| 1. |
- Hall, Emma
(author)
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Mellan rörelse och stillhet : minne och flykt i unga människors berättande 2009-2021.
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The purpose of this thesis is to highlight young people’s experiences of forced migration along irregular migration routes and to examine how they understand themselves in relation to different contexts in time and space. The participants consist of young people with experience of forced migration and of being categorized as ”ensamkommande barn” (unaccompanied minors) upon arrival in Sweden. Using oral and written sources, the thesis explores what and how they remember. The theoretical perspectives are connected by movement as an overarching metaphor. Movement refers to the physical movements made by the participants as well as the assumption that movement characterizes the process of remembering. This is connected to oral history theory and method and the exploration of the past as well as the relationship between past and present in everyday lives. The thesis also leans on several theoretical perspectives from cultural memory studies, which highlight the process in which an individual memory is shaped and reshaped depending on social context and over time. In order to explore how the participants remember different places and times, from origin to destination, a systems approach to migrant trajectories has been applied as a heuristic tool.The analysis shows that there are shared historical contexts despite the fact that the participants make a heterogenous group. During the period of investigation, migration to and within Europe has been characterized by restrictions and control. This means that the participants have travelled via irregular routes, and they have been confronted with strict border controls. When the participants arrived in Sweden, migration policy underwent significant changes that led to consequences for the participants themselves. Furthermore, those labelled ”ensamkommande barn” were at the center of the migration policy debate in the wake of the so called ”refugee crisis” in 2015. An important conclusion in this dissertation is that to a large extent, movements in time and space have led to a development of how the participants understand themselves. In addition to movements over time, shifts in social contexts bring changes to what and how the participants remember. To conclude, this thesis contributes to research on ”ensamkommande barn” as it illuminates the different ways in which the participants understand themselves and experience a sense of belonging. Another contribution is the thesis' approach to historical contextualization and the understanding of the participants as actors in relation to larger historical change.
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| 2. |
- Wagrell, Kristin, 1986-
(author)
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"Chorus of the Saved" : Constructing the Holocaust Survivor in Swedish Public Discourse, 1943-1966
- 2020
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- In this dissertation I examine how the Holocaust survivor has been constructed in Swedish public discourse during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. This is done using a Foucauldian-inspired genealogical method through which an eclectic collection of sources—newsreels, films, radio programs, television programs and newspaper articles—is analyzed. The theoretical underpinnings of this analysis are based on Ian Hacking’s concept of discourse where the classification of survivor ‘types’ has a direct bearing on the expressions possible for those who are classified, i.e. individuals with Holocaust experience. The overarching research question of the dissertation therefore asks: how did a Holocaust survivor ‘type’ develop in Sweden during the 1940s, 50s and 60s? The main thrust of the argument presented in the dissertation is that the concepts of ‘silence’ and ‘excess’ have always disciplined the ways in which Holocaust survivors have been conceived of as both victims and witnesses in Swedish public discourse. The communication of Jewish suffering by survivor-witnesses has both been framed as a dangerous, destructive force which could instigate unnecessary conflict while it, at the same time, has been positioned as a remedy to collective forgetfulness as well as a solution to rising levels of xenophobia and antisemitism. How survivors have been constructed historically also demonstrates the flawed logic of a historical progressivism within which Holocaust memory is seen to steadily go from silence to interest/increased knowledge. What the research presented in this dissertation shows is that this process is not determined by historical progression but by the underlying problematization of Holocaust survivors’ utility.
