Paper short abstract:

Based on the everyday practice of 'institutional neighbourliness' amongst asylum seekers and local residents in a small Danish town, the paper discusses how this situated migratory encounter ties in with local modes of pragmatism, outside of dominant discourses such as humanitarianism/xenophobia.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates everyday practices of co-residency and 'institutional neighbourliness' amongst asylum seekers and local inhabitants in the small Danish town of Jelling. Where asylum centres in Denmark are sometimes faced with local opposition and are often isolated from nearby settlements, the centre in Jelling provides a different local migratory scenario. Being Denmark's oldest asylum centre, it has for 25 years been located in the centre of town, where asylum seekers and local inhabitants share residential and institutional public space. This unique local circumstance invites an ethnographic exploration of how over time and outside of an urban, cosmopolitan setting processes of multiethnic co-residency are shaped, interacted, and narrated, through everyday physical meetings in public space. The paper shows how local cultural history proves paramount for understanding the present-day migratory encounter and outcome in Jelling in its complexity, including the mundane neighbourly routines and pragmatic workings through which the institutions of 'the local community' and 'the asylum centre' have spatially and socially merged. Today the asylum centre has become "just another local institution". The paper thus argues that it is necessary to understand the ways in which situated migratory encounters tie in with pre-existing local self-understandings and modes of pragmatism, outside of dominant national discursive positions such as humanitarianism or xenophobia.

Paper short abstract:

Based on an ongoing fieldwork, this paper explores how the grassroots initiative Venligboerne ("friendly neighbours") is practiced in different local settings in Denmark. It particularly focuses on how ideas about voluntariness and friendliness are negotiated in the local reception of refugees.

Paper long abstract:

In 2015, when Denmark received a large number of asylum-seekers, an initiative on spreading friendliness in a town in northern Jutland overnight became a nation-wide movement for the voluntary integration of refugees. Under the name Venligboerne ("friendly neighbours") more than 100 local facebook groups appeared, and activities such as cafes, language tutoring, donations, shared dinners and excursions took place all over the country. However, since Venligboerne is not an association, but a voluntary movement with no formal leadership, there exist varying and sometimes contradictory notions of what it means to be Venligbo and what friendliness involves. Often these understandings vary between urban and non-urban settings.

This paper uses the voluntary activities of Venligboerne as a lens on migration into non-urban settings. Based on participant observation and interviews with organizers it analyses the founding narratives of three non-urban Venligbo groups and examines how local networks and traditions of voluntariness come into play in a new context. Moreover, it explores how cultural perceptions of 'being friendly' are negotiated among volunteers, refugees and locals, and groups in different regions of Denmark.

Paper short abstract:

What happens to local community dynamics 'after the crisis'? We analyze this issue drawing on qualitative data collected in Norwegian local communities during and after 'the crisis' to understand local reactions and efforts when the crisis trope is no longer in play .

Paper long abstract:

Crisis and continuity: Norwegian local communities in the wake of the 'refugee crisis'

Norway, situated at Europe's northwestern periphery, is currently experiencing the lowest number of asylum seeker arrivals in twenty years. While in 2015 protests were frequent anticipating the peak in asylum seeker arrivals to Norwegian local communities, the 'crisis situation' also unleashed unprecedented local efforts to welcome the asylum seekers. We analyze the 'refugee crisis' as a widely mobilizing critical event (Das 1995). According to social movement theory, such events can serve to challenge established truths, lead to social and political mobilization and even long term social change. But, what happens to local community dynamics 'after the crisis', when reception centers have closed down and the refugees welcomed stop coming? We analyze this issue drawing on qualitative data collected in two rural and one urban Norwegian local communities during and after 'the crisis' to understand what may happen to local reactions and efforts when the crisis trope is no longer in play and the critical event that spurred local response seem to have passed.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon my long-term fieldwork with Bhutanese refugees in a small, peripheral U.S. rust belt city that uses resettlement for revitalization, I interrogate the negotiations of everyday conflicts between refugees and their neighbors as they vie for resources, recognition, status, and stability.

