Abstracts

The Abstract book can be downloaded as a PDF. All the abstracts are also on this page as plain text.

ABSTRACT BOOK: ETMU 2024 Conference Abstract Book


KEYNOTES

Thursday 7.11, 15:00-16:00

Väinö Linna Hall

This will burn bridges only if you let it – and if you do, let the light show you the way
Javiera Marchant Aedo, Human Rights Activist and Equality Expert

This talk examines the dynamic interaction between activists and academic researchers engaged in social justice issues. Activists often dedicate their work selflessly and without compensation, while researchers may gain professional benefits from their work, even in the absence of funding.

One of the aims of this talk will be raising important questions about recognition and impact. I will explore how academia’s focus on oppression doesn’t always recognize that for the people whose lives they research it is not merely an intellectual exercise, but it is a matter of real-life implications for marginalized groups. We will highlight what critical and activist research can look like and discuss the potential for equitable partnerships that honor both activists’ contributions and researchers’ insights. Ultimately, we aim to foster collaboration that drives meaningful social change.

 

Friday 8.11, 11:00-12:00

Väinö Linna Hall

Climate (Im)mobilities as a Lived Relationship: Entering Empathic Unsettlement in Play Space

Kirsi Pauliina Kallio, Professor of Environmental Pedagogy, Tampere University

Climate change is increasing various types of (im)mobilities around the world related to both slow-onset impacts and fast-onset hazards. Both humans and other species are moving more between places and out of deteriorating livelihoods but are also becoming trapped in them. The so-called mobility paradigm has begun to explore human climate mobilities in this broad sense, recognising their transnational and translocal nature, people’s changing relationships with their natural and built environments, inequalities between different people and places, a variety of causes of forced displacement, back-and-forth and long-distance forms of mobility, combinations of mobility and immobility as a family or neighbourhood strategy, and chosen and forced immobilities. This bundle is not easy for anyone to grasp. Understanding what climate (im)mobilities mean for someone, somewhere, in a particular life situation, requires empathic relations-building across difference and often also across otherness. To avoid ‘empathetic failures’, in Pedwell’s (2016) words, time and other resources are needed for this learning. Furthermore, the formation of empathetic lived relationships requires a willingness to enter what Dominick LaCapra (2014) calls ‘the unsettling condition’, where one’s self and one’s lived reality are vulnerable to change. This leap into the unknown can be frightening. Yet Martha Nussbaum (2012) has noted that social anxieties can be overcome in the ‘play space’ accessible through the arts. Following in this vein, this talk will invite the audience into play space to build decolonising lived relationships with climate (im)mobilities through empathic unsettling, guided by 73 ten-year-old research participants.

 

Friday 8.11, 15:00-16:00

Väinö Linna Hall

Poetry as a Site of Knowledge, Action, and Sanctuary

Sohail Jannesari, Global Health Lecturer, Brighton and Sussex Medical School

This keynote explores the unique power of poetry in capturing the experience of migration, providing a place of sanctuary, and being a medium of protest. There is a compelling case, therefore, for poetry to be recognised as a form of academic knowledge and inquiry. At the same time, the keynote confronts poetry’s limitations, potential elitism and distortion by the diaspora. As part of the talk, attendees are invited to craft their own four-line Ruba’i poem, and add it to a collective art installation.

 

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

Thursday 7.11, 10:30-12:00

Väinö Linna Hall

Manifestations of (neo)nationalism in contemporary societies
Chair: Professor Nelli Piattoeva – academic leader of TRANSIT, Research Centre on Transnational and Transformation hosted by the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University.

Panelists: Professor Jouni Häkli, doctoral researcher Attila Kustán Magyari and professor Zsuzsa Millei, Tampere University.

In this multidisciplinary panel researchers will discuss the manifestations of (neo)nationalism in contemporary societies. They will also pose critical questions about research on (neo)nationalism.
Professor Jouni Häkli will look at the critiques of methodological nationalism and whether or not these remain justified. Whereas national societies have become more porous, it is timely to explore how to study nationalism in ways that acknowledge the complex de- and re-nationalizing tendencies. Attila Kustán Magyari will consider the differences and similarities between (neo)nationalism and populism related to the hierarchical and antagonistic understandings of ‘the people’ and the political/economic ‘elite’. Moreover, there is a specific form of decolonial argument that is deployed by right-wing populists and conspiracy theorists in the name of national sovereignty. While the link between nation-building and (post)colonial sentiments is not new, the right-wing branch of the political elite in Hungary uses decoloniality to justify nationalistic policies in the media. Another important arena where (neo)nationalism is reproduced is education and early childhood policies. Professor Zsuzsa Millei will address the shift from welfare state’s values of solidarity and equality as the glue of national societies in the Nordics to virulent forms of exclusionary nationalism. Nationalism is on the rise and is taking spectacular forms often supported by the misinterpretation of scientific evidence. Welfare policies including early childhood education are enlisted to react to the growing diversity of societies as a threat to normative cultural homogeneity and associated status quo – a product of nation-building processes itself. These policies may take spectacular, virulent forms.

 

Friday 8.11, 13:00-14:30

Väinö Linna Hall

An affective encounter – Art and research in the neoliberal setting

Chairs: Fath E Mubeen and Riikka Era, Tampere University

Panelists: Miia Säppi and Jaana Denisova-Laulajainen, Tampere Intercultural Art (TIcAS),

 Nick Haswell and Camila Da Rosa Ribeiro, Tampere University

Academia and the arts are increasingly uniting to answer the profound questions and challenges of our times. Art, research, and art-research are, for example, used in the context of migration issues to bring to light questions and seek solutions. However, social scientific research and the arts have been approximated also in terms of increased precarity and economic scarcity, on local and global terrains. While traditional boundaries between research and art are being erased to produce artistic and scientific knowledge in synergy, there is also increasing pressure for these outcomes to align with global market pragmatic rationality.

Workshops and abstracts

WORKSHOP 1: Youth and Refuge

Organizers: Mervi Kaukko and Maria Petäjäniemi, University of Tampere

Thursday 7.11 Session 1, Room: Linna K103

Youth after forced displacement is shaped by several overlapping conditions that are particular for this group. On one hand, young refugees may face hostility and strict, at times unreasonable policies.  Arriving in a safe country is hard, as seeking asylum is constrained by closing borders, even in violation of international agreements. Those who reach Finland meet new and increasingly distant goals before being accepted. Moreover, youth can encounter multi-layered discrimination and racism even after receiving a favorable asylum decision. On the other hand, there’s a movement in the opposite direction in Finland, and some other countries of settlement: many longtime resident youth, and those working with them, have welcomed young refugees. In some cases, artists and activists have acted as their advocates. Young refugees themselves have also voiced their opinions over the years, for instance in the Right to Live demonstrations.

 

  1. Former unaccompanied minors and the transition to adulthood: A voice-centred relational approach

Luke Macaulay, Tampere University

This paper presents an overview of a current research project working with former unaccompanied minor youth in Finland regarding their experiences of becoming adults. Utilising a qualitative single-site case design underpinned by a voice-centred relational methodology approach, there are two research objectives of this study. Research Objective 1 (RO1) is to better understand the transition to adulthood of former unaccompanied minor youth in Finland. The participants of this study sought asylum as unaccompanied minors but are now young adults – as such, are now technically former unaccompanied minors. RO1 addresses the following research questions: ‘How do former unaccompanied minor youth in Finland conceptualise the transition to adulthood?’; ‘What do former unaccompanied minor youth in Finland identify as barriers and supports to the transition to adulthood?’ Research Objective 2 (RO2) is to innovate new ways of co-constructing knowledge and art with participants, addressing the following research question: ‘How does the collaborative creation of knowledge through a participatory arts-based method amplify the voices of former unaccompanied minor youth in Finland?’ In this paper, I will give an overview of the project – including the overall rationale for the study. A further focus of this paper is to highlight the voice-centred relational methodology approach of the study and how/why an arts-based approach, using poetry and visual art, will be utilised. Anticipated methodological learnings will be presented in order to engage the audience in discussion and critique, with the aim to foster collegial dialogue about this study’s methodological approach.

 

  1. “If they are feeling fine, I feel fine”. The role of transnational family relationships for young refugee women striving towards wellbeing

Marja Tiilikainen, Migration Institute of Finland and Marte Knag Fylkesnes, NORCE

In this paper we explore the role of transnational family in the lives of young women who once arrived as unaccompanied minor refugees to Finland and Norway. What kinds of challenges or resources do transnational family relationships provide to their wellbeing? How do young women negotiate between, on one hand, their new life conditions and, on the other hand, gendered expectations from the side of the family? As part of the Drawing Together project, we engaged with 16 young women over a period of three years. Methods comprised art-based workshops, eco-mapping of social networks and interviews. Across data, transnational family was ascribed a central role in participants’ accounts of wellbeing/ill-being. Participants often maintained strong emotional ties with family over time and space, and opportunity to support family members fostered a sense of agency. However, sustaining intimate relationships across borders could also be a source of stress, due to physical distance, harsh living conditions of the family, and restrictive family reunification schemes. Young women growing up in the North utilized new opportunities available for them, but also negotiated contrasting expectations. The in-depth analysis shows how family roles and expectations are negotiated and evolve over time, as young women strive towards wellbeing for both themselves and their kin. The analysis includes also relationships with siblings and missing/deceased family members, which are less frequently discussed in the literature. One important implication is the urgency to understand better gender-specific experiences and needs of unaccompanied minor refugees living in transnational family situations.

 

  1. Identifying Central Aspects of Well-being Among Individuals in Situations of Forced Migration in Finland

Areen Nassar, University of Jyväskylä

This paper explores the aspects of well-being among individuals in situations of forced migration in Finland. Using the Capability Approach as both a theoretical and analytical framework, this study investigates the central capabilities of forced migrants for achieving well-being within Finnish society. Qualitative data were collected from 43 forced migrants participating in eight group discussions. Thematic data analysis was employed to identify key passages within their collected narratives. Findings highlight legal security, economic participation, and social relatedness as central aspects of well-being in the Finnish context. Legal security not only grants entitlements to a variety of public services but also facilitates access to diverse opportunities and puts an end to chronic uncertainties. Meanwhile, economic participation ensures the enhancement of forced migrants’ social esteem, personal autonomy, and self-esteem, while social relatedness promotes their psychological well-being and human and social capital. Acknowledging the contextual nuances and temporal dynamics inherent in forced migration experiences, these findings serve as a foundational framework for future inquiries into the realisation of well-being aspects among forced migrants within Finnish society. Furthermore, they offer insights that can inform policies and services tailored to the diverse needs of this population.

 

  1. Narratives of everyday life experiences of Unaccompanied Refugee Minors in Norway

Gunika Rishi, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Unaccompanied minor minors (URM) are a particularly vulnerable group when it comes to psychosocial health and integration. URMs experience displacement due to social, psychological, political, economic and environmental stressors. These factors govern their trajectory from departure, through border crossings, to their entire stay in a foreign country. Even after reaching their destination, URMs often face persistent challenges as they adapt to a new society and daily stressors during the settlement process. These can include difficulties related to complex legal immigration processes, access to education or integration, separation from family, social, cultural and linguistic differences, racial discrimination, bullying, experience of homelessness and frequent relocation (Tørrisplass, 2022a). The paradox persists where care and support for URM is often based on their demographic characteristics such as age, gender and nationality, rather than being tailored to their individual needs. This persistent situation perpetuates structural inequalities by mainly categorizing URMs as “refugees” rather than recognizing and addressing their specific needs as children. In line with this focus, my study seeks to make a meaningful contribution by empirically investigating how URMs experiences and narrate their everyday experiences within a changing and uncertain system of migration and citizenship. Building on the exploratory and narrative nature of my study, the paper will focus on how URMs build relationships, navigate new systems, imagine the future, understand their past, and in what ways they show resilience and vulnerability through their experiences. This paper presentation would be based on empirical research done in three municipalities in Norway. I will use narrative interviews to bring out URMs stories about family, home and belonging, to address the following questions: What notions of family and home do these stories produce? What changes do these stories talk about, in terms of family relationships, belonging and the practice of creating a home before and after moving to Norway, and before and after family reunification?

 

  1. Understanding Relationship Between Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction Among young Afghan Immigrants in Pakistan

Qaiser Abbas, The University of Punjab, Lahore Pakistan

This study explores the relationship between psychological well-being and life satisfaction among young Afghan immigrants in Pakistan, addressing a significant gap in the existing literature. While similar constructs have been studied in various immigrant populations, there has been limited focus specifically on young Afghan immigrants in Pakistan. The research draws on a sample of 15 Afghan immigrants between the ages of 18-35 residing in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) and Punjab provinces, consisting of 10 men and 5 women. Utilizing the Satisfaction with Life Scale and the Affect Balance Scale, the study measures both psychological well-being and life satisfaction. The primary objective is to identify critical factors influencing the psychological well-being of young Afghan immigrants in Pakistan. By examining the interaction between these variables, the study aims to inform the development of targeted interventions that can enhance the psychological well-being and resilience of young Afghan immigrants. This research contributes to the broader field of immigrant mental health, highlighting the need for effective support systems to aid the adjustment and well-being of immigrant populations in host countries.

WORKSHOP 2: Transformations of the academic community: Expanding possibilities of knowledge production

Organizers: Anna Björnö and Oshie Nishimura-Sahi, Tampere University

Thursday 7.11 Session 1, Room: Linna 4013

Academic communities proclaim inclusion of multiple diversities, including, but not limited to, the presence of immigrant and guest researchers, participation for the underrepresented social and ethnic minority groups. Looking at this dynamic relationship within academia, we would like to discuss not only sociological aspects of diversity, but its epistemological implications: the ways of challenging and transforming the knowledge base (see, e.g. Parker, 2007). While diversity certainly poses challenges in terms of language and inclusion at the university workplace (Yanaprasart & Lüdi, 2018), it is also worth considering how it contributes to the content of academic work. For instance, Essanhaji and van Reekum, (2022) write that examining diversity through the lens of management or social justice makes the concept operational, yet it might overlook its epistemological contributions to knowledge production. The heterogeneity among researchers opens more varied ways for knowledge production, multiple considerations of what is knowledge and brings challenges of its legitimacy.   We would like to go beyond the binary of national and international aspects of the university functioning to discuss alternative futures on the staff belonging, integration, language policy and knowledge production. In so doing, we touch upon several topics which are relevant to conference themes such as mobility, trans/nationalism and belonging: for instance, language politics in academia, knowledge (co)production through researchers’ ‘foreignness’, and its implications for researchers’ positionality.

