Seminars are normally held on Wednesdays 13:15 - 15:00 (1-3 pm). Texts are made available by e-mail one week in advance. The open seminars are open for all.
If you are interested in participating in the working seminars or have other questions, please contact seminar coordinator Erik Berggren.
Working seminar
Thea de Gruchy, Postdoctor, African Centre for Migration & Society (ACMS), University of the Witwatersrand and Linneaus-Palme Scholar
South Africa is the only African country that acknowledges asylum rights for LGBT persons. Yet little is known about LGBT refugees in South Africa. Due to xenophobic and homo/transphobic violence they remain largely inconspicuous. This makes data a challenge.
With the WhatsApp messaging platform we collected information from 380 LGBT refugees, including age, length of time in South Africa, country of origin and self-identity. In this paper we discuss possibilities and problems of using WhatsApp as a survey with gender and sexual minorities in the Global South.
Working seminar
Matheus Lira Bento presents parts of his ongoing research project as a sociology Ph.D. candidate and guest at REMESO - an analysis of police brutality against immigrants living in the Southern region of Brazil.
Working seminar
Seminar: Amin Mosheni, Scholars at Risk; Visiting Researcher at REMESO.
Open seminar
Hans Kundnani, Associate fellow and former Europe Director, Chatham House, London.
Kundnani discuss his latest book, Eurowhiteness: Culture, Empire and Race in the European Project (Hurst, 2023). The European Union is often thought of as an expression of “cosmopolitanism” – and therefore as the opposite of nationalism. But Europe is not the world. The EU represents a particular region, geography and history and can be thought of as an expression of regionalism – that is, a kind of nationalism, but on a larger scale.
This seminar explores theories of cosmopolitan Europe vs the alternative idea of a European regionalism and if theories of nationalism can be applied to regionalism. Kundnani writes regularly for The Observer, The Guardian, The New Statesman and Foreign Affairs. The seminar is part of The Swedish Research Council’s Graduate School in Migration and Integration.
Reading: Kundnani, H. (2023), ‘“The Eurocentric fallacy”’, The Guardian, 17 August
Open Workshop
An international and interdisciplinary workshop on empire, colonialism, decolonization, and global inequalities; and their place in social theory.
International speakers include:
Syed Farid Alatas, Singapore;Manuela Boatca, Freiburg; Chen Hon-Fai, Hong Kong; Satish Deshpande, New Delhi; Laura Doyle, Massachussetts; Faisal Garba Muhammed, Capte Town; Julian Go, Chicago; Nacira Guénif, Paris; Ann Phoenix, London; Marcelo Rosa, Rio de Janeiro; Neferti X. Tadiar, New York.
More information about the workshop.
Open seminar (registration is required)
Ola Larsmo, Moa Martinsson professor at the department of Culture and Society 2023–2024
How can novels be used to discover unexpected aspects of history? How can we prevent the falsification of history? These issues are in focus for Ola Larsmo, appointed to the Moa Martinson professorship at Linköping University. Welcome to his inaugural lecture followed by a reception. The lecture is given in English.
Working seminar
Lisa Karlsson Blom, PhD candidate, REMESO. Final seminar.
Lisa presents her PhD project on anti racist practices in Sweden during the last decade.
(Note: seminar is held in Swedish.)
Open seminar
Anna Bredström, Associate prof., REMESO and Shai Mulinari, Associate prof., Lund University.
Through interviews with experts in clinical drug testing in Sweden, with a focus on the use of racial categories in trials, this paper explores an ambivalence among the participating experts. On the one hand, they saw race as a politically charged concept, preferably to be avoided. On the other hand, it was still considered medically relevant for determining biological differences between individuals as well as groups.
Open seminar
Irene Molina, Professor at the Department of Human Geography, Uppsala University.
Irene specializes in research about the city as a place of social power relations with a focus on race, discrimination, class, gender and intersectionality.
Combining theories of racialization and racial capitalism, on one side, with the two political fields of Migration and Housing policies, on the other, this lecture sheds light on the processes of racialized segregation in the Swedish cities. We will analyse past regimes of the racialized segregation-migration nexus, look at the current landscape after "Tidö-avtalet" with its exacerbated racial regime and fortification of nation-state borders. We will however also ask about resistance and hope, by looking at ongoing struggles for a just city.
Working seminar
Sabina Tica, guest PhD cand, Dep. of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo.
In Norway, as well as in other western societies, policies have been implemented to increase diversity in the cultural field. However, few contributions have shed light on how artists whose bodies are viewed as contributing to ‘diversity’ experience the quest for diversification. In this paper, I utilize interviews with 34 Norwegian artists who are visible minorities and explore how they narrate stories of stability and change within the field.
Seminar and book launch. What could a long-term, progressive, and anti-racist cultural policy be in Sweden today, in a situation where conservative, xenophobic, and anti-intellectual forces are gaining political influence? Short interventions by Gustav Strandberg, Kim West, and Josefine Wikström, Södertörn University; and Madina Tlostanova and Stefan Jonsson, Linköping University.
