Seminars and activities at REMESO

Calendar

REMESO seminarier

Previous activitities

Road.

Film meets research: Moving Worlds

Moa Martinson Professor, Neferti X. M. Tadiar, and film and media scholar Jonathan Beller presents eight films about migration, racism, discrimination, and diversity - free of charge at CNEMA, Norrköping.

Legal status, temporality and integration, international conference, 3-5 september 2024

The conference, titled "Legal Status, Temporality, and Integration - Changing Migration Regimes and Precarization of Citizenship," is being organized by REMESO, Linköpings University (LiU), in collaboration with The Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration (CERC) at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Speakers:

  • Zoran Slavnic, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Simone Baglioni, University of Parma, Italy
  • Katie Kuschminder, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • Mathias Ericson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Sarah Philipson Isaac, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Xolani Tsabalala, REMESO, Linköpings University, Sweden
  • Karin Krifors, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Manuela Bojadzijev, Humbolt University, Berlin, Germany
  • Maja Sager, Lund University, Sweden
  • Bernd Kasparek, Humbolt University Berlin, Germany
  • Jukka Könönen, University of Helsinki, Finland
  • Laavanya Kathiravelu, University of Oslo, Norway
  • Kristoffer Jutvik, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Irena Molina, Uppsala University, Sweden
  • Karin Borevi, Södertörn University, Sweden
  • Sofi Jansson-Kheshavarz, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Martin Grander, Malmö University, Sweden
  • Branka Likic-Brboric REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Irina Isaakyan, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
  • Anna Triandafyllidou, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
  • Asher Goldstein, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Marshia Akhbar, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
  • Melissa Kelly, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
  • Shiva Mohan, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
  • Claudia Tazreiter, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden

Anti-Colonial Scholarship and Global Social Theory, an Interdisciplinary Workshop, 4-6 oktober 2023

A interdisciplinary workshop on how anticolonial and decolonial ideas will help redefine Global Social Theory going forward.

Speakers:

  • Syed Farid Alatas, Singapore National University
  • Satish Deshpande, University of Delhi, India
  • Chen Hon-Fai, Lingnan University Hong Kong
  • Julian Go, University of Chicago, USA
  • Marcelo Rosa, Federal U Brasilia, Brazil
  • Neferti X. Tadiar, Barnard College, Columbia University, USA
  • Laura Doyle, University of Massachussetts, USA
  • Manuela Boatca, Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg, Germany
  • Faisal Garba Muhammed, University of Cape Town; Africa Institute, Sharjah, South Africa
  • Ann Phoenix, University College London, Great Britain
  • Ali Meghji, University of Cambridge, Great Britain
  • Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, University of Paris X, Vincennes, France
  • Madina Tlostanova, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Keti Chukhrov, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Aleksandra Ålund, Linköping University, Swedan
  • Anna Bredström, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Ulrika Dahl, Uppsala University, Sweden
  • Maria Eriksson Baaz, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Peo Hansen, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Stefan Helgesson, Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Seema Arora Jonsson, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden
  • Shahram Khosravi, Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Christina Kullberg, Uppsala University, Sweden
  • Patricia Lorenzoni, Uppsala University, Sweden,
  • Edda Manga, Mångkultuellt centrum, Botkyrka, Sweden
  • Diana Mulinari, Lund University, Sweden
  • Anders Neergaard, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Paulina de los Reyes, Stockholm University
  • Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Ted Svensson, Lund University, Sweden
  • Claudia Tazreiter, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Håkan Thörn, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Ambivalent Solidarities? Migrant Labour and Trade Unions in South Africa, USA and Sweden, Seminar, 16 February 2021

Speakers:

  • Janet Munakamwe
  • Els de Graauw
  • Shannon Gleeson
  • Anders Neergaard

Commentory:

  • Bridget Anderson
  • Ronaldo Munck

Moderator:

  • Carl-Ulrik Schierup

Unionizing the precarized, syndicalism and the contemporary working class - panel discussion 25 November 2020

Speakers:

  • Eli Adekur
  • Marissa Begonia
  • Daria Bogdanska
  • Franck Iyanga Makelo

Moderator:

  • Asher Goldstein

Doors closing, Social Polarization and the Rise of Cultures of Rejections across Europe, Panel discussion 2019

A panel discussion on the ways we live, work, fear, hate and dream in contemporary Europe – with some of the foremost thinkers in the area of right-wing politics, populism, nationalism and racism.

