Social science and humanities with a dual critical commitment
Filmed Seminar, Migration Policy Institute, European University Institute, Florence
The seminar discussed the merits of Modern Monetary Theory, showing how it offers a realistic approach to migration. Speaker: Peo Hansen (Linköping University). Chair: Stephanie Acker (Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the EUI’s Robert Schuman Centre).
Peo Hansen (June 2024)
Filmed Interview, The Market Exit.
I’m Andres Acevedo and this is The Market Exit. During the migration crisis of 2015, the small country of Sweden admitted a very large number of refugees. What effects did this surge of migrants to Swedish have on the Swedish economy? To find out, I met professor Peo Hansen, author of the book “A Modern Migration Theory” and from our conversation, I realized that many of the economic models we use for assessing our economy and society are deeply flawed. In the conversation, we talk about the field of research called the fiscal impact of migration. We talk about the difference between real resources and financial resources. We talk about the so-called brain drain within the European Union. We talk about why politicians are so afraid of speaking the truth about migration.
Peo Hansen (May 2024)
Panel, Neutrality Studies, Chaired by Pascal Lottaz , Kyoto University, Faculty of Law.
“Since Sweden and Finland decided to join NATO, there is an unprecedented militarization going on all over the Scandinavian countries with the most insane political developments taking place in Sweden that is now selling out some of its sovereign territory to the US military. This use of the Nordic countries for NATO purposes and geared against Russia is unprecedented in either the 20th or 19 centuries. To discuss what this means I have got with me three fantastic experts: Two from the region and one fellow neutrality researcher. From Sweden we are joined by Professor Peo Hansen, from Linköping University. From Finland we’ve got Dr. Tapio Juntunen from Tampere University And finally we are very delighted to be joined by Ambassador Nasir Andisha, who is Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, and also the author of “Neutrality and Vulnerable States – An Analysis of Afghanistan’s Permanent Neutrality”
Peo Hansen (19 May 2024)
Filmed interview with Neutrality Studies, Chaired by Pascal Lottaz, Kyoto University, Faculty of Law.
“The EU to this day treats Africa as a colonial backyard that must be ‘managed’ rather than engaged with on equal footing. At the same time, Josep Borrell begs China to recognise the EU as a fellow great power—something no self-respecting power would ever even dream of. All of this is symptomatic not only for the EU commissions current mental state, but the history of the Union, a history it often downplays or forgets about all together. My guest today is a Swedish academic; Professor Peo Hansen of Linköping University. His research focuses among other things on European integration, migration, political economy, and geopolitics. Dr. Hansen is the author of several books, including “Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism” of which there is also an academic article and recently he wrote a short magazine article as well.”
Peo Hansen (January 2024)
Filmed Seminar, Migration Policy Institute, European University Institute, Florence
The seminar discussed the merits of Modern Monetary Theory, showing how it offers a realistic approach to migration. Speaker: Peo Hansen (Linköping University). Chair: Stephanie Acker (Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the EUI’s Robert Schuman Centre).
Over the last century, the South African state has periodically engaged in the practice of ‘exempting’ various migrants from their otherwise irregular immigration statuses. Always backed by official legislation, exemptions represent one way by which dominant capitalist interests have relied on the legitimacy of the state to meet their labour needs by sometimes employing undocumented migrants from the Southern African region. Through insights from sub-imperialism and bordering, this paper discusses historical case examples from policy articulations, parliamentary debates, secondary literature and archival materials. By exploring cross-national relationships of exploitation and differentiation, the paper argues that exemptions should be understood as attempts by which the contradictions of ubiquitous informal cross-border mobility and employment in a regime of unfree regional movement might be resolved. Exemptions also attest to the challenge of governing human mobility in a region invested with a historically vast infrastructure of producing, attracting as well as exploiting cheap migrant labour.
We are happy to announce the presentation and discussion of two topical volumes on migration and racism, border regimes, and politics of solidarity co-organised by DEMOS, Aalborg University, and REMESO, Linköping University:
Contending Global Apartheid: Transversal Solidarities and Politics of Solidarity, edited by Martin Bak Jørgensen & Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Haymarket 2023
The Crisis Mobility Nexus, edited by Leandros Fischer, Palgrave Macmillan 2024.
Information on the event online:
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A blogpost introducing the Horizon Europe Project at REMESO. The project MORE critically examines policies on return and readmission and attempts to develop viable alternatives, across eight EU member states, the UK, and at the EU level.
My book note about How migration really works by Hein De Haas for the Journal of Peace Research
While many countries were locking down due to the spread of COVID-19, Sweden remained open with few restrictions, as authorities relied predominantly on a civil sense of responsibility and collective compliance with government recommendations. Drawing on interviews conducted with workers in retail and logistics in 2020–21, ethnographic work in digital environments as well as in public spaces and demonstrations, this article analyses discourses of everyday life and discourses of rejection, exploring how rejections were shaped in reaction to how the government and the Public Health Agency of Sweden handled the pandemic. Ortega Soto’s article uses the concept of cultures of rejection—emphasizing a complex compound of values, norms and affects that reject different phenomena in different contexts—to analyse how working and living conditions, political opinions, social views and media habits informed workers’ disagreements with and reactions to the official handling of the pandemic, as well as how this may have led to a growing loss of trust in government. Ortega Soto further investigates how the expression of cultures of rejection differs across generations by looking closely into the ways that nostalgia and a sense of loss enhance such responses among various social groups. The article contributes to a wider understanding of the political shifts and cultural changes that were manifested in the context of the pandemic in Sweden.
Swedish ‘cultures of rejection’ and decreasing trust in authority during the COVID pandemic