Completed Postdoctoral Projects

Towards a Harmonized European Deportation Regime? The Role of EU Technocrats
Members: Annika Lindberg
Period: 2021-2023
Funding: CERGU

Project description: The removal of third country nationals lacking legal authorization to remain has become a key priority for the European Union’s migration governance. While most  prior  research on deportation has focused  on nation-states’ return  practices, the EU’s coordination  efforts  to harmonize return processes and  render them more  efficient remain  understudied. Addressing this gap, this project investigates the role of European technocratic experts working for various transnational projects in crafting a European deportation regime. It uses an original, practice-oriented approach to study European governance and draws on qualitative and ethnographic methods to map this networked project economy and illuminate its role in shaping deportation policies and practice. The project will contribute to deportation studies, research on transnational governance and bureaucratic power, and the sociology of knowledge, and produce novel insights into the ‘backdoor’ dynamics of the European politics of migration.

 

From Sputnik to Chernobyl, from optimism to fear: socialists and communists facing science (1957-1986)

Members: Ettore Costa
Period: 2018-2021
Funding: CERGU

Project description: This project analyses how the attitude of Western European socialists and communists towards science and technology evolved from the late 1950s to the 1980s, from optimism for the Sputnik to scepticism and fear around Chernobyl. The period corresponded to the transformation of the Old Left, from enthusiasm for social transformation and state-centred social engineering to the end of utopian ambitions and crisis. The hypothesis is that the paradigm shift on science was an underrated factor in affecting their policies and undermining their optimism. This comparative analysis of the socialist parties of Britain and Western Germany as well as the socialist and communist parties of France and Italy, assesses the role of science (specifically nuclear power and space technology) in their policies, language and vision of the future, in addition to the influence of new social movements.

 

Non-Compliance and Collective Action in the European Union

Members: Markus Johansson
Period: 2018-2020
Funding: CERGU

Project description: International cooperation requires policy compliance to be sustainable, and non-compliance is therefore a serious challenge in the European Union (EU). While much research has been devoted to explain non-compliance in the EU, less attention has been given to the effects of non-compliance. Founded in collective action theory, a central prediction is that the chances of generating cooperative agreements between nation states is affected by expectations about policy compliance. The project poses questions on whether expectations about policy compliance affect the current and future will to collective action, and what factors that affect the perceived risk of non-compliance. Empirically, the focus is on negotiation processes between representatives of EU member states, relying on a telephone survey with representatives to the EU Council, and comparative case studies of policy issues in the fields of human and animal antibiotics use, migration and foreign policy.

 

National integration, social security and foreign workers: The legal practice of migrants’ insurance in Rotterdam and Antwerp in the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Members: Christina Reimann
Period: 2016-2019
Funding: CERGU/Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

Project description: Statutory security schemes, when introduced in the 1880s, offered a new instrument to integrate society and were part of the national integration through the law. This process contrasted with the significant migration movements of that very epoch. I shall analyse the encounter between national integration and transnationalism on a micro-level by focusing on the legal practice around social insurance of migrants at the very edge of the national integration process, that is in the “cosmopolitan” port cities of Antwerp and Rotterdam. Conceived as a social history of law and based on an analysis of legal consciousness the study shall show if, why, and how migrants were included in or excluded from social security systems and seize the experience of “law” by subaltern actors.

 

Cold War Holidays: The Politics of Scandinavian Tourism to Communist Europe, 1955–1990

Members: Sune Bechmann Pedersen
Period: 2016-2018
Funding: CERGU/Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

Project description: How divided was Europe during the Cold War, and how did tourism help bridge the gap? By researching Scandinavian tourism to Eastern Europe, this project studies the role of governments, travel agencies, and individual tourists in permeating the border between the two antagonistic blocs. The key research questions addressed are: why communist Europe became a popular tourist destination for citizens of the West and how tourism across the Iron Curtain helped stitch together a divided Europe. Without understanding the paradox that consumerist Western tourists were welcome in the East, we are left with an inadequate analysis of the Cold War. The project combines cultural history’s focus on tourism and the everyday life with political history’s focus on international relations and soft power diplomacy. It employs a variety of methods including oral history and visual analysis, and also makes use of the newly opened Danish Radio and Television archives.

