Research Projects

Project title: Tackling Precarious and Informal Work in the Nordic Countries (PrecaNord)

Synnøve Bendixsen, Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, UiB and an IMER board member,  and Ann Cathrin Corrales-Øverlid, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology and an IMER-Affiliated Researcher, are part of the PrecaNord project team led by Professor Lena Näre, University of Helsinki. 

The project examines the sustainability of the Nordic model by offering an integrated analysis of precarious and informal work in Finland, Norway and Sweden. Precarious jobs include jobs that are associated with uncertainty and wherein the employee bears the risk. Through a mixed-methods and multi-level research design, we explore the prevalence, trends, drivers, and consequences of precarious and informal work for workers, employers, and society. We further aim to advance conceptual and theoretical approaches to how to study and understand precarious and informal work across the Nordics.

The project runs from 2022-2026. It is funded by the programme Future Challenges in the Nordics and is a collaboration among researchers from The University of Helsinki, Lund University, Stockholm University and The University of Bergen

For more information, see the project website

Project title: The Invincible Ceiling 

The Invincible Ceiling is led by Sarah A. Tobin, Research Director at Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) and IMER board member. 

Through a 4-year project in 5 work packages, the project utilizes international and effective collaboration to understand the dynamics of financial exclusion as revealed by entrepreneurs in 5 Norwegian cities, key Muslim leadership, and relevant Norwegian organizations.

The project combines insights and experts from civil society organizations, finance, history, and anthropology and employs methods such as interviews, participant observation, surveys, as well as textual analysis to understand how Muslim immigrant entrepreneurs in Norway navigate the financial landscape. Working closely with project team experts from civil society, the project aims to facilitate knowledge exchange by developing and distributing a curriculum on the topic.

For more information, see the project website

Project title: PROTECT The Right to International Protection. A Pendulum between Globalization and Nativization?

The PROTECT Consortium is led by Professor Hakan G. Sicakkan, a professor at the Department of Comparative Politics, UiB, and IMER board member. Also part of the project are, Marry-Anne Karlsen, Researcher at the Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK) and IMER board member and Christine M. Jacobsen, Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Guest Researcher at SKOK and IMER affiliated researcher

PROTECT studies the impact of the United Nations’ ‘Global Refugee Compact’ and ‘Global Migration Compact’ on the functioning of the international refugee protection system. This investigation will be done from the perspectives of political theory, legal theory, cleavage theory, public sphere theory, multilevel global governance, and ethnography. The entities focused on are the UNHCR and IOM (the global level), the European Union and the African Union (regional level), EU countries, Canada and South Africa (state level), and Canadian, South-African and South-European border zones (the local level). Empirically, PROTECT engages in an extensive legal, institutional, attitudinal, and media content data collection. As part of its empirical work, it aims to identify the changes in the notion of refugee protection due to the introduction of the two UN Global Compacts. Conceptually, PROTECT endeavors to develop a notion of refugee protection that is sensitive to the current political realities. Theoretically, it aspires to develop a theory explaining why a notion of refugee and refugee protection governance, and not other competing notions, wins the race at the global level.

For more information, see the project website

Project title: SuperCamp - Genealogies of Humanitarian Containment in the Middle East

Synnøve Bendixsen, Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, UiB, and an IMER board member, is part of the project team led by Are J. Knudsen of Chr. Michelsens Institute (CMI). 

The project aims to build a new understanding of the regional and global forces of humanitarian containment, captured in the term ‘SuperCamp.’ This is at the backdrop of 2015's so-called “Mediterranean refugee crisis", where the EU and Schengen countries instituted a new policy of regional containment from March 2016. The policy specifically aimed to return refugees landing in Greece following irregular migration through Turkey. Border patrols in the Mediterranean increased and surveillance intensified. The EU and Schengen countries thus established a “catch basin” for refugees and migrants in the Middle East.

The project analyses this “catch basin” and hypothesizes that the Middle East takes on features of what is called a “SuperCamp” – an area where migrants are not so much hosted but held hostage. It addresses one of the most pressing problems facing nation states: the movement of refugees and migrants from the global south to the global north. By reflecting on the positionality of the migrants in the “south” and the perceived threat to the “affluent north,” the project provides a more nuanced understanding of and theory on the historical and bio-political sources of containment. The project thus focuses on the consequences of displacement.

For more information, see the project website

Project title: Native/Immigrant/Refugee – Crossings and Divides

Marry-Anne Karlsen, Researcher at the Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK) and IMER board member, Christine M. Jacobsen, Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Guest Researcher at SKOK and IMER affiliated researcher and Kari Anne Klovholt Drangsland, Postdoctoral Fellow at SKOK and an IMER-Affiliated Researcher are part of the Native/Immigrant/Refugee – Crossings Research Initiative. A collaboration with the Center for Race & Gender, University of California, Berkeley. Financed by the Peder Sather Center (2018 – 2020)

Who is a “native,” who is an “immigrant,” and who is a “refugee”?  These categories that are presumed to be fixed are in fact contingent; this contingency is made visible when pressure forces one group to slip from one category to another. Take the asylum seeker who can either successfully gain recognition as a refugee or become an irregular migrant. This slippage can happen narratively, even while it does not happen legally. We could look to Puerto Rico, which as an unincorporated territory of the United States, exemplifies the geographic, legal, and narrative incorporation of populations who are selectively included or excluded, marginal populations whose status is not secure.