Keynote speakers

  • Manuela Bojadzijev, Humboldt University/Leuphania University, Germany
  • Sanja M. Bojanic, University of Rijeka, Croatia
  • Éric Fassin, University of Paris 8–Saint-Denis, France
  • Michael Keith, University of Oxford, Great Britain
  • Gazela Pudar Drasko, University of Belgrade, Serbia
  • Birgit Sauer, University of Vienna, Austria
  • Moderator: Stefan Jonsson, professor at the Institute for research on migration, ethnicity and society (REMESO) at Linköping University, Sweden

Migration and Race in the Era of Authoritarianism, Conference 2018

19th Nordic Migration Research Conference.

Migration researchers usually devote themselves to the study of human mobility across political and cultural borders. Today, however, they are increasingly compelled to reconsider the question of stasis, or immobility. Just as it is true that greater numbers of people than ever may be described as migrants and/or as displaced persons, it is equally true that an ever greater part of these migrants find themselves in situations of prohibited movement, be it in the form of detention camps, border controls, EU hot spots, eroding asylum rights, territorial bondage, or racialized privileges and barriers that block mobility.

Territorial bounds and sedentary life forms always constituted the unspoken norm in research on international migration and ethnic relations. Today’s multiplication of instruments and policies that prevent people from moving should prompt migration research to rethink the discipline’s theoretical and methodological frameworks and invent new ways of understanding why the ‘age of migration’ also appears to be an era of emerging authoritarianism and immobility.

Keynote speakers

  • Etienne Balibar, Professor of philosophy, Columbia University, New York, USA
  • Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Professor, Department of Anthropology, Oslo, Norway
  • Tanya Maria Golash-Boza, Professor, Sociology, University of California, Merced, USA

With funding from the Swedish Research Council; Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare and Linköping University.

New Urban Justice Movements, Workshop, 2014

The workshop brought together researchers, civil society activists from Sweden and the United States, representatives of Swedish independent think-tanks and public institutions in a dialogue on the role of civil society relating to urban development, migration, democracy, labour rights and human rights.

Presentations by

  • Monami Maulik, DRUM and Rafael Samanez, Vamos Unidos, New York, USA
  • RamiAl-Khamisi, Megafonen, Stockholm, Sweden
  • Majsa Allelin, Pantrarna, Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Moderator: Aleksandra Ålund, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden

Panel participants:

  • Karen Austin, Project leader, The Swedish national Board for Youth Affairs, Sweden
  • Leo Mulinari, researcher, Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Elisabet Nihlfors, Dean Educational Science, Uppsala University, UNESCO/MOST Committee, Sweden
  • Veronica Nordlund, Project coordinator Global Utmaning, Sweden.
  • Moderator: Carl Ulrik Schierup, REMESO, Linköpings University, Sweden

Organised by Swedish UNESCO/MOST Committee in collaboration with Commitee for Stockholm research, REMESO, Linköping University, Swedish National Board for Youth Affairs and Global Challenge.

Austere Histories, Social exclusion and the Erasure of Colonial Memories in European Societies, Internationellt Symposium, 2013

European societies have recently turned toward more austere political regimes. Evidence of this can be seen in budget cuts, management of the labor market and restrictions of welfare systems, as well as in new regimes of migration and citizenship.

In the wake of these changes new forms of social inclusion and exclusion appear that are justified through a reactivation of differences of race,class and gender, all this serving, in its turn, to justify new forms of labor extraction and the formation of a new underclass or “precariat”. Another consequence is that democracy itself has become precarious. While the agents and adherents of austerity programs impose themselves as democracy’s saviors, practitioners of democracy find themselves pushed toward the extra-parliamentary margins.

This symposium investigated how a current politics of austerity affects our cultural memory.Are we witnessing a turn toward austerity in theories and practices of historiography, as well as in pedagogies of history? Can we speak of an austere historiography, an enforcement of conformity on Europe past and present?