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| 3. |
- Zabalueva, Olga, 1984-
(author)
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"Not All Museums" : Memory, politics, and museum activism on the move
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation examines the institutional ontology of museums: how it is being changed and which issues and actors are calling for such change. A museum project that started from scratch in the mid-2010s – the Museum of Movements in Malmö, Sweden – is used as a lens to examine how the global processes of (re)imagining the museum are unfolding in the local Swedish context. The research questions addressed in the dissertation consider the use of politics in the process of museum making (and unmaking); framing of “difficult issues” which cultural institutions are dealing with in both the global and the Swedish museum context; and constituting socially relevant and sustainable museum practices based on agonistic memory framework and museum activism. Addressing these research questions, the text moves constantly between analyses of theories and empirical material. Each chapter also discusses existing research in the relevant field, be it museum politics, memory studies or the concept of “difficult issues”. The study relies on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the process of the Museum of Movements’ making and unmaking (2018-2020) and brings in theoretical frameworks to connect museology and memory studies in order to explain museum- and memory politics and museums as processes.
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| 4. |
- Zabalueva, Olga, 1984-
(author)
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"Not All Museums" : memory, politics, and museum activism on the move
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation examines the institutional ontology of museums: how it is being changed and which issues and actors are calling for such change. A museum project that started from scratch in the mid-2010s – the Museum of Movements in Malmö, Sweden – is used as a lens to examine how the global processes of (re)imagining the museum are unfolding in the local Swedish context. The research questions addressed in the dissertation consider the use of politics in the process of museum making (and unmaking); framing of “difficult issues” which cultural institutions are dealing with in both the global and the Swedish museum context; and constituting socially relevant and sustainable museum practices based on agonistic memory framework and museum activism. Addressing these research questions, the text moves constantly between analyses of theories and empirical material. Each chapter also discusses existing research in the relevant field, be it museum politics, memory studies or the concept of “difficult issues”. The study relies on the ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the process of the Museum of Movements’ making and unmaking (2018-2020) and brings in theoretical frameworks to connect museology and memory studies in order to explain museum- and memory politics and museums as processes.
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| 5. |
- Górniok, Łukasz, 1982-
(author)
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Swedish refugee policymaking in transition? : Czechoslovaks and Polish Jews in Sweden, 1968-1972
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The aim of this dissertation is to examine the Swedish government’s responses to the Prague Spring, the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the anti-Semitic campaigns in Poland and, first and foremost, to Czechoslovak and Polish-Jewish refugees fleeing their native countries as a result of these event during the formative period of the late 1960s and early 1970s. This has been accomplished by examining the entire process from the decision to admit the refugees in 1968, to their reception and economic integration into Swedish society during the seven-year period necessary for acquiring Swedish citizenship. This study also analyzes discourses in Swedish newspapers relating to these matters and compares the media’s treatment of these two groups. The investigation is guided by factors influencing refugee policy formation such as bureaucratic choices, international relations, local absorption capacity, national security considerations, and Cold War considerations. Press cuttings, diplomatic documents, telegrams, protocols from the departments and government agencies involved, as well as reports from the resettlement centres, and, finally, refugees’ applications for citizenship form the empirical basis of this study.The period under investigation coincides with three key developments in Sweden’s foreign, refugee, and immigrant policies – the emergence of a more activist foreign policy, the shift from labour migration to refugee migration and, finally, the shift from a policy of integration to multiculturalism. In this regard, the overarching objective of the study is to shed some light on these developments and to determine whether the arrival, reception, and integration of these refugees should be regarded as the starting point for new policies towards immigrants and minorities in Sweden, or if it should rather be seen as the finale of the policies that had begun to develop at the end of World War II.The results demonstrate that Sweden’s refugee policy formation of the late 1960s and early 1970s was hardly affected by these major developments. It could be argued that a more active foreign policy was evident in the criticism of the events in Czechoslovakia and Poland and in the admission of the Czechoslovak of Polish-Jewish refugees to Sweden, but a detailed analysis of the motives shows that these decisions were primarily the result of international relations, national security considerations, and economic capacity, along with other considerations that had guided Swedish refugee policy in previous decades. Similarly, at the centre of Sweden’s reception of the Czechoslovak and Polish-Jewish refugees during the late 1960s and early 1970s was, like in previous decades, the labour market orientation of Sweden’s refugee policy. The Czechoslovaks and Polish-Jews did not experience any multiculturalist turn. Overall, Sweden’s responses to the Czechoslovak and Polish-Jewish refugees were consistent with the objectives developed at the end of World War II and thus did not represent a transition in Swedish refugee policymaking.
