Research seminars: Migration and Ethnicity (MERGU)

30 September

Associate Professor Lecture "Sociological Curiosity – as a Motivation and Method"
Presenter: Ylva Wallinder, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Chair: Mattias Bengtsson, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Language: Enliglish

Note! The seminar will be held in room D138. 

Abstract

In this lecture, I will reflect on some of the concrete experiences that have shaped me as a sociologist, migration scholar and university teacher, and on why sociology has become, for me, an empirical science in which theory serves as a central analytical and methodological tool, rather than an end in itself. I will discuss how and why sociology, and sociological curiosity, are important enablers to imagine alternatives to dominant perspectives and interpretations of different materials, methods, and forms of data. Approaching empirical research with a curious – and at times naïve – sociological gaze, I have engaged with a broad range of empirical settings and methods, combining ethnographic fieldwork, narrative interviews, survey and register data. By drawing on theories of organisational reproduction of sameness – with particular focus on social capital, cultural cloning, and social sustainability in practice – I have sought to understand and explore differences and contrasts within and between organisations, individuals, categories, and institutions. These contrasts show us how tacit knowledge, norms, and expectations shape the boundaries of what employees and organisation members in Sweden are allowed and expected to do. The lecture also considers power and influence as relational phenomena and concludes with a reflection on how researchers’ and university teachers’ choices of empirical focus shape the questions that are asked, the perspectives that are made visible, and the knowledge that is (re)produced.

14 October

Navigating Temporary Protection: Ukrainians Residing in Norway
Presenter: Celine Borge, Guest PhD student from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim
Discussants: Oksana Shmulyar Gréen, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Chair: Maja Cederberg, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg

Abstract

By 2026, more than 100,000 Ukrainians have received Temporary Protection in Norway since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, making Ukrainians the largest refugee group in the country and Norway the largest recipient among the Nordic countries. The scale and the duration of Ukrainian displacement, combined with the distinctive policy framework governing their reception, have made the Ukrainian case increasingly significant for research on refugee settlement, employment, and temporariness. Since March 2022, displaced Ukrainians across European countries have been granted a Temporary Protection (TP) status under the explicit policy assumption of eventual return. In Norway, Ukrainians under TP have the right to work, are entitled to family reunification, and can participate in the extensive Integration Programme, which includes language-learning courses and employment assistance. Norway initially offered a comparatively generous TP regime without additional restrictions. After December 2023 and through 2026, this gradually shifted, first banning visits to Ukraine for all protection holders in 2023, then declaring safe zones in 2024, and exempting all men aged 18 through 60 as of 2026. Situated within this context, my doctoral dissertation explores how Temporary Protection is navigated by Ukrainians residing in Norway and by the service providers responsible for qualifying them for employment. The dissertation draws on qualitative data collected between 2024 and 2026 and currently includes three studies that address different dimensions. The first study examines how Ukrainians' future orientations shape their labour-market strategies in Norway. Drawing on theories of migration aspirations, social anchoring, and perceived opportunity structures, the analysis identifies three distinct labour-market strategies associated with different aspirations for settlement, return, and onward migration. Furthermore, we argue that these strategies are shaped by refugees' perceptions of available opportunities, informed by interactions with institutions, employers, and social networks. The second paper extends the analysis beyond the Norwegian context by exploring Ukrainians' transnationalism, with particular attention to how aspirations, resources, and refugee policies shape their transnational practices. The study argues that these practices have both instrumental and emotional dimensions, shaped in part by transnational networks and refugees' aspirations, as well as institutional structures and policies in Ukraine, Norway and other host countries. The third study shifts the analytical perspective to service providers tasked with qualifying Ukrainians for employment, with particular attention to the tensions that arise and how they are addressed through discretionary practices at both individual and collective levels. We identify tensions between policy imperatives aimed at rapid labour-market entry and more client-centred assessments of Ukrainians' psychological and linguistic readiness and occupational ambitions. 

22 October

Midterm PhD seminar "Cooking Against the Grain: Everyday Food Practices, Belonging and Migration in Sweden"
Presenter: Sona Sukiyasan, PhD student at the Dept. of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Discussants: Katarzyna Wojnicka and Veronica Flyman Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Chair: Oksana Shmulyar Gréenm, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg

The seminar is co-organised by FEMSEM and MERGU. 

