Projects with keyword Gender
Active projects
Domestic worker migration industry from Kenya to the Gulf States
This ethnographic research project deals with women’s labour migration from Kenya for work in domestic service in private households in the Gulf States. Migration from Kenya to the gulf states is well established and while exact numbers are unknown, it is currently estimated that there are up to 300 000 Kenyan citizens working in the Gulf States on temporary contracts (GAATW 2019). Conditions for women domestic workers are particularly harsh. Reports of physical, psychological and sexual violence are frequent (Ibid). To counter the abuses the Kenyan state has developed pre-departure training which includes information on workers’ rights, intercultural competence and technical knowhow. Pre-departure training is now made mandatory and integral to the labour migration process. Using policy analysis, interviews and observations, this project will critically map and analyse the various stakeholders (Kenyan state, NGO’s, recruitment firms, training centres, women workers and women workers’ families) and how benefits, risks and costs are managed and negotiated by the different stakeholders.
An ethnographic exploration of anti-genderism
Gender and sexuality matter in politics. The term Anti-genderism identifies a deep societal conflict in the challenge and resistance to the global expansion of women´s and sexual minorities’ rights, and the
democratization of the family. It highlights political and cultural agendas demanding re-patriarchalisation and retraditionalisation of both families, individuals, and societies. The research team has crafted a novel interdisciplinary and comparative program, bringing together a solid conceptual frame on the nexus gender, sexuality and family, through a multi-sited ethnography, towards a systematic exploration of a fundamental paradox: the centrality of gender equality in the Nordic region and the successful establishment of antigenderism coalitions at the core of the Nordic countries. The aim of the research program will be to analyze antigenderism as ideas, collective identities, communities of belonging and political projects in the Nordic region (here defined as Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) focusing on civil society organizations and networks, mainstream political parties and religious institutions.
Finished Projects
White migrations
Catrin Lundström, Research Fellow
The migrant is often thought of as a non-westerner in search for a better future in Europe or the United States. From a multi-sited ethnography with Swedish migrant women in the US, Singapore and Spain, this project explores the intersections of racial and class privilege and gender vulnerabilities in contemporary feminized migration from or within the West. Through an analysis of white migration, I develop theoretical tools to understand the dynamics that shape the women?s lives as wealthy housewives, expatriate wives and lifestyle migrants. Using the concept of white capital, I approach whiteness as an embodied form of cultural capital that is interlinked with and upheld by (transnational) institutions, citizenships, a white (Western) habitus and other resources that are transferrable (but mediated differently) cross-nationally, yet complicated by gendered and heterosexual norms, and its dependencies and regulations. By shifting the gaze towards privileged migrants, I illustrate how race and whiteness shape contemporary transnational migration and how white privilege is reproduced globally.
Conflicting identities and fractured solidarities
As one of the largest organizational complexes in Sweden, trade unions both reflect and influence societal development, affecting policies, regulating labor markets and influencing wage-earner identities and solidarities. The last decades have seen substantial changes in the trade union landscape, with the increasing strength of white-collar trade unions vis-à-vis blue-collar unions, changes in the character of the labor market, while the strength of Sweden’s social democracy has been decreasing.
The aim of this study is to explore white masculinities in the forging of the trade union worldviews, policies and strategies relating to three spheres– socio-political, industrial relations and internal organization. The focus is on three trade unions dominated by men with a Swedish background variously affected by globalization: engineers, managers and construction workers.
The project is inspired by three central theoretical concepts: neoliberal globalization, white masculinity and trade union solidarity. Methodologically, it encompasses ethnography: interviews, focus groups, observations and document analysis.
