REMESO TALKS

List of Experts – Migration, Integration, Ethnicity, etc.

Sweden’s migration and integration policies are currently undergoing major changes that have implications for society as a whole. At REMESO, journalists can find researchers who can comment on, analyze, and provide perspectives on these developments and the public debate.

Aleksandra Ålund is a professor emerita specializing in social movements for the social and cultural rights of migrants and “post-migrants.” She has studied multicultural suburban areas in Sweden, as well as how migrants and human rights activists collaborate across national borders to influence national and international organizations and UN conventions on the rights of migrants and refugees.
Contact: 011-36 32 32, aleksandra.alund@liu.se

Anna Bredström is an associate professor of ethnicity and migration. Her research focuses on medicine, health, and healthcare. She studies topics such as post-COVID, racism in healthcare, health inequalities, youth sexual health, and how race and ethnicity categories are used in medical knowledge production and biometric technology.
Contact: 011-36 32 42, anna.bredstrom@liu.se

Stefan Jonsson is a professor and department head at REMESO, with expertise in migration, asylum law, nationalism, discrimination, and integration from a historical perspective. He also conducts research on the legacy of colonialism and imperialism in today’s world and on how migration and diversity are expressed culturally and artistically.
Contact: 011-36 36 30, stefan.jonsson@liu.se

Kristoffer Jutvik is a senior lecturer with expertise in inclusion, mobility and asylum. His research focuses primarily on changes in Swedish migration policy and its impact on society and individuals, as well as political participation among people with a refugee background.
Contact: 011-363422, kristoffer.jutvik@liu.se

Karin Krifors is a senior lecturer in ethnicity and migration, specializing in the conditions of temporary migrant workers, digital migration systems, and new technologies in the management of asylum and immigration within the EU. Karin also conducts research on anti-racism, migrant social movements, and local integration networks—particularly in smaller cities and rural areas.
Contact: 011-36 33 33, karin.krifors@liu.se

Catrin Lundström is an associate professor who writes about Swedishness and whiteness and can comment on issues related to gender, race, privilege, migration, and intersectionality. She is also co-author of the book *White Melancholy: An Analysis of a Nation in Crisis*, which examines Sweden’s modern history of whiteness with a focus on the welfare state and the role of the Sweden Democrats in this context.
Contact: 011-36 34 35, catrin.lundstrom@liu.se.

Anders Neergaard is a professor and director of REMESO with expertise in trade unions, migrant workers, foreign-born individuals, ethnicity, and discrimination. He can comment on, among other things, the restrictive development of migration and integration policies since 2016, as well as the Sweden Democrats and the Tidö Agreement.
Contact: 011-36 32 18, anders.neergaard@liu.se

Olav Nygård is a senior lecturer and conducts research on inequality in education, segregated schools, and foreign-born youth in rural areas.
Contact: 011-36 36 67, olav.nygard@liu.se

Carl-Ulrik Schierup, professor emeritus, combines critical political economy with sociology and cultural studies on migration, precarious work, stratified citizenship, ethnicity, racism, and nationalism. His current research focuses on anti-racist commons in Swedish cities, as well as global social movements for the rights of migrants and ethnic minorities.
Contact: 011-36 32 28, carl-ulrik.schierup@liu.se

Claudia Tazreiter is Professor of sociology at REMESO. Her research focuses on marginalised populations, belonging, identity and new formations of sociality. She has worked and researched in the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe. She is interested in the role researchers play in social transformation and the ways knowledge is produced within and outside institutions of learning. Claudia also works with scholars and students at risk and the associated topic of academic freedom and its links to freedom of speech.
Contact: 011-36 36 78, claudia.tazreiter@liu.se

In the Tidö Agreement, M, KD, L and SD describe an objective that “authorities shall be obliged to inform the Swedish Migration Agency and the Swedish Police Authority when they come into contact with people who are staying in Sweden without a permit. This means that authorities that a person may come into contact with have a responsibility to ensure that the person has a legal right to stay in Sweden”. Since Linköping University is a government agency, the Division of Research and Migration, Ethnicity, and Society (REMESO) would like to make the following statement on the so-called information obligation that the government wishes to introduce.

To our students
REMESO’s educational programs require a learning situation that is safe for students, teachers and other university employees. Therefore, we do not check, and will never check, whether those who participate in our courses or stay in our environments have a residence permit. The department has internal rules that allow for this practice to be taken by everyone involved in REMESO’s programs.

To our colleagues in universities and colleges

The task of the university teacher is, by law, to organize higher education in his or her own subject area. The researcher is entitled by law to freely choose his or her research problems, freely develop his or her research methods, and freely publish his or her research results. In turn, the university’s task is to organize education and research, and to cooperate with the surrounding society so that the knowledge available at the university benefits society. It is not part of the tasks of either the teacher, the researcher, or the university to inform the Migration Agency and the Police Authority about their activities or those who participate in them. On the contrary, the so-called duty to inform goes against the teacher’s educational mission, undermines academic freedom, and is contrary to good ethics.

To others
Those who are primarily affected by the proposed duty to inform are not university teachers and researchers at universities and colleges, but employees in health care, social services and schools. With this statement, we join many similar statements from trade unions, municipal administrations, regions, employers and workplaces that oppose the imposition of police duties on persons in the public sector. Such an arrangement is incompatible with the professional duties and ethics of those involved, as well as with democracy itself. The more people who join these protests, the more likely it is that the government will withdraw its plans to force public sector employees to become informers.

Norrköping, Sweden, June 14, 2023
Adopted unanimously at the REMESO staff meeting