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| 6. |
- Petrusenko, Nadezda, 1977-
(author)
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Creating the Revolutionary Heroines : The Case of Female Terrorists of the PSR (Russia, Beginning of the 20th Century)
- 2017
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Representing revolutionary terrorists as heroes and martyrs was a typical feature of the mythology of the Russian revolutionary underground at the beginning of the 20th century. This mythology described Underground Russia, the world of the revolutionaries, as an ideal country inhabited by ideal people. The purpose of that epos was to represent the revolutionary struggle, and individual revolutionaries in such a way that they would gain sympathy from the wider public and become role models for other revolutionary fighters. Sympathetic representations of women who committed political violence seem to be especially shocking in the context of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, since female violent behavior contradicted the existing gender order.Employing theoretical perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis, gender history and intersectionality, the dissertation analyzes the way narratives about the individual life paths of female terrorists of the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (the PSR), the biggest socialist party in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century, were constructed in their revolutionary auto/biographies. It analyzes how the lives of women from different social and ethnic origins, of different ages, with different life paths, who happened to be united only by their participation in the political terrorism of the PSR, were recounted with the help of narratives used in the Russian revolutionary underground.The research findings demonstrate that the accounts of the lives of female PSR terrorists were constructed with the help of the dominant narrative that was formed as a conversion story. Within the framework of that narrative, the lives of individual women were adapted to the dominant discourse of heroism and martyrdom, and at the same time were contextualized within the dominant discourse on “good” femininity that existed in the Russian society, and even within the discourse on Jews as perpetual “Others” in the Russian empire in case of Jewish women. Social and ethnic backgrounds as well as individual circumstances of the terrorist women, however, transformed the dominant narrative, and thus created diversity of representations. The discursive practice of writing a revolutionary life accepted by Bolsheviks influenced the discursive practice employed in revolutionary auto/biographies of female terrorists written during the early Soviet period.
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| 7. |
- Martínez, Victoria Van Orden, 1974-
(author)
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Afterlives : Jewish and Non-Jewish Polish Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden Documenting Nazi Atrocities, 1945-1946
- 2023
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This dissertation examines how Jewish and non-Jewish Polish survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden in 1945 as ‘repatriates’ and were associated with the Polish Research Institute in Lund, Sweden (PIZ) were engaged in transnational social and political processes during the early postwar period, including documenting Nazi persecution and contributing to postwar humanitarian and justice efforts. PIZ, a transnational initiative that documented the experiences of Polish survivors of Nazi persecution for history and justice in 1945 and 1946, was one of the few such initiatives undertaken by survivors who were refugees in a country not directly involved in the Second World War. It is also noteworthy as one of the few survivor historical commissions of the early postwar period that involved and documented both Jewish and non-Jewish survivors and their experiences. The dissertation examines some of the specific ways the survivors contributed to social and political processes taking place in the postwar period; what role the survivors’ vulnerability, agency, and various forms of structural support had in their activities and efforts; and what part gender and other differences played in the actions of the survivors and continue to play in their discursive and historiographical interpretations and constructions. The findings demonstrate how the Polish survivors associated with PIZ, although living in Sweden in layered states of precarity and vulnerability, deployed their past activism and networks of resistance and support, and applied their knowledge, ethics, and practical strategies to improve their conditions and pursue justice. In doing so, this dissertation contributes new insight that begins to fill gaps in existing Swedish and international research on the Second World War and Holocaust, survivor historical commissions and documentation centers, displaced persons in the postwar era, post-conflict relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles, migrant knowledge, and postwar humanitarian and justice efforts.
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