Visting Fellows Programme Archive

• Spring 2002
• Autumn 2002
• Autumn 2003
• Spring 2004
• Autumn 2005/Spring 2005
  
  

Spring 2002 Visiting Fellows

Visiting fellow: PhD Candidate Svetlana Taraban
Duration of fellowship: 2 months, April-June 2002

Curriculum Vitae:
Svetlana Taraban is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto and a Graduate Diploma student at the Canadian Center for German and European Studies. Her research interests explore the issues of identity, gender and globalization and the status of women in post-socialists societies. Current projects: Unaccompanied Children Arriving in Canada (sponsored by Citizenship and Immigration Canada).

Fellow's supervisor during fellowship: Associate Professor Birte Siim, FREIA, Institute for History, International and Social Studies, Aalborg University.

Research project presented on May 16:
Queens and Pawns: Writing/Reading Globalization through the Narratives of Female Border-Crossers

Abstract:
Drawing on the published (auto)biogrpahies, narratives, and ethnographies of female border-crossers in different parts of the world, I will map some of the effects of globalization on the performance of gender in transnational spaces, on the refashioning of identities of female border-crossers and finally, on the re-signification of gender in the dialectics of the local and the global. This paper is organized around four interrelated questions: How do the events and processes of globalization and transnationalism affect the experiences and lives of female border-crossers both globally and locally? How is gender being performed at the borders of the nation-states as well as within the spatial configurations of the modern nation-states? What new types of female border-crossers are emerging in the contemporary transnational landscape? And, What are the material and normative constraints that impinge upon the practices of constituting cosmopolitan, nomadic, and deterritorialized identities of female border-crossers?

Discussant: Associate Professor Birte Siim, FREIA, Institute for History, International and Social Studies, Aalborg University

Autumn 2002 Visiting Fellows

Visiting fellow: Zhidas Daskalovski
Duration of fellowship: 3 months, September-November 2002

Curriculum Vitae:
Zhidas Daskalovski is a doctoral candidate at the Political Science Department at Central European University, Budapest, Hungary, currently a visiting fellow at Academy for Migration Issues in Denmark, Aalborg University. He has been Macedonian Studies Teacher/Fellow at School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College London, as well as a Lord Dahrendorf Fellow at St.Antony's College, Oxford University. He is co-editor of the journal Southast European Politics and has published numerous articles on the Southeast European Region including: "Scheppele and Waldron's Contractarianism and the Right to 'Secession': The Case of Macedonia" in Slovo Vol.13. March 2001 and "A Study of the Legal Framework of the Macedonian Broadcasting Media (1991-1998): From Deregulation to a European Paradigm" in Balkanistica Vol.14, 2001.

Fellow's supervisor during fellowship: Professor, Dr. Ulf Hedetoft, AMID, Aalborg University

Research project presented on November 7:
The Liberal State and the Scope of Minority Rights: Costs and Benefits?

Abstract:
Provided that there is a case for public support of national minorities this presentation analyzes what should the scope of the implementation of policies aimed at improving the conditions of the ethnocultural groups be. To find a more precise answer to this question I turn to Ronald Dworkin's discussion concerning the predicament of state support for art and culture. Building my argument on the premise that Dworkin's account is inadequate I will propose an alternative approach to the issue of when and how much can the state support art and culture. I will argue that Dworkin's position violates state neutrality and is not satisfactory from a liberal point of view. In turn, my approach will be grounded on the respect for the principle of liberal neutrality between the conceptions of the good of various citizens and will be useful not only in manners concerning support of arts and culture in general, but also regarding the scope of the state's support for minority cultures.

Key Words: liberal neutrality, minority cultures, public support of minorities.

Discussant: Assistant Professor, Dr. Lisanne Wilken, AMID, Aalborg University.

Visiting fellow: Carsten Bagge Laustsen
Duration of fellowship: December 9-11, 2002

Curriculum Vitae
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, Aarhus University

Research presentation on December 9
"Camping" - From refugee camps to gated communities (Paper by Bülent Diken & Carsten Bagge Laustsen)

Abstract:
To be sure, the techniques of total exclusion from human togetherness were first developed in the colonies. However, once invented and perfected, they did not cease to come back to Europe; indeed, what the European Christian bourgeois could not truly forgive and forget regarding Hitler was not the crime of genocide, but the bringing of the homo sacer to Europe. Today the homo sacer is in the West and is so in many, old and new, ways, in expected and unexpected situations. This paper deals with the situation of the asylum seeker, who, being "human as such", is more than anything else an instantiation of the homo sacer. The confrontation with the refugee remains in our own time an acid test for politics, a confrontation that incessantly brings into play the scandal of the human as such. The contemporary system into which refugees are enrolled is designed to keep refugees off limits through ever-restrictive policies. Thus many are literally immobilized in "non-places", e.g. accommodation centers in which they lead a life of "frozen transience" and detention centers into which they are forced without trial. The paper focuses on the socio-spatial nature of this extreme form of immobilization, relating it to the concept of the camp. We then move on to discuss some remarkable convergences between refugee spaces and other more respected and more desired contemporary "camps" that effectively problematize the notions of the city and politics.

