Month: August 2016

We are much looking forward to this semester’s Brown bag seminars

including themes such as for example Politics and love, which will take place every other Thursday (approximately) on the forth floor of NIAGARA, close to the Central station in Malmö, see schedule below. The seminars are open to all.

 

Brown bag seminars fall-2016

 

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 fall of 2016 and they are open to all. Seminars are in English and take place at Malmö University. The time is Thursday 10:15-13, the room is NIB0414, fourth floor in the Niagara house, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1 in Malmö. If you would like to attend, or present one of the articles below, please contact anna.lundberg@mah.se.

 

Welcome!

 

 

September 1 Critique of Compassion continued and Love and politics

 

Marcel Paret & Shannon Gleeson (2016) “Precarity and agency through a migration lens”, Citizenship Studies, 20:3-4, 277-294

 

Negri, Antonio, and Gabriele Fadini. ”Materialism and theology: A conversation.” Rethinking Marxism 20.4 (2008): 665-672.

 

 

September 15 Theoretical approaches and considerations in a PhD-study about social services

 

Vanna Nordling, Social work, Lund University. The presentation includes theoretical perspectives to Vanna’s PhD project on ”Negotiations of rights and citizenship through social work practic”.

 

 

September 29 Love and politics

 

Love and Saint Augustine. by Arendt, Hannah (and Joanna Vecchiarelli Scott, and Judith Chelius Stark). University of Chicago Press, 1996.

 

About the book: Hannah Arendt began her scholarly career with an exploration of Saint Augustine’s concept of caritas, or neighborly love, written under the direction of Karl Jaspers and the influence of Martin Heidegger. After her German academic life came to a halt in 1933, Arendt carried her dissertation into exile in France, and years later took the same battered and stained copy to New York. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, as she was completing or reworking her most influential studies of political life, Arendt was simultaneously annotating and revising her dissertation on Augustine, amplifying its argument with terms and concepts she was using in her political works of the same period. The disseration became a bridge over which Arendt traveled back and forth between 1929 Heidelberg and 1960s New York, carrying with her Augustine’s question about the possibility of social life in an age of rapid political and moral change.

 

 

October 13 Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood

 

Lindahl, Hans, and Daniel Augenstein. “Global human rights law and the boundaries of statehood” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 22.3 (2015). (Available here:

 

Baxi, Upendra. “Some Newly Emergent Geographies of Injustice: Boundaries and Borders in International Law.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies23.1 (2016): 15-37.

 

Johns, Fleur. “The Temporal Rivalries of Human Rights.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 23.1 (2016): 39-60.

 

 

October 27 Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood

 

Backer, Larry Catá. “Fractured Territories and Abstracted Terrains: Human Rights Governance Regimes Within and Beyond the State.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 23.1 (2016): 61-94.

 

Cutler, A. Claire. “Transformations in Statehood, the Investor-State Regime, and the New Constitutionalism.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 23.1 (2016): 95-125.

 

Leader, Sheldon. “Statehood, Power, and the New Face of Consent.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 23.1 (2016): 127-142.

 

 

November 10 Global Human Rights Law and the Boundaries of Statehood

 

Bilchitz, David. “Corporations and the Limits of State-Based Models for Protecting Fundamental Rights in International Law.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 23.1 (2016): 143-170.

 

Lindahl, Hans. “One Pillar: Legal Authority and a Social License to Operate in a Global Context.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 23.1 (2016): 201-224.

 

Augenstein, Daniel. “To whom it may concern: International human rights law and global public goods.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 23.1 (2016): 225-248.

 

 

November 24 Territoriality and rights

 

Bosniak, Linda. “Amnesty in immigration: forgetting, forgiving, freedom.” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 16.3 (2013): 344-365.

 

Bosniak, Linda. “Arguing for amnesty.” Law, Culture and the Humanities (2012): 1743872111423181.

 

Bosniak, Linda S. “Ethical Territoriality and the Rights of Immigrants.” Amsterdam Law Forum. Vol. 1. No. 1. 2008.

 

Rajaram, Prem Kumar. “Historicising ‘asylum’and responsibility.” Citizenship Studies 17.6-7 (2013): 681-696.

 

 

December 8 Solidarity and politics

 

Allen, Amy. ”The power of feminist theory: Domination, resistance, solidarity.” (1999).

