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Short abstract

This presentation looks at the refugee-crisis in 2015, the covid-crisis and more recently the fear of seemingly contagious gang criminality and the connections to bio-politics related to the Öresund bridge between Sweden and Denmark.

Long abstract

Before and during the building period of the Öresund bridge in the late 1990´s, the diminished importance of nation-states was predicted. A new Europe of the border regions would emerge and more and more decision-making would take place at a supranational EU or regional level. The new transnational Öresund connection would, both symbolically and practically, be at the forefront of this development and be a growth engine for the entire new border region. On an everyday level the bridge would facilitate croos-border contacts, thus fostering a new regional identity.

The development since then with the refugee crisis in 2015, the introduction of border controls in Europe and the region shows that the regional identity project was slowly emptied of meaning.

This presentation seeks to show, with ethnographic examples from border-crossing experiences at the Bridge in 2000, 2015 and the present, how changes in the notion of borders opens up for a new form biopolitical regime at the bridge.

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Short abstract

Employing ‘medical border making’ as an analytical term, this paper aims to show how borders permeate the social and cultural lives of the health institutions and shape them as inclusion/exclusion apparatuses.

Long abstract

In Germany, migrants’ healthcare needs and perspectives have received limited attention, so that an institutional absence of migration in the German healthcare system is noticeable. This lack of epistemological and political attention to migrants’ health is to reflect in the design and development of healthcare ecosystem in Germany. Given the risks of encoding existing hierarchies, biases, assumptions and unchecked values into the research, design and development of health institutions, it is crucial to unpack how healthcare and access to it has been institutionalized. Healthcare systems are seen as social, cultural, economic and political bordering mechanisms that centralize (undesired) bodies in their discourses, and this makes it essential to understand not only the institutional logics behind the design of these systems, but also how ethnographic and critical engagement with borders, bodies and health can account for more reflexive, interdisciplinary and careful practices. Drawing on empirical research about the primary care of migrants in Göttingen, this paper proposes the term ‘medical border making’ to refer to the processes in which healthcare system as an institution, alongside other institutions and in contribution with them, represents and (re)produces the national, social and cultural borders to establish and institutionalize a certain interpretation of ‘difference’. Employing this as an analytical term, this paper aims to show how borders permeate the social and cultural lives of the health institutions and shape them as inclusion/exclusion apparatuses.

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This paper offers a real time, albeit preliminary ethnography of the attempt and resistance to re-ordering a country. The ACT party, part of the current coalition government is proposing to re-interpret the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, thus eliminating decades of moving towards a postcolonial society. This process is viewed as an example of a global tendency to cancel contracts and policies aimed at righting wrongs, past and present.

Long abstract

This project introduces the method of real time ethnographic diary keeping as events of historical significance are unfolding. The example used is set in Aotearoa New Zealand, whose national contract between Māori chiefs and the British Crown was signed in 1840. The focus will be on analysing de-colonising strategies of a political party attempting to re-interpret and thus re-order the country’s political landscape of a bi-partisan decolonial project. The paper will survey and analyse both political movements and their strategies: the attempt to unwrite Māori progress towards co-governance, and the unfolding resistance movement led by Māori. Both movements are using a mixture of (unspoken and historical) rule breaking and more traditional political tactics.

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In the United States, Appalachia and the American South are both regions where dominant, top-down narratives are often imposed on place, especially in relation to environmental belief, activism, disaster, and rurality. These narratives, in turn, have shaped our social imaginaries of, expectations toward, and attitudes about people and place—and who or where we believe deserves wider empathy, advocacy, or aid. This paper examines the permeability and limits of bordered approaches to region and rurality and explores what a re-examination of regional contact zones might offer folklorists as we navigate global climate crisis and increasing environmental disasters.

