Abstract: Color that matters : a comparative approach to mixed race identity and Nordic exceptionalism

Abstract: This article uses the case of Denmark to critically discuss key assumptions in the theoretical literature on dual citizenship. When Denmark surprisingly accepted dual citizenship in 2015, the decision reflected two distinct lines of argument: first, accepting dual citizenship would allow Danes living abroad to keep their Danish citizenship; second, because it is considered illegitimate to make people stateless, allowing dual citizenship would simultaneously allow for citizenship revocation of dual citizens who engage in or support acts of terror. This rationale stands in striking contrast to how dual citizenship has been previously theorised. The gradual acceptance of dual citizenship in Western countries since the early 1990s has been seen either as a symptom of a post-national era or as a pragmatic adjustment to the transnational realities of international migration. By contrast, the case of Denmark shows that dual citizenship may serve as a lever to protect the political community of the nation-state from terrorism and, as such, function as a tool of securitisation.

Abstract: From 2002 to 2018, Denmark was the only country in the world to enforce a migration law demanding that couples seeking family reunification in Denmark documented their combined “attachment” to the Danish nation. This article investigates the practice of documenting such national attachment through the so-called “application packets”. Investigating the attachment requirement as a migration political tool with affective investments and implications, we suggest that the documentation process can be understood as a performative process in which the application packets lay out a trajectory of “happy objects” (Ahmed 2010): the application, family reunifi cation, a residence permit and ultimately the nation itself. Although the applicants are urged to orient themselves towards the Danish nation as a happy object with the promise of a possible future in Denmark, this promise may have cruel implications for the applicants. Suggesting that an interdisciplinary meeting point between the fields of migration studies and cultural/discursive studies may form as fruitful, this article invites readers to think about the biopolitics of border control in affective terms

Abstract: In recent years, Sweden has been one of the largest receiving countries of unaccompanied minors, compared to other EU member states. Recent studies have increasingly stressed the strength, resilience and agency of unaccompanied minors, despite the traumatic experiences and challenges they face. In this article, we study unaccompanied minors in the Swedish education system and the labour market using register-based data covering the period 2003–2014. We compare this group with accompanied minors and persons of the same age born in Sweden to investigate the mechanisms that facilitate and/or hinder their labour market well-being. We find that unaccompanied minors have problems in completing secondary school but do well in the labour market with regard to finding employment. Our results draw attention to the multifaceted processes that facilitate and/or hinder their labour market well-being.

Abstract: Abstract European labour markets have become increasingly accessible to foreign workers because of increased global migration and the implementation of international labour mobility agreements. Yet, skilled immigrants have lower occupational attainment. The regulated occupations, however, are more inclusive of immigrants than unregulated occupations. This article investigates immigrants’ likelihood of gaining access to licensed occupations in Norway, as well as how this varies between regions of origin and between immigrants with a foreign or domestic degree to determine whether employment outcomes are due to different impacts of regulatory frameworks. The empirical investigation uses administrative register data that cover the years 2003–2012. The results show that there are no significant differences between the immigrant groups with a domestic degree, while the results for immigrants with foreign degrees signal that without international agreements on mutual recognition of education credentials, those who are educated for a licensed profession are somewhat restricted in performing it.

Abstract: In the early 2010s, transnational surrogacy was a hotly debated topic in Norway following Norwegian citizens’ repro-migration. One of the oft-repeated policy proposals in the debate was to criminalise transnational surrogacy in the same fashion as the purchase of sex. However, instead of introducing a prohibition, the Parliament, in 2013, voted in favour of an addition to the Biotechnology Act, clarifying that private individuals could not be punished for participating in surrogacy abroad. Of concern to me in this paper is how transnational surrogacy came to be handled in a manner that facilitated, rather than stopped, this type of repro-migration. I examine the legislative process that led to the current regulation of transnational surrogacy, with particular attention to the affective biopolitics of repro-migration. I find that reproductive vulnerability and desire circulated in the debate, which finally resulted in an exemption of the Norwegian repro-migrants from punishment.

