Upcoming Seminars
Only forward - no backward: Navigating hyper-controlled mobilities
Speaker: Aida Jobarteh (Stockholm University)
Abstract: This chapter explores how Gambian men navigate hyper-controlled mobility along the Mediterranean Backway, that is, the irregular route from The Gambia through Senegal, Mali, Niger, and Libya toward Europe. The vernacular expression “only forward—no backward” offers an analysis of time and decision-making under duress: a collectively shared temporal orientation that renders return unthinkable while violence and constraint intensify along their journey. Drawing on ethnographic engagement (2014–2018), I examine how migrants encounter layered border regimes in which state and non-state actors, from police and soldiers to smugglers and fouaye operators, simultaneously constrain and compel movement. Through the narratives of three interlocutors, I show how these border zones function as spaces of extraction and containment, where initiatives such as “voluntary return” become integrated into ongoing cycles of mobility rather than providing closure. In doing so, the chapter contributes to critical migration studies by demonstrating how African borders produce racialized forms of hyper-control while extracting value from both mobility and immobility.
Date and time: Tuesday, May 26, 12:30 - 14:00
Location: Room B706, Stockholm School of Economics
Gendered ethnic gaps in Nordic labor markets: A cross-national comparison of immigrant women's labor market incorporation
Speakers: Nora Sánchez Gassen & Debora Pricila Birgier (Nordregio)
Abstract: Although the Nordic countries are frequently treated as an institutional cluster with respect to labour market organization and work-family policy, they diverge considerably in their immigration histories and integration policies. Existing scholarship has separately documented women's comparatively strong labour market position in the region and persistent disadvantages faced by immigrants, yet those who occupy both positions simultaneously — immigrant women — have received comparatively less attention in a Nordic cross-national perspective. This study addresses that gap by examining how the intersection of gender and ethnicity shapes labour market incorporation across the Nordic countries.
Drawing on microdata from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) for 2021–2024, the study analyses three outcome variables — employment status, occupational prestige, and part time employment — across five origin-country groups. Preliminary findings reveal substantial cross-national variation in the magnitude of ethnic penalties. Employment gaps are most pronounced in Sweden and Denmark, with disparities being particularly severe among migrants from Africa and the Middle East. Across all countries examined, immigrant women experience larger penalties in both employment and occupational prestige than immigrant men from the same origin countries, indicating compounded disadvantage at the intersection of gender and immigrant status. The study contributes to the comparative integration literature by centring gender as a primary analytical axis, examining job quality alongside employment status in the Nordics.
Date and time: Tuesday, June 2, 12:30 - 14:00
Location: Room B706, Stockholm School of Economics
Race and poetry in the Nordics
Speaker: Elliot Mason (Uppsala University)
Abstract: Over the last two decades, a significant shift has occurred in Nordic poetry, which Maïmouna Matikainen-Soreau has called the “postmigration” trend. In Sweden, the children of migrants now form the majority of the most well-known poets. At the same time, emphasizing this “postmigration” literary generation as a total break the past affirms the narrative of the region’s racializing exceptionalism: before migrants arrived, suddenly and without precedent in the early 2000s, there was no such thing as race or racism. How do poetry and literary criticism contend with the political complicity that captures every attempt at defining this literary era?
Building on his work on contemporary American poetry in his book Poetics of Value (Brill, 2025), in this talk Elliot C. Mason discusses the politics of literary history in the Nordics, ultimately proposing poetry as a crucial site of struggle.
Date and time: Tuesday, June 9, 12:30 - 14:00
Location: Room B706, Stockholm School of Economics
European ethnics became white Americans only when non-Europeans arrived: A three-group assimilation hypothesis for the future of new immigration
Speaker: Aryan Karimi (University of British Columbia)
Abstract: Contemporary segmented and neo-assimilation research posits that socioeconomic status (SES) mobility led ethnic Europeans to become one with white Anglo-Saxons. The puzzle is that, while they joined whites, recent longitudinal data do not show widespread SES mobility among the ethnic Europeans in the 20th century. Hence there must be a different cause of their assimilation. Karimi proposes that it was boundary expansion by the white Anglo-Saxons. To build this boundary model, he relies on the broader theories of sociology of boundary-work: each group self-identifies vis-à-vis an Other group and, as such, two groups, self and Other, cannot completely assimilate to become one; it is necessary that an Other group remains and exists on the scene.
Accordingly, his three-group hypothesis of assimilation proffers that the post-1965 arrival of non-Europeans created a three-group scenario with Anglo-Saxons, European ethnics, and non-Europeans. Then, regardless of SES, the boundary of Anglo-Saxon whiteness expanded to include the European ethnics. Without the third group, ethnic Europeans would not have comprehensively assimilated. Karimi operationalizes the hypothesis and provide a preliminary test using Google Ngram data. He discusses the theoretical implications for non-Europeans’ assimilation.
Date and time: Tuesday, June 16, 12:30 - 14:00
Location: Room B706, Stockholm School of Economics