Anthropology

"Work Unlimited: Identity construction in a global context" is a project funded by Working Life Research Program at the Norwegian Research Council (NFR). The project will be focusing on the subjective and personal experiences of global work migrants moving across geographical and administrative boundaries in different European countries. This research will be a collaborative project involving the fields of organizational anthropology and organizational psychology located at the departments of Social Anthropology and Psychology respectively at NTNU.

This project is about the racialization of migrant labourers across political boundaries, with a main focus on impoverished Europeans who served in huge numbers as indentured labourers in nineteenth-century Guianese, Caribbean and Hawaiian sugar plantations and in the workforce of late nineteenth and early twentieth century New England cotton mills. With this project I aim to provide major, innovative contributions on three fronts: (i) theory-making, by working the concepts of race, racism, racialization, embodiment and memory in association with migrant work across political boundaries and imperial classifications; (ii) social relevance of basic research, by linking an issue of pressing urgency in contemporary Europe to substantive, broad-scope, and multi-sited anthropological/historical research on the wider structures of domination, rather than to targeted problem-solving research of immediate applicability; (iii) disciplinary scope, by proposing to unsettle historical anthropology and ethnographic history from within the boundaries of a single empire, and to overcome the limitations of existing comparative studies, by inquiring into the flows and interactions between competing empires. I will also: (iv) strengthen the methodology for multi-sited, multi-period research in anthropology; (v) contribute to an anthropology of global connections and trans-local approaches; (vi) promote the multidisciplinary and combined-methods approach to complex subjects; (vii) narrate a poorly known set of historical situations of labour racializations involving Europeans and document the ways they reverberate through generations; and (viii) make the analysis available to both academic audiences and the different communities involved in the research.

Consubstantial to the founding project of social sciences, moral issues have been eclipsed for a long time in sociological and anthropological research. Without neglecting recent efforts of social scientists to readdress them, my intention is to take up this repressed ambition by laying the foundations of a critical moral anthropology. The crucial importance of morals in everyday life as well as in global crisis, in the evaluation of actions as well as in the justification of policies, in the relations with others as well as in the construction of social identities makes this ambition a reasonable necessity. Empirical validation will be done through a comparative ethnography of moral economies around two groups: immigrants in juridical precariousness; adolescents from underprivileged areas. Our study will concern their interactions with regulation structures police and justice, social work and mental health. It will enlighten the concepts of moral work and stakes, of moral categories and evaluation, of moral communities and boundaries. Fieldwork will be mainly conducted in the banlieues of Paris. For the immigrants, we will study how situations and claims are evaluated at the border to enter the territory (Waiting Zone for Foreigners of Roissy) or in case of appeal for refugees (National Court for Asylum); we will also analyze processes of sanction for their illegal situation (Retention Center of Coquelles) or for offences (Prisons of La Santé, Fresnes and Val d Oise). For the adolescents, we will focus on the ordinary setting of institutions in charge of these publics (Val d Oise), but also on two innovative responses based on mental health (Network of Yvelines Sud and House for Adolescents of Val d Oise East). Based mainly on anthropology and sociology, the project also involves political science, philosophy, psychology and psychiatry. The research team includes the PI, 5 post-docs, 5 PhD students and two part-time researchers, all from IRIS.

This research focuses on how market transformation gives rise to new patterns of politics that among some social groups in Eastern Europe emerge as new fascism. By focusing on two social groups that have encountered the most significant transformation in effect of the economy re-structuring after state-socialism and whose positions caused the major challenges for academics and policy makers -- heavy industry workers and Roma/Gypsies -- the project aims to offer new perspective on the anthropology of social and political movements in Europe. Building upon years-long fieldwork in Slovakia, Poland and Ukraine, the project investigates how individualism and market calculation in what I call post-peasant setting after state-socialism have paved the way for populist movement that have increasingly taken anti-Roma attitudes among social groups that have not previously shown sensitivity to ethnic conflict or neo-fascist protests. The anthropology of new fascism therefore analyses the social and political movement from the ordinary perspective of everyday eceonomic models, balancing the dominant view on macro-structural or identity-centred 'culturalist' approaches. Theoretically, the project combines the recent dialogue of anthropology and economy with literature on transformations of polities, particularly in post-socialist setting. The project intends to argue that the current rise of populism and neo-fascism in Eastern Europe can only partially be explained as being the effect of neoliberal globalization. It is argued, instead, that the perspective on the everyday distribution of power in post-peasant society and how it has been reproduced via uneven development alongside with the changes in livelihood strategies under the market proliferation into the spheres previously dominated by community reciprocity shall be investigated in order to develop a new theory in the field of anthropology of social and political movements in/of Europe.

