The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin

The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin offers an in-depth ethnographic account of Muslim youth’s religious identity formation and their engagement with Islam in everyday life. Focusing on Muslim women in the organisation MJD in Germany, it provides a deeper understanding of processes related to immigration, transnationalism, the transformation of identifications and the reconstruction of selfhood. The book deals with the collective content of religious identity formation and processes of differentiation, engaging with the changing role of religion in an urban European setting, restructuring of religious authority and the formation of gender identity through religion. Synnøve K.N. Bendixsen examines how the participants seek and debate what it means to be a good Muslim, and discusses the religious movement as individual engagement in a collective project

Differentiation of Rights in the Norwegian Welfare State: Hierarchies of Belonging and Humanitarian Exceptionalism

Controlling mobility and borders has become a central, defining feature of the state today. Using the Norwegian welfare state as a case study, I argue that the differentiation of rights depending on status categories is an important way in which the state deals with irregular migration. It is also an integral element of border construction and how mobility is managed. How is the Norwegian welfare state differentiating the rights to work, health care, and economic welfare benefits and through which argumentations does the state legitimate these differentiations? This article argues that the practice of differentiation contributes to establishing hierarchies of belonging and enforces the nexus of welfare rights–migration management. Further, the exclusion of certain categories of people from accessing basic welfare services and, consequently, creating precarious lives, is legitimized by the discourse of humanitarian exceptionalism, through which migrants gain some support outside the welfare state system. This facilitates policies and regulations that are “tough on migration”, and produces the irregular subject as apolitical, a victim, and unwanted. The differentiation of rights and the discourses that the state uses to legitimate these differentiations are keys in the negotiation of who should be entitled to which rights in the future

The Care/Security Nexus of the Humanitarian Border: Assisted Return in Norway

While Assisted Return and deportation are frequently viewed as two different return policies, the first represented as humanitarian and the latter as enforcement, this article argues that there is a continuum between these policies and that they form part of humanitarian border enforcement. Drawing on policy document analysis and interviews with NGOs and with irregular migrants, the article provides a two‐level analysis by examining how AR is presented from the Norwegian governmental perspective and how it is experienced from the Afghan migrant perspectives. The article argues that the government bases its AR policy on the need to maintain the credibility and sustainability of the asylum system, as part of fighting crime, while presenting it as a humanitarian solution. For irregular migrants, however, the experienced lack of proper asylum procedures delegitimizes return policies. Overall, the performative aspects of humanitarianism in return policies contribute to depoliticizing return.publishedVersio

Ambivalent recognition: young unaccompanied refugees’ encounters with Norwegian society

Receiving the right to stay in Norway might seem a critical factor for refugees’ well-being and belonging. Yet, this research shows that young unaccompanied refugees experience ambivalent feelings towards Norwegian society after their resettlement. The study is based on a qualitative research design with 14 young unaccompanied refugees residing in Norway. Drawing on recognition theory, we focus on how participants’ psychosocial well-being is constituted through their encounters with social workers and helpers, restrictive asylum policies, and antiimmigration discourses in Norwegian society. Our findings suggest that, while social workers are central to the well-being of these young people, their interaction is sometimes perceived by the young people as emotional misrecognition. Further, while they have the right to residency, their right to family life is not fully recognised, and this poses a threat to their well-being. Antiimmigration discourses contribute further to feelings of ambivalent recognition. Participants strived to manage through active involvement in relationships, everyday coping, sensemaking, critical reflection and social engagement, insisting on their own and other refugees’ worth. We argue that youthfocused social services must explicitly engage with these young people’s broader legal, emotional and social (mis)recognition and with their ways of managing challenges when assisting them in achieving well-being.publishedVersio

The Migration-Kinship Nexus: Mobilising Kinship During fragmented Afghan and Iraqi journeys to European Union Countries

Peer reviewe

Being Tamil, being Hindu:Tamil migrants’ negotiations of the absence of Tamil Hindu spaces in the West Midlands and South West of England

