Sociologist with +15 years of professional experience. My research focuses on the linkages between mobility, belonging and social order, with focus on how migration is perceived, practiced and governed by different actors, the role of mobility in society, and the transnational engagement of diaspora groups with a focus on gender and affect.
I am the PI of the collaborative research program Diaspora Humanitarianism in Complex Crises (D-Hum) that explores how Somali diaspora groups engage during humanitarian emergencies in the Somali regions (2019-2025). Likewise I part of the Governing Climate Mobility (GCM) research program that explores links between climate change, mobility and governance in Ghana and Ethiopia.
I works ethnographically, with expertise in multi-sited fieldwork and longitudinal studies. Theoretical focus on mobility and immobility, infrastructure, temporality, gender and belonging.
Projects
| Migration Reasearch Hub ID: 2689 | |
| https://www.linkedin.com/in/nauja-kleist/ | |
| X/Twitter | https://twitter.com/Nauja_Kleist |
Expertise
Migration processes
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Migration drivers
- Gender relations
- Climate change and environmental conditions
- Conflict, war and violence
- Migration governance and infrastructure
- Migration policy and other public policies
- Personal resources and migration experience
- Migrant communities and networks
- Migrant aspirations and attitudes
- Cultural norms and ties
- Globalisation and (post)colonialism
- Transnational ties
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Migration forms
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Migration infrastructures
Migration governance
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Governance actors
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Migration policy and law
Cross-cutting topics in migration research
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Migration research and theory
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Transversal themes
Disciplines
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Disciplines
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Subject Areas
Methods
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Qualitative research
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Types of study
Geographies
Roles
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Danish Institute for Internation Studies
Research Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark
Senior Researcher
Research
Trajectories of involuntary return migration to Ghana: Forced relocation processes and post-return life
| Authors | Nauja Kleist |
| Year | 2020 |
| Journal Name | Geoforum | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
In the Name of Diaspora: Between Struggles for Recognition and Political Aspirations
| Authors | Nauja Kleist |
| Year | 2008 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
| Citations (WoS) | 43 |
Mobilising ‘The Diaspora’: Somali Transnational Political Engagement
| Authors | Nauja Kleist |
| Year | 2008 |
| Journal Name | Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies |
| Citations (WoS) | 35 |
Suggested Research
Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity. By Cawo M. Abdi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Pp. ix+289. $94.50 (cloth); $27.00 (paper).
| Authors | Nauja Kleist |
| Year | 2016 |
| Journal Name | American Journal of Sociology | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Diaspora and Transnationalism. Concepts, Theories and Methods
| Authors | Nauja Kleist |
| Year | 2011 |
| Journal Name | Nordic Journal of Migration Research | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
Moving Horizons: Hypermobile Somali Youth in Türkiye
| Authors | Ayan Yasin Abdi, Nauja Kleist |
| Year | 2025 |
| Journal Name | Global Networks | Taxonomy | View Taxonomy Associations |
‘These days, things have changed’: historicizing current dynamics of climate-related migration in the savannah zone of Ghana
| Authors | Francis Xavier Jarawura, Nauja Kleist, Joseph Kofi Teye, ... |
| Year | 2024 |
| Journal Name | Climate and Development |
| Citations (WoS) | 1 |