Abstract: Based on 41 semi-structured interviews with young Latvians and Romanians in Malmo, Sweden, this article explores why Europeans from new European Union (EU) member states want to move to, and stay i ...

Abstract: Through a close reading of media reporting from 2017 to 2018 on the case of the Chinese girl Liu Yiming, who was fi rst denied then granted residency in Denmark due to public pressure, this article analyses how regulation of family reunifi cation involving children is negotiated in the Danish public imaginary in the context of strong anti-immigration sentiments. This imaginary projects the white Danish public as eager to love Yiming and as aff ectively invested in reversing the injustice done to her and her family. The article suggests, however, that the outpouring of white love, which functions as an aff ective intervention imbued with the promises of reversing Yiming’s deportation, is deeply embedded in exceptionalist notions of the ‘integrated’ migrant and that it works to restore an idealised image of a Danish nation defi ned by ‘human decency’ as a core value. Thus, the analysis raises critical questions to the politics of white love and its promise of securing social change for the ‘integrated’ migrant through collective acts of white feeling.

Abstract: Based on two ethnographic studies on the experiences of high-skilled migrants in Denmark, we argue that it is problematic to presume a simple correlation between ‘deskilling’ and what is often regarded as low-status jobs. We claim that many of these migrants are, albeit discreetly, actively gaining new skills and knowledge through low-status jobs not related to their qualifications and/or utilising their existing knowledge and skills in their everyday lives. We approach skills as a social construct that differs according to context and under particular historical circumstances, not merely as a neutral, measurable and easily transferable human capital. The article offers critical analysis of simultaneous processes of skilling– deskilling–reskilling–upskilling linked to migration and generates new insights into debates on highly educated migrants in a Nordic context.

Abstract: Abstract This article focuses on the process through which intergenerational ambivalence is experienced by a group of adult children and their parents with an Iranian refugee background living in Finland. This ethnographic study provides an insight into how the families’ struggles to mobilize capital in different forms can contribute to their experience of intergenerational ambivalence. The study indicates that when the parents’ social, economic and cultural capitals accumulated prior to migration are not accessible or valuable in Finland, they become dependent on their children’s conduct. This produces a contradictory demand on the participants’ roles as parents and children, where they face difficulties in navigating their role expectations. The families in this study expressed a significant ambivalence in their intergenerational relationships associated with these stressful conditions.

Abstract: This introductory paper, reflecting the rubric of the special issue, brings together two themes that have recently become prominent in migration research: a focus on youth mobilities, and a concern to analyse the process and outcomes of migration through a well-being lens. The five papers that follow approach this intersection in a variety of European contexts and from a plurality of theoretical, methodological and thematic angles. The special issue is a product of the Horizon 2020 YMOBILITY research project on ‘New European Youth Mobilities’, which ran from 2015 to 2018, and most of the papers were first presented at a dedicated session on Youth Mobility and Well-being at the IMISCOE Annual Conference in Rotterdam, 28–30 June 2017.1 The purpose of this editors’ introduction is to ‘map the fields’, which we do by organising our presentation in the following way. In the next section, we open up a discussion on the nature and diversity of youth mobility, looking, in particular, at the way in which young people’s international mobility interfaces with their youth transitions to ‘adulthood’. Then, we review the well-being approach to migration and mobility, with special reference to youth mobilities. The final section of the paper summarises key findings from the five papers that follow.

Abstract: Based on fieldwork among Kurds in Norway, this article explores how participants described the presence of female genital cutting (FGC) in Kurdistan as a difficult topic to address in public. Perceptions of how FGC should be addressed ranged from acknowledging and directly confronting it to silencing and rejecting it as a Kurdish practice. The participants associated FGC with a “traditional mindset” and perceptions of female sexuality that did not readily fit into new ideologies of women’s liberation. Based on literature on how to manage a “difficult” characteristic in national identity construction, we argue that the participants’ negotiation of “modern” and “traditional” aspects of national identity is one strategy for dealing with FGC. FGC has the potential for spoiled national identity. However, we find reason to suggest that a condemnation of the practice based on women’s liberation may strengthen the aspects of Kurdish national aspirations that are grounded in human rights and gender equality.