 

Supranationalizing Industrial and Economic Policies: Socialists in the Consultative Assembly of the European Communities, 1952-1972

Members: Brian Shaev
Period: 2015-2017
Funding: CERGU

Project description: This project traces discord and consensus over time within the Socialist faction of the Common Assembly of the European Coal & Steel Community from 1952 to 1958 and then, within the Common Assembly of the European Economic Community from 1958 to 1972. It investigates the domestic and regional concerns that the Socialist/Labor deputies from the six member states brought to the supranational assembly and how, through cooperation, transfer, and learning, they were able to put forth a unique and largely unified position on the institutional workings of the Communities, as well as a generally common vision for the future trajectory of the European project. In turn, it will determine the degree to which a common Socialist position was balanced by centrifugal forces rooted in domestic concerns and divergent party traditions and policies.

 

Rights Consciousness, Litigation, and the Mobilization of Interest Groups in Europe

Members: Andreas Hofmann
Period: 2015-2017
Funding: CERGU/Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

Project description: This research project investigates the potential of the legal system as a resource for interest groups seeking policy change. The expansion of EU law in particular has greatly increased the catalogue of rights available to citizens and corporations in Europe. The project analyses the circumstances of interest groups’ use of litigation. In a series of comparative case studies on conflicts over resource extraction and labour relations, it poses the following three questions: How do interest groups become aware of legal rights? How do they evaluate the opportunities offered by the legal system? How does litigation impact their mobilizing efforts outside the courtroom, both in case of success and in the face of legal set-backs? While existing research on litigants in Europe tends to focus on civil society groups, I plan to specifically include producer interests.

 

Transnational European Fathers' Rights Movement(s): Between European and National Dimensions

Members: Katarzyna Wojnicka
Period: 2015-2017
Funding: CERGU/Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

Project description: The main goal of this project is to analyse the character of European fathers’ rights movement(s) which belongs to the wider group of men’s social movements. Despite of the fact that fathers’ rights movement is one of the most recognizable men’s movement in Europe there are no comparative analyses of the phenomenon and only fragmentary analysis of the national groups and organisations can be single out. In order to obtain well-founded background knowledge about the movement I will carry on qualitative social research in 4 European countries representing different European gender regimes. Subsequently, obtained data will be analysed using social movements theories, critical men and masculinities theories as well as frame analysis and feminist methodology.

 

Hate Crime Legislation in Europe

Members: David Brax
Period: 2014-2016
Funding: CERGU/Riksbankens Jubileumsfond

Project description: This project concern the legal, conceptual and political complications involved in coordinating European hate crime policies and legislations. Hate crimes constitutes a particular challenge to the general project of harmonizing criminal law in Europe. They raise questions regarding the values and principles that governs the Union, and how these are to be codified into law, interpreted in national contexts, and enforced in practice. This project aims to clarify the philosophical/theoretical issues at stake in terms of criminal law, prevention and monitoring. More specifically, the aim is to provide
1. A theoretical overview of European hate crime law
2. An account of the various moral foundations of hate crime legislation - the rationale for punishment enhancements.
3. An account of what characteristics are and should be covered by hate crime laws. What are reasonable criteria for inclusion in the set of protected groups - and should the common European conception allow for local variations in this regard?
4. An analysis of the relation between legislation, policy and monitoring in this area.
 