 

  1. Academic well-being, equity, and the future of academic work: lessons from a qualitative exploration into staff well-being at a Finnish university

Marc Perkins & Taina Saarinen, Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä

We believe that the concept of well-being, while sometimes applied in a one-size-fits all instrumental and individualizing manner, may provide a framework through which we can explore the diverse lived realities of academic workers, and by doing so identify possible pathways towards an inclusive, caring academic community. Workplace well-being is frequently evaluated via quantitative methods, with multiple choice questions a mainstay of analyses. While these surveys serve important leadership functions and provide useful data, they may fail to capture the complexity of people’s well-being experiences at work due to the lack of nuanced answer options. We used a variety of artistic participatory qualitative techniques to explore the factors that influence staff members’ well- and unwell-being at work in a Finnish university. Our 21 participants were variable on many axes, including classification (teacher, researcher, expert- and professional-staff), employment type (permanent vs. temporary), employment duration, unit, language, and immigrant status. Preliminary themes we have identified that are central to participants’ workplace well-being are the work environment, work situation, supervisor, purpose, community, and ability to be a whole person. We believe that these very same themes are also central to equitable workplaces and can help form meaningful imaginaries of possible academic futures that are more inclusive, community-driven, and open to diversity along many axes. In this presentation we will share some of the stories of our participants, weaving together the streams of well-being, equity, and possible futures into a single dialog discussing the state of academic work in Finland today and beyond.

 

  1. International academics as change agents for transformation: lived and managed internationalization in a Finnish university

Vesna Holubek, Derek Ruez, Mila Bujić, Marisa Honkanen, & Zsuzsa Millei, Tampere University

This paper explores internationalization processes as an ongoing transformation of higher education institutions by examining a case of internationalization efforts at Tampere University (TAU). We focus on an initiative of a local trade union association, led by international academics, to understand and improve the position of international researchers, teachers, and other staff at TAU. This qualitative case study combines survey and interviews (2021-2022) with self-identified international staff at TAU, as well as analysis of relevant policy documents. We also work autoethnographically with our own critical reflections as a team of international and Finnish academics who conducted the research and used the findings to advocate for changes. Like many (globally renowned) universities, TAU built its procedures for managing internationalization predominantly along quantitative indicators (e.g. number of international staff, students, and partnerships). It can be argued that the discourse of recruiting international ‘talent’ further instrumentalizes international academics in Finnish universities. However, the lived side of internationalization efforts paints a more complex picture of the proclaimed international status of TAU: the participants’ experiences of exclusion from university communities and distance from university decision-making intersect with challenges around language practices and impacts of academic precarity. The findings illuminate lived aspects of internationalization and show the complicated convergences and divergences between managerial attempts to increase university’s global competitiveness and the diverse needs, positionalities, and agencies of international academics.

 

  1. Ethnophilosophy as Intellectual Resources: Self-Reflective Inquiry into the Onto-Epistemic Foundations of Global Education Policy Research

Oshie Nishimura-Sahi, Tampere University

This paper exemplifies a way of recasting researchers’ autobiographical narratives as an intellectual resource. In so doing, it aims to describe the inherent complexity and multilayered nature of the onto-epistemic foundations for studying global education policy (GEP). It seeks to achieve this aim through self-reflective thinking about my own trajectory that encompasses my origin and professional experiences. The origin and professional experiences interrelate in shaping researchers’ decisions on ‘what to study’ and ‘how to study’ that ultimately influence the nature of the knowledge created on political and educational practices in different parts of the world. In reflecting on my trajectory toward becoming a researcher, I am attentive to how my childhood memories, which are coloured by Shinto spiritualities, Buddhist doctrines and Japanese naturalism, gave rise to my interests in actor-network theory (ANT), which has recently gained traction in GEP studies and become an influential part of the ‘material turn’ in the GEP field.

 

  1. Language as an epistemic tool

Anna Björnö, Tampere University

This paper is trying to deepen internationalization perspectives in academia. In contrast to the commonly accepted perspective highlighting transnational mobility, cultural exchange and the ability to learn diverse practices as key achievements of internationalization, this paper digs into a scholarly journey as “growing roots”—the process of getting to know people, history, and the intricacies of social relations in new and old places. Internationalization is connected to migration, and intellectual pursuits inevitably also reflect these experiences. As universities become more diverse, integrating international researchers presents a challenge for institutions, but it is also requiring scholars to reshape their epistemological outlooks. Using my personal experience of learning Finnish and autoethnography as an analytical lens, I explore how language acquisition can shape both personal and academic process of “growing roots”, understanding one’s own positionality. The paper critiques the neoliberal perspective internationalization, which often prioritizes global competitiveness at the expense of deeper engagement with places, histories and communities, reducing language to a mere tool for communication. This perspective highlights the need to re-evaluate language learning’s role within education beyond linguistics and pedagogy, especially in social sciences, where it plays a vital role in shaping scholarly positionality and understanding of the societal phenomena.

WORKSHOP 3: Researching, documenting and archiving the local histories of African diaspora communities

Organizers: Anna Rastas, Tampere University and Leila Koivunen, University of Turku

Thursday 7.11 Session 1, Room: Linna K107

In this session, we will look at a range of projects aiming at researching and/or recording the history of the African diaspora: publications, artistic projects, exhibitions, museum collections and other cultural heritage projects. By whom and how should these histories be recorded and explored? How do local contexts, such as relationships with colonialism and different histories of migration, shape narratives and ways of representing the histories of African diasporic communities in different places? How are the various political and cultural flows of the global African diaspora transmitted in the production of knowledge about diaspora communities in different locations? And how should discussions on the decolonization of knowledge guide research and cultural heritage projects on the African diaspora?

 

  1. Curating cultural heritage – The Finnish Senegalese community and the Helinä Rautavaara Museum

Kristina Tohmo, MA cultural anthropologist, Producer, Helinä Rautavaara Museum

My presentation is a case study of a collaboration between a Finnish Senegalese community and the Helinä Rautavaara Ethnographic Museum in Espoo, Finland. In 2017-2019, the museum’s Senegalese artefacts were curated as part of a new collection exhibition together with members of the Senegalese community in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. I discuss the reasons why both parties considered the joint museum project important. The presentation describes the Senegalese global diaspora in Finland and opens the meaning of one’s own community. In the 21st century, the social and global responsibility of museums is highlighted. A more egalitarian way of doing museum work implies an awareness of the links and power imbalances between museum institutions and colonialism. Themes of decolonization and repatriation, as well as Black Lives Matter and other anti-discrimination campaigns, are nowadays visible not only in all domestic and international social discourse, but also in the Finnish museum field. Museums are increasingly working with their reference groups and the communities that created their collections, while also collecting and documenting the history of local minority groups. The theoretical framework of the presentation emerges from museum anthropological and museological research on the subject and addresses themes of decolonization with an emphasis on internal decolonization, i.e. the representations of museums and the determined elimination of the structural colonialism that underlies them. Exhibitions are the public faces of museums. They convey powerful messages and act as experiential encounters.

 

  1. Holding on: Collaborative heritage work between Somali diaspora community and cultural institution. Case studies from the Helinä Rautavaara Museum

Ilona Niinikangas, Helinä Rautavaara Museum

For more than twenty years, the Helinä Rautavaara Museum has collaborated with local migrant communities in greater Helsinki region, including Somalis. Between 2010 and 2019, 11 different projects celebrating living heritage involved more than 300 members of local Somali communities. The museum has also provided a space for joint exhibitions with Somali associations and other associations that have links to Somalia. For example, Mogadishu Now and Then (2018) combined Somalian poetry and photographs of the capital of Somalia before and after the country’s war. In addition to that, over the years, dozens of trainees of Somali background, most of them women, have been recruited to work in the Helinä Rautavaara Museum and in projects focusing on Somali culture. The museum has also offered short-term employment, helping young and elderly Somalis for whom finding jobs or internships in the Finnish labour market is more difficult than for their native peers. The presentation looks at multiple ways of building trust and maintaining the dialogue as well as community’s contributions to museum decolonization. The presentation is based on the article Rastas Anna and Niinikangas, Ilona 2023: With and Beyond Museums: Cultural Heritage Work in the Somali Diaspora. Museum & Society, 21 (3).

 

  1. The Atlantic as the knot of the world: Research in Archives of the African Diaspora

Osvaldo Santos Falcão, Tampere University

This presentation which is linked to my doctoral dissertation project on people from the Quilombola community of Ipiranga, in the Brazilian state of Paraíba, emphasizes the importance of documents and archives of the African Diaspora in understanding the Colonial Matrix of Power (CMP), as proposed by Quijano (2000). The Brazilian Atlantic, especially the Northeast, has been a stage for five centuries of colonialism (Gonçalves, 2003). The analysis of “historical-structural knots”, according to Mignolo (2017), is crucial for unraveling the power relations inherent in the CMP. Mbembe (2003, 2017) highlights the need to preserve Afro-Latin heritage, avoiding the historical erasure of its culture of resistance against colonialism, as documented by Moura (1988). Through a methodology that combines the synchronic approach of history with the diachronic approach of anthropology (Sahlins, 1976), my ethnographic research on quilombola communities and their museums applies the notion of historical-structural knots to colonial archives. This focus reveals the richness of intercultural encounters between Africans and Indigenous peoples in the anti-‘colonial fight. They shape the current contest for land and social justice of the quilombola remnants.

Theoretically, my Ph.D. project aims to elucidate the historical and cultural dynamics that structure the CMP. Empirically, it investigates how quilombos and their museums constitute ethnic territories of cultural reference.

 

  1. People of African descent in Finland. Presenting local minority histories, re-thinking national and global histories

Anna Rastas, Tampere University & Leila Koivunen, University of Turku

In our presentation we will introduce the premises of our ongoing research and book project on the history of people of African descent in Finland. The starting point of our project is the idea that the epistemic advantage of marginalized communities concerning particular topics should be the starting point in research on their agency and cultures. Our previous research has shown that the inclusion of the African diaspora in both local, national historiography and the narrative of Europe and Europeanness requires a decolonial and intersectional framework that acknowledges both the diversity of the global African diaspora(s) and the heterogeneity of (local) diasporic communities. It also requires understanding the various transnational and diasporic ties and linkages that shape diaspora subjects’ experiences and knowledge of what their histories “here” are, and how these can and should be written. Our study is based on our long-term collaboration with different African diaspora communities and our earlier research projects on African diaspora subjects’ and their communities’ cultural activities and cultural heritage work. We will also discuss how exploring and writing minority histories on diaspora communities highlights the need to rethink and reform academic traditions of history writing.

WORKSHOP 4: Being at risk and a Risk: Opening space for power and agency to “vulnerable” groups

Organizers: Avanti Chajed, Aalto University and Viivi Eskelinen, University of Helsinki

Thursday 7.11 Session 1, Room: Linna K108

Academia and society term several groups of migrants as “vulnerable.” Vulnerability is tied with being “at risk” and is reinforced through academic structures such as ethical reviews or created through political discourses that paint vulnerable groups as risks to society. These labels, even bestowed with positive intentions, have the potential to limit the voices and identities in the name of protecting individuals (Whetung & Wakefield, 2019). By silencing and speaking for them, they are potentially otherized in society and their belonging is given conditionally (Shirazi, 2018).

In this workshop, we emphasize how supposedly vulnerable groups exert agency, power and control in their lives to belong to societies in which they are considered either at risk or as a risk. It also asks what role of academia and societal actors must play in reinforcing and expanding these strengths as migrants work to belong in fraught climates. How can vulnerability be challenged while still acknowledging the actual risks in turbulent climates created by right-wing governments?

 

  1. Immigrants accounting for exerting agency in problematic everyday encounters

Annika Valtonen, Tampere University

Immigrants’ experiences of belonging and being a valued part of society are built, but also dismantled, in everyday interactions. Where mutually amicable and respectful encounters foster these experiences, problematic interactions and discrimination cause long-lasting feelings of otherness and exclusion instead. Navigating through problematic encounters is commonplace yet distressing for immigrants living in Finland. Being able to form these troublesome experiences into a comprehensive, tellable narrative is integral for overcoming their negative effects through social support, and for seeking social change. However, this task is dilemmatic in various ways. First, accounting for interactional trouble is complicated by moral work, such as efforts to protect both the narrator’s and the account recipient’s faces. Second, the interactional trouble may be subtle and thus hard to verbalize into a coherent narrative. Additionally, lacking shared language during the troublesome encounter makes communicating the core of the problem difficult. A dataset of 23 single-person interviews with immigrant participants and 2 focus-group interviews with intercultural discussion group attendees is analyzed, with focus on immigrants’ narratives of exerting their agency in problematic encounters. Using Bamberg’s narrative positioning analysis, the following research questions are explored: 1) How do immigrants position themselves as moral actors in the narratives and in the storytelling interactions; and 2) What challenges of telling occur in the storytelling interactions? Findings illuminate how immigrants exert their agency in navigating everyday problematic encounters, and the dilemmas related to accounting for these experiences. The presentation concludes by discussing how the findings can be utilized for promoting social change.

 

  1. Claiming equity: Unrecognised participation of youth ‘at risk’

Iida Kauhanen, University of Oulu

Young people and especially young, forced migrants are commonly not recognised as speakers. Instead of being seen as valuable participants of the society, forced migrants are often portrayed as vulnerable, at-risk population and as “passive targets of our help” (Baak, 2021). Simultaneously, various models are designed to enhance youth participation to activate the ‘passive youth’. This kind of emphasis on creating new models to activate the youth, neglects the existing active demands made by young people whose voices are deserving of recognition, particularly those in minority positions. Building on the concept of active equity rooted in Rancière’s notion of equality (1991) and expanded by Lanas and colleagues (2023), this paper focuses on participation from the point of view of activism displayed by forced migrant youth themselves. Lanas et al. (2023) argue that active equity is evident in the ways youth participate in their surroundings, demanding their rights, even when these demands go unrecognized. This paper specifically explores the experiences of young people whose participation is consistently overlooked. The material utilised for analysing participation in this research consist of two different datasets: the first (2018-2019) employs feminist ethnography with 13 unaccompanied youth. The second (2022), from the research consortium Mobile Futures, uses walking interviews with four forced migrant youth. This paper discusses how these young individuals asserted their rights as active participants and sheds light on the reality that their demands often went unheard.

 

  1. Participatory design approaches to build migrants’ agency

Rūta Šerpytytė, Tampere University, Aalto University

Participatory Design (PD) is often considered as a democratic approach that engages a diverse set of actors throughout the cycle of design. PD’s ethos aims for not just participation of different communities, but for equitably centring narratives from underrepresented populations, balancing power relations, and facilitating community self-determination (Escobar, 2018; Harrington et al., 2019; Young et al., 2024, Björgvinsson et al., 2012). However, while the Nordic roots of PD lie in engaging with societal issues of labour rights in the 70s (Bødker, 2021), under the neoliberal ideas of individualisation, depoliticisation and rapid technological developments, it has moved away from big questions and focused on sporadic PD interventions such as one-off workshops to find quick solutions for immediate problems. Design as a field often aims for inclusion and empowerment of “vulnerable” communities and migrants across different contexts (Ramírez & Coşkun, 2020; Krüger et al., 2021; Pollini & Caforio, 2021; Bustamante Duarte et al., 2021). However, migrants are not a monolithic group, with different languages, cultural backgrounds, education, motivation, duration of stay, religions, and professions (Bobeth et al., 2013), which creates tensions when aiming for generalisable solutions (Hodson et al., 2023). Moreover, ascribing the term “vulnerable” for migrants can have negative implications by reinforcing stereotypes or even be used to justify policies that focus on perceived vulnerabilities instead of addressing the real migrant needs (Era & Mäkinen, 2022). Keeping in mind the criticism of PD’s performative, solutionist notions, we still see the potential of using this methodology for building agency and capacity among migrants, allowing them to engage and integrate with society on their own terms. To create such conditions, it’s crucial to not only re-engage with the political and embed these practices to an institutional context, but also keep the principles of emancipation, power redistribution, and contestation in mind.