Abstract: This article explores the experiences of queer children who have sought asylum alone in Norway, focussing on hope, fear and despair. The children who are denied asylum relate an experience of standing at the brink of death, while those who are granted asylum describe how the queer life they have hoped for is postponed by the settlement and integration system, where they live in isolation and in risk of violence and bullying. We analyse these experiences in light of decolonial theory in which the conditions of war and proximity to death are extended into the childrens’ lives under the custodianship of the Norwegian state. Drawing on queer theory, the wager is life as these children have known it. The potential is living beyond the coloniality of Being, in relationships and communities that provide the possibility of a meaningful life.

Abstract: This article argues that authorisation and moral evaluation are the dominant legitimation strategies used in asylum decisions by the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri). After the migration events of 2015, the percentage of accepted asylum claims dropped dramatically in Finland, causing concern about the legal rights of asylum seekers. Drawing on theoretical literature concerning asylum decisions, borders and language, this article is based on a systematic analysis of 77 asylum decisions. It aims to answer the following questions: What strategies of legitimation does Migri use to support their negative asylum decisions? How are these strategies used? The study reports that the reasons behind negative asylum decisions are often not openly provided. Instead, the decisions largely rely on authorisation and implicit moral evaluation; the decision is so ‘because Migri says so’. This lack of transparency has adverse consequences for the due process of asylum seekers, and these consequences can be life changing.

Abstract: Abstract Bringing together theories of media and policy frames of Norwegian Muslims as governance instruments, this article performs a microanalysis of the Norwegian 2015 de-radicalisation seminar Together against Radicalisation and Extremism as an instance of governance of religious diversity. The seminar was organised by an interfaith forum based in the conservatively Christian ‘Bible Belt’ of southern Norway and directed at local high school students who attended the seminar as part of their compulsory curricula. Analysing how Islam came to constitute a focal point to which the public presenters frequently related, this study explores how media and policy frames impact cultural encounters at the civic society level and points to how the seminar’s subtle workings reproduce significant religious, ethnic and cultural demarcations that stand in opposition to the seminar’s minority-inclusive objectives.

Abstract: Belonging to religious communities is of great importance for many migrants coming to Europe. This article focusses on one such community, a Lutheran Ethiopian/Eritrean Mekane Yesus association in Stockholm, and its relations with the Church of Sweden. The article discusses identity formation and belonging in a situation of living in the diaspora, as well as analysing the processes of integration that involve diversity work. This example shows how global power hierarchies in church relations are played out in the local arena - power relations that signal, but also sometimes challenge, a post-colonial order. Furthermore, an identity like Lutheran is highly contextual, as the article shows. While the role of Lutheran churches in the Nordic context is understudied when it comes to migration, this article – and the study it builds on – contributes to a deeper understanding of how the Church of Sweden is being both challenged and motivated to act in relation to migrants coming to Sweden.

Abstract: Abstract Citizenship is defined in terms of national contexts, institutions, or practices. Apart from noting one’s membership in a certain polity, citizenship can be understood to have – at least – three meanings as follows: it can signify access, identification, and practice. This article examines these three dimensions based on the experiences of highly skilled Finns living in other European Union member states. Do they adopt the legal citizenship of the new country to gain access to legal and civic rights? Do they begin to identify with and assimilate to their new home country? Is citizenship played out in the everyday life as practice? The article concludes that thanks to European citizenship, all three interpretations are present at the same time.

