WAIT
Waiting for an uncertain future
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What we have been up to
Dear friends and followers, the WAIT-project is entering a new phase. This last year our researchers have carried out fieldwork and spent time as guest scholars at our partnered institutions. Marry-Anne Karlsen has been in Johannesburg, at the African Centre for Migration and Society at the University of Witwatersrand and Kari Anne Drangsland at the Universität Hamburg.
In January, the core research group got together in Bergen to exchange experiences from the field, and to identify central themes that have been common throughout their different sub-projects.
-Our goal at this point has been to unpack different understandings of waitinghood in irregular migration, rather than narrowing the focus, says project leader Christine M. Jacobsen. According to her, the group has concerned itself with developing a strategy for working comparatively.
-We have also felt the need to discuss the ethical aspects of our research, and the unequal power relations that structure the encounters of ethnographer and migrants in the field. Jacobsen argues that the feminist perspectives that inform the project have been useful in this regard.
This fall the work will center on analysis and dissemination. The WAIT project is part of the strategic focus on migration at the University of Bergen, and Jacobsen recently presented the project at an EU-workshop on the European asylum system. In August Thomas Hylland Eriksen will hold a key-note lecture at the Nordic Migration Research annual conference, New (Im)mobilities: Migration and Race in the Era of Authoritarianism. At the conference, WAIT will organize the workshop Il/legal time: Exploring the temporalities of irregular migration. Also in August, Sharam Khosravi will hold a key-note lecture at the biennial of the European Association of Anthropology (EASA) in Stockholm, which focuses on the themes staying, moving, settling. At EASA researchers from WAIT will convene for the panel Trapped in space, stuck in time? Exploring irregular migration, time and im/mobility.
-This shows that the problematics raised through the project elicit significant interest and attention, both nationally and internationally, says Jacobsen.
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WAIT researcher Thomas Hylland Eriksen explains the WAIT project
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Researchers in the field
–Meeting the migrants have made a big impression, but as anthropologist it is also through these meetings that I think best, says Christine M. Jacobsen, researcher and project leader of the WAIT project. Through ethnographic research, the project examines how laws, norms and power relations structure irregular migrants' experience of time and their possibility to carry out their life projects.
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Falling out of time
What are the moral consequences of irregular migrants’ prolonged waiting? In this blog-entry, philosopher and professor Odin Lysaker reflects upon the ethical role of time in the case of refugees. The text is based on his contribution to the WAIT research project.
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Publications and dissemination
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Walker, Rebecca, & Galvin, Treasa (2018). Labels, victims, and insecurity: an exploration of the lived realities of migrant women who sell sex in South Africa. Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal, 1-16.
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Lysaker, Odin «Dignified Childhoods Put on Hold: A Waiting Guarantee for Vulnerable Unaccompanied Minors’ Prolonged Displacement.» Paper presented at The Philosophy and Social Science Conference, Prague 16.–20. May 2018.
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Karlsen, Marry-Anne ‘How long time is enough?’ Exploring irregular migration, time and belonging. Work in Progress Seminar, African Centre for Migration and Society, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 04. May 2018.
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Khosravi, Shahram "Deportees' Time" Keynote at Borders, Racisms, and Harms: A Symposium. School of Law, Birbeck, London, 2. May 2018.
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Drangsland, Kari Anne "Your future starts right here – The temporalities of Ausbildungsduldung as a borderscape." Lecture at the Universität Hamburg, Fakultät für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften, 17. April 2018.
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Jacobsen, Christine M. 'The Transformative Effects of Migration on Gender in Politics and Society' at The Transformative Consequences of International Migration Symposium. 9. March, 2018.
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Bendixsen, Synnøve Kristine Nepstad & Eriksen, Thomas Hylland (2018). Timeless time among irregular migrants: The slowness of waiting in an accelerated world, in Manpreet Janeja & Andrea Bandak (eds.), Ethnographies of Waiting: Doubt, Hope & Uncertainty. Bloomsbury Academic.
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Musso, Sandrine in collaboration with Carine Baxerres, Alice Desclaux, Cyril Farnarier, Juliette Sakoyan, Aline Sarradon-Eck and Francesca Sirna "Frontières, temporalités et matérialités au prisme de la santé." Seminar series at Centre Norbert Elias, EHESS Marseille.
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