 

  1. Methodological reflections on researching place bound trust and distrust among migrant background stay-at-home parents

Liselott Sundbäck, Mobile Futures research project, Åbo Akademi

Migrant background stay-at-home parents, especially mothers, are a group positioned often both at risk (e.g. in relation to academia by emphasizing structural vulnerability and ethical approvals) and a risk (e.g.in relation to employability by the Finnish right-wing government). However, little is known on how parents themselves make sense of and experience everyday life in Finland, especially from a place and space bound trust perspective. This paper sets out to discuss research settings for a newly started research project on place bound trust and distrust among migrant background stay-at-home parents. Methodologically, it strives towards co-creation of knowledge through co-research. As the research is only about to begin, the paper discusses potentials, possible tensions, positionings and agency within this research setting. The intention is to explore trust and distrust through co-research discussion groups, pictures, walkings (to trust-related places, institutions) however, these suggestions will be further developed, changed and decided on together with the co-researchers. Trust and distrust sense making among migrants have in previous studies been showed to evolve partly around the notion of safety. This then poses the following questions: how to carry out co-research on the balance between structural vulnerability and various forms of agency? How to grasp notions of ontological safety among stay at home parents, especially in a space/place context, without othering? Hence, the presentation explores notions of situated vulnerability, agency, embodied knowledge and epistemic interactions in relation to research on trust and distrust.

WORKSHOP 5: Unpacking Narratives of Migration: Visual Approaches and Hopeful Engagements

Organizers: Berfin Nur Osso, University of Helsinki, Ana Tarazona, Adriana Calvo and Gintare Kudzmaite, University of Tampere

Thursday 7.11 Session 1 & Session 2, Room: Linna K109

In the face of global turbulence and the resulting rise in human mobility, it is vital to explore innovative and multidisciplinary approaches to understanding and addressing the challenges faced by migrants. Transcending distinctions such as forced/voluntary, legal/irregular, internal/external migration, this panel seeks to explore how visual approaches can be utilized to unpack narratives of migration and empower marginalized individuals and communities to claim their political rights from the bottom up. By centering the experiences and voices of those directly experienced migration, we aim to challenge dominant discourses and amplify alternative narratives of longing, belonging, safety, and agency.

 

  1. Compelling Encounters? Intermedial Elements in Migration-Themed Comics

Aura Nikkilä, University of Turku

Migration and migrants have been featured in comics throughout the history of the medium, but especially since the 1980s – with the rise of autobiographical comics as well as the formation of the genre of comics journalism – experiences of migration have become a central subject matter of the medium of comics. Comics is a distinctive form of narrative storytelling with a language of its own. In addition to the combination of visual and verbal elements, also the simultaneity and sequentiality of images are typical to the medium: the panels of comics function both in time and in space (Groensteen 2007). It can be argued that the spatio-temporal nature of comics makes it an apt form of expression for representing migration which is both a geographical and a historical phenomenon.

Due to the commingling of image and words, comics has been regarded intermedial per se (Rippl & Etter 2015). I am, however, interested in the intermediality of comics in a wider sense: in this presentation I will analyse the use of intermedial elements, such as photographs and maps, in migration-themed comics. Through different elements incorporated from other media to comics, such experiences of migrants as, for example, mobility, displacement, stasis, and un/belonging are further emphasised. Furthermore, I analyse how intermedial elements may also contribute to a meaningful and possibly even an empathetic encounter between the comic and the reader.

 

  1. The other cartographies of Hong Kong: Exploring migrant domestic workers’ experiences and perceptions of the city through arts-based participatory research

Laura Lamas Abraira, Dept. of Anthropology, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

Since the 1970s Hong Kong has been a primary destination for Southeast Asian female migrants. The foreign domestic workers (mainly Filipino and Indonesian) constitute the 4.5% of the HK population, even though they are largely exposed to very hard living and work conditions, often characterized by abuse and exploitation. These women are forced by law to live in their employer’s houses where they work between 12-18 hours a day and in most cases, they don’t have their own room or private space. On their day off (Sunday) they all go out driving to an intensive occupation of the public space across the city. This is particularly striking in the central area of the island, comprising the financial district, the most expensive and luxurious area of HK. Through an origin-based (country/region) spatialization, squares, sidewalks, parks, and walkways become full covered by camping tents, open umbrellas and cardboard boxes (often including self-made walls) which serve as a rug for picnicking, napping, singing karaoke or dancing, among many other activities; therefore, modifying the physical, social and cultural landscape of (Monday to Saturday) Hong Kong. The relationship of these women and the city becomes mediated by the power (dis)continuities between the public and private spheres in a context in which both, the physical and symbolic dimensions of the space(s) matter. Based on a nine-months multimodal ethnography which includes among other visual methodologies the crafting of 30 mental-emotional cartographies through participatory inquiry, this presentation explores the potential of arts-based methods in: (1) creating unique spaces for emotionality, self-reflection and self-expression; and (2) to both decoding and representing intangible layers of the experience that remain unreachable to conventional methodological and text-centric representational models.

 

  1. We, Malungas: a project on reimaging a world filled with heroines of the impossible

Letícia Simões, University of Porto

The WE, MALUNGAS project began as in-depth research into methods of female resistance to the Portuguese colonial slavery system in Brazil, focusing on technologies such as dance, music, desire and the narratives of our memory. From this initial research stories, documents, pictures, songs and photographs emerged into a 90 minute performance, uniting the familiar with the historical, intertwining today and forever. The stories of WE, MALUNGAS are intertwined with a thought about the condition of black immigrant women today, in Portugal, through music and gastronomy, always thinking about the idea of a malunga identity, fluid, hybrid and potential. Built among and by black immigrant women (present) with resonances in the forgotten narrative of resistance by black women from the diaspora (past) aiming at other inscriptions in the world (future). Malungo means “canoe” in the Bantu language, and it is the term designated in history for the symbolic operations that took place on the crossing of the slave ship, a very violent and demarcating journey. Forever and ever, from then on, subjectivity and corporality of these subjects that were part of this ship would be united, although they came from very different places. The idea of a malunga identity has to do with

the complicity between trafficked souls; people coming from different contexts, who spoke different languages, who did not share the same rituals, but who, by experiencing the same violent experience, share, after leaving the crossing, a new language of life.

 

  1. Navigating Citizenship as a Young Refugee: Studying Resilience through the ‘Cage’ Metaphor

Dr. Turkan Firinci Orman, Department of Design, Aalto University

This study deeply explores the relationship between lived and legal citizenship using the ‘Cage’ metaphor to highlight the complex dynamics faced by individuals whose sense of belonging and lived citizenship differ from formal legal definitions due to their refugee status. As such, the citizenship is understood both as emancipatory and dominating concept (Isin, 2024), as an apparatus of government. Centred on the compelling story of Salma, a young Syrian refugee girl in Turkey, the research examines how she navigates these tensions with notable political presence, agency, and resilience amidst challenges such as racism, financial hardship, and systemic discrimination. Utilizing a geosocial methodology combined with feminist geography and situational intersectionality, the study employs various research methods, including in-depth interviews and participatory techniques, to reveal Salma’s daily experiences and personal perspectives. By emphasizing Salma’s interpretive agency and creative self-empowerment, the study illustrates how she asserts her political presence in a complex socio-political environment, thus redefining traditional notions of citizenship while

expressing her youthful identity. This research significantly enhances the understanding of youth political agency in refugee contexts, providing insights into the transformative power of creative agency and metaphorical analysis in reshaping societal views on citizenship.

 

  1. Desire-Led Methodologies: The Possibility of Anti-Colonial Research

Dr. Isabel Arce Zelada, University of Hull

This paper investigates the UK asylum system through observations in the court of appeal, co-interrogates the asylum process with people going through it via workshops centred on displaced knowledge, and through the creation of exhibited artworks disseminates this knowledge. By interrogating citizenship and borders, this arts-based methodology reveals the asylum process as a continuation of colonial practices that create a narrative inequality between the person seeking asylum and the nation-state. Arts-based methods enabled counter-narratives, allowing people to revalue their desires as central to interrogating the violence of the asylum process that they experience. The desires each person expressed in their art revealed the dissonance between their lived experience and the human rights protections supposedly at the heart of the asylum system. A system professing to champion human rights but often unable or unwilling to uphold them. The hopes expressed in this project unlock questions of future alternative justices, and alternative governance, that have profound implications for how we understand the asylum system and the people subjected to it. A view beyond the suffering refugee that the nation-state demands, and a recovery of the futures that we envision as displaced people.

 

  1. Future Imaginations: Visual expressions of hope and aspiration among Unaccompanied Refugee Minors

Gunika Rishi, NTNU, Norway

This paper presentation draws from the narrative interviews done in three municipalities in Norway with Unaccompanied Refugee Minors (URMs). The results from the empirical work are used as a framework of designing an interactive visual workshop: “Imagining Futures”. By using crafts and collage, participants would be encouraged to depict their imaginations for their future, revealing a rich tapestry of hopes and dreams that conjure up images of their individual journeys and aspirations which are both vivid and vital. Visual methods are used to overcome the limitations of language in expressing their aspirations and disengage from the stereotypical perceptions often associated with young refugees, revealing their unique aspirations and perspectives through visuals. The workshop would focus on the resilience, creativity, and potential of the young individuals and then employ photo elicitation techniques to capture and reflect on their artwork, facilitating deeper conversations about their personal stories, experiences, and future goals. The results are expected to demonstrate ways in which visual art can serve as a powerful medium for URMs to express their identities and ambitions. The creations and subsequent conversations would allow to delve deeper on their unique perspectives but also reveal their worries and challenges. These insights underscore the importance of validating and empowering the voices of these young individuals. This approach can inform future support programs aimed at fostering the emotional, social, and practical development of refugee youth, helping them navigate the complexities of their new environments and work towards their envisioned futures.

 

  1. Co-creating knowledge on migrant students’ learning at work

Katarzyna Kärkkäinen, Päivi Tynjälä, Maarit Virolainen and Anne Virtanen, University of Jyväskylä

This paper focuses on presenting preliminary results from the study of migrant students’ learning at the workplace in the Finnish vocational education and training (VET) context. In VET, learning at work is an important part of study and workplaces are seen as an important arena for learning in relation to working life practices. In the context of migrant students’ learning processes, these benefits of learning at work have been highlighted. However, many limitations to migrant learning in the workplace have been identified. In order to gain a better understanding of the benefits and barriers of learning for migrants in the workplace, we conducted collaborative research in one of the vocational institutes in Finland. The collaborative study involved working with one of the migrant groups studying on the practical nursing programme, including participating in study days and facilitating narratives of workplace learning through creative inquiry, observing three students in their workplaces, taking photographs at students’ workplaces and interviewing students, teachers and workplace supervisors. Co-creative and collaborative research practices enabled students, workplace supervisors and teachers to reflect on issues relevant from a workplace learning perspective, such as negotiating student and workplace supervisor roles and expectations, workplace encounters and growth as health and social care professionals. The action-research nature of the study allowed those involved in the study to reflect on how to improve the collaboration between the institute and the workplaces and how to better support the learning of migrant students. There were also signs of thinking about taking concrete action.

 

  1. Belated sensing: Visual approaches and the research of human rights violations in the Greek-Turkish borderlands (and beyond)

Phevos Simeonidis, Durham University, SGIA / DGSi

During the past decade, an array of visual methodologies are employed by researchers and activists alike to investigate and raise awareness about human rights violations in the Greek-Turkish land and sea border areas. Ranging from collective expulsions (pushbacks) to enforced disappearances, and from detention to border deaths, these illegal practices are transforming both EU’s policy towards migration, but also the border zones themselves. These changes, traceable through visual investigations, or reconstruct-able through the use of situated testimony methodologies and with the help of visual cues, are often at the core of emerging methods in migration and peace & conflict research. This paper seeks to explore three case studies relevant to the Greek-Turkish border zone of Evros, Greece, presenting alternate vantage points in each one of them. The first, through an investigation via satellite imagery of how the border area is changing and how that is affecting the routes that asylum seekers follow, and the relation of this transformation with the necropolitical landscape. The second, concerns the use of visual cues and descriptions as they emerge through participatory mapping exercises on the field or remotely, in an attempt to locate spaces of arbitrary detention and/or torture in the area. Finally, the third concerns the ways in which such research has been presented in the public domain, focusing on previous work of the author with agencies such as Forensic Architecture,in an attempt to unpack some of the ethical considerations accompanying such research.

WORKSHOP 6: Intersections of Rights: Gender, Education, and Migration

Organizer: Prof Savita Kaushal, Jamia Millia Islamia India

Thursday 7.11 Session 1 & Session 2, Room: Linna K110

Migration, as a dynamic force shaping societies worldwide, intersects profoundly with the realms of gender, education, and human rights. The theme,” Intersections of Rights: Gender, Education, and Migration” seeks to navigate the intricate web of these intersections, illuminating often overlooked dimensions while championing inclusive and equitable solutions.

 

  1. Intersectionality of religious freedom in Finnish education for adult migrants
    Miitta Järvinen, University of Turku

After receiving a residence permit in Finland, education is among the first institutions that migrants will attend in case they are unemployed. Finnish education for adult migrants varies from literacy and basic education to language and competency training for skilled professionals. These institutions participate in the “social integration” of migrants, and within them, according to a 2012 core curriculum, “[–] all migrants receive information about their rights and responsibilities in Finnish society and its world of work [–].” As per legislation, educators have responsibility to promote the equity and equality of their students, as well as support the possibilities to maintain their own language and culture. In this presentation, the outlook on rights is religious freedom as a civil right. I will examine how (migrants’) religious freedom intersects the social categories of gender, race, and labour market position. With the interview excerpts, I will illustrate how these intersections manifest in the educators’ accounts of their encounters with their students. I will focus on the following themes:

1) the educator’s account of religious freedom.

2) prioritizing religion/other aspects of life

3) racialization and gendering of religion.

The presentation is based on the analysis of the interviews with educators who work in integration training, basic education for adults, and liberal adult education, and their understanding of diversity. In my doctoral research, the intersectional approach entails that the perceptions of social categories that constitute diversity reflect the actor’s (i.e., educators’) positions within power hierarchies.

