‘I promise you my country will help you’ - Promissory acts within the Norwegian refugee regime
Promises play an integral part in refugee regimes of Western liberal democracies. They appear in political speeches, bureaucratic procedures, legal texts on asylum, or integration programs. In this IMER seminar, Manuel Insberg explores how promissory acts constitute the relationship between refugees and the receiving society and engender powerful images of the future, drawing on data from his ethnographic fieldwork in Oslo.
Main content
Protection, a good life, and participation in the receiving society are promised objects that politicians, government officials, or humanitarian actors declare desirable for certain 'deserving' forced migrants. However, they are also inevitably linked to assurances of protecting the integrity of the nation, its citizens, and the prosperity of the welfare state.
Following Sarah Ahmed’s and Lauren Berlant’s accounts on promises, Insberg understands the Norwegian refugee regime as a cluster of hegemonic promises that (re)produces different subjectivities and the power relations between them through promises. Zooming in on some encounters with his interlocutors who have gained protection status in Norway, this presentation sheds light on the promises that circulate within the refugee regime.
Manuel Insberg is a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern in Switzerland and a short-term visiting PhD scholar at the Center for Women and Gender Studies (SKOK) at UiB. Manuel is part of the SNF-Ambizione project 'Violent Safe Havens? Exploring Articulations and Repercussions of Violence in Refugee Reception and Settlement' funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.