Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society - REMESO

Man in refugee camp behind the Belgrade Central Station
Abdul Saboor is an Afghan refugee and photographer based in Paris. During 2017 he was stuck in Serbia, due to the new border closure. He lived in an informal camp behind the Belgrade Central Station. There he started to take pictures with his phone and later with a donated digital camera.  Photographer: Abdul Saboor

The Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society is a meeting place for researchers who want to develop a multilevel approach to the understanding of migration, ethnicity and society. REMESO’s research synthesises economic, ecological, technological, social, and cultural dynamics to understand migration and ethnicity.

We seek to explain how migration and displacement are caused by forces such as socioeconomic inequalities, precarious livelihoods, unfair labor conditions, climate change, and armed conflict. We examine how migration processes are met and managed by local, national, international, and geopolitical regimes of inclusion and exclusion.

REMESO’s research entails the study of our contemporary landscape of borders and border practices. Our research examines the precarisation of work and citizenship, the role of race and ethnicity in healthcare, schools, and urban segregation, and the effects of climate change, wars, and eroding state sovereignty on refugee movement and consequent transformations of the asylum system. Equally important, we study how borders are transformed by the strategies and know-how of migrants who seek access to welfare and rights.

REMESO investigates how regulation of migration are intertwined with discourses of difference and structures of discrimination related to nation, race, class, gender, and sexuality. We analyse the rise of right-wing populism and racism, and explore how everyday ideas, media discourses, cultural expressions, and the arts relate to ethnicity and nationalism.

REMESO also emphasises that research should embrace multiple perspectives and experiences, not least those of migrants and racialised groups. In many of our projects, we study the voices, agency and practices of migrant organisations and social movements.

Research projects

Human migration and mobility are as old as history, and they affect every society in the world. 

They also belong to history’s most changeable phenomena, as they are often linked to political conflicts, economic inequalities, environmental change, ethnic and racial discrimination, and social unrest.

To understand migration and ethnicity, REMESO's research synthesises economic, ecological, technological, social, and cultural dynamics.

Thematic streams

The research projects are organised in five thematic streams:

  • Citizenship and Ethnic Relations
  • Globalisation and the Reconstitution of Normative and Legal Frameworks
  • Migration, Public Service and Health
  • Migration Welfare and the Political Economy of Labour Market Segmentation
  • Post-National Strategies for Development/Growth, Inclusion and Diversity

Research concept

Migration and ethnicity require a transdisciplinary outlook and unorthodox methodological approaches. This recognition underlies our common theoretical platform: a dual critical commitment. This theoretical platform accommodates a broad multiplicity of methods, from quantitative sociology and economics to aesthetic analysis and history.

 

Publications

The latest publications

2024

Gustav Lidén, Emma Holmqvist, Joel Jacobsson, Kristoffer Jutvik, Jon Nyhlén (2024) Gatekeepers of the Undesired?: A systematic review on local housing policy and the settlement of vulnerable groups Journal of Public Policy (Article in journal)
Zoran Slavnic, Olga Jubany (Editorship) (2024) MORE Project D1.1 - Policy Brief: Development of Return and Readmission Policies across Europe: Multilevel Analysis
Zoran Slavnic, Klara Oberg (2024) International Migration and Economic Informalization Critical Sociology (Article in journal) Continue to DOI
Måns Fellesson, Paula Mählck (2024) Women's self-reliance and sustainable livelihoods: implementation of the Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-Economic Development Plan (KISEDP) for refugees and the host population in Kenya Handbook on migration and development: a counter-hegemonic perspective, p. 218-232 (Chapter in book)
Branka Likic-Brboric (2024) Business-led governance of migration and development: a challenge for civil society Handbook on Migration and Development: A Counter-hegemonic Perspective, p. 367-384 (Chapter in book) Continue to DOI

Quote

REMESO has become a leading centre for research on migration and ethnicity, with a growing reputation for the quality of its research both in the Nordic context, and more broadly in Europe and internationally.
FORTE Centres of Excellence Evaluation, 2018

Seminars and conferences

Ongoing

Calendar

Cooperation and outreach

REMESO cooperates with civil society organisations, social movements, cultural institutions, businesses, and authorities on local, national and transnational levels.

These collaborations involve education and knowledge exchange as well as project development and evaluation. By collaborating in research, education, and dissemination, REMESO has built a network of affiliated researchers and experts. These networks connect us to ongoing outreach activities involving think tanks, popular publications, pod casts and public events. Exchanges with visual artists, writers and public intellectuals will continuously be a strong interest and commitment for the Institute.