The Politics of Translation Metaphors: Shaping Translation Studies, Situating the Translator

Members: Angela Kölling
Funding: CERGU/Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Period: 2013-2016

Project description: Drawing on past metaphorical representations and insights from recent studies in metaphor theory, I investigate how metaphors may arrest or transform translation studies and position translators in European local, national, and global cooperative networks. Such metaphors as the translator as mediator, traitor or agent of empire significantly shape the way in which we understand translation; they aid in the training of translators and theorists and foreground aspects of translation to be studied. Most practitioners and theorists of translation are familiar with or even produce their own metaphors for translation: which perceptions and inferences follow from them, what actions do they sanction in a globalised world that depends on dialectical, possibly uneven and developmental intercultural cooperation?
In particular, I am interested in the way metaphors may affect the role of translations and translators at international book fairs, which are ideal study sites because they act as reference points for current global and local economic, cultural and literary developments. Here, the rubber of world literature and translation theory meets the road.
My research cuts across the fields of comparative literature studies, translation studies, creative writing, cultural studies, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and education. Consequently, my study makes use of historical studies, analyses current coverage in the trade journals, periodicals and public medial; draws on conversations with organisers, exhibitors, visitors and representatives of publishers and booksellers associations, statistics released by the selected book fairs, as well as my own experience and observations, and targeted interviews with translators involved in the bookfair networks.

 

Trying to Fit In: Social Risks, Social Policies, and Dualization in the Contemporary Welfare State

Members: Allison Rovny
Period: 2012-2015 (part-time)
Funding: CERGU

Project description: My research focuses on the welfare state, the presence of new social risks in postindustrial political economies, and the growing divide between those deemed to be insiders and outsiders. The term “new social risks” arguably signifies one of the defining areas of contemporary research on welfare state adaptations in advanced affluent democracies. In my research, I examine how the various worlds of welfare provision—specifically, social policy tools—affect the well-being of new social risk groups, and whether we are indeed witnessing an emergence of labor market and welfare state outsiders. I investigate the determinants of outsiderness expressed as single parent income, child poverty rate, and youth unemployment. I analyze the effects of social policies on the likelihood of being poor among low-skilled populations. My ongoing research projects consider the cases of France, Sweden, and Germany, and probe the extent to which a divide between labor market insiders and outsiders has cemented over time, and whether the welfare state exacerbates or ameliorates this dualism. I am particularly interested in the policies, actors, and processes aimed at lessening youth unemployment.

 

Macroeconomic Conditions and Immigrant Inflows Impact on Resistance to Immigration and the Welfare State in Europe

Members: Joakim Ruist
Funding: CERGU/Riksbankens Jubileumsfond
Period: 2013-2015

Project description: Over the last few years, Europe as a whole has seen a substantial increase in public resistance to immigration. In public debate this development is commonly interpreted as an effect of the European economic crisis. The aim is to investigate this in three subprojects.
1) The impact of business cycle variation on resistance to immigration. Variation in resistance to immigration over time is measured for 23 European countries using all six rounds of the biannual European Social Survey 2002-2012, relating the variation to business cycle fluctuations. Results obtained thus far clearly show that business cycle fluctuations have large effects on resistance to immigration.
2) Causes of variation in anti-immigration votes in Sweden. This study will relate local variation in the share of Sweden Democrate (SD) votes to the local economic situation in terms of median incomes and unemployment across more than 5000 Swedish election districts, comparing the outcome of the 2010 and the 2014 elections.
3) Post EU-enlargement immigration and the welfare state in economic recession. This study investigates the net fiscal contribution of immigrants from new member states, including beneficiary costs.

 

Relationen mellan migration och korruption: Vardagskorruption i samband med yttre och inre gränskontroll i Europeiska Unionen

Members: Anja Franck
Period: 2013-2015
Funding: CERGU

Project description: Även om småskalig korruption nämns i många studier av internationell migration saknas det fortfarande forskning om relationen mellan migration och korruption. Tillräckligt med exempel har dock redovisats för att anta att en ökad migration också innebär ökade ”möjligheter” till korruption. Dessa möjligheter uppstår inte bara som en följd av ökad rörlighet över gränser utan också på grund av migrationens ”militarisering” (securitization) och kommersialisering – som inneburit ett ökat fokus på gränskontroll (med hjälp av polis och militär) samt att en del av hanteringen av migrationen överlåtits/övertagits till/av kommersiella aktörer (såsom bemanningsföretag och människosmugglare).

Detta projekt syftar därför till att undersöka vilken roll korruption spelar i migration till den Europeiska Unionen (EU) – med fokus på småskalig/vardagskorruption i samband med yttre och inre gränskontroll i ett antal utvalda mottagarländer i EU.

