Aleksandra Ålund
Professor Emerita
https://liu.se/en/employee/aleal15
Active projects
Democratizing global migration governance (MI-GLOBE)
Branka Likic-Brboric, Professor
The aim of the project (MI-GLOBE) is to investigate the development of an emerging global governance of migration (GGM) and the space, role, strategies, alliance making, and impact of a composite transnational civil society organisation (TCSOs) in pushing for an accountable rights-based approach to migration. In 2006 UN initiated a High Level Dialogue (UN-HLD) on International Migration and Development, and in 2007 the Global Forum on migration and development (GFMD).
Against the background of a critical review of the UN-HLD, GFMD meetings (2007- 2021), the factoring of migration into 2030 UN Development Agenda and the adoption of the UN Global Compacts for Migration (GCM), the research team will follow and analyse:
a) Global governance policy framing, focusing, on principal positions on and conflicts between with business-friendly migration management approach and the rights-based GGM;
b) Processes of deliberation, conflict mitigation and consensus making between governments, multilateral organisations and TCSOs, business actors within global and regional settings;
c) TCOs mobilisation, internal negotiations, strategies to challenge the marginalization of a rights-based GGM.
Urban justice movements
Aleksandra Ålund, Professor Emerita
After the violent youth rebellions in Swedish suburbs during 2009, a plurality of new dialogue oriented activist groups have emerged, profiled as youth urban justice movements (YUJM). They address issues of segregation, racism and welfare transformation in Swedish cities.The project will explore expressions of agency; claims, network building and knowledge production with focus on cooperation and dialogue between YUJM and the wider civil society.
Questions for research: how YUJM relate to the broader civil society; what situated knowledge is produced and find expression in strategies and action repertoires; how YUJM constitute themselves as public voice relating to local, national and international contexts.
The project combines perspectives from urban studies and social movement studies. It employs a battery of qualitative methods aiming at highlighting activism as embedded in suburban livelihoods, local institutional conditions and wider structural change.
Finished Projects
Trade Union Strategies, migration and informal labour
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor
The collaborative project focused on changing strategies of trade unions and other civil society organisations in Turkey, South Africa and Sweden, facing irregular (or “undocumented”) migration and increasing precarity of labour connected with restructuring and informalisation of economies and labour markets in the context of emerging multilateral frameworks for the global governance of migration.
Politics of Precarity
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor
Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences
Labour Rights as Human Rights?
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor
Rationale
The overall purpose of thi conference wasto reflect on knowledge and promote social dialogue on the role of labour unions and other organisations of civil society in the global governance of migration. These issues were discussed against the background of labour market restructuring and emerging international norms pertaining to labour rights as human rights. The conference was organised so as to systematipromote exchange of perspectives between leading scholars and representatives of international organisations, labour unions and activists in other civil society organisations on questions of migration, ‘decent work’ and global governance. Conference participants investigated jointly and elaborated on policy alternatives for promoting migrants’, citizens’, and labour rights, as well as conditions for equitable international coordination and a more inclusive role for civil society.
The conference was organised by the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University and the International Network for Migration and Development (INMD) in collaboration with the Swedish UNESCO-MOST Committee, Norrköping May 30-June 1st, 2012
Seasonal Migrant Workers in Sweden
Nedzad Mesic, Associate Professor
Seasonal Migrant Workers in Sweden: Contingents of the new austeriat
In the current era of austerity free movement of labour has produced an ongoing but also contingent flow of migrant labour, an austeriat, moving from poorer crisis-hit regions of Europe to those countries such as Sweden where the crisis has been less severe. This project describes the working and living experiences of Bulgarian Roma berry pickers in Sweden. It argues that, in the context of a previously well-regulated labour market, an erosion of labour standards based on the exploitation of seasonal unskilled labour migrants from Bulgaria is occurring in the Swedish berry industry, in turn posing challenges for labour market actors and regulatory authorities. The examines what might be appropriate European and national trade union responses and those of civil society to the issues of labour precariousness which have emerged.
Cooperation, education and inclusion in multi-ethnic suburbs
The project aims at enhancing empirical knowledge and theoretical understanding of this complex research question, focusing on the potential of alternative strategies for social inclusion of migrant youth in multi-ethnic urban settings. We set out to examine different expressions of cooperation for social inclusion in multi-ethnic urban settings. The project studies the question of urban unrest from different empirical perspectives, ranging from institutional representatives to actors in civil society and young people themselves. Empirically, the project will scrutinize how structural change and institutional responses related to welfare reductions affects social exclusion/inclusion of migrant youth in marginalized neighborhoods through case studies in two Swedish urban settings, Stockholm and Malmö. The project is interdisciplinary and is carried out with by the use of qualitative methods such as interviews (individually as well as in groups) and document analysis.