Madams and Maids
The aim is to investigate the narratives of employment relations between expatriate Scandinavian women
employers and Tanzanian women domestic workers, and how this influences their social identity models and
communication around work. An important part of the aim is also to investigate the changes and continuities
between contemporary employment relations articulated by the women involved and the employment relations
that were practiced during the system of indentured labor in East Africa during the period 1820s – 1940s. The
system was introduced by colonial settlers after slavery was
School's Treatment of
Sabine Gruber, Associate Professor
In the wake of two high-profile murders in 1999 and 2002, which involved the killing of two young women of Kurdish background by close family members, the situation of and the victimisation experienced by “immigrant girls” in their families has been transformed into an important issue in Sweden. The murders came to bo defined as “honour murders” and the situation showed that there was an acute need for conrete measures to combat this violence. The project analysis the Swedish school system´s efforts to combat “honour-related” violence. The study is ethnographic and the empirical material is based on interviews with student welfare staff at different compulsury schools and colleges of further education. There are also some participant observations at study days focused on “honour-related” violence. An important result is that the violence is understood as related to the Other, located to a “traditional” and “patriarchal” culture. A consequence of this is that the violence is homogenized. That will say the violcene is attributed to clear-cut explanations and signs, which makes alternative explanations and interpretations invisible. “Honour-related” violence is distinguished and separated from other gender-based violence, whereby whole groups will be stigmatized as victims or perpetrators of violence.
The School Makes a Difference
Sabine Gruber, Associate Professor
The study, which is a dissertation study, examines how ethnicity is turned into a central category for the social organisation of the school and used to emphasise differences, whereby students are categorised as Swedes and immigrants. Interest is also levelled at how ethnicity constructions are bound up with social complexity and interact with other relations, especially gender and class.
The study is based on ethnographical field studies in a comprehensive secondary school, primarily consisting of participant observations of classroom situations, staff meetings and informal discussions where teachers talk about their work and students.
The study shows that the differences that are generated and sustained through the school personnels actions, argumentation and interactions with the students are complex, varied and closely bound up with the school context. This means that individual students are not only and alternately identified as immigrants or Swedes, but are dependent on contexts also understood in a variety of ways. For example, students who are successful in their schoolwork are, to a lesser extent, identified as immigrants.
One important observation is that the school personnels everyday work and contact with the students are ambitious when it comes to justice and tolerance, but that these intentions are seldom combined with insights into the power aspects associated with social relations. Daily practices are instead overshadowed by the need to accomplish certain teaching elements, where attention is focused on the classroom situation in preference to highlighting or discussing students individual experiences and living conditions. The school personnels intentions and possibilities of working towards equality and against discrimination are thus transformed so that the school instead produces and sustains relations of inequality.
Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality in Social Policies
The study focus on the role of the civil servants in the implementation process of social policies. The projects purpose is to study Swedish integration and labour market policies. Issues of how race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class are done in the meeting between civil servants and their clients are often absent in research on public administration. The study focuses on, from a race/ethnicity, gender, class and sexuality perspective, how labour market establishment of newly arrived Swedes are made.
Empirically, the material will be gathered at institutions that are responsible for the integration of newly arrived immigrants, i.e. employment offices.
The project has an intersectional approach and is theoretically framed within gender studies and ethnicity studies. The study also takes it theoretical point of departure in welfare state research and public administration studies. The methods used are participant observation, in-depth interviews and discourse analysis.
The main result of the project is a PhD dissertation on Ethnic and Migration Studies.
Women and Migrants within the Sweden Democrats
During the last 20 years their has been an upsurge in research on xenophobic populist parties mirroring their political successes. However, these studies have rarely touched upon the role of women and immigrants within these parties. While women are often invisible in research, located in a marginal role as girl-friends and sisters, migrants support to these parties is often defined as a contradiction in terms and remains un-theorised. The aim of the study is to analyse the double edged relationship between on the one side women and migrants approaching the Swedish xenophic populist party -Sweden Democrats, and on the other side the discourse of the party in respect to women and migrants in their conditions of representatives. It will identify women’s and migrant’s agency and explore the ways through which these shape, constrain and influence their position in the organisation. Theoretically the project is framed within gender and IMER studies, focusing on the notions of the family and nationhood, and the notions of ethnic belonging and nationhood. Methodologically the study is based on in depth interviews and life-stories with women and migrants representing SD in municipalities.
