzed as narratives, and both narratives and storytelling are important throughout the dissertation, not only as the method used in the analysis but as the form of the dissertation, making it a kind of super structure organizing the writing. Writing (how to write accessibly and interesting) and reading (how to write in order to invite an open and active reading) are important aspects of the dissertation.
|
|
| 4. |
- Bergman, Jonny, 1973-
(författare)
-
Seeking empowerment : asylum-seeking refugees from Afghanistan in Sweden
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of this study is to contribute to the understanding of how asylum-seeking refugees manage their lives in the situation they are in, a situation in which they are dependent and have to wait for decisions on whether or not they will get to stay in the country in which they have made their application for asylum. The elaboration upon these questions and the purpose of the study is approached through a field study of asylum-seeking refugees from Afghanistan in Sweden. The thesis presents a background of international migration, refugee migration, refugee migration from Afghanistan and the reception of asylum seekers and refugees in the EU and Sweden, which tells us both that asylum seekers and refugees are not welcome in the countries of the ‘North’, where policies of containment and repatriation are the most common features of treating the refugee ‘problem’ and that the long period of waiting and uncertainty creates a situation of passivity and ill-health among the asylum seekers. Employing grounded theory methodology in different forms based in data from fieldwork, including participant observations and informal conversations, the study applies a constructionist grounded theory approach in the analyses of the situation and the management thereof. Steered by this constructionist grounded theory approach, strengthened by a situational analysis, the thesis presents a situational frame pointing to the situation for the asylum-seeking refugees as temporal and dependent on Swedish national discourse, racism and paternalism. With this background and frame and generated by data from the field study, the thesis goes on to present the situation as disempowering. The disempowering processes are illustrated through looking at dependence and inhospitality, and are characterised by the asylum-seeking refugees’ oscillation between feelings of hope and despair. It becomes, however, also evident that the asylum-seeking refugees take action and that they are supported by latent empowering processes. The actions taken are categorised as actions of empowering in opposition to the processes presented as disempowering. The actions of empowering are connected to keeping oneself occupied, searching for and maintaining social contacts and in the asylum-seeking refugees’ representations of themselves. From the presentation of the situation as disempowering and the actions taken by the asylum-seeking refugees in response to this situation as actions of empowering, a process characterised as seeking empowerment is presented. In this process empowerment is discussed as the establishment of power to resist. During the discussion of the concept of seeking empowerment it is shown how the asylum-seeking refugees in this study, through their actions of empowering, try to resist the disempowering situation. By seeking to establish power to resist, they are seeking empowerment.
|
|
| 5. |
- Larsson, Jennie K, 1972-
(författare)
-
Integrationen och arbetets marknad : Hur jämställdhet, arbete och annat "svenskt" görs av arbetsförmedlare och privata aktörer
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Avhandlingen belyser vad som hänt i svensk integrationspolitik sedan etableringsreformen genomfördes 2010 och ansvaret för flyktingmottagandet överfördes till Arbetsförmedlingen. Utöver förändringen som Arbetsförmedlingens ansvar innebar medförde reformen också ökad marknadsorientering, införande av valfrihetssystem, villkorad aktiveringspolitik samt andra genomgripande organisatoriska förändringar.I fokus står aktörer som på olika sätt har makt att påverka hur integrationspolitiken görs i praktiken. Studien analyserar vad som händer när privata företag bedriver arbetsförmedlande verksamheter där ersättningen kopplas till uppnådda resultat. Vidare analyseras betydelsen av ”svenskhet” i görandet av integrationspolitik.Avhandlingen är etnografisk och det empiriska materialet består av intervjuer och observationer med individer som arbetar på arbetsförmedlingskontor, som etableringslotsar samt samhällskommunikatörer på utbildningsföretag.Genom att syntetisera teorier om gatubyråkratier med en intersektionell ansats visar avhandlingen att görandet av integrationspolitik också är ett görande av ojämlikheter som grundas i stereotypa bilder av ”svenskhet” och ”invandrarskap”. Studien visar vidare hur föreställningen om Sverige som jämställd nation påverkar hur politiken görs. I analysen framkommer att de strategier som arbetsförmedlarna utvecklar för att hantera de krav som ställs på dem, i form av aktivering och resultat, inte leder till att de nyanlända kommer närmare arbetsmarknaden. Studien visar även att privata företag prioriterar resultat, lönsamhet och satsar på de nyanlända som de lättast kan nå resultat med.
