Department of social anthropology seminar with Synnøve Bendixsen

The Department of Social Anthropology has the pleasure to invite you to a seminar with Synnøve Bendixsen from IMER Bergen Uni RokkanCentre. She will present the following paper:

The politics of belonging of irregular migrants in Norway


Abstract

During the spring of 2011 the landscape of Oslo changed: three tents camps were set up at church properties by ‘failed’ asylum seekers and irregular migrants from Iran, Ethiopia and Palestine. This formed part of a longer array of political mobilization by irregular migrants in Norway, which included hunger strikes, petitions and asylum march.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper will examine what forms of politics of belonging the various groups drew upon in their demonstrations, Although all three groups faced similar challenges as irregular migrants, which were their reason for their political mobilization, and similarities are found between their strategies and techniques involved, in terms of how they assembled, and the forms and states of capital involved, they largely remained three distinct groups, rather than joining forces. Looking at the different claim making can illustrate how being irregular is an unfixed position, and that political agency is dynamically formed in relation to both the ideologies and cultural values of the governing system towards which the claims are made, and the self-defined, or self-understanding/identification of the actors. The paper will suggest how the different strategies both challenge and reinforce the ideological foundation and established conceptions on which ideas of ‘worthy citizens’ in Norway are constructed.

Bionote
Synnøve Bendixsen is a postdoctoral researcher at IMER Bergen Uni RokkanCentre. She holds a joined PhD in Social Anthropology from the Humboldt Universität and Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (2010). Bendixsen has conducted extensive fieldwork in Germany and is the author of The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin. An Ethnographic Study (Brill, 2013). She is currently working on the living conditions of irregular migrants and their political mobilization in Norway as part of the research project "Provision of Welfare to Irregular Migrants (PROVIR)".


All interested are welcome!