Month: March 2015

Maria Amelie became known nation-wide in Norway, when she first published the book “Illegaly Norwegian”, and then in January 2010 was arrested and later deported to Russia. This book tells her story from coming to Norway as a child wih her family seeking asylum, being rejected but choosing to stay in Norway with help from friends. She managed to get an M.A. degree from NTNU in Trondheim, but keeping her undocumented status a secret to the ever growing network of friends and colleagues. Some months after her book was published, she was arrested by the police outside of the Nansen Humanistic Academy in Lillehammer, some hours north of Oslo, and taken to the deportation center Trandum. This sparked a large mobilisation all over the country, with thousands of people demonstrating in the streets, as most people were unaware that people in this situation even existed in Norway. It eventually lead to a small legal change, allowing asylum-seekers with a job offer to apply for a work visa if they applied from their home country. Maria Amelie did this, and was able to return with a work permit later that spring.

In November 2014, she visited our project and Malmö Högskola to talk about her experiences as described in this first book, and also in her newest book “Takk” that describes and reflects upon the events following the arrest. It is an important and inspiring story, that tells us about the difficult choices that leads to and defines the undocumented situation, the lack of rights and possibilities, but also about hope for change. She recently told her story at the TEDxOslo event, and you can see it here:

In our seminar series (see below) we discuss matters relating to undocumentedness, rights-claiming and action. Last seminar was about Social movement, neatly summaries below by Sally Erisman who is also a new project member.

During the Brown Bag Seminar on February 5th, we discussed the function and impact of social movements, drawing on Donatella Della Porta and Mario Diani’s introductory book Social Movements. This is a recurring theme in many of our discussions, as actions taken by and on behalf of undocumented migrants, might be called collective rights claims.

Della Porta and Diani define social movements as a distinct social and political process. They are sources for creating and reproducing loyalties and collective identities. They are fluid in the sense that there is no stability between organisational and movement identities; hence, social movements don’t have members, but participants. When individuals identify themselves less with the movement and more with an organisation, the movement burns out. Distinct characteristics of social movements are that they have dense informal networks, linking individual and organisational actors engage in conflictual collective action, i.e. in relation to other actors there has to be an enemy on the basis of shared identities.

The book provides a research overview through the theories of other social movement scholars. Through the New Social Movements approach, scholars break from a commonly Marxist background, instead finding that conflict among industrial classes is of decreasing relevance. Rather, the interest lies in how stakes and central actors of social conflict are modified under changing structural conditions. Social movements have departed from an industrial worker’s movement to a post-industrial mode, where the reasons to engage may be multiple. Through cultural and symbolic production, the identification of social problems as worthy objects of collective action is enabled, and the collective identity is constructed. By developing new ideas and values, social movements work as agents of cultural change.

Identity linked to social movements and collective action is about processes of recognition – how participants recognise themselves and how they are recognised by other actors – as part of groupings to which they develop attachments. What lies behind individual participation – rational choice, or emotions? In the 1970s, some sociologist scholars made a point of defining social movements as rational, purposeful, and organised actors, thus with calculations as a fundamental component. This book, along with many others, criticises this assumption for being too rationalistic, and rather suggests that while the organisation makes rational, calculated choices for action, the social movement may not. Disregarding emotions creates a problem, in particular when accounting for the construction of collective identity. The process of constructing collective identity is a fundamental component of collective action, which is always highly emotive. The answer could instead be shared values and solidarity within the movement, rather than potential material gain. This makes identity highly paradoxical: it is stable in the sense that it usually persists for a long period of time; and dynamic in the sense that it is open to constant redefinitions.

Social movements are dependent on the political system of the country in which they operate, and how they are recognised by the other actors in that context. They develop in a variety of ways: through rituals and ways of living; or perhaps through the participation in recurrent events, such as demonstrations on May 1^st. With participation, loyalties and identities are formed, and while collective identity does mean homogeneity, the identity movement or identity politics runs the risk of being exclusionary.

Our full seminar schedule for spring term 2015, welcome to Malmö University if you pass by:

 

In the project “Undocumented children’s rights claims” we explore rights-claiming among undocumented children and their families in light of theoretical and practical perspectives (see https://blogg.mah.se/undocumentedmigrants). The seminars below are conducted in the spring 2015 within the research project and they are open to all. Seminars are in English and take place at Malmö University in the conference room in the Gäddan-house (room 355). The time is 10-13. If you would like to get the texts in advance to read, or present one of them, or would like to present your own work, please contact anna.lundberg@mah.se.