Abstract: In this article we investigate what happens to the children who are brought to a new country along with their parents, and how they, now young adults, narrate the ‘self’ as a migrant child and adolescent in different temporal and spatial contexts. We draw on five long narrative interviews with young women who were born in Latvia and came to Finland during their childhood. For our analysis of these narratives, we coin a notion of ‘fateful well-being’. The research participants’ challenges as child migrants, where geographical displacement was compounded by language changes and discontinuities in schooling, as well as ruptures with family members and friends, are revalued and appropriated through the self-development skills of reflexive narration. Within the concept of fateful well-being, youth transitions involve both constrained agency and choices towards well-being. We argue that reconciling difficulties is a vital part of fateful wellbeing.

Abstract: Abstract This article analyses migration decisions and labour market manoeuvring of Latvian migrants to Norway, as well as the economic and social conditions that influence their choices. How do they adapt to the labour market in Norway? Do they practise circular migration, or do they aim for more permanent settlement? For some circular migrants, ‘reinforced’ motivation for migration emerges gradually, partly related to differences in working conditions – lower workload, better enforcement of work-safety regulations and opportunities for specialising in their field. Family and networks can influence both return and permanent settlement, depending on whether these are based in the home country or in Norway.

Abstract: Book Review: Kramer, Alexander & Fischer, Florian (eds.) (2019) Refugee Migration and Health. Challenges for Germany and Europe, Springer International Publishing. 213 pp.

Abstract: This study analyses the discussion of four Finnish parties – Centre Party, National Coalition Party, Social Democratic Party of Finland (SDP) and Finnish People’s Democratic League/Left Alliance (SKDL/VAS; Suomen kansan demokraattinen liitto/Vasemmistoliitto) – on foreign workers, refugees and asylum seekers in 1986–1991. The turn of the 1990s marked a period of substantial change in Finnish immigration policy and legislation and included the first comprehensive immigration policy papers by the parties. The study sheds light on the contemporary history of Finnish party politics and discourses on immigration and the challenges faced by mainstream right-wing and left-wing parties when dealing with immigration. The analysis of a wide range of policy papers and documents produced for parties’ internal use indicates that the changes in foreign policy, developments in national demographic and economic circumstances as well as the parties’ broad base of supporters and distinctive ideological traditions facilitate explanation of party stances. The parties’ objectives of the period represented both continuity and revision in relation to previous decades’ considerably restrictive politics.

Abstract: Based on 20 in-depth interviews with young Spaniards aged 20–35 years in the London region, this article explores the linked processes of migration, adaptation, and young–adult life transitions from the perspective of psychosocial well-being. Although most young Spaniards have moved for economic reasons, they also have personal and emotional motivations. The article explores factors that mediated their well-being experiences in the destination setting, such as the role of social networks and the achievement of their aspirations. Aspirations were not only material, in the form of a steady and higher income, but also factors such as language improvement, reuniting with a partner or friend, and being independent from their family. The findings of the paper contribute new insights into the factors that condition the relationship between migration and psychosocial well-being during the transition of young people to adulthood.

Abstract: The paper explores the social integration, well-being and self-healing strategies and outcomes of a sample of second-generation Turkish-Germans who were deported to Turkey due to conviction for youth crimes. Based on the life-story narratives of 14 male participants living and working in the Mediterranean resort of Antalya, I analysed the way in which this tourist city offers spaces for self-discovery and socioeconomic integration, based on profitable work in the tourist economy. Although deportation was a traumatic event, it facilitated possibilities for life transformation – from ‘vagabond’ to ‘tourist’.

Abstract: The belief that hard work can lead to advancement in a society stands as a key motivation for migrating. The literature on migration, however, has viewed meritocratic attitudes in a different light, arguing that a belief in a meritocratic society can cause migrants to be more accepting of inequalities and blind them to structural explanations of it. To add to this debate, I therefore study whether migrants generally perceive their recipient countries to be meritocracies or not, as well as what can explain these attitudes. I answer these questions using a survey collected among nine migrant groups in Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany. The results show that all the migrant groups perceive the three recipient countries as meritocratic, though there are differences among the groups. The article further studies what these variations in the belief in the meritocratic society can be explained by.