If this is the case, it helps explain that certain narratives of the European past are now privileged whereas other parts of the cultural heritage are weeded out. Strong tendencies and interests are apparently at work to purge the histories of specific European nations, but also those of Europe, the West, and globalisation from cultural plurality. In their stead, assertively heroic and homogeneous stories about the past of nations, regions, institutions and religions are being retold, reinvented, and re-launched. In brief, history (including public debate on history and history education) is again becoming either “nationalistic” or “cosmopolitan” – but cosmopolitan in a way that tend to celebrate the achievements of Europe and posit the West as a model of universality, humanism and perhaps also of the human as such.

Among the sacrifices of this tendency are multiculturalism, postcolonial memories, and minority discourses of all kinds. What is lost is the very complexity and contradictoriness of Europe and the West. Especially, colonial and postcolonial memories are evicted from their recently claimed habitats in the European past, and again placed at the outskirts, far beyond the limit of the Western world.

The symposium seeked to extract the correlation between how minorities, migrants and their descendants are treated by present policies and how memories and experiences of migrants,minorities and colonised peoples are treated in historiography and historical pedagogy. By bringing together a group of distinguished European scholars who have examined Europe’s colonial past in relation to migration, historiography and cultural heritage, the symposium elucidated how new regimes of historiography and memory culture relate to integration, discrimination, and social segmentation in the present.

Outputs
Read about the volume edited by Stefan Jonsson and Julia Willén that was produced as a result of the symposium at Rouledge.

Speakers

  • Nicolas Bancel, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland
  • Gurminder K Bhambra, The University of Warwick, Great Britain
  • Manuela Boatca, Freie Universität, Germany
  • Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, Université de Paris X, France
  • Peo Hansen, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Lars Jensen, Roskilde University, Denmark
  • Nicola Labanca, Università degli Studi di Siena, Italy
  • Esther Captain, National Committee for the Remembrance of WWII, Netherlands
  • Robbie Shilliam, Queen Mary, University of London, Great Britain
  • Kuratorisk Aktion (Tone Olaf Nielsen & Frederikke Hansen), Copenhagen

Commentators, Panelists and Chairs:

  • David Gaunt, Södertörn University, Sweden
  • Stefan Helgesson, Stockholm University, Sweden
  • Stefan Jonsson, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Carsten Juhl, The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Denmark
  • Mikela Lundahl, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
  • Edda Manga, Uppsala University, Sweden
  • Anders Neergaard, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Carl-Ulrik Schierup, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Anders Stephansson, Columbia University, USA
  • Maria Stern, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
  • Julia Willén, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Charles Woolfson, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden
  • Aleksandra Ålund, REMESO, Linköping University, Sweden

Organised by Stefan Jonsson, Professor, REMESO, Linköping University.

Labour Rights as Human Rights? UNESCO-MOST Conference, 2012

Migration, Labour Market Restructuring and the Role of Civil Society in Global Governance

Recent decades have seen remoulded or new transnational migration systems across the globe. Inter- and intra-regional migration have been propelled by major political and economic changes in Eastern Europe, massive growth of industrial and service economies such as China and India and increasing conflict- and climate driven refugee movements. This is accompanied by an unprecedented mobility of capital, restructuring of economies and flexibilisation of labour markets. Hence, the new political economy of migration is linked to informalisation and precarisation of work with re-enforced ethnic, racial and gender segmentations, as well as deteriorating social rights.

On this background major international organisations have seeked to establish global normative frameworks for human and labour rights and fair rules for cross-border movement. Among them is the UN initiative for ‘fair globalization’. Another is the ILO’s ‘decent work agenda’. In addition, a range of civil society movements are engaged in redefining issues of migration and global governance in the nexus of human rights, social rights and labour rights.

This global scenario of structural change was the context for the 'Labour Rights as Human Rights?' conference in Norrköping, Sweden.