 

Deepta, Chopra, and Catherine Müller. ”Connecting Perspectives on Women’s Empowerment.” (2016).

 

Singh, Anneliese A., Kate Richmond, and Theodore R. Burnes. ”Feminist participatory action research with transgender communities: Fostering the practice of ethical and empowering research designs.” International Journal of Transgenderism 14.3 (2013): 93-104.

 

 

December 22 Solidarity and politics

 

Scholz, Sally J. ”Seeking Solidarity.” Philosophy Compass 10.10 (2015): 725-735.

 

Pansardi, Pamela. ”A non-normative theory of power and domination.” Critical review of international social and political philosophy 16.5 (2013): 614-633.

… And finally, as a start for next semester’s first theme … The Challenge of Studying Undocumented Migration

Katharine M. Donato and Douglas S. Massey ”Twenty-First-Century Globalization and Illegal Migration” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science July 2016 666: 7–26

 

 

 

 

 

In this year’s NMR-conference we had a workshop titled The right to have rights and irregular migration. I also for the second time arranged a workshop in collaboration with Erica Righard on Artsbased migration research, much appreciated. Ericas work with a Serbian/Swedish theatre group provide new opportunities to understand mobility in the contemporary world.

For my own part I presented the text A solidaric take on action. Solidarity as a foundational principle for political action – struggles for the right to asylum in the contemporary world, based on readings this summer. Any comments on the idea, or potential interesting “hooks” are most welcome to this post (which is the abstract only, the paper draft is still with me). Anna Lundberg, Global political studies, Malmö University

 

The essay attempts to contribute to a discussion about how solidarity can serve as a principle for action in transnational spheres, through discussing the asylum rights movement and the particular example of the ‘Tent camp against deportation’ in the city of Malmö. The aim is twofold. First, I want to highlight political work by irregularised migrants as instances of solidarity, so called worldly activities that are based on the principle of solidarity and carry this principle within. Second, this essay aims to develop an understanding of Arendt’s idea of solidarity as a foundation for collective action that emerges, and may be understood, in initiatives by irregularised migrants. The ability to act meaningfully in a position of deportability, on the basis of solidarity, tells us something about struggles over the world, worldliness as Arendt terms it. Through examples from the tent-camp we can notice how struggles play out in the everyday, and how activities are ‘world-facing’ rather than unworldly; public rather than private, diverse rather than narrow-minded, transnational rather than national, and reducing burdens for people to take part in the governance of the world. Here, grains may be found to a world where those who lack citizenship or for other reasons are excluded from spheres where their opinions are significant, may also appear as political subjects. In relation to the contested theoretical discussion about the novelty and unpredictability of political acts or statements, the tent camp action and similar initiatives indeed are unpredictable and simultaneously an expression of visions of a new world based on the principle of solidarity.

 

Welcome to

Mahmoud Keshavarz’ defense of his thesis in Interaction design

Design-Politics: An Inquiry into Passports, Camps and Borders 

 

Time: Sep 9, 13.15 h 

Place: Hörsal C, Niagara, Malmö University, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1, Malmö 

 

The faculty opponent will be Professor in Interdisciplinary Design Andrew David Morrison, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Institute of Design.

 

The thesis can be downloaded from this link: https://dspace.mah.se/handle/2043/20605

 

Abstract:

This thesis is an interrogation of the contemporary politics of movement and more specifically, migration politics from the perspective of the agency of design and designing. At the core of this thesis lies a series of arguments which invite design researchers and migration scholars to rethink the ways they work with their practices: that states, in order to make effective their abstract notions of borders, nations, citizenship, legal protection and rights are in dire need of what this thesis coins as material articulations. The way these notions are presented to us is seldom associated with artefacts and artefactual relations. It is of importance therefore, as this thesis argues, to speak of such material articulations as acts of designing. To examine the politics of movement and migration politics from such a perspective, this thesis focuses on practices that shape specific material articulations such as passports, camps and borders. At the same time, it discusses the practices that emerge from these articulations. By doing this, it follows the politics that shape these seemingly mundane artefacts and relations as well as the politics that emerge from them. Consequently, it argues that design and politics cannot be discussed and worked on as two separate fields of knowledge but rather as interconnected fields, as design-politics. This thesis unpacks this claim by focusing specifically on the lived experiences and struggles of asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants as well as rearticulating some of the artefacts and artefactual relations involved in the politics of movement and migration.