Location in some geographic spaces renders some populations particularly vulnerable. The pressures of climate change link Puerto Ricans with Sami in the Arctic Circle. That land and water can render one a refugee or force one to migrate suggests a revisioning of the refugee as a figure produced through political persecution or war; likewise, it challenges us to expand our framing of forces such as climate change to consider its relation to colonization, and geopolitics.

The key questions ask how the legal and cultural construction of these three groups–the native, the immigrant, and the refugee–are not isolated discourses but are deeply entangled in the regulation of the other. How has immigration law understood refugees as an exception? How has immigration law understood native peoples? How have native nations policed borders, membership, and territorial presence of non-members? And how do cultural forms and practices, from literary works to indigenous drum circles at the airport welcoming refugees in the face of Trump’s ban on Muslim immigrants, reflect distinct epistemologies, experiences, and political claims that confound or confirm these legal understandings?

For more information, see the project website

Project title: Temporary Protection as a Durable solution? The 'Return Turn' in Asylum Policies in Europe

The TemPro project is led by Jessica Schultz, Senior Researcher at Chr. Michelsens Institute (CMI) and IMER affiliated researcher. The team consists of Marry-Anne Karlsen, Researcher at the Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK) and IMER board member and Kari Anne Klovholt Drangsland, Postdoctoral Fellow at SKOK and an IMER-Affiliated Researcher. 

Following high numbers of refugee arrivals in 2015, European countries have responded with restrictive policies reinforcing the temporary nature of the protection they are willing to provide. These measures, part of a ‘return turn’ in the practice of refugee law, include granting short-term protection permits to refugees from certain groups, stricter requirements for receiving permanent residence, and regular protection reviews to identify people whose need for asylum no longer exists. By investigating (primarily) post-2015 developments in Norway, Denmark and the UK, the project invesigates 1) How  changes in national and EU-level laws and policies affect the durability of residence for recognized refugees, and 2) How  temporary protection interacts with facets of the welfare state designed to promote integration? What areas of conflict exist between asylum and integration policies on the one hand, and the intention of policies and their implementation on the other.

For more information, see the project website

Project Title: TRAFIG, Transnational Figurations of Displacement.

Sarah A. Tobin, Research Director at Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) and IMER board member is part of the project in collaboration with researchers from 12 partner organisations. 

TRAFIG running from Jan 2019 - Oct 2022,  investigates long-lasting displacement situations at multiple sites in Asia, Africa and Europe and analyse options to improve displaced people’s lives.

Displacement is normally regarded as a temporary phenomenon. Yet, more than 13 million people—two thirds of 20 million refugees worldwide—have been in exile for long periods of time without prospects of return, resettlement or local integration. The number of internally displaced persons who cannot return is unknown. Both groups find themselves in protracted displacement.

The project aims at generating new knowledge to help develop solutions for protracted displacement that are tailored to the needs and capacities of persons affected by displacement. TRAFIG looks at how transnational and local networks as well as mobility are used as resources by displaced people to manage their everyday lives.

For more information on TRAFIG, see here

Project Title: Waiting for an Uncertain Future: the Temporalities of Irregular Migration (WAIT)

The WAIT project was led by Christine M. Jacobsen, Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, Guest Researcher at SKOK and IMER affiliated researcher. Other IMER-Affiliated Researchers who are part of the project include Marry-Anne Karlsen, Randi Gressgård, Kari Anne K. Drangsland and Jessica Schultz.

The WAIT-project focused on the temporal aspects of migration and investigates how temporal structures related to irregular migration are shaped by legal regimes, cultural norms and power relationships, and how they shape subjective experiences and life projects. By focusing on temporality and ‘waitinghood’ the research can add importantly to dominant spatial approaches in migration studies, and that a migration focus can advance existing theories of time. The project scrutinized ‘waitinghood’ in four European migration-hubs: Oslo, Stockholm, Marseille og Hamburg.

The WAIT project used theories of temporality and the concept of 'waitinghood' as tools for producing new and critical insights into the cultural conditions and implications of migration. 'Waitinghood' is about the condition of prolonged waiting, uncertainty and temporariness which is characteristic of irregular migration. WAIT investigated how temporal structures related to irregular migration are shaped by legal regimes, cultural norms and power relationships, and how they shape subjective experiences and life projects. The project focused on four European migration-hubs, notably Oslo (Norway), Stockholm (Sweden), Marseille (France) and Hamburg (Germany).

For more information, see the project website

Project title: Imagining and Experiencing the Refugee Crisis (IMEX)

The IMEX project was led by Susanne Bygnes, Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology, and an IMER-Affiliated Researcher. Other IMER-Affiliated Researchers who are part of the project include Professor Elisabeth Ivarsflaten and Amany Selim.  

The IMEX project investigated both the experiences of the recent Syrian diaspora in Europe and of the majority population in Norway. We have drawn on panel data, qualitative interviews, and fieldwork in local communities to investigate zones of negotiation and meeting points between the majority and the minority in the wake of the 'refugee crisis'. 

For more information, see the project website