Globalisation and the Governance of Migration
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor
MIGLINK is a Swedish-Mexican-Turkish Research Links consortium specialised on migration and development. MIGLINK aims to
examine the development of an incipient global governance framework for migration with a focus on the role of civil society.
Partnerships, Anti-Discrimination and Immigrant Associations
Aleksandra Ålund, Professor Emerita
The project focuses on the role of immigrant associations in combating discrimination. The project sets out from previous research indicating a need for a broader understanding of immigrant associations for the development of alternative strategies in education and the labor market, in order to advance the understanding of the conditions for partnerships between civil society, public and private sectors. The project examines partnership between public, private and voluntary actors through a qualitative study of Anti-Discrimination Agencies, (ADA) in Stockholm, run by immigrant associations. The efforts of the ADA to assist individuals who feel discriminated on the basis of gender, ethnic background etc., indicates the growing importance of ADA as actors in the field of social strategies for social inclusion. One of the preliminary findings indicates that activism among ADA as civil society organisations is based on delicate balancing between volunteer activism and adjustment to increasingly emphasized market exigency.
Education, Work and Civic Agency
Aleksandra Ålund, Professor Emerita
The project illuminates, with Stockholm as a case study in a national and international perspective, how institutional changes and reforms of compulsory and upper-secondary schools affect the social inclusion/exclusion of young people with immigrant backgrounds; their careers and experiences of education and employment in segregated metropolitan environments. Special attention is paid to local cooperation involving the family, ethnic associations, and local educational institutions. The overall research question concerns the impact of education, work and civic agency on social inclusion and full citizenship in multi-ethnic society. Reforms in the system of education and changes on the labour market are related to local community development in order to elucidate the interplay between structural and institutional change, civic agency and individual social mobility.
Trade unions, globalization and transnational solidarity
The network aims to create an intellectual forum for scientific discussion and criticism, and research initiatives on issues concerning trade unions, globalization and transnational solidarity.
By bringing together researchers from different disciplines and scattered between Universities, the network aims to develop theoretical understanding of the trade union movement’s challenges in a social landscape in change, characterized by regionalization and internationalization of production regimes. Within the framework the nework pays particular attention to cases of union cooperation across national borders. The network brings together research on gender, ethnicity and class linked to transnational trade union solidarity. The empirical focus is on transnational trade union cooperation in near areas (the Nordic /Baltic region), regional (EU / Europe) and global (North-South). In addition to a common theoretical focus, the network is aims to coordinate and develop the research and form the basis for initiation of new research. Finally, the network aims to enable cooperation with other international network of researchers focusing on similar research.
Migration, Citizenship, and the Welfare State
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor
The project surveys, in international comparative perspective, changing welfare states and the transformation of their multiethnic societies through two complementary analytical lenses: on the one hand, the welfare state’s capacity for accommodating migration and ethnic diversity through policies of border control and the allocation of rights of citizenship and, on the other hand, migration and ethnic diversity as a dynamic factor for change in the economic, political and cultural foundations of welfare states. It focuses on changing ethnic divisions of labour related to processes of social inclusion/exclusion and politics of European integration.
Migrant precariat and the frames of solidarity
Nedzad Mesic, Associate Professor
The project deals with the relations between social movements, trade unions and disadvantaged groups of migrant workers on the labour market. These groups could also be denominated as the precariat. More specifically the focus is set on irregular immigrants, discriminated workers and seasonal guest workers. The primary target for the project is to explore the ways actors in the civil society manage to build supportive relations to these groups of workers and other organisations in the field. The project is guided by the overarching research question: What are the possibilities and constraints for civil society organisations to establish and maintain transversal relations with disadvantaged groups of migrant workers and their organisations? The task is thus, on the one hand, to investigate how trade unions take on these new challenges within their field and to explore: the new strategies developed by the trade unions; and their collaborations with new social movements organisations. On the other hand, the project centres on new social movements’ collaborations with neighbouring actors, their articulations of the problems; and their strategies to provide solutions to the problems.