2. Does Husband Migration Significantly Influence the Inequalities and Access to Maternal Health Care Services in Rural Koch Bihar, West Bengal?
Moslem Hossain, Central University of Karnataka

Background: Women’s healthcare is crucial for their well-being and significantly impacts gender equality, human rights, sustainable development, economic productivity, social justice, and equity. This study examines the disparities in maternal healthcare utilization between women with migrant husbands and those with resident husbands in rural Koch Bihar, West Bengal. Method: Our research was conducted from October 2022 to February 2023 in rural Koch Bihar, West Bengal, using a mixed-methods approach that included surveys, interviews, and focus group discussions with left-behind women. The study involved 384 women aged 15-49 who had given birth to a live baby within the past five years, divided equally between those with migrant husbands and those with resident husbands. We analyzed the data to investigate the relationship between women’s healthcare decision-making power and access to comprehensive maternal healthcare services. Results: Bivariate analysis revealed that women with migrant husbands had significantly greater healthcare decision-making power than those with non-migrant husbands. Multivariate analysis indicated that women with migrant husbands who make healthcare decisions independently are more likely to access comprehensive maternal healthcare services compared to those who make decisions jointly with their husbands (AOR=0.213; 95% CI: 0.077-0.584), decisions made solely by the husband (AOR=0.156; 95% CI: 0.044-0.547), or decisions made by in-laws or others (AOR=0.303; 95% CI: 0.092-0.995). Conversely, women with non-migrant husbands were more likely to access comprehensive maternal care services when making healthcare decisions jointly with their husbands compared to making decisions alone (AOR=2.098; 95% CI: 0.748-5.883). Additionally, factors such as women’s employment status, husband’s education, wealth quintile, and social group influenced access to comprehensive healthcare services. Conclusion: The study suggests that husband migration poses a risk for unhealthy behaviors among women in rural Koch Bihar. These insights should inform policymakers and healthcare providers in creating targeted interventions to meet the specific needs of left-behind mothers.

 

  1. Menstrual Hygiene and Gender Equity in the Context of Migration: A Study of Schools in Najafgarh, New Delhi
    Surabhi Chawla, University of Delhi

This study explores the intersection of menstrual hygiene management (MHM), gender equity, and migration within schools in Najafgarh, Delhi. In the context of rapid urbanization and increasing migration, schools in semi-urban areas like Najafgarh face unique challenges in addressing the menstrual hygiene needs of adolescent girls. The research examines how migration influences the availability and effectiveness of menstrual hygiene resources and education in schools, and how this impacts gender equity in educational settings. Through a mixed-methods approach, including surveys, interviews, and focus group discussions with students, teachers, and parents, the study reveals gaps in MHM facilities and education, exacerbated by the diverse backgrounds of migrant families. The findings highlight the urgent need for targeted interventions to improve menstrual hygiene management in schools, promoting a more equitable educational environment for all students. The study also discusses the broader implications for policy and practice in addressing menstrual hygiene within the framework of gender equality and the rights of migrant communities.

 

  1. Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) and Migration in India: Challenges and Opportunities
    Savita Kaushal, Jamia Millia Islamia India

Migration within India, both rural-to-urban and inter-state, significantly impacts access to Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for millions of young children. Migrant families, driven by economic hardship or seasonal labour demands, often face barriers in accessing quality ECCE services. This paper explores how internal migration in India affects children’s early educational experiences, focusing on the challenges faced by migrant children, including language barriers, frequent relocations, social exclusion, and limited access to Anganwadi’s and pre-primary schools. In India, the Right to Education (RTE) Act does not cover children under six, leaving the ECCE sector vulnerable to inequities, particularly for migrant communities. Many migrant children miss out on the critical early years of education, which impacts their cognitive, emotional, and social development. This paper highlights the urgent need for inclusive ECCE policies that are responsive to the unique needs of migrant children in India. Emphasis is placed on the role of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme and Anganwadi’s in reaching these children, as well as the importance of culturally sensitive, multilingual education to accommodate diverse migrant populations. Drawing from successful case studies in India, the paper discusses community-based interventions and mobile ECCE units designed to provide education to children of seasonal migrants. It also advocates for improved data collection on migrant children, flexible ECCE models, and policy interventions that ensure continuity in education for this vulnerable population. The conclusion calls for a more robust national strategy that integrates ECCE within migration policies, ensuring equitable early learning opportunities for all children, regardless of their mobility or socio-economic status.

 

  1. Challenging Gender Norms: Gender and Educational Equity in India
    Manish Arora, Ahvaan Trust

Rationale: This study addresses gender disparities in India’s educational system and societal norms’ impact on educational experiences, particularly in roles like pre-primary teaching dominated by females. It quantifies disparities in literacy rates, school enrolment, and workforce participation, highlighting challenges for females.

Objectives:

– To Evaluate Gender Disparities in Education, focusing on literacy rates, school enrolment, and workforce representation.

– To Examine the Influence of Gender Stereotypes by investigating how societal roles and cultural norms perpetuate gender stereotypes in the education system

– To Analyse Strategies for Gender Equity through policy reform, curriculum development, and capacity-building.

Introduction: The intersection of gender and education involves the roles, behaviors, and

expectations society assigns based on perceived sex, affecting both access to and quality of

education. This abstract explores the multi-dimensional concept of gender and its influence

on the educational experiences of students and educators. Social roles and cultural norms

perpetuate gender stereotypes, leading to unequal participation and representation in education. For instance, teaching at the pre-primary level is often seen as a feminine profession, resulting in a predominance of female teachers and a lack of diverse perspectives. In India, these gender disparities extend to educational attainment and workforce participation. In 2019, literacy rates were 82% for males and 65% for females, while school enrolment rates were 83% for males and 74% for females. Additionally, workforce participation in 2020 was 76% for males and 24% for females. Limited training in gender responsive pedagogy for educators exacerbates these inequalities, hindering their ability to address and reduce gender biases in the classroom.

Intervention: The Ahvaan Trust in Chhattisgarh has adopted a strategy to challenge traditional gender roles by involving male educators in early childhood education in collaboration with the state government. This approach demonstrates the potential for inclusive practices to transform educational landscapes. The success of such initiatives highlights the need for ongoing efforts in gender awareness, curriculum development, capacity building of state authorities, and policy reform to achieve gender equity in education. Addressing these challenges is crucial for fostering an inclusive, diverse, and equitable educational environment that benefits all students and educators.

 

6. Challenges and Prospects of Urban Refugees in Accessing Higher Education in Kampala, Uganda.
Ricardo John Munyegera, McGill University

Refugees are people being forced to migrate across borders. In recent years, there has been an influx of refugees across countries. This is due to different reasons. Some of the reasons are increased political instabilities, natural disasters, terrorism and among others. Notably, Africa produces one of the biggest numbers of refugees and asylum seekers. In fact, this is followed by a high number of Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs). Sub-Saharan Africa produces a bigger number of refugees and Uganda hosts the biggest number. Uganda is praised for having one of the most progressive, inclusive, and compassionate of the world’s laws and policies for refugee support, management, and protection. Currently, Uganda hosts approximately, 1.6 million refugees arriving from South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, and others. Around 4% of these are urban refugees living in Kampala according to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) reports. Refugee education is enshrined in refugee policies that have been drafted over the years. Many of these are jump-started under the prominent refugee integration and self-reliance policies that have had a progressive implementation in Uganda. This paper presents the challenges, opportunities, and solutions to urban refugees in accessing higher education in Uganda. It is worth noting that urban refugee access to higher education is constrained and under-researched in Uganda and Sub-Saharan Africa in general. This study explores the challenges and prospects of urban refugee access to higher education. It targets government, policymakers, and educational planners, stakeholders such as NGOs, scholars, etc. It examines the available opportunities for urban refugees to access higher education; and the challenges; and suggests solutions to address the challenges faced. In answering the above questions, the researchers employ qualitative and exploratory research methods. Finally, recommendations for further research will also be given in a nutshell to explore and understand refugee education in not only Uganda but also Africa and the global south.

 

  1. Cultural Diversity Among Finland’s Early Childhood Educators – Implications for Professional and Organizational Development
    Qiqi Suutari, University of Oulu

While intersectionality-informed research conducted under the themes of diversity and equity in education often addresses educators’ pedagogical practices in relation to beneficiaries of education (Mikander & Mansikka, 2023; Kurian & Rajala, 2023; Valkonen & Furu, 2023; Van Houten, 2014; Sun, 2014; Xenofontos et al., 2024; Lang et al., 2024), such intersections also influence how one positions themself as an educator (Ennser-Kananen, J. & Ruohotie-Lyhty, M., 2023), understandings of antiracism and respective practices in an institutional setting (Loukola, 2023), and how conceptualizations of diversity and belonging intertwine between personal and professional lives of educators (Juutinen & Kess, 2019). As a female predominated sector (Tilastokeskus, 2023) with over 30% of staff turnover rate in the past few years (Osaamistarvekompassi, 2024) and concern among professionals over the sector’s economic equity (Hjelt, 2023), Finland’s early childhood education and care (ECEC) offers fruitful ground for exploring how aspects of cultural diversity, such as gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background (Juutinen & Kess, 2019) intersect to affect collegial interactions and professional development. Building on Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition (2012) and Nancy Fraser’s notion of gender as a two-dimensional linkage between recognition and redistributive justice (2003), this study invites practitioners-on-parental leave to reflect on the connection between motherhood and ECEC (Ailwood, 2008), personal migration experiences, and other personally meaningful intersections in cultural diversity which have allowed them to refine their abilities to develop practices in professional communities to support recognition and redistributive justice.

 

  1. Intersecting Inequalities: Gender, Education, Migration, and the Financialization of Capitalism
    Nimish Jhingan, ASU

This paper explores the crosscutting intersections of gender, education, migration, and the financial markets, examining how capitalist structures privatize profits while socializing risks, disproportionately affecting migrant women. It analyses the financialization of education and its impact on marginalized groups, particularly women from migrant communities, who face increasing barriers to educational access in privatized systems. The paper also investigates the role of migrant women in global labor markets, highlighting their vulnerability in underpaid sectors and the exploitation of their labor to fuel corporate profits. Furthermore, it addresses how financial markets and economic shocks, such as global crises, exacerbate inequalities by shifting the social and economic costs onto migrant populations while protecting private capital. By linking financial markets with gender-sensitive policies and the commodification of education, the paper emphasizes the need for government intervention to mitigate the negative impacts of privatization and promote equitable access to education for migrant women. Through an analysis of remittances, microfinance, and the role of public-private partnerships, the study advocates for systemic reforms that ensure financial inclusion and social protections for women navigating migration, education, and labour. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how gendered and migratory experiences interact with global finance, calling for an integrative approach to economic policy that prioritizes human development alongside market growth.

WORKSHOP 7: Activist Research: Hopeful Methods, Transformative Practices

Organizer: Camilla Marucco Al-Mimar, Migration Institute of Finland

Thursday 7.11 Session 1, Room: Linna K106

This workshop by the Activist Research Network (ARN) welcomes politically engaged scholars across disciplines and career stages to present methods and practices they have applied in research, collaboration and teaching. The workshop aims at featuring practical experiences that enact hope and promote transformations in and through knowledge production as well as sharing in and beyond academia. Some guiding questions are: what methods do you/researchers use to enact research ethics and rigor while deliberately committing to ongoing and historical struggles against human rights violations? How can participatory, collaborative, co-creative methods advance (or hinder) the values and practices dedicated to the protection of human rights and pursuit of social justice? In this workshop (in English), we want to explore non-traditional forms of knowledge-sharing interactions. Instead of traditional conference papers, we invite creative explorations in storytelling (e.g. poetry, literary prose, TED-talk-like narratives, recitations, performances, musical and audiovisual resources, etc.) and group activities.

 

  1. Pedagogy of love, loving pedagogies, pedagogical love: What is love in pedagogical encounters?

Maija Jones & Emma Heikkilä, University of Helsinki

This experimental workshop invites the participating community to collectively delve into the meaning of love in pedagogical encounters. We follow the tradition of critical pedagogy in which pedagogy is not confined into classroom interactions but reflects broader processes of dialogue and learning that occur in different societal interactions (cf., e.g., Freire, 1968/2017; hooks, 1994; Giroux, 2020). Essentially, the workshop is a call for action in reshaping what pedagogical love means and how it can manifest in Finland. The motivation arises from the need to revisit the work of Simo Skinnari, Pedagogical Love [Pedagoginen rakkaus] (2004), which reinforces a white, Eurocentric and patriarchal philosophy of love centred around formal learning spaces. While this workshop recognises the value of Skinnari’s work from the perspective of shifting away from competitive pedagogies, the aim is to problematise the narrow representation of love’s connection to Lutheran Christianity with the support of white, male academics’ works, which overlooks the long history of (black) feminism and love. Drawing on bell hooks’ (1994, 2000) and Sara Ahmed’s (2014) explorations of love, in addition to the Finnish publication on Intersectional Feminist Pedagogies [Intersektionaaliset feministiset pedagogiikat] (2022), the workshop invites colleagues to question what does it mean to approach pedagogic encounters with love and to love the pedagogic encounters you come across?

 

  1. Playing with transknowledging: Making epistemic in/justice visible in (our) data

Johanna Ennser-Kananen, University of Jyväskyla, Hai Nguyen, University of Turku & Sanna Riuttanen, University of Jyväskyla

Whose knowledges count? has been a central question in a 5-year critical ethnographic study that examined the epistemic negotiations at a Finnish community college for adults with forced migration experience and interrupted formal education. In this interactive presentation, we introduce the concept of transknowledging, a potential theoretical outcome of this study. In its current form, it refers to processes of knowledge construction or negotiation, such as human-human, human-text/data, or human-other-than-human interactions. Drawing on a large body of decolonial and critical scholarship, transknowledging aims to tease out the transgressive, historical, self-reflexive, praxis-oriented, and relational in such exchanges, while also calling for lifelong re/learning of all involved. With this orientation, we hope that the concept will promote and facilitate a closer understanding of “whose knowledges count” as it intends to reveal and dismantle epistemic hegemonies that hark back to and perpetuate a racio-colonial and cis-heteropatriarchial world order.

In this presentation, we offer some data samples to show how the concept could be used to make epistemic negotiations and their power-laden histories visible. For instance, we show transcripts of audio-recorded interactions and fieldnotes from school (classroom) contexts with adult learners from forced migrant communities and ask: Along which lines or line-crossings is epistemic legitimacy de/constructed? What linguistic/racial/gender/… histories surface in the interaction? What relations are forged? What epistemic praxis and self-learning is involved for all agents? We invite the audience to participate in data analysis and/or play with the concept in relation to their own data (including in subversive and collaborative ways of playing) to test its usefulness for research in the areas of (for example) migration, antiracism, intersectionality, and linguistic justice.

WORKSHOP 8: Race, bordering and disobedient knowledge

Organizers: Suvi Keskinen, University of Helsinki, and Aminkeng Atabong Alemanji, Åbo Akademi

Thursday 7.11 Session 1, Room: Linna K112

The panel explores distinct ways in which racialisation-migration nexus is challenged in everyday life, art and activism. More precisely, by focusing on resistant small-scale practices that challenge the grim realities of people seeking to cross the external borders of the Schengen area and everyday racism and structural inequalities within European states the panel addresses knowledge as a site for disobedience. Disobedient knowledge, both contesting and seeking to exceed racial categories, is articulated in activism and social movement practices, but also in the everyday struggles that build on the gendered, racialised and classed experiences of racialised minorities and postcolonial migrants living their lives at the border. The panel draws on contributions to the edited volume Race, Bordering and Disobedient Knowledge (Manchester University Press, June 2024) that brings together analyses of antiracist activism and migrant (solidarity) mobilisations, as well as centring everyday struggles rather than protests or mass demonstrations. It elaborates theoretically and empirically how disobedient knowledge is created by racialised minorities and postcolonial migrants living their lives at the crossroad of different kinds of (b)ordering practices. Further, the book addresses the often disharmonious and sometimes painful negotiations between differently positioned actors in the everyday struggles of activism, antiracism practices, migrant and solidarity movements, and collaborative research.

