Projects with keyword Civil society
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.
Collective Agency in an era of Authoritarian Automation
Connecting artistic research and practice to aesthetics, sociology and computational modeling and visualization, this project asks: What is a crowd in the 21st century? We explore how collective protests, migration and authoritarian populism shape today’s politics while also being modelled by digital infrastructures and automated systems.
Aims:
To understand the impact on democracy of collective protest, authoritarianism, migration and computational modeling.
To investigate how collective behavior generated by digital technologies align crowd behavior with political programs and market strategies that defy democratic values.
To investigate how embodied subjective agency and collective assembly interrupts such processes of collective automation.
To show the ability of artistic research to spark conceptual development, innovative methodologies and theoretical insights into the relation of aesthetic expression and democracy.
The project assembles photography, film, digital aesthetics, literary essay, choreography. It will organize workshops, performances and theoretical debates. Output is a collaborative film essay, a literary essay and anthology, and exhibition.
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.
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
The Nation's Brightest and Noblest
This study brings into focus the issue of reproduction and transformation ofcultural authority in the so-called post-Soviet context. It seeks to examine howintelligentsia may be presented and what empowering narratives it may articulate in a concrete locality, namely, in the post-1991 West Ukrainian city of L’viv. Theauthor argues that claims for cultural authority stemming from the socio-culturallocation of intelligentsia are decisive in discussions about Ukrainian nationalidentity and cultural development, which gained momentum after independence.Despite significant discursive transformations, after 1991 intelligentsia is stillpresented as the essence of the nation, as its typical and brightest representativeswho assume the right to speak for the whole nation and to extrapolate own valuesand choices to it.
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.
Civil Societies Organisations and Educational Achievements
Young people from lower socio-economic strata living in marginalized urban areas have substantially more difficulties in school. This project aims to study if and how participation in civil society organizations may improve this situation. The research questions of the project are: 1) Young people in marginalised urban areas are active in which kinds of civil society organisations? 2) Through which processes does membership in civil society associations affect educational achievements of young people in school? 3) How does the impact of membership vary in terms of the educational outcomes of young people, taking account of issues such as gender, class and ethnic background? 4) To what extent does participation in civil society organisations restrict the freedom and mobility of young people and do such restrictions differ based on gender, class and ethnic background?
The answers will help us to grasp the significance of civil society organizations for young people?s educational achievements, and in continuation their labour market entry, and used in general educational policies, and to improve the situation for young people living in marginalized urban areas.
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.
Beyond Racism: ethnographies of anti-racism and conviviality
The aim of the project is to explore antiracist ideas, practices and strategies, focusing on women and migrants doing antiracism and everyday practices of conviviality. Methodologically the project is inspired by institutional ethnography, extended case method and ?What?s the problem represented to be? (WPR). Indepth, focus group interviews and participant observation will be carried in two major and two rural municipalities, where 5 different organizations/networks will be studied (human rights, migrant; antiracist, feminists and religious).
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.
The quest for 'fair globalization' and a 'decent work agenda'
Branka Likic-Brboric, Professor
The research in this project critically analyses the on-going configuration of global and regional migration regimes within the framework of multilevel global governance. The main objective is to survey international institutional arrangements for core labor standards and migrant workers? rights and to explore their significance for migration management within the ‘asymmetric’ global governance, as well as their impact on the current trajectory of global and regional political economies. Various studies within the project trace the development of a ‘social dimension’ of globalization and the articulation of an inclusive, human rights-based policy approach to migration management. The focus is on the ILO?s reformulation of social justice goals in terms of ‘decent work’ for all workers, including especially those working in the informal economy. The identification of the main multinational, state and non-state actors, their discourses and strategies for the promotion of global social justice, in particular the role of the EU is examined. Since 2010 participants in this project have followed and analysed the UN High Level Dialogue on Migration, related Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and the role of global civil society actors in this process, leading to MIGLINK, a collaborative research project with Ankara University (Turkey) and University of Zacatecas Mexico).
Multiculturalism, Nation and Globalisation
Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Professor
The project explores research and debates on multiculturalism, social cohesion and liberal values in academic discourse, policy documents and the media. It scrutinises discourses voicing anxiety over “multiculturalism” in societies marked by the erosion of citizenship, urban revolts among disadvantaged migrant youth, an ongoing nationalist-populist alignment and exclusivist policies of migration and “integration”.
Labour Migration, Crisis and Cohesion in Eastern Europe
Charles Woolfson, Professor Emeritus
This project focuses specifically on labour migration from the Baltic new member states in terms of challenges it offers to social cohesion and longer-term prospects for social development in the context of the continuing aftermath of economic recession and the global economic and financial crisis. The project analyses the intersection of global economic recession with the underlying crisis of neo-liberalism in a new European Union member state, Baltic Lithuania. It ethnographically charts the disappointment of expectations occasioned by the shock of crisis for the citizens of a post-communist society. Resulting social unrest and the fragmentation of social solidarities are depicted through an analysis of “voice”, as expressed in “discourses of discontent”. It is suggested that the failure of the political process to acknowledge these popular discourses, and the muting of popular political protest via increasingly repressive public order policing has led to an outward “exit” of labor migration on an unprecedented scale, as well as the concerning possibility of “internal exit” in the form of xenophobia, populism and racism.
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.