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Bergen Summer Research School

Migration and the (Inter-)National Order of Things

Law, State Practices and Resistance

Refugees in boat
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Course leaders: Maja Janmyr, Postdoctoral Researcher, Faculty of Law, UiB, and Marry-Anne Karlsen, Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK), UiB

This interdisciplinary course aims to deepen the understanding of the politics of protection and control of contemporary migration. It asks: How are migrants given different bureaucratic and legal identities (e.g. refugees, stateless persons, irregular migrants) and what are the consequences of such distinctions and labels? What protection does international law and humanitarian institutions offer to different categories of people? What are the spatial, temporal and gendered implications of the protection and control practices aimed at migrants?  And, how are the legal and bureaucratic identities, and institutions of migration control, challenged by migrants themselves? 

This course introduces PhD candidates to key concepts, cross-cutting research and analysis in the fields of law, anthropology, human geography and political science. It offers lectures by leading migration scholars, student presentations, role plays, film screenings and a possibility of writing an academic paper, enabling the participant to earn 10 credits.

Please refer to the BSRS programme for common BSRS sessions

Course programme

Monday 12 June
13:30 – 14:00 Course introduction
Maja Janmyr (UiB) + Marry-Anne Karlsen (Uni Rokkan Centre)

14:00 – 15:00 Lecture: Introduction to International Refugee Law
Jessica Schultz (CMI)

15:30 – 16:30 Role Play: Refugee Status Determination Process
Jessica Schultz (CMI)

Tuesday 13 June
09:00 – 10:30 Lecture: The Syrian Refugee Crisis and Non-Signatories to the 1951 Refugee Convention
Maja Janmyr (UiB)

11:00 – 12:30 Lecture: A case apart. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Palestinian refugees
Kjersti G. Berg (UiB)

Wednesday 14 June
09:00 –10:30 Lecture: Normative Dimensions of Migration
Jesse Tomalty (UiB)

11:00 – 12:30 Presentations (MJ/MAK)

13:30 – 15:00 Lecture and film: Between “Victims” and “Criminals”: Trafficking, Smuggling, and Everyday Violence among Nigerian Women Migrants
Sine Plambech (Diis)

15:30 – 17:00 Visit to The Church City Mission’s "Project Free", a low threshold service for victims of trafficking

Thursday 15 June
9:00 – 10:30 Lecture: Irregular migrants and political mobilization
Synnøve Bendixsen (UiB)

11:00 – 12:30 Lecture: Waiting for an uncertain future: Gender, time and irregular migration
Christine Jacobsen (UiB)

13:30 – 15:00 Presentations (MJ/MAK)

15:30 – 17:00 Keynote: Alison Mountz  Discussant
Christine Jacobsen (UiB)

Friday 16 June
9:00 – 10:30 Lecture: Local responses to the “refugee crisis”: the case of Norway:
Susanne Bygnes (UiB)

11:00 – 12:30 Lecture: Camp, Ghetto, Zinco, Slum: Lebanon’s Transitional Zones of Emplacement
Are Knudsen (CMI)

13:30 – 15:00 Presentations (MJ)

Monday 19 June
9:00 – 12:30 Presentations (MAK)

 

Course literature

Al Husseini J. and Bocco, R. “The Status of the Palestinian Refugees in the Near East: The right of return and UNRWA in perspective”, Refugee Survey Quarterly, Vol. 28, Nos 2 & 3 (2009), pp. 260-285.

Arendt, H. “The Decline of the Nation-State and the End of the Rights of Man”, Ch 9 in Arendt, H., The Origins of Totalitarianism (1966), pp.267-302.

Bendixsen, S., “Voice Matters: Calling for Victimhood, Shared Humanity and Citizenry of Irregular Migrants in Norway”, in Gonzales R. & Sigona N. (eds.) Within and Beyond Citizenship. Borders, Membership and Belonging, (Routledge, 2017), pp. 185-207.

Carens, J. H. “Aliens and Citizens: the case for open borders” The Review of Politics, Vol 49, No. 2 (1987), pp. 251-273.

Goodwin-Gill, G. “The International Law of Refugee Protection”, in Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E., Loescher, G., Long, K., & Sigona, N. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014) pp. 1-16.

Hinger, S., Schäfer, P., & Pott, A.,“The Local Production of Asylum”, Journal of Refugee Studies (2016) doi: 10.1093/jrs/few029.

Hyndman, J. & Giles, W., “Waiting for What? The Feminization of Asylum in Protracted Situations”, Gender, Place & Culture, Vol. 18, No. 3 (2011), pp. 361-379.

Janmyr, M., “No Country of Asylum: Legitimizing Lebanon’s Rejection of the 1951 Refugee Convention” [forthcoming 2017]. 

Knudsen, A. J. “Camp, Ghetto, Zinco, Slum: Lebanon’s Transitional Zones of Emplacement”, Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Vol. 7 No. 3 (2016), pp. 443-457.

Plambech, S., “Sex, Deportation and Rescue: Economies of Migration among Nigerian Sex Workers” Feminist Economics (2016), pp. 1-26. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13545701.2016.1181272

Stevens D., “Shifting Conceptions of Refugee Identity and Protection: European and Middle Eastern Approaches”, in Kneebone S., Stevens, D., & Baldassar, L., Refugee Protection and the Role of Law: conflicting identities (Routledge, 2014), pp. 73-97.