REMESO – the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society organises a LiU 50 years conference
Date: November 6th
Location: Linköping University, Campus Norrköping, located in central Norrköping (rooms to be announced)
Keynote:
Rethinking Migration – Challenging Borders, Citizenship and Race
Professor Bridget Anderson, University of Bristol.
Anderson takes as her starting point that the 'migrant' and the 'citizen' and the differences between them are constructed in law and in social and political practice. Research also plays an important role in this, raising important ethical, epistemological and political questions.
Anderson has a DPhil in Sociology and previous training in Philosophy and Modern Languages. She is the author of, among others: Us and Them? The Dangerous Politics of Immigration Controls (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Doing the Dirty Work? The Global Politics of Domestic Labour (Zed Books, 2000).
Conference sessions (detailed information below)
- Climate Justice, Human Mobility, New Ecologies and Sustainability
- Digital Transformations, Automation and New Bordering Practices
- Global Migration Governance, Space for Civil Society and Sustainable Development
- Migration, Ethnicity and Swedish Schools
- Migration, Race, and Ethnicity in Culture and the Arts – Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
- Precarity as Policy: Migration Control, Labor Market Stratification, and the Political Economy of Exclusion
- Social Movements, Migration and Crisis of Solidarity
- Societal Development and Inclusion in Sweden’s Restrictive Migration Regime
Deadline for abstract submission: October 10th.
To register, follow this link:https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=7Bg_kSZ_X0yoFnhP6aWO3bJGhDPEm-5Njh24r8Ou5FpUMVBKVFVRSjZJQ1BGNFk1VzVYTk4wN09UUS4u&route=shorturl
Session 1: Climate justice, human mobility, new ecologies and sustainability
Session organisers: Claudia Tazreiter and Kenna Sim-Sarka
Form: Panel discussion, paper presentations and discussion
In this panel we bring together researchers working from a variety of disciplines around the topic of climate justice and its intersections with human mobility, but also new ecologies and issues of sustainability. We welcome panelists who use experimental, artistic and decolonial methodologies, among others. We want to propose climate justice as an overall frame, allowing panelists to discuss their work and how they engage with different dimensions of climate justice. As we confirm speakers for the panel we may modify the focus.
Session 2: Digital transformations, automation and new bordering practices
Session organisers: Karin Krifors, Mauricio Rogat, Anna Ådal, Max Waleij
Form: Paper presentations and discussion
In this session we invite researchers engaging with new technologies, AI and the automation of human practices. Technological innovation as well as discursive shifts and ‘hypes’ affect the constructions of borders as these divide populations and individuals according to notions of territorial, racial, gendered and economic difference, but also affect our social life in unpredictable ways beyond biases, discrimination and reproduction of inequalities. As digitalisation and AI are often imagined as de-territorialising and as countering traditional borders, returning to important scholarly empirical and philosophical work on borders may help us open up new conversations. As Etienne Balibar notes, borders are not merely produced by states (2002). Gloria Anzaldúa (2012) importantly illustrates how the borderland help us think about the multitude and hybridity of violence as well as creativity and resistance. Borderlands, therefore, are possibilities of training to challenge status quo. We invite scholars who collectively explore how seemingly diverse advancements of digital technologies and algorithmic modelling produce new borders, inclusion and exclusion, violence and discrimination or new prospective futures, but also take an interest in the borders that allow us to understand the role of digitalisation and AI. Themes may concern borders as a) border controls, policing and digital carceral landscapes, b) automation and calculation of social dimensions of peoples’ lives, such as education, housing and health, or c) new industries and global modes of production that rely on digital forms of territorialisation and sovereignty.
Session 3: Global migration governance, space for civil society and sustainable development
Session organisers: Branka Likic Brboric (REMESO) and Jonathan Josefsson (Child Studies)
Form: Panel discussion, paper presentations and discussion
Against the hegemonic and asymmetric global governance, understood as instrumental to neoliberal globalization, this session addresses the processes of the formulation of global and regional migration governance. Papers are welcome which explore global institutional and organizational frameworks, state and non-state actors shaping the evolving approaches to migration and sustainable development, including the factoring of migration into the UN 2030 Agenda, sustainable development goals (SDGs), the Global Compact for Safe and Orderly Migration (GCM) and their implementation. We bring together researchers addressing any of the themes that critically review intersections between migration (regular, irregular, labor and forced migration), poverty, (un)development, climate change, precarity, human and migrant workers’ rights, and the making of global migration governance as interconnected to geoeconomic and geopolitical structural transformations, informed by the reinvigorated market ‘utopia’. Furthermore, the focus is on how different state and non state actors contribute to, challenge, or even undermine dominant governance practices, considering both inclusionary and exclusionary migration policy approaches, such as a UN/ILO (International Labour Organization) human rights-based migration approach, and a business friendly migration management cum securitization approach, to be executed by the IOM (International Organization for Migration) and private public partnerships. This encompasses the discussions of inner paradoxes of sustainability along the “triple bottom line”, and related subordination of migrants’ rights, labour rights and “decent work” to the neoliberal governance that champions “economic growth” (SDG8, SDG 10, SDG 17).