 

Welcome! Bring your own lunch.

 

Themes for spring 2015:

 

Human rights and sanctuaries

January 8

Lippert, Randy K., and Sean Rehaag, eds. Sanctuary Practices in International Perspectives: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Movements. (2012) Routledge (a selection of articles).

 

January 15

Walters William. Deportation, expulsion, and the international police of aliens. Citizenship Studies. 2002;6(3):265-

Bagelman, Jennifer. Sanctuary A Politics of Ease? Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 2013;38(1):49-62.

 

Humanitarianism and human rights

January 29

Fassin, Didier. Humanitarianism as a politics of life. Public Culture 2007;19(3):499-520.

Fassin Didier. Another politics of life is possible. Theory, Culture & Society. 2009;26(5):44-60.

Fassin Didier. Humanitarian reason: A moral history of the present times (available as E-book). (2012) Berkeley: University of California Press (a selection of chapters).

Squire, Vicki. Desert ‘trash’: Posthumanism, border struggles, and humanitarian politics. Political Geography, 2014;39:11-21.

 

Social movements and human rights

February 5

Della Porta, Donatella; Diani, Mario. Social movements: An introduction. (2009) John Wiley & Sons (a selection of chapters).

Meewisse, Anna. Organizational innovation in the Swedish welfare state. Critical Social Policy, 2008:28.2:187-210.

 

Action, communication and human rights

 

February 26

Habermas, Jürgen Theory of Communicative Action Chapter 3 volume 1. (1984)

Habermas, Jürgen Theory of Communicative Action Chapter 6 volume 2. (1984)

 

March 5

Andrijasevic, Rutvica, and Bridget Anderson. “Conflicts of mobility: Migration, labour and political subjectivities.” Subjectivity1 (2009): 363-366.

Andrijasevic, Rutvica. ”Sex on the move: gender, subjectivity and differential inclusion.” Subjectivity1 (2009): 389-406.

 

March 12

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. Can the subaltern speak? (1988).

 

Human rights, dislocation and revolution

March 19

Laclau, Ernesto. New reflections on the revolution of our time (1990); The rhetorical foundations of society (2014) Verso (a selection of chapters).

Tyler, Imogen. Revolting subjects: social abjection and resistance in neoliberal Britain. (2013) Zed books (a selection of chapters).

 

Human rights, revolution and constitution

March 26

Rua Wall, Illan. Human rights and constituent power: without model or warranty (2013) Routledge (a selection of chapters).

Spång, Mikael. Constituent power and constitutional order: above, within and beside the constitution (2014) Palgrave Macmillan (a selection of chapters).

 

The meaning of rights (note three weeks)

April 2; April 16; April 23

Douzinas, Costas trilogy The End of Human Rights (2000); Human Rights and Empire (2007); and The Radical Philosophy of Rights (2015) (a selection of chapters).

 

April 30

Douzinas, Costas; Gearty, Conor (ed.). The meanings of rights: the philosophy and social theory of human rights (a selection of chapters).

 

May 7

Stone, Matthew, Illan rua Wall, and Costas Douzinas (ed.) New critical legal thinking: law and the political (2012) Taylor & Francis (a selection of chapters).

 

Gender, sexuality and migration

May 14

Luibhéid, Eithne, et al. Pregnant on Arrival: Making the Illegal Immigrant (2013) University of Minnesota Press (a selection of chapters).

Keshavarz Mahmoud Material Articulations from and of Undocumentedness (PhD project Malmö University).

 

Critical childhood studies (Away days, internal discussion in the research group).

May 21

Quennerstedt, Ann. “Children’s rights research moving into the future-challenges on the way forward.” The International Journal of Children’s Rights2 (2013): 233-247.

Reynaert, Didier, Maria Bouverne-de-Bie, and Stijn Vandevelde. ”A review of children’s rights literature since the adoption of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.” Childhood4 (2009): 518-534.

Reynaert, Didier, Maria De Bie, and Stijn Vandevelde. ”Between ’believers’ and ’opponents’: critical discussions on children’s rights.” The International Journal of Children’s Rights1 (2012): 1-15.

 

Human rights and power

June 4

Foucault, Michel. The subject and power. Critical inquiry, 1982, 777-795.