 

  1. They could have stayed home

Sanna Ryynänen, University of Jyväskylä

In my latest article, I looked at how the Finnish print media wrote about migration and migrants during the years 2019–2021. The themes covered in the texts varied from characterisation to, for example, work, family, legislation and language, but one theme stood out as especially interesting: seeking refuge / refugees. It was the third most often mentioned theme in the data of 301 texts, but, in addition, it divided the data in two distinct sets: those texts that were related to refugees were much more negative in tone than those texts which dealt with other kinds of migration. Moreover, in the background level it was possible to discern a story which turns refugees from people in distress to criminals and enemies. Its basis lies in the texts’ unwillingness to mention explicitly the fact that people were fleeing something and seeking refuge, or to report the circumstances that had led people to set off on their journey. Instead, an image of people who could have just as well stayed home was formed. And since they could have just as well stayed home, they had deliberately caused us immense problems by “flooding” “our” borders. They forced us to resort to the border guard, the police and the military in order to respond to their “threat.” The refugees ended up equalling pests, criminals and enemies, and we ended up being the victims. – And racist discourse ended up as the “rational and neutral” way of reporting about refugees.

 

  1. Contention and Concerted Consensus Over (Anti)Racism: Tempering Black Lives Matter in Finnish Mainstream Media

Aino Nevalainen, The Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism (CEREN), University of Helsinki

Black Lives Matter broke through to the Finnish mainstream media in the summer of 2020, surfacing into the consciousness of the general majority White Finnish audience from the networks and activities of activists of color and Black activists. The scarcity of mainstream media discussions on racism before BLM emphasizes the significance of this contention. It highlights the efforts of media-savvy activists in connecting to media to mobilize people and to create and maintain contention, making visible and challenging the conditions and practices of belonging and exclusion based on racialization. This presentation, based on an article currently under review, focuses on what happens when mainstream media do engage with contention related to race and racism. Utilizing frame analysis, this research examines 263 articles published in three Finnish mainstream media news outlets between May 2020 and September 2021 to analyze what kind of frames were mobilized and how specific frames were (de)prioritized in mainstream media contention related to racism and antiracism during and following the demonstrations. Of the five most prevalent frames, three represent antiracist frames—the frames of experiential racism, structural racism, and colonial complicity—and two represent frames challenging antiracism: the frame from moderation to anti-wokeness, and the frame of denial of colonial/racial history. I argue that while legitimizing and amplifying antiracist frames in general, mainstream media coverage of the BLM demonstrations in Finland and the consequent contention related to (anti)racism also imposed new demands and restrictions on how this contention unfolded and what kind of (anti)racisms were (de)legitimized.

 

  1. Designing an antiracism mobile phone application: A reflection on the process and discourse as disobedient knowledge

Aminkeng Atabong Alemanji, Åbo Akademi

After years of studying the issue of racism, UNESCO in 1960 described racism as the social cancer of our time that gnaws away slowly and insidiously until it invades the whole organism of society and erupts in violence and death. This cancer was alive before UNESCO diagnosed it and has continued to evolve, corrupting more societies. The changing form of this cancer requires developing new techniques and new research to combat it. One of the main differences in the society we live in today and that of 1960 when UNESCO published their finding described above is the development and advancement in information technology, which has been credited as the most outstanding agent of globalisation. Information technology and the internet have also given room to new forms of racism – one where the perpetrator can afford to be invisible. However, efforts to combat racism have never been as vital as today. As antiracism efforts in and out of school evolve, researchers have argued that combining antiracism with information technology in an antiracism application could produce positive outcomes in the fight against racism. This chapter focuses on how students in one international school critique three reporting antiracism mobile phone applications within the context of a wider project of designing and building a new antiracism app Using critical discourse analysis and set around the framework of critical race theory. The highlights the complexities around race, racism, antiracism and antiracism mobile phone application discourse as well as the outcomes of this complex engagement.

 

  1. Archiving the Present: Memory as creative practice Multi-local and site-specific creative memory work between Australia and El Salvador

Tania Canas, University of Western Ontario

Archiving the Present (AtP) is a multi-site digital community archive project of “remembering as insurgent practice” (Cusicanqui 2020, p.xxxii) and memory as creative practice, from a Central American, site-specific, and multi-local perspective. The project is made up of artists and community members who are primarily of the Australian Salvadoran community, having arrived in Australia through the refugee and humanitarian program in the 80s and early 90s. Archiving the Present seeks to develop alternative practices of remembering through digital, material and public interventions that sit at the intersection of practice-as-research methodologies (Nelson 2013), critical community frameworks (Nancy 1986, Joseph 2002, Tuck 2009) site-specific art and public intervention (Kwon 2004, Jackson 2011). Importantly AtP does so from the context of forced displacement, Central American and border studies (Anzaldúa 1987, Cañas, 2015, Cárdenas 2018) decolonial theory (Cusicanqui 2020, Tuhiwai-Smith 2012) as well as literature which contextualises setter-colonialism specifically within Australia, including perspectives from Blak1 feminist Aboriginal academics (Wolfe 2006, Moreton-Robinson 2015, Watego 2021, Ball 2018). Archiving the Present began in 2021 as a collective quick-response activism to the destruction of a Salvadoran community mural (painted by the children of the Salvadoran community in the Kensington public housing flats in 1990) as part of a $10.2 million ‘redevelopment’ of a community recreation centre. Since then, AtP has expanded to run a series of interventions including: a community library of Central American texts in Náhuat, English and Spanish, an online 8-month introduction to Náhuat course for the displaced diaspora, exhibitions, and public projects as well as events. This article explores some of the key methodological questions considered in the ‘making’ of research alongside ‘making’ in the creative sense, and memory ‘making’; in ways that seek to counter hegemonic heritage regimes (Ireland, Brown & Schofield, 2020).

 

  1. Memory, Epistemological Justice and Disobedient Knowledge in Nordic Activism and Art

Suvi Keskinen, University of Helsinki

This presentation examines how activists and artists racialised as non-white or ‘others’ narrate marginalised histories of colonialism and racism and, by doing so, create understandings of Nordic societies that challenge prevalent ideologies of colour-blindness and national self-images as champions of human rights. The chapter analyses the actions through which activists and artists call for epistemological justice and create disobedient knowledge. It argues that histories of overseas colonisation and slavery are central for the disobedient knowledge created in activism in the Nordic region, as in other parts of Europe, but such narratives are also placed in dialogue with histories of colonisation of Indigenous lands within the Nordic region and commemoration of more recent events of racist violence. The presentation shows how the activists are combining academic research, collective memory and art to create disobedient knowledge that challenges the silencing of ast and present racism. Addressing responsibility over the effects of slavery and colonialism on current European societies, their organisation of welfare and the groups given possibility to enjoy its benefits can open up new discussions of social justice and inclusion. Accounts of responsibility can provide resources to thinking that moves beyond the legacies of colonialism and slavery, as well as for politics that seeks to counteract the racial hostility characteristic of present European societies. The analysis is based on extensive fieldwork, interviews with activists, and media material collected in Denmark, Sweden and Finland in 2015-2019.

WORKSHOP 9: Migrant Men and Conditional Belonging

Organizers: Tatiana Glushkova and Larisa Shpakovskaya, University of Helsinki

Thursday 7.11 Session 2 and Friday 8.11. Session 3, Room: Linna K106

The concept of belonging is one that has been widely utilised in social research in the recent years to highlight people’s personal and lived experiences in various contexts. When adding the notion of belonging being conditional (Yodovich 2021) in the context of migration studies (deWaal 2020), it brings the focus to whose belonging is made conditional, by whom, and in what terms. A sense of belonging is ultimately conditional for all, however, different conditions related to e.g. ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic background or class become visible in the ways people search for and negotiate their belonging. In short, belonging is a ‘feeling of being at home’ and we wish to explore what this entails as a lived experience for migrant men. In this session, we are particularly interested in experiences of find a sense of belonging which is influenced by men/masculinities in a wide context, what these contexts could be, and representations that can influence people’s positions in the context of migration.

 

  1. Sense of belonging and political participation in Finland: A positively reinforcing relationship?

Josefina Sipinen, Tampere University; Peter Söderlund, Åbo Akademi; Hannamaria Kuusio, Finnish Institution for Health and Welfare

Literature in social psychology, political science, and sociology suggests that a stronger sense of belonging increases political participation. Belonging to a community reinforces norms of engagement in group affairs and enhances the sense of influence over common matters, while alienation weakens this efficacy. This study examines the link between participation and sense of belonging among migrants in Finland. The MoniSuomi survey, collected by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (n=7,838), asked migrants about their political participation and experiences of inclusion and belonging. We employ latent class analysis (LCA) to identify subgroups with shared characteristics. Some migrants may feel included but not participate politically, while others may experience the opposite. The MoniSuomi data allows for examining both institutional political participation and non-institutional participation, such as demonstrating. This is important as political participation also includes non-conformist forms like protest participation, which oppose the current administration or status quo and can stem from low levels of belonging. This study explores factors influencing subgroup membership, such as the democratization level in the country of origin, reasons for moving to Finland, age at migration, socio-economic status in Finland, gender, and discrimination experiences.

 

  1. Migrant men’s experiences of belonging in Finnish vocational education

Inkeri Tanhua, Hanken School of Economics

This paper examines how male vocational upper-secondary school students experience belonging in their school, and how they perceive their prospects of getting a job after graduation. The study draws on group interviews with 28 students on two courses, women-dominated dental technology and men-dominated mechanical engineering, but focuses on the experiences of men, who have migrated to Finland. In dental technology, I interviewed three and in mechanical engineering nine persons who identified as migrant men. This paper thus focuses on the experiences of these twelve men. The paper examines their experiences of belonging by analyzing how they relate to their co-students in group interviews and in their talk, how they describe their relations to teachers, and how they perceive their prospects of getting a job after graduation. By examining the concept of belonging, the paper aims to contribute to the debate on the reasons for occupational segregation by gender and race/ethnicity. The study shows how segregation happens in local contexts, intersectionally.

 

  1. A sense of belonging during the time of social raptures: population based-study of older Russian-speaking migrants in Finland

Tatiana Glushkova, University of Helsinki; Laura Kemppainen, University of Helsinki; Anne Kouvonen, University of Helsinki and Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast; Teemu Kemppainen, Centre for Public Health, Queen’s University Belfast; Ilkka Pietilä, University of Helsinki; Sirpa Wrede, University of Helsinki

Aging in a foreign country, which is becoming more common due to increasing international migration and population aging, is associated with a greater risk of loneliness and social isolation. A sense of belonging provides a feeling of being “at home” and may protect against loneliness. However, learning the local language and adopting local cultural practices are not always sufficient to develop a subjective sense of belonging in the host society. For older migrants, creating a sense of belonging in a new country can be particularly challenging. Additionally, significant social changes can affect one’s sense of belonging, either to the destination society or the society of origin. Using panel data from a population-based study of older Russian-speaking migrants in Finland (n=1082 for 2019 and n=724 for 2022), we examined whether belonging to Finns, Russians, or other migrant groups changed between 2019 and 2022—a period marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Preliminary findings indicate that belonging to Finns remained stable during these years, while belonging to Russians weakened, and belonging to other “immigrants” strengthened.

 

  1. Ageing and the end of life in refuge – The case of men

Eveliina Lyytinen, Migration Institute of Finland

Ageing and the end of life are becoming increasingly critical issues in the context of forced migration, as more and more of the world’s population live in exile, yet elderly refugees are under-researched and underrepresented in migration-related debate (Bastia, Lulle, & King 2022). In this research, I investigate how elderly men with a refugee background experience their belonging in Finland, alongside their feelings and strategies connected with dying in the context of refugeehood. I hope to bridge the study of individuals’ end-of-life-connected experiences and reflections with the analysis of transnational community practices of support and care at times of death and the expansions of ‘deathscapes’ in refuge (Maddrell & Sidaway 2010). In doing so, my aim is to produce further understanding of the ways in which ‘transnational death raises questions about identity, belonging, and customs, but also about the logistical care of bodies, rituals, and commemoration’ (Saramo 2019: 8). The premise of this research is that elderly refugees face particular challenges of belonging or finding an alternative end to their refugeehood, due to their age, with age-sensitive approaches therefore being needed in both research and services for them. Moreover, refugees are obliged to create novel transnational strategies in conjunction with dying and mourning in exile. The empirical research utilizing observation, FGDs and interviews will commence in 2025 with a small group of elderly men with a forced migration background. This research is conducted as part of Mobile Futures – Diversity, Trust, and Two-Way Integration (Strategic Research Council) and Endings – Refuge, Time, and Space (Kone Foundation) projects. The project has an ethical clearance from the University of Turku.

 

  1. Negotiating Social Ties in Times of Aggressive State Politics – Intersections of Migration and Age

Anastasia Asikainen, University of Helsinki; Larisa Shpakovskaya, University of Helsinki; Tatiana Glushkova, University of Helsinki; Ilkka Pietilä, University of Helsinki

For Russian speakers living in Finland, Russia’s aggressive state policy has multiple consequences in their everyday lives. Since the politics of belonging and one’s own sense of belonging are inherently intertwined, this paper asks how the continued aggression of the Russian state and the discussion of issues related to these events affect the social relations of Russian-speakers living in Finland. Based on interviews (N=22) and observations with older Russian-speaking migrant men, most of whom migrated to Finland as older adults and lack fluency in Finnish, we ask how this segment of Russian speakers in Finland renegotiate their social relations in relation to these events. The issues related to finding ‘real’ connections with people while avoiding conflicting issues become relevant for their social relations. We argue that their sense of belonging to particularly close, but also more casual, social ties becomes more conditional in nature, which makes their ‘belonging work’ more laborious and creates situations where social ties need to be negotiated and rationalised anew. It is therefore both in the public sphere, where people who come from countries of aggression (or are identified as such because of a shared language), and in the private sphere, where their belonging is conditional due to political shifts.

 

  1. The building blocks of a nation: Migrant men working in construction industry in Finland

Anastasia Diatlova, University of Helsinki

The construction sector depends on cheap and precarious labor in order to turn a profit. This cheap labor is often recruited from abroad and from among the migrants living in Finland. However, as the construction sector in Finland is slowing down due to various economic pressures, it leaves many migrant construction workers without work and income, and subsequently without the possibility to stay in Finland. Despite their integral contribution to building the infrastructure of the country, their own lives and futures as treated by the industry and the migration legislation as disposable. Based on semi-structured interviews, the paper examines the ways in which migrant men working in the construction sector in Finland cope and resist this precarity.