Paper long abstract:

Erie, Pennsylvania—a small city in the region of the United States known as the "rust belt"—has been in a perpetual crisis for several decades. Struggling to reverse an ongoing exodus of people, jobs, and capital, this shrinking city has turned to refugee resettlement as a means for revitalization. Federal policy encourages resettlement to places like Erie due to their low costs of living and discourages refugees from accessing welfare. Locally, refugees are constructed as an injection of vital, new blood that infuses new life into Erie and its economy. This narrative portrays refugees as model minorities—active, economic agents saving the city from ruin—in contradistinction to Erie's poor white and black populations. Yet, while refugees are praised for buying homes, starting businesses, and "taking the jobs that nobody else wants," this narrative obfuscates the reality that most of Erie's refugees struggle for survival and social inclusion. Further, it exacerbates tensions within their new neighborhoods. As Erie has been devastated by deindustrialization and the U.S. welfare state has devolved, many Erieites—understanding that their livelihoods have been lost to competition abroad—feel as if they must compete amongst one another for a share of ever-dwindling resources. Refugee arrivals, seen as "getting a free ride," represent a new threat to their stability. Drawing upon my long-term fieldwork with Erie's Bhutanese refugee population, I interrogate the negotiations of everyday conflicts between displaced refugees and their dislocated neighbors in this peripheral city, as they vie for resources, recognition, status, and stability.

Paper short abstract:

Responding to a cosmopolitan bias in international migration studies, this paper conceptualises the articulation of local opposition to the dispersal of asylum seekers to Middlesbrough, a marginalised, post-industrial town in the North East of England, through the figure of the 'dumping ground.'

Paper long abstract:

Migration scholarship tends to focus on the relationship between incumbent residents and migrating incomers in Europe's global cities. However, the policy move in many European countries to disperse asylum seekers and refugees outside of cosmopolitan centres, often in marginalised or peripheral places, warrants the development of new theoretical approaches. Specifically, the UK's asylum seeker dispersal policy, predicated on the availability of cheap housing, places asylum seekers in a handful of the UK's most deprived neighbourhoods. Of these, Middlesbrough, a post-industrial town in the North East of England is the most deprived, and from 2013 to mid-2016, housed the most asylum seekers as a proportion of the population. This paper aims to understand how the locality of this denigrated provincial place - its socio-economic history and stigmatized identity - shapes the way local people narrate the presence of asylum seekers in Middlesbrough. A combination of ethnographic methods - participant observation and semi structured interviews - and rhetorical and discursive analysis of the comment sections of online local newspaper articles, are used to unpack these contested narratives. Opponents contend that Middlesbrough functions as a 'dumping ground' for an externally created, problematic asylum seeking population. Moving beyond the humanitarian/ xenophobe dualism, this figure of the 'dumping ground' provides an original lens though which opposition to the national government, local elites and asylum seekers themselves, intersect, underpinned by the view that asylum seekers are 'human waste:' an unwanted, burdensome problem to be managed and contained in an already marginalized, denigrated space.

Paper short abstract:

Focused on Chechens in Poland, this paper discusses how refugees 'make a life' while subject to the European migration regime. I explore how refugees deal with loss and transcend precarious conditions while being held in peripheral localities with high levels of poverty and ethnic-based prejudice.

Paper long abstract:

The European border regime has a negative impact on refugees' lives, but it does not necessarily force refugees into living in perpetual limbo. Refugees undertake various life projects to build their future despite the precariousness. They counter conditions of uncertainty and insecurity with their proactive existence. Actual migration control practices vary from region to region, and these practices affect different migrants who find themselves in various predicaments. The question arises: how does the political and socioeconomic setting shape migrants' making of a life? Under what circumstances do migrants develop a strong sense of shared identity as a part of their everyday resistance? Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork among Chechen migrants in Eastern Poland, this paper explores how refugee survivors of the violence that erupted in the North Caucasus after the dissolution of the USSR strive for living in the present while being subject to migration control policies and technologies at the new eastern border of the European Union. I discuss how Chechens deal with traumatic loss and transcend precarious conditions while being held in peripheral localities with high levels of poverty and ethnic-based prejudice.