Discussant: Professor, Dr. Ulf Hedetoft, AMID, Aalborg University

Research presentation on December 11
Becoming Abject - Rape as a Weapon of War

Abstract:
Organized rape has been an integral aspect of warfare for centuries. However, the classics on warfare have predominantly been concerned with theorizing "regular" warfare - that is, situations where one army is encountering another in a battle for the conquest or defence of a territory. Recently, however, much attention has been paid to asymmetric warfare and accordingly to phenomena such as guerrilla tactics, terrorism, hostage taking, and a whole range of aspects of war revolving around the importance of identity: be it religious fundamentalism and holy war, ethnic cleansing, or war rape. War rape might in fact be taken as the best example of an asymmetric strategy. In war rape, the enemy soldier attacks a civilian (not a fellow combatant), a woman (not another male soldier) and only indirectly with the aim of holding or taking a territory. The prime aim of war rape is to inflict traumas and through these to destroy family ties and group solidarity within the enemy camp. The paper understands war rape as a fundamental way of abandoning subjects: Rape stamps the mark of sovereignty directly on the body - it is in essence a bio-political strategy using (or better abusing) the distinction between the self and the body. Through an indepth analysis of the way rape was practiced by predominantly paramilitary Serbian forces on Bosnian soil, the paper seeks to understand and theorize a twofold practice of abjection: Through war rape an abject is introduced within the woman body (sperm or forced pregnancy) transforming her into an abject self rejected by the family, excluded by the community and quite often also the object of selfhate of in some cases suicidal dimensions. The paper seeks to develop its understanding of war rape through a synthesis of the literature on abandonment (Schmitt, Arendt, Agamben) and abjection (Bataille, Douglas, Kristeva) and accordingly it is argued that the penetration of the woman body works as a metaphor for the penetration of enemy lines, and in addition that this "bio-political" strategy operates through the creation of an "inclusive exclusion" - as does all other form of sovereignty. The woman and the community in question are inscribed within the enemy realm of power as excluded.

Discussant: Associate Professor Birte Siim, FREIA, Institute for History, International and Social Studies, Aalborg University.

Autumn 2003: Visiting Fellow

Visiting fellow: Karen Bird
Duration of fellowship: November 1-30, 2003

Curriculum Vitae
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, McMaster University,
Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Research presentation on November 11, 2003
The Political Representation of Women and Ethnic Minorities: A Framework for Comparative Research. Abstract.

Discussant: Associate Professor Birte Siim, FREIA, Institute for History, International and Social Studies, Aalborg University.

Presentation at the conference "Immigration Days" on November 26, 2003
Canada: Diversity and Integration: Canadian Experiences.

Spring 2004: Visiting Fellows

Visiting fellow: Tordis Borchgrevink, Senior Researcher, Institute for Social Research, Oslo, Norway.

Duration of fellowship: February 15-June 15, 2004

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests
Cultural encounters and multiculturalism, Integration and identity,Young immigrants (social problems)

Visiting fellow: Jere Behrman, Professor, (Dept. of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, USA).

Duration of fellowship: June 7-11, 2004

Research Interests
Agricultural Economics, Economic Development, Health Economics, Income Distribution, Labor Economics, Latin American Economics, Population and Demography, South and East Asian Economics

Visiting Fellows Autumn 2004/Spring 2005:

• Anastasia Christou
• Linda Scharn Fair

		Name:	Anastasia Christou
		Academic Title:	Post.doc. Researcher
		Affiliation	earlier University of Sussex, UK
		Duration of Stay	15 August-15 December 2004

Research Project while based at AMID

Greek Migrants in Denmark: Transcending Nostalgia and Constructing Identities – Segmented Selves and Diasporic Lives

This research project has two major aims:

1. To develop a detailed profile of the Greek migration phenomenon to Denmark, encompassing migration processes, experiences, community structures and networks.
2. To examine and to attempt to theorize processes of identification, integration and interaction/conflict between generations and within the wider Nordic space (social and cultural) but also in relation to the country of origin.