Abstract

This doctoral project explores how food practices shape experiences of identity, belonging, and home-making among Armenian migrants in Sweden. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, including narrative-biographical interviews, participant observation, and reflexive and autoethnographic material, the study examines how everyday practices of cooking, shopping, eating, sharing, and remembering food become entangled with experiences of migration and diasporic life. Food is approached not simply as a marker of cultural continuity or ethnic identity, but as a material, sensory, affective, and relational practice. The study examines how culturally familiar foods are sought, substituted, recreated, transported, and shared, as well as how migrants navigate differences between remembered food practices and the material conditions of everyday life in Sweden. Particular attention is given to experiences of sensory familiarity and difference, the emotional and mnemonic significance of food, and the social and transnational networks through which food, knowledge, and practices circulate. Emerging from the ethnographic material is an understanding of food as one of the everyday means through which familiarity, continuity, social relationships, and forms of belonging are made and maintained in conditions of migration. At the same time, these practices are shaped by broader material and social conditions, including uneven access to familiar foods, the organization of food markets, migration experiences, and cultural hierarchies. Participants respond to these conditions through practices of adaptation, substitution, home production, sharing, collective purchasing, and transnational exchange. Such practices also point toward the development of what I conceptualize as alternative infrastructures of care and solidarity, through which access to food, practical knowledge, memories, and forms of mutual support are collectively sustained. The developing theoretical framework brings scholarship on diaspora and identity into conversation with perspectives on affect, everyday practices, and the political significance of seemingly ordinary acts. Hall’s work provides a point of departure for approaching diasporic identity as relational, historically situated, and continuously negotiated rather than as a fixed cultural essence. Ahmed’s work on affect offers possibilities for examining how emotions and attachments circulate through encounters with food, people, objects, and places, while Gandhi’s work on minor forms of politics provides a developing perspective for considering the potential political significance of everyday practices of care, solidarity, and collective action without necessarily defining these practices as explicit forms of resistance. Rather than applying these theoretical perspectives as fixed explanatory frameworks, the study develops its conceptual approach in dialogue with the ethnographic material. By approaching food as an entry point into the everyday experience of migration, the project seeks to connect intimate and sensory experiences of taste, memory, care, and familiarity with broader questions of migration, belonging, inequality, and power. In doing so, it foregrounds migrants not simply as subjects adapting to new social  environments, but as active participants in creating and sustaining everyday forms of belonging, connection, and collective life.

28 October

Intersectional Belonging: Class, Gender, and the Quest for Ordinary Life among Eastern European Migrants
Presenter: Magdalena Nowicka, Professor in Sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences at Humboldt University in Berlin and 
visiting professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University (2026-2028)
Chair: Katarzyna Wojnicka, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg

The seminar is co-organised by FEMSEM and MERGU. 

Abstract

Drawing on her forthcoming book Middle Grounds: Chronic Liminality and the Quest for Ordinary Life, Nowicka examines how middle-class values shape the aspirations and experiences of Eastern European migrants in contemporary Europe. The book starts from the premise that, for Eastern European migrants, middle-class values promise not only access to an affluent social position but also a sense of belonging to Europe itself.  Nowicka explores the dynamic between universalised ideals of middle-class life that inform migrants' aspirations for a "good life" and the locally specific performances of middle-classness that migrants must learn and enact in order to claim social belonging. Focusing on the role of gender, she compares the stories of two migrants from Poland, Judyta in London and Milena in Berlin. Although the two women share similar backgrounds, their struggles for belonging unfold within distinct constellations of racism, while their opportunities to claim belonging are differently shaped by gendered identities and care responsibilities.By bringing together questions of class, gender, race, migration, and place, Nowicka demonstrates the value of a genuinely intersectional approach to understanding migrants' positionalities in contemporary Europe. 

9 December

Dis-comfort as method in queer migration research
Presenter: Sophia Zisakou, PhD in Sociology of Law, Lund University
Discussant: Martin Joormann, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg
Chair: Katarzyna Wojnicka, Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg

The seminar is co-organised by FEMSEM and MERGU. 

Abstract

This article reflects on unresolved affective tensions in the field, not as failures or impasses but as analytical tools for (un)doing research. Shifting from a distant and detached analysis of my interlocutors’ narratives towards a decentred account of myself, I trace my disorientations, discomforts and troubles in encounters with queer refugees and asylum seekers. Through this ephemeral self-accounting, I approach the self as an aporetic, political and theoretical space of (un)becoming, examining how (non-)normativities emerged in my PhD research and how I navigated them while oscillating between affirmation and resistance. From this autotheoretical standpoint, and in confronting the inescapability of discursivity, I write through uncertainties, ambivalences and affective conflicts, approaching writing not as closure or as a constraint to ‘write what we already know’ but as an invitation to relate and (un)learn through the performative act of writing itself.