Keynote speakers

  • Stephen Castles, University of Sydney, Australia
  • Saskia Sassen, Columbia University, USA
  • Guy Standing, University of Bath, Great Britain
  • Ronaldo Munck, Dublin City University, Ireland
  • Raul Delgado Wise, University of Zacatecas, INMD, UNESCO, Mexico

Organised by REMESO (Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity, and Society) at Linköping University in collaboration with the INMD (International Network for Migration and Development), under the auspices of UNESCO-MOST and with financial support from The Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS) and the Swedish Research Council (VR).

Paradoxes of Liberalism and the Conundrum of Solidarity, International workshop, 2011

The background to the workshop is a growing realization that liberal democracies today harbour a set of contradictory aspirations: Ideas about multiculturalism and tolerance are pushed back in favor of nationalistic ideas about liberal core values, security and a tougher immigration policy, across Europe. A driving force is a political alliance between a neoliberalagenda for de-regulation and growth, and neo-conservative tendencies towards morality, family values and national traditions. In light of an erosion of civil, political, social and cultural rights of citizens, these trends raise questions about the conditions for social and political solidarity.

REMESO gathered a group of distinguished scholars to discuss these issues.

Panel discussions

Solidarity and Difference: New Identities in Contemporary Societies
Ellie Vasta, Associate Professor of Social Inclusion, Macquarie University, Sydney
Discussant: Diana Mulinari, Professor in Gender Studies, Lunds University

The Ideology of Universalism and the Dangerous Classes
Stefan Jonsson, Professor, REMESO, Linköping University
Discussant: Martin Peterson, Professor Emeritus, Gothenburg

Solidarity and Ethno-Nationalism in Post-Communism: the Case of Serbia
Dusan Janjic, Associate Professor, The Institute of Social Sciences, Belgrade
Discussant: Branka Likic-Brboric, Lecturer, REMESO and Fellow, Uppsala University

Solidarity and Ethno-Nationalism in Post-Communism: the Case of the Baltic States
Charles Woolfson, Professor, and Indre Genelyte, PhD, REMESO, Linköping University
Discussant: Tünde Puskás, PhD, Researcher at REMESO, Linköping University

Lobby

A project and an exhibition area that deals with the meeting between knowledge and art.

This is an exhibition space set up at Kåken hus on Norrköping Campus, to communicate, confront and contextualize research on Campus. The project is run by Erik Berggren and receives financial support from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond and the research council FORMAS.

Contact person: Erik Berggren

Previous exhibitions

Place in Europe - Cecilia Parsberg, Erik Pauser, Haval Murad och David Marinez Escobar, September - October 2020

 

A Place in Europe - Cecilia Parsberg, Erik Pauser, Haval Murad and David Martinez Escobar
The artwork will be shown on Bredgatan between Täppan and Kåkenhus in Norrköping from 19 September, during the Culture Week and throughout October.

The artists Cecilia Parsberg and Erik Pauser, together with the architects Haval Murad and David Martinez Escobar, have created a sculptural installation that reflects cracks in society. The film sculpture Huset started its journey at Odenplan to continue in other public places in different cities in Sweden. The sculpture has the shape of a house that has turned over and looks like it is sinking. The short film 'A place in Europe' is shown on the underside of the sculpture. The film tells about a hidden place in a big city that has become a home for job-seeking migrants who have fallen between the cracks in Europe´s free movement. The narrator is Thomas, who for three years has sleeped in this place, with rats under a loading dock. Now he's about to be evicted. He represents those who want to do right by themselves: work, support their family, live a dignified life. Modern poverty force many to become nomads in European cities. Läs More information on A Place in Europe

In Custody - Maria Backman och Hanna Sjöberg, March - October 2020

 

An overgrown concrete structure, in the middle of the forest.

During World War II, neutral Sweden served as an uncertain waiting room for nearly two hundred thousand refugees from the war in Europe. The country was surrounded by warring countries and the Swedish government tried to maintain a balance act, in order to stay out of the war. It was relatively rare that people who had fled to Sweden were deported. The refugee camps indicated two things, on the one hand the right to asylum, which already existed through the 1937 Aliens Act and which was actually upheld and on the other hand, on the state's nervousness towards the refugees. It was about giving protection to those who came but also to protect against the risks to the security of the kingdom.