Session 4: Migration, Ethnicity and Swedish Schools
Organiser: Olav Nygård (REMESO)
Form: Panel discussion, paper presentations and discussion
More than a quarter of Swedish pupils have foreign-born parents, and lives and relations are becoming increasingly transnational. But while schools are expected by law to incorporate this reality in their practices, a monocultural view still lingers. Changing this, places high demands on teachers and staff. It also places high demands on school principals to organize work in a way that is more conducive to intercultural pedagogy. Curiously, there are many knowledge gaps about how this work is undertaken.For two years now, researchers at REMESO and IBL together with colleagues from other parts of the university have offered the course “Att leda i den mångkulturella skolan” – aiming to provide school principals with a framework to discuss and build competencies on ethnic relations, norm-critical pedagogy, school quality and equality in education. The session invites presentations by colleagues working with migration, ethnicity and equity in education more generally.
Session 5: Migration, race, and ethnicity in culture and the arts – historical and contemporary perspectives
Organisers: Stefan Jonsson, Samuel Richter, Anna Ådahl (REMESO)
Form: Paper presentations and discussion
There is increasing awareness in ethnic and migration studies of the ways in which arts and culture offer insights into questions of migration and ethnicity. This panel invite contributions from all fields of knowledge that who analyze aesthetic works and cultural phenomena to understand migration, migrant experience, processes of racialization, stereotyping, immigrant incorporation, and diversity - in Europe and beyond, and in historical and contemporary perspective. In particular, the panel welcomes papers that discuss artistic activities as means of moving beyond ethnic differences towards narratives of identity and belonging that capture the complex reality of postmigrant societies. Artistic and cultural activities that fall under the rubric of the panel range from music, fiction, poetry, cinema, and the visual and performative arts to sports, fashion, clothing, design and food.
Session 6: Precarity as Policy: Migration Control, Labor Market Stratification, and the Political Economy of Exclusion
Organiser: Zoran Slavnic (REMESO)
Form: Mixed format – keynote input, paper presentations
This session examines how Swedish contemporary migration policy particularly in the context following the Tidöavtalet—actively contributes to the production and reproduction of labor market precarity. Rather than seeing precarity as an unintended consequence, the session invites a political economy perspective that treats it as a strategic governance outcome. It highlights the shift from permanent to temporary permits, increased use of problematic return and readmission policy strategies, and the broader criminalization of migrants and migration. These developments are not only moral, legal and/or humanitarian concerns, but also mechanisms that restructure labor markets and stratify access to work and welfare. The session aims to foster interdisciplinary engagement with how exclusionary policies and economicrestructuring intersect. Colleagues from historical studies, welfare law, Tema Q and social work will be invited to discuss how labor and migration policies co-constitute regimes of inequality at national and European levels.
Session 7: Social Movements, Migration and Crisis of Solidarity
Organisers: Anders Neergaard, Celina Ortega Soto (REMESO)
Form: Paper presentation + discussion
Social movement research is a large field often focusing on what Robert K Schaeffer (2014) names as aspiring and altruistic movements – struggling for expanding rights. In contrast the study of restrictionist movements – that aim to resist and reverse social changes perceived as threats to their own liberties – is marginal within the social movement research, often studied through populism and radical right. However, the growth of restrictionist radical right movements, being right-wing populist, radical right, racist, anti gender, conspiritual incel or fascist, almost always contain a central component focusing on migration, ethnicity and race. Furthermore, which also challenges social movement theory, in recent decades restrictionist movements have increasing gained governing power in different forms of right-wing coalitions across the globe. Bolsonari and Milei in Latin America, Modi of India, Orbán of Hungary, Meloni of Italy and Trump of the USA are some examples. As is Åkesson of Sweden, member of the “inner cabinet” through the Tidö agreement, despite formally outside the government. In this session the focus is on grasping various forms of social movements in which issues of migration, ethnicity and race play a major or minor role. Theoretical discussion, empirical analyses, comparative studies using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches are welcome.
Session 8: Societal development and inclusion in Sweden’s restrictive migration regime
Organiser: Kristoffer Jutvik (REMESO)
Form: Paper presentations, discussions
Almost a decade ago, in July 2016, Swedish migration policy changed over a day with the introduction of temporary residence permits. Today, in 2025, these regulation rests on a broad political consensus, and new, more restrictive changes, are discussed to be introduced ahead. A growing number of research studies have shown that ‘the shift’ has had many unintended consequences in the short term. In research, Swedish studies have shown that, in comparison to migrants granted a degree of permanency, those with temporary permits express a lower sense of well being, develop new short-termintegration strategies as a response to restrictive regulations, and develop new paths of onward migration as a type of re-escape. These conclusions are echoed by several civil society actors who are concerned with, what they perceive as, the harmful implications of temporary residence, especially among children. The purpose with this session is to invite researchers and practitioners, both from the public sector and civil society, to discuss the implications of this shift on societal development and refugee inclusion.
Welcome!