|
|
| 6. |
- Silberstein, Daniel, 1987-
(författare)
-
Humanity Washed Ashore : Visual representations of practices, people, and the borders of Europe
- 2020
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Over the past decade, Frontex (European Border and Coast Guard Agency) has emerged as a central actor for the European Union’s migration and border policies. This doctoral dissertation examines the role of Frontex in constructing understandings of borders, practices, and people present in these spaces as well as more ambivalent representations of risk, unease, and (in)security. The study is based on material produced by Frontex during the period 2010-2016. More specifically, the dissertation explores how borders, practices, and people as well as risk, unease, and (in)security are produced through representational practices. In doing so, this dissertation examines how Frontex is normalised as the EU’s central actor at Europe’s borders. Unlike previous studies on Frontex, which have tended to focus on either the practices of the agency, its legal context, or use of technology, this dissertation examines Frontex as a producer of different discourses. Secondly, this dissertation adds to the existing research on Frontex by examining their visual material. Likewise, in contrast to much of the research in the field of Critical Border Studies (CBS), which has focused on the performative aspects of how borders are produced, this dissertation adds to the field of CBS by examining how borders are performed through representational practices of visual material. In order to examine representational practices of (in)securitisation by which Frontex is normalised as the EU’s central actor at Europe’s borders, this dissertation draws primarily on the research on (in)securitisation while adding a visual aspect to create a framework termed visual (in)securitisation. The overall findings cast light on the complexity of processes of (in)securitisation and the performances of borders and offers new ways of understanding both processes. The findings point to the role of images in shaping conditions for processes of (in)securitisation, influencing how borders, practices, and people in these spaces are understood. Empirically, this dissertation demonstrates the significance of integrating images whilst analysing how (in)security and borders are produced and how Frontex are normalised as the EU’s central actor at Europe’s borders. Theoretically, it highlights the relationship between images and ambiguity, ambivalence, risk, and unease in processes of (in)securitisation as well as the role of images in performing borders.
|
|
| 7. |
- Tornhill, Sofie, 1974-
(författare)
-
Capital Visions : The Politics of Transnational Production in Nicaragua
- 2010
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In processes of economic integration, neoliberal discourse and corresponding notions of development comprise some of the most readily available imaginaries of political and social interaction and change. However, these processes are always also locally produced and negotiated. Engaging with discourse theory, Marxism and postcolonial feminist theory, this dissertation brings together “macro” and “micro” aspects of globalization. The aim is to interrogate discursive reinforcements of and challenges to global orders of production and divisions of labor. With a focus on representations of Free Trade Zones (FTZs), which are tax-exempted enclaves for export production, the study explores competing meanings attributed to the operation of transnational capital in Nicaragua. Based on policy documents, political speeches, promotional videotapes and interviews, the political rhetoric of two governments with competing agendas is analyzed: the neoliberal/conservative government of the Liberal Constitutionalist Party (2002–2007), which framed the FTZs in terms of national progress, and the leftist government of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (2007– ), which attempts to reconnect to the country’s revolutionary past. In this way efforts to formulate legitimate political agendas in the context of shifting relations between states and markets are detailed, together with constructions of citizens and workers along differentiations of class and gender. Relying on interviews with FTZ workers, the study examines ways to interpret, inhabit or resist imperative subject positions at the intersections of contending projects of nation-building and transnational orders of production, in conjunction with a discussion of the uneasy distinction between representation and appropriation that troubles transnational feminist research projects.
|
|