Partners

Our partners include:

The Swedish Migration Agency, Regional Board Östergötland, European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, Swedish National Agency for Education, Public Health Agency of Sweden, Swedish Employment Agency, Swedish Association for Sexuality Education, Global Challenge, PGA – Peoples’ Global Action for Migration, UN High Level Political Forum on Migration, UNESCO Council's Social Science Program MOST, Ericsson, Tensta Art Center, Norrköping Art Museum and various Swedish Municipalities. 

An exhibition space

On Campus Norrköping REMESO runs since 2017 an exhibition space – LOBBY – in which contemporary artists are invited to address and confront issues linked to our research.

 

Education

REMESO offers a Bachelor’s programme in Social and Cultural Analysis and an international Master’s programme in Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Social and Cultural Analysis

The Bachelor’s programme in Social and Cultural Analysis (SKA), is an interdisciplinary undergraduate education taught mainly in Swedish with some English courses. Students gain insights into historical conditions, learn to analyse contemporary societal conditions and acquire tools to work with change for the future.

Ethnic and Migration Studies

The Master’s programme in Ethnic and Migration Studies (EMS) is a two-year campus-based programme taught in English. EMS relates ethnicity and migration to global economic and cultural change, as well as to systems of domination and movements of resistance. Students learn to analyse the causes of migration, as well as its consequences for emerging formations of race, gender, labor, citizenship, health care, welfare and culture. 

Doctoral studies

REMESO runs a doctoral programme in Ethnic and Migration Studies and an International Graduate School in Migration and Integration.

The PhD programme in Ethnic and Migration Studies gives doctoral students insight into central dimensions of Swedish and international research on ethnicity, migration and society. The courses are interdisciplinary and usually offered in English. Course work and thesis writing are thoroughly integrated throughout the programme. 

The Graduate School in Migration and Integration is jointly run by REMESO and the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Sociology and Centre on Global Migration. The school provides Swedish and international PhD students with the opportunity to participate in advanced teaching and research training in the areas of migration and integration.

PhD dissertations in process – with preliminary titles

Haqqi Bahram: Between Statelessness and Refugeehood: Kurds from Syria and the Question of Citizenship

Nicolina Ewards Öberg: Home making in times of changing migration regimes

Asher Goldstein: Indifference to Extraction

Mavis Hooi: Informal learning. Social media activism. Intersectional antiracism

Lisa Karlsson Blom: Måste vi prata om ras? Samtal om rasism och antirasistisk praktik i Sverige på 2010- och 20-talen

Rudeina Mkdad: Navigating ‘Respectability’: The Relationship to the Family Center in Sweden for ‘Racialized Parents’ from Muslim-Majority Countries
Celina Ortega Soto: Cultures of Rejection: rejection of migrants and authorities in the shadow of the corona pandemic in Sweden
Kenna Sim: Movement is Foundational: Cultures of Resistance in the Context of Climate Mobilities
Julia Willén: Futures Lost of South African Whiteness: the Writings of Nadine Gordimer 1953–1979 

 

News

Neferti Tadiar, LiU guest professor in the name of Moa Martinson, and Jonathan Beller, visiting professor at REMESO.

Learn more of the world through a unique film series

The film series Moving Worlds includes seven films that, in various ways, explore the global forces shaping today’s world – forces that drive migration, conflict, environmental destruction, but also people’s resistance to violent change.

Neferti X. M. Tadiar infront of a photo of Moa Martinson inside Norrköpings Stadsmuseum.

Moa Martinson visiting professor will get new perspectives of the world

Neferti X. M. Tadiar has one foot in New York and the other in Manila. As the visiting professor in the name of Moa Martinson, she will do research on colonialism, migration, capitalism, and environmental change from a new corner of the world.

Jonathan Josefsson och Branka Likic-Brboric at the conference GFMD.

The signs that reveal migration policies

Who has access to the meeting rooms? Who leaves when others enter? Who is talking to whom? This may reveal how the winds are blowing in migration policy at an international summit. And researchers from LiU are moving in the crowd to observe.

About REMESO

Research since 2008

Animated by the need for adequate knowledge of international migration and ethnic relations, REMESO was founded in 2008. REMESO has a Board and an International Advisory Board.

The institute was funded by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE), Linköping University and Norrköping Municipality. REMESO is today a university-wide institute and part of the Department of Culture and Society (IKOS).

Situated at Campus Norrköping, REMESO has about 30 faculty members and PhD students and collaborates with some 20 affiliated researchers.

Brochure about the institute

Broschyr om REMESO framtagen 2023. 

REMESO's 15th anniversary

REMESO talks

News letter and Blog

Contact

Organisation