In this wobbly situation, a space was opened up for both a positive reception but also suspicion. In addition, there were German-friendly actors within the Swedish police and the military. It was this reality that the refugee was2ere the foreign met the local - the traces of these events lie in people's memories, in the archives and in the actual places of these camps. This is part of our Swedish history, a contemporary cultural heritage that can be read in several ways. The traces of the camps in the landscape are also traces of the authorities’ attempts to control people they did not trust in an uncertain time. The project In Custody is two artists' exploratory meeting with these sites. The traces are mostly gone but we know that something has happened where there are now seventy-year-old, logging mature pines and firs.

Waiting, installment No II, Mahmoud Dayoub och Diana Jabi, October 2019 - February 2020 

A new exhibition with two Syrian artists. Mahmoud Dayoub and Diana Jabi. They have fled the war in Syria and ended up in different parts of the world, yet their migrant journeys are not over. This is reflected in their art. The works we show continues the investigation of the theme, and existential condition, of waiting, that more and more people are forced to deal with today. The first exhibition on this theme was the drawings by Syrian artist Muhammad Ali - I am just a number. Now we continue to inerrogate with this artists what it means for the subject to be robbed of that essential aspect of the self, the control and ownership and negotiation with one´s time.

Me and The Train - Mahmoud Dayoub, Ink on Paper/2015

Mahmoud Dayoub (Moved to Sharjah, UAE) obtained a B.A in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Damascus University, in 2005. He has exhibited his work in the Netherlands, Sweden, France and other countries around the world. He is a multidisciplinary artist with a special focus on humanity and his approach to art-making spans across video, installations, painting, and drawing.

Diana Jabi - March 15, 2011, Ongoing work Crochet/2011

Diana Jabi ( moved to Romania for an unclear period)
She obtained a B.A in Engraving and Graphic Arts from the Fine Art Faculty in Damascus in 2004. In 2012, she gained an MA in Produccións Artistiques i Recerca from the facultat de Belles Arts, universitat de Barcelona (UB). She has exhibited her work in different countries around the world as Barcelona, France, Sweden, Italy, Finland and others.

I am just a number, Abir Boukhari och Muhammad Ali, February - Augusti 2019

During the Spring 2019 Lobby will show two exhibitions that address waiting. Waiting that war entails and the waiting which the asylumprocess forces upon people. This is the result of a collaboration with the curator Abir Boukhari, who came to Sweden from Damaskus, Syria in 2015.

The first exhibition - ”I am Just a Number”- shows drawings by Muhammad Ali. It is an attempt to grapple with the number that was written on his arm upon arrival on Samos on his way to Sweden. This number can seem like a ticket to a queue and thus as representing a kind of order after the chaos of war. But it is just as much a symbol of the disorder of the asylum process in Europe for those that are forced to endure it.

The Last Day, Behnam Sadighi, May - October 2018

Behnam Sadighi 2010-2017 (work in progress) 80X100 cm - C-print - Unframed

This ongoing series looks at the immigration of Iranian youths to distant countries, aspiring to find a better situation and lead a successful life.
They leave their own country, not to experience new things, but as a form of evacuation, like those who are flood-stricken and forced to seek refuge in a foreign land. This is a daily experience, visiting young students who are trying desperately to leave their country; some wishing to pursue their educational goals and others seeking permanent residency abroad. This project presents their last portraits, taken before theyleave their motherland, as a memory for them to hold, of a land that they may never see again.

This exhibition has been curated by Erik Berggren and produced together with a fantastic group of students from the Program of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Thanks to Esther, Samina, Joachim, Mischa, Gabriella, Chrissy, Mansi. Also thanks to Glenn Dahlberg at LiU-service for all your help.

Movements - on migration and solidarity, 3 November 2017 - 14 April 2018

This is an exhibition about movements. The movements of refugees, thats is a starting point, but here the focus lies on movements of engagement, knowledge and solidarity.

The photos taken by Renzo Arcuri, Celina Ortega Soto and Nedžad Mešić, exist because of their physical movement and their solidarity with refugees in camps in Greece. Nedzads photos also captures the formation of a movement, an embryo to a union organisation among informal migrant workers in Northern Sweden - berry pickers.

Foto: Renzo Arcuri