This paper considers the religious practices of Tamil Hindus who have settled in the West Midlands and South West of England in order to explore how devotees of a specific ethno-regional Hindu tradition with a well-established UK infrastructure in the site of its adherents’ population density adapt their religious practices in settlement areas which lack this infrastructure. Unlike the majority of the UK Tamil population who live in the London area, the participants in this study did not have ready access to an ethno-religious infrastructure of Tamil-orientated temples and public rituals. The paper examines two means by which this absence was addressed as well as the intersections and negotiations of religion and ethnicity these entailed: firstly, Tamil Hindus’ attendance of temples in their local area which are orientated towards a broadly imagined Hindu constituency or which cater to a non-Tamil ethno-linguistic or sectarian community; and, secondly, through the ‘DIY’ performance of ethnicised Hindu ritual in non-institutional settings

The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin

The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin offers an in-depth ethnographic account of Muslim youth?s religious identity formation and their engagement with Islam in everyday life. Focusing on Muslim women in the organisation MJD in Germany, it provides a deeper understanding of processes related to immigration, transnationalism, the transformation of identifications and the reconstruction of selfhood. The book deals with the collective content of religious identity formation and processes of differentiation, engaging with the changing role of religion in an urban European setting, restructuring of religious authority and the formation of gender identity through religion

Notes on a More Equitable Higher Education

Non peer reviewe

The Care/Security Nexus of the Humanitarian Border: Assisted Return in Norway

While Assisted Return and deportation are frequently viewed as two different return policies, the first represented as humanitarian and the latter as enforcement, this article argues that there is a continuum between these policies and that they form part of humanitarian border enforcement. Drawing on policy document analysis and interviews with NGOs and with irregular migrants, the article provides a two‐level analysis by examining how AR is presented from the Norwegian governmental perspective and how it is experienced from the Afghan migrant perspectives. The article argues that the government bases its AR policy on the need to maintain the credibility and sustainability of the asylum system, as part of fighting crime, while presenting it as a humanitarian solution. For irregular migrants, however, the experienced lack of proper asylum procedures delegitimizes return policies. Overall, the performative aspects of humanitarianism in return policies contribute to depoliticizing return

Ustvarjanje nedokumentiranih migrantov: primer Norveške

Irregular migration is a growing phenomenon in Europe and elsewhere. In Norway, as in other European countries, there has been a process of heavy restrictions and limited liberalisation in asylum and immigration policies. Drawing on research on irregular migration and my own fieldwork with irregular migrants in Norway, this article discusses four areas of government action that explain how irregular migration is produced, namely 1) the de- and reestablishing of borders, 2) categorization as a management strategy, 3) the production of a deportable subject and, finally, 4) the criminalization of people who are in the territory “illegally”. These are complexly interrelated techniques used by governments in their efforts to exercise authority over people who are in the nation- state “illegally”. I focus on how the nation-state configures and produces irregular migrants in their own back yard. The governmentality of irregular migrants is simultaneously the production of such a category of people.Nedokumentirane migracije so v porastu tako v Evropi kot drugje po svetu. Na Norveškem, kot tudi v preostalih evropskih državah, zaznavajo zastoj liberalizacije azilnih in migracijskih politik in porast restriktivnih ukrepov. Članek temelji na raziskavi nedokumentiranih migracij in avtoričinem terenskem delu z nedokumentiranimi migranti na Norveškem ter ponuja analizo štirih področij vladnih ukrepov. Ti pojasnjujejo način ustvarjanja nedokumentiranosti: 1) odstranitev in ponovna vzpostavitev meja; 2) kategorizacija kot strategija upravljanja; 3) ustvarjanje kategorije subjekta za deportacijo; in 4) kriminalizacija »nezakonito« priseljenih ljudi. Namen kompleksno prepletenih vladnih tehnik je upravljati z »nezakonito« priseljenimi ljudmi. Članek se osredotoča na načine konfiguracije in ustvarjanja nedokumentiranih migrantov na ozemlju nacionalne države, saj prav vladnost nedokumentiranih migracij hkrati ustvarja tovrstno kategorizacijo ljudi