Panel discussions with colleagues, board members, alumni, and affiliates.
Max Jerneck, Affiliated researcher , PhD, Stockholm School of Economics. Jerneck discussed the dominant paradigm underpinning the discussion of the “costs” of immigration. Most parties have accepted the idea that because immigrants, as a group, have a relatively high level of unemployment and get more from the welfare state than what they pay in taxes, they make up a an economic burden. However, Jerneck argues, through the lens of “functional finance” and a critical look at the dominating discourses, that immigrants contribution through taxes to the state budget is of little relevance for the Swedish economy.
Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, professor of political aesthetics, University of Copenhagen.Where and what is fascism today? What if it can’t be confined to political parties or ultranationalist politicians but has become something much more diffuse that is spread across our societies as cultural expressions and psychological states? Professor Bolt Rasmussen discussed his recent book Late Capitalist Fascism (Polity) and work in progress.
Ahmed Kaharevic, PhD candidate; Helena Iacobaeus, PhD candidate; Mariana Gustafsson, Lecturer and Associate Professor, Division of Political Science, Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University.
This article answers to the call for more critical perspectives on digital citizenship. Inspired by Isin and Ruppert’s (2020) conceptualization, Laclau & Mouffe’s (1985) discourse theory, and Schou and Hjelholt’s (2017) citizenship framing in the Danish context, we identify and unpack imagined digital citizenship in the Swedish (digital) welfare state. The data consists of the Swedish national digitalization strategy, the Swedish Library Act, and interviews with library staff.
Edda Manga, Researcher, Mångkulturellt centrum and Mattias Gardell, professor, CEMFOR, Uppsala University. Edda Manga and Mattias Gardell presented their new book which examines the question on how to “measure” racism, from a set of theoretical and historical perspectives. They also offer a practical suggestion for how to measure the effects of racism for different groups: the so called: Balingsholmsmodellen.
Aliaksei Kazlou, Assistant Professor, Department of Management and Engineering, Linköping University.
Aliaksei Kazlou presented an article co authored with Lin Lerpold and Örjan Sjöberg, Center for Sustainability Research and Department of Marketing and Strategy, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm.
The attitude of trade unions towards migration and migrants, be it of asylum seekers or those in search of jobs and better incomes, differs quite substantially across European countries. In this investigation the authors use sentiment analysis to assess whether there are any changes, such as structural breaks or polarisation, to be discerned in the opinion of the representatives of thirteen blue-collar trade unions and their national confederation. At its most general, the trend appears to turn more negative over time, yet the influence of defining events and legal changes is not so easily discerned, therefore closer studies was undertaken the union representing workers in the industry with the largest proportion of immigrant labour, the Hotel and Restaurant Workers’ Union.
Mauricio Rogat, postdoc, REMESO. Recent post-pandemic recovery plans in the EU and the UK, involving considerable investments in digital infrastructures, evoke questions about potential reconfigurations of sovereignty and the boundaries of imagined communities. This presentation will elaborate on the relationship between the expanding digital infrastructures, bordering practices and the social fabric of the everyday.
Book presentation by visiting professors Gurminder Bhambra, University of Sussex, and John Holmwood, University of Nottingham. Commentary by REMESO professors Peo Hansen and Claudia Tazreiter. Moderator: Stefan Jonsson.
James R. Walker, PhD, ADN, Honors Program, DePaul University, Chicago.
The seminar discussed Walker's essay, "COVID-19 and Dreams of a Radical Re-visioning of Global Health Engagement," and it´s suggestion to re-vision our engagement with global health inequity through the work of Black Radicals C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, Paul Gilroy, and Christina Sharpe.
Discussion on Loïc Wacquant’s article “Resolving the Trouble with ’Race’” (2022), which suggests a new notion of ethnicity and race and problematizes the idea of structural racism. Introductory comments by Anna Bredström and Anders Neergaard.
Danielle Drozdzewski, Dep. of Human Geography, Stockholm University. Danielle Drozdzewski talked about her reccent book, co-authored with Shanti Sumartojo and Emma Waterton, and the suggestion that the digital constitutes opportunities to influence how we remember. She will moreover introduce a new epistemology of memory, which tackles the complexity of geographies of commemoration. Integral to her approach has been an embodied and mindful cognisance of positions within/on memory research (including about Anzac).
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, professor emeritus, REMESO, presented his new book, co-authored with Martin Bak Jörgensen (Brill 2022). Commentary by Stefan Jonsson, REMESO.
Duygu Hatipoglu Aydin, REMESO guest researcher, Associate Professor at Hacettepe University, Faculty of Law, Ankara.
Oncemore Mbeve is a Doctoral Candidate at Wits University, African Centre for Migration and Society (ACMS) and a visiting Doctoral Candidate at REMESO, LiU. Comments from Anna Bredström, Associate Professor, REMESO.
Annika Lindberg, School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg. Guest seminar with REMESO International Graduate School.
Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, Dep. of Arts and Cultural Studies, Copenhagen University. Rasmussen will give a presentation based on his new book Late Capitalist Fascism, (Polity Press, 2021)