Projektet har två delar. I den ena delen kartläggs rapporter/kunskap om korruption i samband med yttre och inre gränskontroll hos bistånds/hjälp- och människorättsorganisationer i några av Europas största mottagarländer av migranter: Grekland, Italien och Spanien. I den andra delen ligger fokus på att fördjupa vår förståelse av hur korruption påverkar migrationsprocessen – genom intervjuer med Afghanska flyktingar och migranter i Sverige som rest både med och utan giltiga papper till och genom Europa.

 

Using Expert Surveys to measure party positions in Europe

Members: Jonathan Polk
Period: 2012-2014
Funding: CERGU

Project description: My CERGU research project focuses on developing expert surveys as valid and reliable measures of political party positioning and using these data to explore the electoral consequences of shifts in the positioning of political party leadership in Western Europe. Isolating the connection between party behavior and vote choice requires cross-nationally comparable information on the policy positions of political parties. The most recent Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES), a central data source for exogenous measures of party placement, included a series of hypothetical political parties depicted in a set of vignettes. These vignettes were designed to ascertain the comparability of expert placements of party positions between countries and between experts. The experts’ placements of the hypothetical parties allow one to detect and ultimately correct for any potential country or expert-based bias in the experts’ placements of the actual political parties in the survey. I am currently developing two co-authored manuscripts that use the anchoring vignettes to show that the majority of CHES respondents use the left-right scale in a similar way when placing parties. I use these and earlier CHES measures of party positioning to investigate the relationship between changes in the positioning of mainstream parties and electoral support in national legislative and European Parliament elections.

 

The national implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSDF)

Members: Christina Olsen Lundh
Period: 2012-2014
Funding: CERGU and the research programme SPEQS (financed by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency)

Project description: My research focus on the implementation of the environmental quality standards (EQS) system in Sweden; from setting the standards, via the operationalization, requirements and measures, enforcing measures and follow-up. More specificly I’m interested in the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Direcitve (MSDF). The main goal of the Directive is to achieve a good environmental status in European seas by 2020. The idea behind the MSFD is to develop and implement a common approach to the assessment of the ecological status of marine waters. The directive is binding as to the result (good environmental status) but how ambitious does a member state need to be in order to comply? How to identify the line? And what will happen in the Baltic Sea where not only Member States affect the water quality? Currently, my research focus mostly on the implementation of EQS in order to achieve good environmental status and how Sweden, as a Member State, has handled this. Since the structure and ambitions of the MSFD are similair to the Water FrameworkDirective (WFD), which entered into force in 2000, the implementation of EQS following from the WFD is very interesting and may give a hint on how sucessful the implementation of the MSFD will be. Also EQS from other areas (for example air pollution) is interesting from an implementation perspective.

 

Electoral Implications of Party Fission and Fusion

Members: Raimondas Isbenkas
Period: 2013-2014
Funding: The Swedish Institute

Project description: Political parties and party systems are crucial institutions for the functioning of a modern representative democracy. While the party politics literature commonly assumes the existence of stable parties, in reality political elites regularly reshape party supply through party splits and mergers. There is little comparative research on how these party transformations affect voter behaviour and aggregate electoral outcomes. This research project fills this gap by examining how voters respond to splits and mergers by drawing on the established theories of voting behaviour. The theoretical expectations derived from these theories are tested using a new dataset on splits and mergers in 24 European democracies in the post-war period and the election survey data.

 

The Politics of Managing Migration in Europe

Members: Andrea Spehar
Project period: 2010-2013
Funding: CERGU

Project description: The project studies the actors, discourses and practices of migration management, including both empirical analyses of new forms of migration politics and policy and analytical investigations of their political and ideological foundations. Project related research findings have been published in leading academic journals, such as Journal of European Public Policy, Policy Studies, a forthcoming anthology for Palgrave Macmillan (2013) and a special issue for Comparative European Politics (2015). Andrea Spehar is also member of the IMAGINATION project, funded by Urban Europe for the period 2013-2015. This project focuses on migration from Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries by raising the question what the consequences are of this type of mobility for urban cohesion and urban governance. The project focuses on urban regions in Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden and Turkey and includes the perspective of the CEE countries themselves as well.