Abstract: The aim of this article is to study the experiences of highly skilled migrants from an intersectional perspective. Based on a case study of a group of skilled migrants in Finland, this article explores the interplay of various social identities and categorizations in their everyday life. I argue that although class markers are an important element in the self-defined group identification for skilled migrants, they are also subjected to intersecting social categorizations, stereotyping and assumptions based on gender, ethnicity, race and nationality, creating different experiences and belongings for different skilled migrants. Anthias’ concept of ‘translocational positionality’ is used to highlight how these intersections are highly situational, context specific and relative to other actors in the Finnish context.

Abstract: In his recently published memoirs, the former Danish Minister of Justice Søren Pind (2019) reveals that in 2015, when many refugees crossed into the European Union (EU), the Danish conservative-liberal government made detailed plans to erect a wall on the border between Denmark and its southern neighbour, Germany, to stop refugees from entering into the Danish territory. The border wall project was never presented to the Danish public, and the plans and preparations were eventually abandoned, partly due to a lack of construction materials. Four years later, a few media outlets have now paraphrased Pind’s recollection of the border plans, but they have not made headlines or prompted wider discussion in Denmark. The fact that the Danish Government made such plans during a time when Donald Trump was campaigning and later elected as president on the promise of building a wall on the US–Mexico border calls for retrospective refl ection and scrutiny, but so does the apathy and absence of political interest in the disclosure of the plans.1 The retroactive national acceptance of erecting physical border walls to keep refugees out must be seen in the context of a powerful circulation of aff ective images within a political discourse that construes migrants and refugees as dangerous and about to ‘overtake’ Denmark and Europe. For example, in early December 2016, Kenneth Kristensen Berth, then a member of parliament for the Danish People’s Party, suggested on national television that refugees attempting to cross the Mediterranean should be shot at if their boats entered the territorial waters of a European country (DR 2016). In August 2019, Pernille Vermund, an MP for the New Right, linked the infl ux of refugees in 2015 to an increase in the numbers of reported rapes in the same year and called on the Minister of Justice to investigate this connection (Brems Knudsen & Sørensen 2019). As these examples illustrate, the management of migration increasingly takes place through the invocation and governing of public and THE AFFECTIVE BIOPOLITICS OF MIGRATION

Abstract: According to the Swedish science fiction TV series Akta manniskor (Real Humans, SVT and Matador film 2012-2014), humanoid robots called “hubots” are replacing the human workforce in care work and assembly line industries. Against the backdrop of current debates about immigration and citizenship in the Nordic countries, this article does a close, contextual reading of the series, exploring how the hubots influence work and family life. We are particularly interested in how hubots tie in with the cultural circulation of affect in relation to Otherness and how responses towards the “not-quite” human or dehumanized Other are negotiated in present-day Nordic cultural imaginaries. What kinds of affects are at stake in how Akta manniskor takes up and interacts with debates about immigrant workers and the “not-quite” human? To answer these questions, the article develops the notion of “affective imaginaries” as an analytical tool for understanding the exchange between popular culture and political debate.

Abstract: In this article, we examine the experiences of students in the ninth grade (aged 15–16 years) in relation to harassment, discrimination and racism. The study was carried out at eight Finnish lower secondary schools with a high proportion of students with an immigrant background in 2015. The sample consisted of survey data (n = 445) and thematic interviews (n = 112) conducted with young people of Finnish and immigrant origins. Approximately one-quarter of the respondents said that they had been harassed or discriminated against at schools, and one-tenth had experienced this behaviour in their free time. In addition, almost half of the young people thought that discrimination is widespread in Finland. The more often a student experienced discrimination, the less they liked school. Experiences of harassment, discrimination and racism were especially downplayed when the respondent was the target.