 

  1. Affecting masculinities in Privileged Migrant Men in Finland

Stephanie Clark, University of Helsinki

This paper theorises research interviews with privileged groups of migrant men as affective encounters in which normative masculinities have the potential to be challenged and ultimately transformed. It forms part of my doctoral monograph in which I examine the construction and deconstruction of masculinities in privileged migrant men in Finland. The data for this paper comes from interviews with educated white migrant men coming from Minority World countries (e.g. UK, USA, Germany) – those whom policy makers and journalists in Finland deem “the good migrant” (Koskela 2014: 24). Many of the men interviewed expressed feelings of alienation and loneliness in their lives in Finland, while others did not express such feelings explicitly but told stories which left a similar intensity and were often accompanied by a sensation of profound sadness for me as a researcher. Some men stated that the interview was the first time they had been invited to talk about these topics, while others said that they previously had not even considered them even privately to themselves. This paper examines these encounters in terms of Todd Reeser and Lucas Gottzén’s (2018) arguments on transformational affect, and Reeser’s (2020) work on leaky affect, looking at how affect moves between researcher and participant and other bodies within the space of the interview. Alongside contributing to studies on migration between Minority World countries, this work intends to contribute to the still underdeveloped but growing body of work in masculinities and affect theory (Reeser and Gottzén 2018).

WORKSHOP 10: Multi-species mobility by force or by choice: In search of more hopeful futures

Organizers: Norma Rudolph, Tampere University and Elisa Lähde, Aalto University

Thursday 7.11 Session 2, Room: Linna K103

The entanglements of human and more-than-human migration and mobility contribute to the multifaceted civilizational crisis of climate, energy, poverty, inequality, food and meaning (Escobar, 2021). Settler colonialism, imperialist food regimes and extractivist economies have exacerbated multi-species migration and the degradation of eco-systems and biodiversity, contributing to current ‘global turbulence’ and eco-social injustice. While modern awareness of the impacts of neophyte species on local ecosystems has increased, the Anthropocene has created conditions—such as unjust food systems, global trade, travel, and planetary damage — that perpetuate these migrations. This session invites hopeful engagements through trans-disciplinary knowledge co-production to explore these interconnected themes of multi species mobility, towards more hopeful futures through creative imaginaries for wellbeing and flourishing ecosystems.

 

  1. Biocultural Origins of Rural Exodus: New Vistas for Explanation and Problematization

Jeffrey Wall, Turku Institute for Advanced Studies and Department of Landscape Studies, University of Turku

Despite the emergence of a critical mass of multi-disciplinary evidence from around the world showing its negative social and ecological consequences, rural exodus has yet to be thoroughly problematized or empirically engaged in research, public discourse or governance. This is because rural to urban migration has enjoyed historic and widespread support from international and national development frameworks for over a century. Consequently, the cultural-ecological conditions which precede, underly and succeed abandonment are not well studied, understood or even acknowledged. The emerging biocultural orientation to environmental protection valorizes the environmental self-determination of those most affected by rural outmigration: Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IP & LC’s). It further honors the powerful value of IPLC’s for being and remaining in their historic homelands in the face of numerous contrary global trends. This developing research field is thereby inherently pointing to new vistas for viewing rural exodus in the fullness of time and space. In this paper, I review promising theoretical grounds for explaining, studying and problematizing rural exodus under conditions of ubiquitous and constant environmental change – drawing together insights from Indigenous Law, Hannah Arendt’s notions of earth alienation and the production of superfluity, as well as negative place attachment. I will further elaborate how an inquiry of this nature into the origins of rural exodus promises new windows for understanding a number of extremely pressing global issues adjacent to rural exodus, including climate migration, the growth of slums, the authoritarian nationalist turn in agrarian politics, and the preconditions for wildfires and epidemics.

 

  1. Pluriversal waters: Tracing hydro-ontologies across colonial-extractivist assemblages

Iuliia Gataulina, Tampere University

In modern times, water has been separated from its relation to the land, humans, and other species and become a commodity or a resource to manage; this ontology is often connected to capitalist extractivism and colonialism. The paper is based on the research plan of the postdoctoral project which I have started in May 2024 and the first results of the literature review and data collection. The project aims to analyze different ways of being (with), governing, and exploiting water in the contexts of colonial extractivism. The project enquires into colonial-extractivist practices of water exploitation through case studies of 1) mining and related to it water degradation in Northern Finland and 2) extractivist practices in the Aral Sea in the Karakalpakstan autonomous region of Uzbekistan. Through these cases, the project seeks to understand the relations between different politico-economic systems (liberal democracies vs. authoritarian regimes) and colonial extractivisms and analyze their different or similar modernities. This research project departed from Latin American studies on decolonizing water and seeks to enrich the scholarship on water ontologies from the contexts of Global North (Northern Europe) and Global East (Central Asia) which have received less scholarly attention on colonial extractivisms. The perspective from the Global East is especially lacking, and the scholars have also called for research which problematize East/West binary by analyzing the multiple relations between them. In order to analyze the ways in which water is governed, exploited, and lived with, this research project utilizes three interconnected concepts for the analysis: assemblage, hydro-ontology, and pluriversality.

 

  1. Tracing Time and Space: The Biocultural Heritage of Saari Manor

Elisa Lähde, Aalto University

The Saari Manor in Mynämäki, Southwest Finland, is a residency for artists from diverse disciplines and nationalities, embedded within a landscape rich in cultural and historical heritage. This project explores the biocultural heritage of Saari Manor through a series of graphics that depict the interactions between human and more-than-human actors across time. These graphics, including map diagrams and sectional images, reveal the hidden layers of the landscape, both temporally and spatially, by illustrating the “choreographies of care” that have shaped the site. Biocultural heritage, which encompasses the interdependent evolution of biodiversity and cultural heritage, emerges from long-term interactions between humans and nature. To fully grasp this heritage, it is essential to delve deep into the landscape’s temporal and spatial dimensions. Our visual representations aim to uncover the temporalities and phenomena that have influenced the development of Saari’s biocultural heritage. Additionally, a global map is utilized to trace the migration of plant species to Saari, illustrating their origins and the eras of their introduction. These visual aids facilitate more-than-human storytelling, highlighting the collaborative effort required to understand and communicate the complex relationships that have shaped this landscape over time.

WORKSHOP 11: Navigating Migration Discourse: An Artistic Inquiry in the Borderlands of Academic Language

Organizers: Melinda Russial and Iida Kauhanen, Oulu University, and Nella Turkki, artist.

Thursday 7.11 Session 2, Room: Linna 4013

This workshop will engage scholars and artists from various fields across the study and experience of migration to confront words and concepts that frequently appear in contemporary migration discourse. We will explore interdisciplinary art practices across visual art, poetry, drama, dance, and music, to allow participants to creatively access the assumptions, biases, and multiple meanings that often hide within the language(s) of our scholarship. Words at the center of inquiry may include the following: integration, acculturation, assimilation, coloniality, race/racialized, asylum, refugee, border, conflict, kinship, belonging, trust, diaspora, community, etc. These words hold powerful emotions and discursive assumptions in the frame of migration research, and an open inquiry into their entanglements can support renewed honesty, integrity, and empathy in our scholarship. In centering artistic practice and discovery, we hope to call attention to entrenched patterns of communication, encourage movement across boundaries, and offer creative ways to engage challenges of access, power, agency, and hope in academic and political spaces. The session will be conducted in English, but the activities are open to exploration in all languages and beyond language.

 

  1. MY BODY CARRY ME HOME — dance, ecology and activism in Teresa Fabião and Íris Garcia

Rita Xavier, Universidade do Minho, Portugal

All movement begins from the body, from its internal somatics to skin, a penetrable boundary to everything that exists on the outside. If, on the one hand, we witness, in the announced geological era of the Anthropocene, a domination by the human species over the body of the earth, increasingly dry and infertile, on the other hand, the human body itself is also threatened, as a territory increasingly medicalized, optimized and controlled. Even the attempts to repair of/on nature are often swallowed up by capitalist consumption logics a similar phenomenon to ‘green wash’ is emerging today with the growth of the highly profitable wellness and healing industry. This reflection aims to build alternative proposals through somatic and choreographic movement and a

micropolitical action that takes shape in the work of the portuguese Teresa Fabião and Íris Garcia. Teresa Fabião is a dancer, researcher, educator and artivist. Her multifaceted journey is driven by transitions between cultures where she lived; body languages (contemporary, classical, African dances, Afro-Brazilians, capoeira) and contexts of dance making-thinking (having a PhD in Performing Arts, Brazil). An HIV+ diagnosis made her expand dance in a path that combines personal development, artistic expression and social commitment. Íris Garcia is a witch, an ecosomatic therapist, an herbalist, an Iberian healer and dancer. It is through the creations, therapeutics and activisms of these pilgrim women that we found movement as an internal action with the time of the earth, a path to return to that most essential home: our body.

 

  1. Discussing migration as a ‘discursive construct’

Khushal Naik, Åbo Akademi

Migration in the 21st century has become a central theme of much debate across the globe. Increasingly, these debates have resulted in a political pluralisation between those who see it as a resource and those who see it as a threat to an existing status quo, therein seemingly departing from the 20th century’s humanitarian efforts. Whilst these debates rage, there is increasing research to show a large disconnect between theorisations of migration and the phenomenon in praxis. This disconnect has further been shown to contemporaneously result in widespread negative perceptions about the phenomenon of migration and have seen greater political efforts thereafter to restrict it via hardened and often illegal migration policies, as demonstrated by the current British government’s Rwanda policy. This discussion paper aims to approach this disconnect between theory and praxis via a discursive approach. It will be argued that restrictive migration policies in the 21st century are a consequence of a discursive construction of the phenomenon. The creation of discursive formations such as “illegal” migration, the “securitization” of migration, and the “instrumentalization”/“weaponization” of migration provide evidence to this argument, wherein far-right politicians have increasingly been able to construct a discourse that migration is dangerous and should therefore be restricted. As right-wing politicians continue to gain political power in recent years, paying attention to, and highlighting these discursive constructions will prove significant to furthering the UNs newly implemented drive towards “evidence based” research and decision making

WORKSHOP 12: Immigration control and the intimate sphere

Organizers: Jaana Palander and Pihla Maria Siim, Migration Institute of Finland

Thursday 7.11 Session 2 and Friday 8.11. Session 3, Room: Linna K107

In this workshop, we are interested in exploring how immigration control influences the intimate sphere and family dynamics. Private and family life are encroached in many ways, and people must tackle different legal and bureaucratic obstacles to be able to live together in one country. Uncertainty and threat of deportation affect people’s everyday lives and the sense of belonging to society. Temporality is closely intertwined with the immigration control. Changing legislation and long waiting periods make planning for the future difficult and stressful. Sense of displacement continues and making of home is postponed. Changes in immigration legislation and practice can also have unpredictable consequences. In addition, the negative effects go beyond the directly affected foreign citizen also affecting partners, children, extended family and friends. Unsecure situation usually burdens all involved and may affect (power) relations between the family members.

 

  1. Challenges Faced by Mixed-Citizenship Couples: Navigating Understandings of Genuine Relationships and the Burden of Proof

Pihla Maria Siim, Migration Institute of Finland

Research tends to focus on direct subjects of immigration control. However, by defining what kind of intimate partnerships are acceptable, border regime influences also citizens who are in a relationship with a foreigner. This presentation focuses on transnational intimacies of couples where one is of Finnish nationality and the other one of foreign background with an insecure status in Finland. I will investigate how the ways immigration authorities determine genuine relationship affect mixed-citizenship couples and their possibilities to live ‘normal’ family life. Immigration control recognizes intimate ties rather selectively, viewing mixed-citizenship couples categorically with wariness. The couples are left with the burden of proof to show that they have right kind of relationship, motivated by love. The conceptualisations of marriage and family life thus become part of bordering processes. Couples need to “do their families” in a right way and represent their relationships as normal and respectable. In this process, it is of great importance not to cross the lines between different immigration categories and to master the right conventions of narration. The analysis is based on interviews with couples and experts in immigration work. In addition, I analyse negative decisions (76) conducted by the Finnish Immigration Service in 2023 regarding mixed-citizenship couples’ application on residence permit based on their family ties. This research is done in the framework of the INDEFI project (‘Intimate geographies of bordering: Deportability and its effects on Finnish citizens with foreign spouses and their extended families’, funded by the Research Council of Finland, 2021–2025).

 

  1. Real and imagined effects of the immigration system in transnational couples’ decision making

Ella Alin, University of Helsinki

It is well recognized that immigration legislation and practice affect family relationships when one (or more) family member has a precarious legal status. Family members often need to make choices that affect their family life, such as deciding where to work and live, or when to marry or separate, according to the limitations instilled by the immigration system. In addition to the tangible ways in which immigration legislation affects the choices made in families, the ways the wider society perceives families where one or more members have, actually or in the outsiders’ imagination, precarious legal status, affects how such families are perceived by the society, and consequently, how they feel about their relationship and choices. For example, a couple’s motivations of being together, or deciding where to live, are often viewed through the lens of immigration, regardless of whether the couple themselves would grant the immigration system any role in their decision making. In my presentation, I draw from interviews I have conducted as part of my PhD research on interracial couple relationships in Finland to discuss some of the ways in which immigration legislation, and its impact as imagined by outsiders, affects family practices in transnational couples, as well as their sense of agency regarding these practices, which from the outside are often perceived through the frame of ‘immigration’.

 

  1. Authenticity of the intimate – meeting points of personal belief and public administration

Teele Jänes, University of Eastern Finland

In the modern society religion is often considered to be private and mostly separated from the public sphere, in reality the meeting points between the two may appear in somewhat surprising places. One of the places where these two worlds (personal religion and public administration) meet is in the religion-based asylum proceedings. Religion is one of the five grounds for granting asylum, according to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Current research argues for a practical need to understand and explain the decision-making processes and judgement arising from immigration officials determining the authenticity of an asylum claim based on religious affiliation. The question about the immigration authorities’ competence in religious matters and in evaluating the genuineness of personal beliefs and practices remains relevant, addressed by an ongoing academic discussion. This research joins the discussions regarding the meeting points of the personal, the intimate and the state, bringing new information from the Baltic region. In 2023-2024, in-depth interviews with the Baltic asylum authorities and other relevant stakeholders (courts, policymakers, religious organisations) were conducted as well as training-related focus-group discussions. The diversity of religion-based claims and overall unstable migratory situations challenge the asylum processes. By exploring the everyday reality of state officials in their legal and institutional environment, their perspectives, knowledge and preconceptions regarding religion in the context of asylum as well as collecting emerging training needs, the study aims to practically contribute to regional asylum training development.

 

  1. Migration Control in Pakistan: Legal Challenges and Their Impact on Familial and Personal Relationships

Rashida Abbas, University of Lahore

Migration is a multifaceted phenomenon with profound social, economic, and legal ramifications on refugees personal and familial dynamics. This study offers a critical analysis of the legal framework governing migration in Pakistan, exploring domestic legislation, international conventions, and their implementation to assess the efficacy of Pakistan’s migration management approach, particularly in light of its non-signatory status to the 1951 Refugee Convention. Refugees in Pakistan are frequently categorized as illegal immigrants under the Foreigners Act, raising serious concerns regarding their protection and rights, as well as their impact on family structures and personal relationships with immigrant and wider social communities. Using policy document analysis, I examine Pakistan’s domestic laws, including the Emigration Ordinance, 1979, and the Foreigners Act, 1946, which predominantly regulate emigration rather than immigration. Moreover, how such reductionist laws hinder in regulating normal familial and social relationships nationally and transnationally. The study highlights the absence of comprehensive legislation addressing immigration, which presents significant challenges to effective migration management, with far-reaching consequences on family cohesion and the intimate relationships of those affected. Instances such as discrimination, arbitrary detention, and inadequate access to basic services underscore the gaps in the effectiveness of the existing legal framework, exacerbating the vulnerability of families and intimate relationships among refugee migrants. This study offers policy recommendations aimed at enhancing governance and ensuring better protection for migrants and refugees.