 

Structuring New Democracies: Eastern European Political Competition in Integrated Europe

Members: Jan Rovny
Project period: 2011-2013
Funding: CERGU

Project description: For my postdoctoral project, I plan to extend and develop a part of my PhD dissertation concerning the impact of European integration on the structure of political competition in Eastern Europe. While my earlier research demonstrates a significant realignment in Eastern European party competition, I would like to develop a systematic explanation of this phenomenon. I thus propose to carry out a data-collecting project based on a successful pilot study I conducted in the Czech Republic in 2009-10, addressing the content of political competition in Eastern Europe as viewed by political elites.

 

Social and linguistic transformations of the nation: Linguistic landscaping in Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country in an era of increasing globalization and regionalization

Members: Johan Järlehed
Period: 2010-2013
Funding: CERGU

Project description: Within this project, I examine the visual and linguistic representation of national identities in Catalonia, Galicia, and the Basque Country. The aim is to reveal how this representation currently changes in each case, and how these local processes of change are related to more wide-ranging transformative processes like globalization, regionalization and Europeanization. I situate the project within the growing field of research on the linguistic or semiotic landscape, i.e. the symbolic construction of the public space through meaning-making resources like language, color, material, and typography.

 

Territoriell identitet och europeiska välfärdsstater           

Members: Linda Berg
Project period: 2008-2010
Funding: CERGU

Project description: En av de största utmaningarna för en fortsatt europeisk integration handlar om hur Europas territoriella omvandling kan komma att påverka de europeiska välfärdsstaterna och omfördelning mellan europeiska medborgare (Bartolini 2005; Ferrera 2005). Vissa forskare hävdar att EU helt saknar förutsättningar för att kunna hantera välfärdsstatspolitik på överstatlig nivå, medan andra hävdar att en sådan utveckling är nödvändig om integrationsprocessen ska kunna fortsätta (Habermas 2001; Scharpf 2000). En nyckelaspekt, enligt systembyggnadsteoretiker, är betydelsen av territoriella gränser, eftersom dessa antas påverka territoriell identitet och därmed också uppfattningar om politisk legitimitet och solidaritet mellan olika delar och individer i Europa (Ferrera 2005). Detta postdokprojekt syftar till att analysera effekter av både kollektiva territoriella identiteter (makronivå) och individers olika territoriella identifikationer eller samhörighet (mikronivå), på olika territoriella nivåer. Genom att använda multilevel analys finns möjlighet att samtidigt analysera variationer på såväl makro- som mikronivå. Projektet kommer huvudsakligen att använda data från olika europeiska opinionsstudier, t.ex. ESS, EVS, Eurobarometer, men även valundersökningar och svenska opinionsdata.

 

Global Europe – the EU’s external trade relations, with special focus on Asia

Members: Lena Lindberg
Project period: 2008-2010
Funding: CERGU

Project description: Whereas my earlier research dealt with the process of regionalisation and its impact on economic integration in Southeast Asia, particularly within the framework of ASEAN but also within arrangements such as ASEAN 3 (ASEAN, China, Korea, and Japan), my post-doctoral research concerned the EU’s external economic relations with focus on East Asia. Over the years, I have developed a strong interest in the political and economic relations between Europe and this part of the world, and the research problem therefore concerned how the EU should deal with its economic relations in Southeast and Northeast Asia. The argument was that the EU should consider how to best manage its relations – either separately with ASEAN, China, Japan and Korea, or with a joint strategy for the entire region. A related issue had to do with the role of the EU in international trade on the global arena. Interviews were made with decision-makers in both Brussels and Asia.

 

The EU’s Democracy Promotion and the Mediterranean Neighbours. Orientation, ownership and dialogue in Jordan and Turkey

Members: Ann-Kristin Jonasson
Project period: 2006-2008
Funding: CERGU