Long abstract

In the United States, Appalachia and the American South are both regions where dominant, top-down narratives are often imposed on place, especially in relation to environmental belief, activism, disaster, and rurality. These narratives, in turn, have shaped our social imaginaries of, expectations toward, and attitudes about people and place—and who or where we believe deserves wider empathy, advocacy, or aid. Rural places and the people living within them are still often considered isolated and intensely local—disconnected from larger-than-local forces. These constructions create socio-environmental challenges, especially for unincorporated places within rural areas that may be unmapped yet are hosts to environmental exploitation and crises. Environmental sociologists, for example, have noted global polluting industries often intentionally choose unincorporated or marginalized communities to avoid deeper noticing of associated harms or disasters. Both regions also hold an abundance of bottom-up narratives, grassroots movements, complex beliefs, and creative expressions about environmental actions, art, and history. How can studying the overlaps, tensions, and connections beyond constructed regional boundaries help us better examine place-based practices and attitudes toward environmental life? What can a focus on the institutionally defined and imposed border between Appalachia and the South help us understand about other institutionally defined and imposed borders (and the violences that accompany them)? This paper examines the permeability and limits of bordered approaches to region and rurality and explores what a re-examination of regional contact zones might offer folklorists as we navigate global climate crisis and increasing environmental disasters.

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Short abstract

This paper addresses the subject of the process of kinship boundaries reconstruction in Japan. And show how boundaries are reconstructed and how people in particular contexts conduct kinship practices.It helps us understand the fluidity and ambiguity of boundaries, and explain people's practices in the particular context of rural Japan.

Long abstract

The organization called dozoku is a Japanese family union that originated in the 17th century and usually exists in rural and fishing villages. In the past, power relations and hierarchical structures of dozoku generally followed genealogical and economic relations. As an important part of rural Japanese society, dozoku not only satisfies people's spiritual and religious needs, but also have social functions such as agricultural production, farmland distribution, and cooperative work. The boundaries of dozoku, means who is or is not a member of the dozoku was very clear. But with industrialization and urbanization advancing, boundaries began to blur. Sometimes it even disappears, which means dozoku's disband. However, in modern Japan, dozoku attempt to rebuild its boundaries through rituals, common cemeteries, and feasts. In my fieldwork, I found that these attempts are not only gently maintain ancient traditions, but also full of conflicts by changes in social environment. Therefore, I will ask why people in my fieldwork area, where the population decrease is very serious, still choose to reconstruct their dozoku boundaries, even though organization has almost no social function now.

I will explain their practice using the anthropological concept of substance. Through the various examples of conflict and the power structures and changes within dozoku, we can see how its boundaries are being redefined and reproduced in the modern context.

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Short abstract

The paper explores the multidimensionality and processuality of the identity of Ukrainian forced migrants, who came to Lithuania after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Research is funded by the Lithuanian Research Council (LMTLT) (No. S-MIP-23-39).

Long abstract

The paper explores the ways in which cultural, social and physical boundaries are narrated in the construction of Ukrainian identity in interviews with Ukrainian refugees in Lithuania. Boundaries in identity construction are understood as processual and constructed between "us" and "them" through the selective and contextual application of certain social and cultural criteria (see Barth 1969, Eriksen 2010, Lawler 2013, etc.). The paper is based on more than twenty in-depth interviews with forced migrants from Ukraine who arrived in Lithuania after February 24, 2022. The analysis of the interviews reveals that narratives of shared history, language, notions of European-ness, and other socio-cultural markers are used to construct divisions and unities among Ukrainians as well as with outsiders. The paper examines how socio-cultural boundaries are (re)constructed in the context of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, as reflected by research participants, and what notions of Ukrainian-ness are constructed in these narratives; whether and how physical borders interrelate with cultural and social borders. I will argue that the narratives reveal the construction of Ukrainian-ness as inclusive, and at the same time, certain aspects of Ukrainian identity (e.g. the Ukrainian language) are seen as becoming more important in the construction of national identity in the context of war. The research was conducted within the framework of the collaborative research project "Ethnic, national and transnational identities and geopolitical attitudes of third-country nationals in Lithuania in the context of the war in Ukraine" funded by the Lithuanian Research Council (LMTLT) in 2023-2026 (No. S-MIP-23-39).

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Short abstract

The paper is focused on constructing, deconstructing, and redefining social and cultural boundaries through the case of a community in North Macedonia, existing outside current identity frameworks such as ethnicity or nationality, and navigating this challenge within contemporary political, economic, and social developments in national and transnational contexts.