 

  1. Everyday struggles of living with a precarious or irregularised status in Finland

Paula Merikoski, University of Helsinki

This paper examines how irregularity influences the everyday lives of irregularised or precarious migrants and their families in Finland. It begins by outlining how the Finnish migration regime and (anti-migration) policies create particular obstacles for irregularised migrants in Finland, focusing on the perspective of migrants’ intimate and domestic lives. Irregularity is a politically and legally produced situation, resulting from state policies and politics that restrict access to residence permits, asylum and fundamental rights while simultaneously creating a precarious labour force (e.g. de Genova 2004; Sigona et al. 2021). Moreover, irregularity is not merely about having a residence permit or not. Migration regimes leave many people in a situation of administrative precarity (Näre, Palumbo, Merikoski & Marchetti 2024), in which a person may hold a temporary and conditional residence permit or visa, and thus be at risk of falling into irregularity. Moreover, in this situation, uniting with one’s family and building a stable future is often impossible. In analysing how irregularity and administrative precarity influence the lives of migrants and their families, including situations where family members hold different statuses, this empirical paper draws from findings from thematic policy analysis and semi-structured expert interviews, workshops with experts and preliminary data from ethnographic fieldwork with precarious migrant workers in Finland.

 

  1. Parenting while waiting – Asylum-seeking families’ struggle for meaningful participation in reception centres in Finland

Martta Myllylä, University of Helsinki

Research on families in forced migration situations emphasizes the consequences that restrictive migration regimes have on families whose members are forcibly detached from each other. However, less attention has been given to the struggles of asylum-seeking parents living in reception centers with their children. In this presentation, I examine how families cope and how parents negotiate parenting and participation in the context of Red Cross reception centers in Finland. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of interviews with asylum-seeking parents and ethnographic observations in reception centers. The results indicate that current reception services, especially the lack of child-care services, overlook the needs of families. In addition to the challenges the circumstances create for parenting, they deepen the marginalization of families in multiple ways, affecting both the present and the future. Instead of a therapeutic and individualistic approach, parents require material support and structural changes to the reception system to live a meaningful everyday life, practice good parenthood, and participate in local communities. Moreover, the limited services that confine parents, often single mothers, within the premises of reception centers are in contradiction with both Finland’s self-image as a model country for gender equality and with public and policy discourses that demand migrant integration. The results support the notion of reception services as a form of humanitarian government wherein asylum seekers are reduced to victims with biological and psychological needs, while their political and social rights and agency are ignored.

 

  1. Ukrainian families with children under the Temporary Protection in Finland: Relationalities as hopeful engagements in navigating (in)securities in cross-border situations

Gorana Panic, University of Oulu

This study addresses a pressing issue of forced displacements following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In immediate responses, Finland demonstrated a welcoming culture, tremendous voluntary efforts, and solidarity with people fleeing Ukraine. By the end of 2023, more than 60,000 people from Ukraine sought temporary protection (TP) in Finland (Eurostat). As beneficiaries of TP, they have unrestricted rights to work. Since March 2023, Ukrainians who lived in Finland for a year can apply for a municipality residence and become customers of the services provided by municipalities and wellbeing services counties. Meanwhile, the Finnish government aims for social security cuts and tightening immigration policy. In growing research interest concerning the influx of migrants from Ukraine, and at the intersection of migration governance and social protection, this qualitative exploratory study examines how Ukrainian families with children are situated in shifting arrangements of cross-border living. Based on the personal experiences of Ukrainian families, we are interested in exploring families’ efforts to navigate unfamiliarity, (un)certainty, and (in) security in cross-border living, and the family’s emerging relations with various actors and networks involved in providing protection. This presentation is focused on relational modalities as hopeful engagements in navigating (in)securities experienced by Ukrainian parents in cross-border situations. Empirical data consists of semi-structured interviews with 13 parents/guardians collected across Finland between October 2023 and February 2024. The study’s theoretical contribution is discussing the empirical data using the relational approach of statgraphy (Thelen, et al. 2017) and its three analysis domains: relational modalities, boundary work, and embeddedness. This is a sub-study of a broader research project Transnational Child Protection funded by the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health (2022-24).

 

  1. Where are the most vulnerable? Searching for small children in the legislative proposals of Finnish government and debates in parliament concerning Aliens Act and Act on the Integration of Immigrants and Reception of Asylum Seekers

Riikka Era, Tampere University

Finland has stated that it is willing to help the “most vulnerable people” referring to children and families with children. This willingness can be tracked for example back to the 1920’s, it has been stated out loud in the case of the refugees from Vietnam in the 1970’s and again concerning the intra-European “burden sharing” of asylum seekers in the 2000’s. How is the imagined, vulnerable child portrayed in the debates of Parliament and in the legislation proposals of Government? In this paper I turn to legislative processes from 1990’s to 2010’s and try to sketch out the figure of the child. I am interested in the role that is offered to the child who is seeking international protection in Finland. I focus on the small children, the ones who are not yet attending schools or other educational institutions. This paper is part of my PhD research which concentrates on the lived realities of small children who live in Finnish reception centers. I am analyzing their everyday lives with the deleuzian concept of assemblage. The discourses used in the legislative processes are part of the macro level assemblage of these children and by that they bring affective forces and concrete effects to the children’s daily lives.

WORKSHOP 13: Culture of Migration: Exploring Migration as a Normative Behavior

Organizer: Saroj Koirala, University of Jyväskylä

Thursday 7.11 Session 2 and Friday 8.11. Session 3, Room: Linna K108

In this session, scholars, researchers, and practitioners will discuss the cultural dimensions of migration, examining how migration becomes ingrained into the collective consciousness of certain communities, transforming it into a normative behavior. The session will explore migration not only as a rational decision influenced by external micro- or macro-level factors but also as a cultural product perpetuated by learned behavior and societal expectations.

 

  1. If People Don’t, Why Would Devta Stay? The Culture of Migration in Western Himalayan Communities

Garima Bhandari, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India

Rural communities in the Global South are significantly impacted by the process of migration, which has altered village dynamics and sparked discussions among social scientists examining migration’s relationship to development and social change. While villages in several parts of South Asia experience circular or semi-permanent movement involving repeated and cyclical movements and altering village culture, many villages of the western Himalayan region are witnessing the contrasting trend towards permanent migration, resulting in the formation of thousands of Abandoned Villages or popularly known as Ghost Villages. This phenomenon has brought significant changes in the socio-political, economic and cultural spheres of these rural areas, which has rarely been figured as an explicit object of research. This study uses the Social transformation lens to analyse the changes and transformations brought about by out-migration in the peripheral depopulating villages. Drawing on a qualitative approach, this study delves into the Culture of migration in a hilly village in Uttarakhand and how it has evolved over time, resulting in the disintegration of the village structure as a whole. The study focuses on understanding how migration influences and shapes the various dimensions of rural areas, ultimately leading to major shifts in dominant political, economic, agricultural and socio-cultural relationships. Furthermore, it discusses the role of the state in perpetuating migration from rural areas towards urban areas, forming two opposite poles that are unlikely to be bridged. It concludes that in order to prevent villages from becoming abandoned, there should be an effort to develop a comprehensive strategy to address the challenges faced by the mountainous communities.

 

  1. Braga, Portugal: Two Millennia of Migrations and Cultural Transfers

Chisoka Simões, University of Minho

Mobility and migration are intrinsic human traits that have shaped the world. Recently, the discourse surrounding migration has shifted, often portraying it as a threat due to the rise of ethnonationalism in Europe. Grounded in Critical Heritage Studies, with theories of transnationalism and cultural memory, this research analyses migration as a normative behaviour in Braga, highlighting its continuous role in shaping the city’s 2000-year history. Using historical registries, toponymy, and other cultural practices of Braga, a Portuguese northwestern town, this research traces the impact of migrants on the city’s development and history. Since the city’s foundation in 16 B.C. by the Romans, it saw the rule of different tribes and groups, including Suebis or Arabs. Afterwards, with the country’s establishment, the 12th century to the present, immigrants—including priests, bishops, archbishops, scholars, navigators, explorers, architects and entrepreneurs from regions such as modern-day Belgium, Italy, Spain, and France—have shaped Braga, as we know it. Additionally, the study explores the forced migration and probable influence of formerly enslaved people in the city during the Portuguese slave trade period and the few possible biographical aspects after their manumission. It also examines emigration from Braga, mainly to Brazil, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and to Africa, specifically under Salazar’s dictatorship (1933-1974). Nowadays, the city faces a wave of Brazilian migrants, creating neologisms such as Bragasil, but also becoming attractive to migrants from new origins, such as southwest Asian countries, such as Bangladesh, adding new layers to this neverending mobility.

 

  1. Seeking Greener Pastures: conceptualizing rahar and badhyata in Nepali culture of migration

Saroj Koirala, University of Jyväskylä

Drawing upon the data from ethnographic study on aspiring labour migrants and international students, this study exposes the culture of migration in Nepali society, conceptualizing the role of rahar (desire) and badhyata (compulsion) in shaping migration choices. The study argues that both cohorts, despite having heterogeneous backgrounds, share common elements of rahar and badhyata in their migration choices. Economic adversities, absence of desired opportunities, scepticism about better future and a general lack of hope inside the country produce elements of badhyata to migrate from Nepal. People’s elevated life aspiration influenced by media depiction, success stories of migrant ‘role models’ and perceived social status, on the other hand produce elements of rahar fostering migration in Nepal. Rahar and badhyata together contribute to the formation of distinct culture of migration, where going abroad in any possible way is viewed as a normative step towards securing a better future and achieving upward mobility in Nepal.

 

  1. From Integration to Satisfaction: Immigrant Women’s Experiences in Finland

Zahra Hosseini, University of Helsinki

As part of the Trust-M project, and in line with the 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 16, this study investigated immigrants’ experiences with public services in Finland. The research involved semi-structured interviews conducted in Persian with ten female immigrants of varying educational backgrounds (from diploma to postdoctoral), ages (30-64), lengths of residency (5-28 years), modes of entry (study visa, asylum seeker, and family reunification), and marital statuses, residing in different cities across Finland. Participants generally perceived Finland as a country of beautiful nature, safety, respect for silence and privacy, and predictably cold weather. However, they contested the widespread notion of Finland as a land of universally happy people. Moreover, the public healthcare and education systems did not meet their expectations. A comparative analysis of immigrants’ initial and subsequent perceptions of public services revealed that refugees who were resettled in Finland by the United Nations and supported by integration programs experienced a gradual shift from negative to positive feelings, leading to increased life satisfaction. Conversely, immigrants who entered Finland with a study residence permit encountered greater challenges and disappointment in their integration process, resulting in decreased life satisfaction. Along with the crucial role of integration programs offered to refugees, the study highlights the importance of communication support from family members, ethnic communities, and access to information in shaping immigrants’ trust, sense of belonging, and overall satisfaction with life in Finland.

 

  1. Bubble Tea as a Cultural Anchor: Asian Migrants and the Normativity of Cultural Adaptation in Europe

Xinwei Zhang, University of Helsinki

This paper examines the role of bubble tea as a cultural anchor for Asian migrants in Europe, exploring how this popular beverage transcends its culinary origins to become a significant element in the adaptation and identity formation processes of migrant communities. The study investigates the journey of bubble tea from its introduction in Asia to its establishment in European markets, where it serves as both an economic strategy and a means of maintaining cultural continuity. Through ethnographic research and sociocultural analysis, the paper highlights how bubble tea facilitates the negotiation of identity and belonging among Asian migrants, reflecting broader patterns of cultural adaptation and resilience. In the context of migration as a normative behavior, this research demonstrates how food practices, such as the popularization of bubble tea, are not merely about sustenance but are deeply embedded in the socio-cultural fabric of migrant life. Bubble tea becomes a medium through which migrants express their heritage, navigate their new environments, and forge connections within their communities. The paper argues that the widespread adoption of bubble tea in Europe illustrates the fluidity of cultural practices in the face of migration, underscoring the ways in which migrants reshape and redefine their identities in response to the challenges of displacement and integration. This study contributes to the conference theme by exploring how migration, often seen as a norm in a globalized world, drives the evolution of cultural practices and creates new cultural norms within host societies.

 

  1. “Navigating Persecution and Belonging: The Integration of Ahmadiyya Refugees in Finland”

Sumeera Hassan, University of Helsinki

The Ahmadiyya community has faced persecution from both the Pakistani government and fundamentalist groups due to their religious beliefs. As a result, many Ahmadis have sought refuge in European countries, including Finland. Compared to other European nations, the Ahmadiyya diaspora in Finland is relatively new. These refugee families encounter significant challenges in navigating a political environment increasingly influenced by right-wing ideologies, despite Finland’s comparatively better human rights conditions. My research explores the narratives of integration and belonging among these newly arrived Ahmadiyya families in Finland. It argues that while the concept of ‘homeland’ remains central to the Ahmadiyya diaspora, they are actively seeking solace in Finland, striving to integrate into society while maintaining their religious values. The paper uses qualitative methodology, and the data is collected by extensive ethnography from the year 2021-2024 with the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat Finland.

WORKSHOP 14: Story Sharing Café: Encounters across Languages

Organizers: Linda Bäckman and Sari Pöyhönen, Jyväskylä University, and Max Bremer, Story Sharing Universum

Friday 8.11 Session 3, Room: Linna K103

This session centres the concept of linguistic citizenship (Stroud, 2001) and invites participants to reflect on questions of language from their own perspective and a collective one through facilitated story sharing. It is led by researchers from the project Language choices and linguistic citizenship in Swedish-speaking Finland (University of Jyväskylä) in collaboration with facilitators from Story Sharing Universum, a Helsinki-based collective that strives to bring people from diverse backgrounds together to meet each other as equals through sharing everyday stories.

The concept of linguistic citizenship was coined in the context of South Africa as a way of transcending the debates on linguistic human rights, which often assume a fixed view of language and identity. Instead, linguistic citizenship places language at the heart of questions of welfare and equity, and calls for action to contest prevailing power relations (Stroud, 2001). It calls for talking about language in visionary terms by encouraging reflection on “the ways in which the humanity of each of us depends on respectful recognition of, and engagement with, the linguistically mediated humanity of others” (Stroud 2015: 35). It is these engagements with the humanity of each other that we wish to draw on in the session. We invite ETMU participants to join the café by telling their stories and listening to others. Moreover, we will together explore the potential of story sharing as a method in participatory and ethnographic research.

WORKSHOP 15: Resistance and endings in the context of migration

Organizers: Erna Bodström, Ahmed Zaidan, Eveliina Lyytinen and Camilla Marucco Al-Mimar, Migration Institute of Finland

Friday 8.11 Session 3, Room: Linna K109

Resistance can be an essential way of finding a good ending in the context of migration. Endings can take various forms and vary from person to person, from e.g. finding or building communities to belong to, to obtaining citizenship and thus ending the legal status of being a migrant.