... Eine rechtsethnologische Untersuchung des Aufeinandertreffens von migrantischen Lebensentwürfen und rechtlicher Systembildung in verwaltungsgerichtlichen Streitfällen "Hypothese ist, dass zwischen Migranten und staatlichen Akteuren eine Interaktionssituation entsteht, von der auch jenseits des Gesetzgebungsprozesses Impulse für eine Rechtsentwicklung ausgehen. Zentrale Fragen sind, wie Migranten als Akteure die Möglichkeiten verwaltungsgerichtlichen Rechtsschutzes erleben, wie Rechtsanwender in ihrem Arbeitsalltag Migrationsdynamiken und -folgen bearbeiten und welche Auswirkungen diese soziale Praxis auf das Verwaltungsrecht und die Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen der beteiligten Akteure hat. Dr. Vetters geht von der Hypothese aus, dass zwischen Migranten und staatlichen Akteuren eine Interaktionssituation entsteht, von der in der Rechtswirklichkeit auch jenseits des Gesetzgebungsprozesses intendierte und unintendierte Impulse für eine Rechtsentwicklung und eine Transformation von Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen ausgehen. In einer empirischen Untersuchung wird diese Interaktionsdynamik einschließlich der aus ihr resultierenden Prozesse der Rechtsfortbildung und -transformation systematisch erfasst und im Hinblick auf die Ausgestaltung von Rechtsstaatlichkeit unter Bedingungen soziokultureller Pluralisierung in Deutschland eingeordnet. Zunächst wird hierfür eine Datengrundlage in Form einer Falldatenbank mit mindestens 200 Fällen geschaffen, die bislang fehlt, da insbesondere die Justizstatistik keine Daten über den Migrationshintergrund enthält. Dazu werden zunächst explorative Interviews mit Migranten geführt, um so Rechtsgebiete zu identifizieren, die – neben den klassischen Gebieten wie dem Ausländer- und Asylrecht – für die migrantische Biographie von besonderer Relevanz sind bzw. in denen der Migrationshintergrund eine Rolle spielt. Für diese Referenzgebiete sollen dann weitere Daten durch teilnehmende Beobachtung, Interviews und Analyse schriftlicher Quellen in den Akteursfeldern „Migranten“, „Anwalt/Rechtsberatungsorganisation“, „Verwaltungsgericht“ und „Behörden“ erhoben werden. Aus dieser Falldatenbank sollen dann solche Fälle ausgewählt werden, in denen sich unterschiedliche Aspekte der Rechtsentwicklung und Transformationen von Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen andeuten. Auf dieser Grundlage ist geplant, 12 bis 16 detaillierte Einzelfallstudien zu bilden, anhand derer unterschiedliche Aspekte der Rechtsentwicklung und Transformation von Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen dokumentiert und analysiert werden können. Anhand verschiedener Teilfragen werden dabei die beiden großen Teilbereiche untersucht, welche Transformationen der Ordnungsidee der Rechtsstaatlichkeit in der Rechtswirklichkeit als Ergebnis von Interaktionen zwischen den am verwaltungsgerichtlichen Verfahren beteiligten Akteuren zu beobachten sind und inwiefern transformierte Rechtsstaatsvorstellungen der Akteure auf die Rechtsanwendung und -entwicklung zurückwirken."

ANTHUSIA is a multi-disciplinary EJD in the Anthropology of Human Security in Africa proposed by a consortium of four universities in Aarhus, Edinburgh, Leuven and Oslo. Combining competences from Anthropology, Human Security and African Studies It aims to foster talent relevant to current challenges and potentials of developing safe societies in Africa. By exploring different areas from a human security perspective, the research will provide insights into problems such as expanding young populations, accelerated urbanisation, unequally distributed growth, recurring conflicts, persistent health problems, and refugee insecurity. A human security perspective shifts the focus from the security of nation states to the safety and well-being of humans in their everyday lives. Human security problems, as well as growth rates in Africa have obvious ramifications for European home security and economy. Refugee crises due to human insecurity in the African continent are likely to continue evolving in the future. We propose 15 ESR projects converging in a comprehensive understanding of human security. These address epidemics, borderlands, infrastructure, economic/livelihood security, environmental/climate change, land and resource issues, and political security – and the inter-linkages between them. To enhance the research findings’ policy impact, ANTHUSIA has partnered with organizations offering secondments, and will train them to do innovative dissemination. ANTHUSIA’s central African hub is the British Institute of East Africa, which will host workshops and summer schools. Each ESR is supervised by two senior researchers from two universities, will do one year of empirical research in Africa, including 3-5 months of secondment, participate in PhD courses and disseminate research in a thesis as well as articles, presentations, and policy briefs using visual media. The ESRs will be awarded a joint doctoral degree from the two universities, where the supervisors are based.