The research envisions exploring the multiple zones of intersection, interaction, and hybridization between 'home-host' roles, individual and collective identities of Greek migrants in Denmark. The elucidation of the differences and the diversity in this process is relevant for the current social and political agenda of European integration. Cultural images, imaginations and constructions (ethnic, national, gender, etc.) are outlets for perceiving, implementing, and performing roles in migrancy contexts; at the same time, they link roles to group and individual identities. In the context of ethnic and social practices, social actors internalize, problematize, contextualize, and transform these images of multi-layered institutions and frameworks, be that the family, the sense of self and other, the sense of 'home' and belonging. The research will address the way identities and acts of identification occur in relation to social and cultural space and in response to the ethnic place of origin and destination.

Research Interests

As a Human Geographer researching within the areas of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Greek-American Studies and Modern Greek Studies my work has primarily focused on: migration & return migration, the second generation & social capital, ethnicity & nationalism, space & place, diasporas & transnationalism, identity & culture, globalization & networks, gender & feminism, cultural landscapes & memory, home & belonging.

Brief Curriculum Vitae

Education

Employment Record

		Name:	Linda Scharn Fair
		Academic Title:	PhD Candidate
		Affiliation	Rutgers University, NJ, USA
		Duration of Stay	17 September- July 2005

Research Project while based at AMID

Refugees, Integration and Spatial Dispersal in Denmark

My dissertation research will be based on the two following events:

1. In 1998 the Danish Parliament passed the Act on Integration of Aliens in Denmark No. 474 (the Integration Act), an act which significantly changed the rules and regulations regarding the settlement of and aid given to refugees and asylum-seekers in Denmark. Among these new regulations is one that calls for the spatial dispersal of newly-arrived refugees, as well as asylum-seekers recently granted refugee status, effective January 1, 1999.
2. In August 2001 the Think Tank on Integration in Denmark issued a report entitled, "The Integration of Foreigners in the Danish Society," evaluating the extent to which, at that time, foreigners had "integrated in the Danish society." Analysis of the level of integration was based on "Seven Criteria for Successful Integration." (Think Tank on Integration 2001:1).
   
   

Research Questions
The study will address two sets of interrelated thematic questions which are subcomponents of the broader question, "Will Denmark's Act on Integration reduce anti-immigrant sentiment and lead to more positive interactions between all people living in Denmark?"

1) Spatial Dispersal Policy - Why was the spatial dispersal policy, mandated by the 1998 Danish Integration Act, adopted? How has the spatial dispersal policy been implemented? How is the policy working? What are the effects of the policy on asylum-seekers, refugees, social service workers, policy-makers, NGOs and Danes (both native-born and foreign-born)?

2) Integration Program - One of the explanations for the failure of spatial dispersal policy in Sweden stated that the "placement strategy failed, qualitatively, due to a lack of understanding of which mechanisms might enhance integration" (Andersson and Solid 2003:97). What impact is Denmark's legislation, combining spatial dispersal with a three year integration program, having on refugees? Has Denmark identified mechanisms that will enhance integration, thus negating one of the main criticisms of spatial dispersal in Sweden? How widespread is acceptance and use of the "Seven Criteria for Successful Integration" as a standard for measuring the "successful integration" of refugees? Are refugees aware of the seven criteria? If the answer is yes, how are refugees reacting to the seven criteria? How are others reacting to the seven criteria? Native-born Danes? Foreign-born Danes? Members of NGOs? Policy-makers? Social service workers?

Proposed Methodology
When I first conceived my research strategy I chose a mixed-methods approach including structured questionnaires and interviews. The purpose of using a mixed methods approach was to begin the research with a broad survey - questionnaires - that would provide a general picture of the lives of asylum seekers and refugees in Denmark. Issues of concern to the refugees and asylum seekers would be pursued further during the in-depth interviews with the anticipated result of gaining a more personal understanding of their lives as they "integrated" into Danish society.

My plan was thwarted for three reasons. First, if I were to conduct a survey where I asked the Danish government to provide me with names and addresses, according to my specified criteria - a common practice in Denmark - it would cost me about 400,000 DKK (over 60,000 USD) (Personal conversation with Dr. Garbi Schmidt, June 2003). Secondly, "According to Danish law it is illegal to register people by race, religion or ethnic background" (Hjarnø 1996: 291). Thirdly, the Danish government does not have a census as every single individual in the country is registered with the government and has been assigned an identification number. Without census data it would be impossible to determine which neighborhoods to survey. Therefore, I decided to drop the questionnaire and to put all of my time and energy into the in-depth interviews, while at the same time expanding the type and number of interviews.

The in-depth interviews will take place in Copenhagen and selected other cities with individuals from the following six groups:
· Policy-makers (e.g. Members of Parliament)
· Social service workers
· Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (e.g. Red Cross)
· Danes born in Denmark
· Foreign-born Danes (naturalized citizens)
· Refugees/asylum-seekers

Brief Curriculum Vitae

Education