We elaborate forms of resistance through research, art and activism. On the one hand, how can structural changes, such as those of policy or law, be resisted? On the other hand, how can resistance be utilized to make a change at the individual or communal level, and to bring about hope and safety? Acts of resistance can be looked at from the viewpoints of the everyday, the legal, the emotional, the material, the institutional, and others.

This workshop is organized in relation to Endings – Refuge, Time, and Space (funded by the Kone Foundation, 2023-2026, MIF), a project combining research and arts to address theoretical and empirical gaps connected with refugeehood, time, and endings.

 

  1. Resisting Occupation through Social Work Practice in a Palestinian Refugee Camp in Lebanon

Evelina Sironen: University of Jyväskylä

In my presentation, I will explore the dynamics of resistance and social work within a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, focusing on the roles social workers play in fostering community resilience and resisting occupation across borders. The presentation is based on my PhD project, conducted in a community center of a local NGO providing social services to marginalized people in the Palestinian camps and surrounding areas in Lebanon. These camps host marginalized populations, including refugees, migrant workers, and Lebanese, affected by occupation, wars, and the socio-political climate of Lebanon. Over six months of ethnographic research, I followed the daily work of social workers during a time when war was being waged, and continues to be waged, in Gaza, and clashes between Hezbollah and Israel were occurring almost daily in southern Lebanon. The concept of “endings” in this context is multifaceted, encompassing both individual and collective transformations. How did the social workers challenge and resist settler colonialism and occupation in their daily work? How did they perceive their work as contributing to social change, justice, and resistance within the context of Palestinian camps in Lebanon? I will address the creative ways social workers challenged and resisted settler colonialism in their daily work. By examining the interplay between resistance and social work, this research highlights the critical role of social workers in addressing immediate needs under precarious situations, while fostering long-term, sustainable endings in refugee contexts.

 

  1. Re-defining refugeehood and its possible endings? Experiences from people who navigate(d) refugeehood living in Finland.

Camilla Marucco Al-Mimar, Migration Institute of Finland

What does refugeehood as an experience mean to different people who have navigated it? Does the experience of refugeehood ever end? If not, what contributes to ending it? This presentation explores the experiences of various people who have lived in refugeehood. In particular, it raises their acts of resistance and their agencies by attending to their own (re-)definitions of refugeehood, their possible compliance with this term or outright refusal to use it. Further, it centers their accounts of what supports the agency and life of people navigating refugeehood, and what instead restricts them. Last but not least, it amplifies the solutions and strategies that these people create to deal with the restrictions imposed by refugeehood. The presentation is based on the results of an ethnographic study that I have carried out in 2024 with people of various ages, nationalities, ethnicities, genders and legal statuses who have known refugeehood in the first person. My work is part of the project “Endings – Refuge, Time, and Space” (funded by the Kone Foundation).

 

  1. Legal resistance in ending the refugee status

Erna Bodström, Migration Institute of Finland

This paper looks at legal resistance in ending the refugee status. Many scholars agree that the refugee status is not meant to be indefinite, yet until recently many states in Europe have primarily treated it as such in the name of integration. However, recently the states have turned their focus from providing stable and sustainable solutions to ‘reviving the Refugee Convention’s cessation provisions’ in what can even be seen as a Return Turn (Schultz 2020). This makes the endings an increasingly topical issue. Academic research has paid a great deal of attention to how refuge as a legal status begins as well as how the asylum determination processes are resisted by, for example, demonstrations. When it comes to endings of the said status, much of the research has concentrated on group-based decisions, for instance in the case of Rwanda. The Return Turn most likely indicates that an increasing number of decisions on endings will be made to individual refugees, yet research on this is scarce. Ending of the refugee status is a legal-administrative process, and consequently much of the resistance to it is also legal. Therefore the current paper asks: how is the ending of the refugee status legally resisted? The paper answers this through analysing 200 decisions and related documents on terminating international protection status made by the Finnish Immigration Service in years 2015-22. By doing so, it contributes to the existing literature on both ending the refugee status and resistance in the refugee status determination at large.

 

  1. Art: A Vital Tool for Activism

Ahmed Zaidan, Migration Institute of Finland

Art is a vital instrument for enacting change in societies, as it emanates from the essence of

humanity, extending us into a realm where the impossible becomes possible. It transcends societal boundaries, stretching our resilience to new limits, and enabling us to incorporate the outcomes of our rapidly changing world into a broader understanding. Art operates as an instrumental tool of activism, empowering individuals to resist and fight, as it is the best means to ignite our senses and stir our emotions. Yet, revolution with no thought is like a torch of fire without light. For this reason, I believe that art and science should go hand in hand, spanning the trek of activism and resistance. In our project “Endings: Refuge, Time and Space,” my poetry becomes activism, showcasing the humanitarian dimension of legal documents and their impact on recipients. Through this project, I hope to raise emotional awareness, encouraging people to feel the consequences of certain policies on specific groups within our society. I am eager to explore this dimension through my poetry at the ETMU Conference, where I will perform poems that capture the spirit of legal decisions: how a legal decision might appear when viewed from the other side–the humanitarian side. My poems will express the emotional complexities that can arise from legal documents. Additionally, during my poetic presentation, I will briefly delve into the process of creating my art, emphasising the importance of merging research and art to form a vibrant and deeper horizon teeming with colours and opportunities, where art becomes the wings and science the compass, guiding us to unlock new dimensions as we navigate with the hope of reaching the shores of knowledge.

WORKSHOP 16: Immigration policy and integration policy development in Finland and Europe

Organizers: Aurora Nisso, University of Turku and Pasi Saukkonen, City of Helsinki / University of Helsinki

Friday 8.11 Session 3, Room: Linna K110

Immigration and integration are core topics in public debate in several European countries. Parties that strive for limiting immigration and that emphasize immigrants’ own responsibilities in the integration processes have significantly grown in popularity in many countries. In some member states of the European Union, these often populist parties have also been able to reach political influence, either as a coalition party or by supporting government from opposition. In this workshop, we will locate this development into the overall development in Europe, in general, and in Finland, in particular, regarding both immigration policy and integration. If we put the contemporary situation and the most recent development into a longer historical perspective, how does the development in the EU and in member states look like? Can we trace both ruptures and continuities? How well the current critical debate reflects what really has taken place in Europe? One perspective can also be the comparison between state, regional and local levels of politics and administration. In some countries, there has historically been more congruence between these levels, in others, differences or even tensions between central and local government. In this workshop, we also welcome papers that look more closely to both the historical development of these relations and to the contemporary situation, especially in this context of neonationalist populism.

 

  1. Integration Policy Development in Northern Europe: Divergence or Convergence

Pasi Saukkonen, City of Helsinki / University of Helsinki

Policies relating to immigrant integration started to get shape in the 1980s and 1990s in several northern European countries. Since then, there have been minor and major differences between different countries, initially some of them emphasizing a more assimilationist, others a more multiculturalist approach. Later, many authors have documented a certain convergence towards what has been called civic integration. Political changes have also produced more or less long-lasting changes to national integration policies. In Denmark and Norway, right-wing neo-nationalist populism influenced government policy already in the early 2000s, whereas similar development has taken place in Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands only later. How does the situation look like at the moment in these five countries? In my paper, I will first make a systematic comparative analysis of the development of national integration policies using available research literature. In the second part, I will take a closer look at the more recent development, using national legislation, government programs and integration programs as main sources. In addition to a general comparison, I will particularly focus on the influence of right-wing neo-nationalist populism to integration policies, whether from the inside or from the outside of government.

 

  1. Between restriction and protection: ambiguous goals and implementation of Finnish work permit system

Suvi Karhu, Tampere University

The number of work permits is increasing in Finland and the increase has come mainly from low skilled labour. In this paper, I examine how low-skilled labour immigration from outside the EU is restricted in Finland, how the restrictions have been justified and how the justifications have changed during the current Aliens Act. Before granting a work permit, authorities determine whether the vacancy could be filled by a local workforce. Labour market test is not needed, if regional authorities have assessed that there is a shortage of labour at the sector. Defining the availability of low-skilled labour is politically contested, and the authorities have a lot of discretion in assessing whether the foreign labour is needed. The assessments vary regionally, but in general the labour market is less regulated than before. As the importance of the labour market test has decreased, the focus of the work permit system has shifted to controlling of the working conditions. The aim is to prevent the exploitation of foreign labour, but the consequences can also be the opposite: the only tool available to authorities, is to limit the work permits of the foreign workers. According to previous studies, uncertainty and precarious legal status can lead to foreign workers becoming an exploitable workforce. Using policy documents as material, my aim is to examine the institutional change and the gaps between the legislation and implementation. Research is needed, because the goals of labour immigration have changed and the work permit system must be reformed, but there is no previous study about how the current system has performed.

 

  1. Development of the Finnish Integration Policy

Aurora Nisso, University of Turku

In this paper I provide a brief overview of the integration policy in Finland. I examine its development from a historical perspective to both understand and question the paths which have led Finnish integration policy to its current state. The period I focus on spans from 1999 to 2023. Finnish integration laws were legislated during this period: the first law in 1999, the second 2010 and the third 2023. I point out similarities and differences that can be seen in the government bills regarding these three integration laws. The latest law will enter into force for the most part at the beginning of 2025. This means we are discussing an issue that is evolving as we speak. My aim is to foster a discussion where it is possible to combine different approaches and perspectives so that we can better understand the wide-ranging effects of the ongoing changes in the field of integration in Finland.

 

  1. Citizenship as a gift, not a right: Policy shifts in citizenship and permanent residency in the Nordics

Nina Carlsson, Migration Institute of Finland / Uppsala University

Nordic countries have for the past years undergone a restrictive membership policy shift, with both foreseen and already implemented restrictions to entry, residency and citizenship. Denmark has been characterized as the frontrunner of this trend, imposing strict requirements for income, language skills, cultural knowledge and residency for permanent residency and citizenship. Sweden and Finland are in the process of introducing stricter requirements, in part inspired by Denmark. With a starting point in semi-structured interviews with policy implementers, permanent residency and citizenship applicants in Denmark, this presentation discusses the implications of imposing strenuous requirement for membership. It also discusses the Danish findings in relation to the ongoing Finnish and Swedish legislative processes in the field of permanent residency and citizenship.

WORKSHOP 17: Migration and the Narratives of Europe: Intersections of Identity, Justice, and Policy

Organizers: Reetta Toivanen, Miika Tervonen and Kolar Aparna, University of Helsinki

Friday 8.11 Session 3, Room: Linna K112

This panel explores the intricate narratives surrounding migration and displacement within the European context, with a focus on their impact on legal, social, and cultural frameworks. Against the backdrop of current geopolitical challenges and efforts to weaken Europe’s refugee protection regime, the panel critically engages with contemporary narratives and the pursuit of epistemic justice. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the panel examines historical and modern migration experiences to understand their influence on European identity and conceptions of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. It investigates how migration narratives intersect with official policy frameworks of the Council of Europe and the European Union. The panel expands its scope beyond conventional European boundaries by adopting a decolonial perspective to explore migration and displacement experiences across colonial divides, particularly emphasizing Eastern Europe and Europe’s interactions with Africa. By foregrounding the agency, belonging, and community of migrants and refugees, the panel seeks to illuminate the multifaceted impact of these experiences on Europe’s future trajectory.

 

  1. Reconstructing geographies of margins, doing europes otherwise

Kolar Aparna, University of Helsinki

Which worlds are we constructing through our writing as scholars of migration and borders of Europe in EU today? What categories of subject/object are taken as foundational? What spatio-temporal frames and subjectivities dominate? I reflect on these questions to outline an agenda for building situated knowledges from experiences of movement historically produced as ‘out of place’ and ‘out of time’ to undo fixity in linear spatio-temporal narratives of Europe but also of social-scientific analysis. Building on black and decolonial feminist scholarship I argue that thinking and sensing from the plural epistemological and ontological positions emerging from such movement (i.e. historically produced as ‘out of place’ and ‘out of time’) is essential to emancipate the categories of the migrant/refugee/other from scientific and historical ways of knowing that produced it in the first place. I will then reflect on the implications of such modalities of being, knowing and relating for non-repressive relations of inquiry and doing europes otherwise.

 

  1. ‘Like Don Quixote against the windmills’: doing migration control in Ethiopia

Floris van Doorn, University of Helsinki

How does the EU seek to externally manage African migration through the use of development cooperation? Zooming in on a particular example of ways to ‘tackle the root causes of irregular migration,’ this paper looks at how one such project financed by the EU Trust Fund for Africa has been implemented in the Gambella region of Ethiopia. Relying on 21 stakeholder interviews, this paper reads these European efforts of migration as a case of ‘frontier governmentality’. Focusing on the relationship between the European Union as project initiator and the NGO’s as the funding parties operationalising projects on the ground, it transpires that managing the Ethiopian margins is anything but a straightforward undertaking. In appreciating the complex and messy nature of the relationship between project initiator and funding partner, the paper complicates our understanding of EU migration management initiatives in the African context. European efforts to manage these African spaces are not to be seen as top-down or unidirectional. Rather, managing migratory frontiers is a multidirectional affair seldom yielding unambiguous or ‘satisfactory’ outcomes.

 

  1. Uncovering histories of forced removal

Miika Tervonen, University of Helsinki

The presentation addresses deportation – the forced removal of non-citizens from a state territory – as a site of selective nation-building and bureaucratic violence that is characterized by deep non-transparencies and historical amnesia. While deportation has become a central area in contemporary politics of bordering Europe, there is surprisingly little understanding of or even interest in why and how it has become so prominent. The presentation addresses forced removals as a long-term phenomenon in the case of modern Nordic history, highlighting four logics deeply embedded in histories of modern nation/welfare-state building: 1) socioeconomic selection, 2) racial/cultural gatekeeping, 3) deportation as a foreign policy tool and 4) guarding the administrative power of the state. It suggests ways to move beyond silences, including the use of oral history materials and reading administrative sources ‘against the grain’. More broadly, the presentation calls for an epistemological shift from a nation-state -centric perspective that omits those whom the state disposes itself of.

 

  1. Refugee History of United Europe: To Remember or to Forget?

Reetta Toivanen, University of Helsinki

Research has shown that the idea of a unified European history leaves many inequalities and atrocities outside the narrative of unity. Like any story, the idea/l of Europe required a violent forgetting and even repression of certain memories, life stories, and experiences. The forgotten memories are sometimes only smothered, and smothered memories tend to resurface to find expression in new forms. The fact is that memories are as important to the process of European construction as anything that has had to and must be forgotten. This presentation offers a first insight into research on family histories of Sudeten Germans who were expelled from the Czech Republic to Germany after World War II. In East-Germany (Soviet zone), their grievances and home sickness were silenced immediately; everyone was supposed to be the same socialist. In West-Germany they were initially treated as refugees, but at the latest with the Cultural Revolution of 1968 their demands for or even the memory of their lost homeland were silenced. I am studying the second and third generations in several places using ethnographic research methods to understand what the silence meant in the family history and their understanding of Europe as a continent of flight. I will pursue the question of whether the silence on the refugee past can explain why minority rights are still a serious stumbling block for European politics today.