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- Djampour, Pouran
(författare)
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Borders crossing bodies : The stories of eight youth with experience of migrating
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In public discourse on migration, people who migrate are often portrayed as deviating from the rest of the population. This is especially true for the group categorised as ‘unaccompanied’ children who are portrayed as homogeneous and not seldom with a common history. Such simplifications create a ‘single story’ that reduces people who migrate and their complex lives to stereotypes. This dissertation derives from a willingness to contest this single story through multiple stories by multiplestorytellers. This is done by seeking tocomprehend what borders do in the lives of eight youth with experience of migrating. The aim is thus to study what borders do and how the participants navigate, experience and challenge those borders at different stages of their lives.This study is based on ethnography among eight youth, who at some point have been categorised as ‘unaccompanied’ children in Sweden and other countries. The fieldwork was carried out during a period between 2013 and 2017 involving interviews and conversations with the participants. Borders are analysed from a multiperspectival standpoint, which means that borders are seen as practices of both material and symbolic divisions performed by different actors constituting control. Borders not only hinder or stop some while granting passage to others; they also construct people differently. Those who are repeatedly crossed by borders eventually become inhabitants of the borderlands. Influenced by feminist and postcolonial scholarship, this study calls for epistemic plurality by acknowledging different sources of knowledge which are placed in dialogue with the stories of the youth. Aspects of their lives before moving from their homes are considered equally important for their experience of borders as their lives in Europe.
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| 2. |
- Hansen, Christina
(författare)
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Solidarity in Diversity : Activism as a Pathway of Migrant Emplacement in Malmö
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Written at the intersection of migration studies, urban studies, and research on activism, this thesis contributes to the exploration of solidarities born on the ground in an urban context marked by immigration and economic restructuring. Based on ethnographic material collected 2013–2016 in Malmö, Sweden, it examines alliances and friendships generated across social, cultural, ethnic, and legal divides through a particular political practice—activism as carried out by the extra-parliamentarian left. A decisive aspect is the particularity of Malmö, a city with a high density and diversity of activist groups, and Möllevången, the neighbourhood where their actions are concentrated. Möllevången is conceptualised in this thesis as an incubator for resistance to the dispossessing effects of neoliberal economic restructuring and urban gentrification. Special attention is devoted to activist groups that, at the time of fieldwork, affected the most people through their large mobilisations and solidarity-based work. While not negating differences among activists or between activists and racialised migrants in precarious legal conditions, the thesis highlights their shared experiences of co-creating political spaces and interests—commoning. This kind of embodied solidarity requires activists to experiment with non-hierarchical and non-normative ways of structuring social relations, a process filled with challenges, ambivalences, and conflicts. The thesis shows how activists cope with challenges and what they perceive as achievements. Furthermore, it shows that—despite the ever-increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric, restrictive migration policies, and neoliberalisation of the commons—solidarity and commoning contribute to pathways of migrant emplacement: re-establishing life in a particular locality, building networks, making friends, and developing a feeling of belonging to a new place. Not only does the activists’ commitment to radical equality and mutual aid create certain pathways for emplacement in the city, it also enables the political socialisation of some migrants and paves the way for a new generation of migrant activists in Malmö.
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| 3. |
- Moberg Stephenson, Maria, 1978-
(författare)
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From Young Migrants to "Good Swedes" : Belonging and the Manifestations of Borders and Boundaries in NGO Social Work
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Belonging is a contested concept, and for young people arriving unaccompanied by parents to seek asylum in Sweden, belonging is conditional. The aim of this thesis is thus to analyse belonging in the context of an NGO mentoring programme for young people defined as unaccompanied in Sweden. By intersecting different dimensions of belonging, this is studied both from the young people’s own perspective and within the work of the mentoring programme. The thesis builds on interviews, participant observations, and policy documents gathered from the NGO mentoring programme, which more specifically works with ‘unaccompanied’ young people placed in kinship care in a Swedish suburban neighbourhood to support their establishment in Sweden. Participating in the study are young people involved in the programme and the employed mentors. The results show that the young people create a sense of belonging through transnational and local migrant networks, while the NGO perceives the young people’s situations in kinship care and in the Swedish suburban neighbourhood as limited. The mentoring programme’s work to promote establishment is intended to help the young people to overcome possible boundaries, and to reach a belonging to Swedish society. As such, the work can be interpreted as a form of boundary work. However, this work risks producing new boundaries – those between a desired, but imagined, ‘Swedish community of value’, and the migrant ‘other’. Hierarchies of belonging are thus created, within which the young people must strive to become ‘good Swedes’ to be seen as established in society. The thesis also shows how these boundaries can be challenged within social work by acting against racial structures and imagined collective communities. It thus argues for the importance of acknowledging and actively working with young people’s transnational and local networks to avoid the reproduction of boundaries.
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