Long abstract

The paper will discuss how the community members understand, construct, and define the group's social and cultural boundaries, and how cultural differences and boundaries, as well as the social construction of these boundaries, shape their identity. It will reflect on a case study focusing on a community of Slavic-speaking Muslims in a larger village in North Macedonia, which has been based on ethnographic field research. How is this image being redefined by the Macedonian majority? However, is contact with the majority the key factor shaping the contemporary life of this group, considering that most male residents work abroad, and the community relies heavily on remittances? Moreover, the village has been undergoing rapid depopulation over the past 20 years due to economic migration. Could transnational relationships and connections, therefore, hold greater relevance in understanding their current dynamics? And how do they shape the boundaries of the group?

The discussion will encompass the perception of economic migration and transnational connections, the perspective of the majority population, relationships with non-Muslim and Muslim communities in the region, and the impact of political changes, considering the current dimensions of Orientalism, Balkanism, and Occidentalism.

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Short abstract

This paper discusses strategies for dealing with "peripherality" in the narratives of the inhabitants of the Czech-Slovak borderlands as a means of identity formation, (re-)defining and (re-)conceptualizing of the border.

Long abstract

In 1993, Czechoslovakia broke up and two separate states, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, were created, along with new state borders. The new geopolitical situation, which went hand in hand with the post-socialist transformation, brought many changes to the everyday life of the inhabitants of the Czech-Slovak borderlands. In the last 30 years, they have had to react to the closing and opening of borders or to their new position on the "periphery" of the new nation states.

Historically, the Czech-Slovak borderlands can be considered an example of “integrated borderlands”. However, borders are dynamic, their presence and meaning are changing and reactivating depending on political, security or economic factors that influence the processes of debordering and rebordering.

In recent years, scholars have conceptualized borders as discourses and practices that configure understandings of place and communities. In this context, I am interested in how the inhabitants of the Czech-Slovak borderlands cope with their position on the "periphery".

In this paper I draw on oral history interviews conducted in 2023-2024 with residents living in the Czech-Slovak borderlands. I am interested in what narrative strategies are chosen by the interviewees to overcome "peripherality", I trace the narrative construction of ambivalent and multilayered identities of the inhabitants of this region. I analyse how specific local/regional or cross-border identities are constructed in the narratives, how events from the past are used to legitimise, shape or undermine the borders. I see these processes as a source of resilience and empowerment for local actors.

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Short abstract

This paper presents modern British Muslims identities discourse, based on statistics, academics, media and author`s field materials 2012-2024 in Northern England, London, Scotland, Northern Ireland, etc. The work describes the role of city structures and districts, co-interpretation of borders, forming and transforming cross-border identity, e.g. by means of author`s visual anthropological methods.

Long abstract

This paper presents modern British Muslims identities discourse, based on statistics, academics, media and author`s field materials 2012-2024 in Northern England, London, Scotland, Northern Ireland, etc. The work describes the role of city structures and districts, co-interpretation of borders, forming and transforming cross-border identity, e.g. by means of author`s visual anthropological methods.

We are talking about specific communication places: mosque (territory for community socialization, mobilization and public discussions): sports club, stadium, school (territories of external communication and competition); home as family socialization, local heritage; market as a space for familiarization). and we are talking about 3 types of communications, expressed in urban quarters allegory: 1. “ghettos” presenting (not preserving) a micro version of the world that its inhabitants once left; 2. quarters of a cosmopolitan, commercial, literally multicultural order; 3. “quarters” that do not exist as such, a territory that sometimes remains an idea, a virtual space enclosed within the central and bohemian districts. The paper also touches upon the problem of "visibility" and role of contemporary British-Islamic entertainment culture in the development of this identities. We can talk here about co-interpretation of “active borders” – joint interpretation of the meanings of history/space/memory both on the “hard” and “soft” borderlands. Young Muslims of the so called “2-3 generations” deal with two cultural worlds of their own families and cultural communities, as well as their peers, schools and society at large. Thus, “intercultural worlds”, including “worlds of memory”, can turn out to be not only “bicultural”, but much more multi-layered.