Equal Work-Places in a World of Inequality
Studies of Swedish working life shows inequality: women and migrants earn often less in the same jobs. Women and migrants face more obstacles in their careers. The project aims to compare the factors that influence the situation of different groups at two workplaces, one equal, and the second less equal. Methods used are questionnaires, interviews, participant observation in the workplace, and discourse analysis: 1) How are formal qualifications valued for wage setting and promotion at the workplaces? 2) What knowledge is valued as workplace-specific skills at each workplace? 3) What is the effect of possession of social capital, ie network, on wage and career development at the workplaces? 4) Are there differences in opportunities for people of the different groups? 5) Can the measurement of knowledge explained in terms of local discourses and social practices related to the construction of masculinity and femininity, Swedish or non-Swedish? The project contribution is expected to produce extended knowledge of the conditions for capital accumulation, and a broader understanding of how social practices at workplaces may generate equality.
Reorganization of the Public Sector
This project aims at describing and analysing the reorganization of the Swedish public sector from ethnic, gender and age perspectives. The Swedish public sector is in a process of transformation. The current changes are often in line with the international New Public Management trend. As the welfare services in Sweden are an obligation to the 290 municipalities, empirical studies have to be conducted on the local level. Improved democracy in terms of freedom of choice to the citizens, increased diversity in services available, lower costs for the local community, and development of new markets are often the aspired goals from the promoters of the changes. These new markets are expected to encourage local entrepreneurs and especially former employees. As women are overrepresented among the employees, the new strategies are expected to be very positive for women and, due to an assumed demand from the clients, for ‘ethnic specialists’. This means that the reorganization might entail new possibilities for entrepreneurs with a business profile different from ‘the mainstream entrepreneur’ but to this point we find a domination of large organizations rather than small.
The Feeling of Migration
This dissertation is an ethnographic interview study analyzing narratives of queer partner migration, i.e., a family-tie migration in which one partner of a relationship has migrated in order for the partners to be together, and where the partners queer the migration in the sense that they have a non-normative sexuality and/or gender identity. The purpose is to examine how queer partner migrants and their non-migrating Swedish partners experience the migration process by analyzing what emotions and feelings ‘do’ to the relationship and how emotions and feelings structure the migration process. The study analyzes the work three different emotions – love, loss, and belonging – carry out in these migration processes, and how this work is described in participant narratives. Migrant participants have migrated from different parts of the world (Africa, Europe, Latin America, and North America), making it possible to analyze what emotions and feelings do in this particular migration process from the point of view of nationality and, in particular, proximity to ‘Western-ness,’ race, and language as well as how privileges connected to these positions come to matter in the process.
HIV/AIDS, Sexual Risk Taking and Intersectionality
Anna Bredström, Senior Associate Professor
Project 2
Previous research indicates that young people’s sexual risk taking varies depending upon gender, ethnicity and class. A main aim of the study is therefore to explore the issue from an intersectional perspective focusing on how intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality and class shape young people’s sexual practice in general and sexual risk taking in particular. In addition, the project consists of two subprojects, one focusing on sexual risk taking in relation to alcohol consumption, and the other on sexual risk taking among gay and lesbian youth.
Theoretically, the project sets out from a perspective where sexual risk taking (as well as alcohol consumption) is understood as shaped by socio-cultural and structural factors. By adopting a qualitative approach (using focus groups and individual interviews), the project seeks to expand a research field that is dominated by quantitative studies.
Ethnicity, Gender, Boys and Young Men in Institutional Care
Sabine Gruber, Associate Professor
The project investigate how ethnicity and gender is constructed in the care and treatment at youth detention homes. Central questions are about how the institution staff understand the enrolled boys and themselves in relation to ethnicity and gender and how that understanding is given importance in the organization of the institutions, their practices and attitudes. This is investigated with participant observations and interviews at four detentions homes for boys in the age of 13-21. The aim is to analyse how ethnicity and gender is given significance and materialize in practice through the institution staff actions, reflections and definitions of the social world. The study has a critical understanding of ethnicity, that will say ethnic relations are understood as products of power relations. Ethnicity is under this an instrument for sorting people that results in differential identities, exclusionary practices, different and unequal conditions. The study also builds on feminist research indicating that gender has a central position i constructing ethnicity. This approach emphasizes that neither ethnicity or any other dimension of social relations can be analysed as something pre-given, it problematizes rather how constructions of different relationships/categories also implies an attitude in relation to each other.