Keynotes
Learning from academia? Reflections on postmigration as an analytical perspective
The concept of postmigration recognizes the significant role of migration within society and aims to challenge the ideas of otherness and the resulting inequalities. It is used in academic, artistic, and political contexts to describe a variety of conditions, practices, and perspectives. This keynote talk focuses on postmigration as an analytical perspective, highlighting the need for empirical research to refine it. The talk will discuss the findings of the interdisciplinary team in the project “Academia and cultural production as postmigrant fields in Sweden" (2021-24, https://postmigrantfields8.wordpress.com) on the tensions, contestations, and alliances in academia. The research aimed to understand how migration status, both actual and ascribed, affected the professional recognition of professors and tenured researchers who migrated to Sweden as adults, as well as those who were born in the country to two migrant parents. The study shifted the focus from migration to relationships, and we therefore interviewed persons identified as allies - established insiders, most of them born to Swedish parents, whose support was crucial for the primary interviewees’ professional establishment. The talk will discuss the broader implications of postmigration as an analytical perspective, including questions about the use of categories and selection of participants, the scope of qualitative approaches, and the epistemological challenges of making claims about society at large.
Maja Povrzanović Frykman is Professor of Ethnology and Coordinator of doctoral education at the Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University. As a researcher of migration-related experiences and practices, she is affiliated to the Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare. She coordinates the project “Academia and cultural production as postmigrant fields in Sweden”, which will form the basis of her keynote at the conference.
On the vulnerability of the post-migrant society
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict confronts the normative foundations of the post-migrant society and its ability to shape the conflicts of multiple belonging and multiple discrimination inclusively. The current conflicts are acutely bringing to light disparate grievances, nourished by the politics of memory. Grievances emerge that counter the ethical claim to empathy and reconciliation with a politics of enmity. The post-migrant society is wounded because Jewish life in Germany is once again in danger. But it is also wounded when a restriction of fundamental rights in the form of selective assembly bans and the threat of revoking German citizenship are normalised. In politics of memory, a pedagogy of cruelty seems to be emerging before our eyes - when “tears are shed without mourning”, when the contextualisation of violent relationships is accused of relativising and legitimising violent events. An institutionalised culture of suspicion towards the inappropriate affect of the other bursts the delicate seam of any multidirectional memory; it separates the spaces of mourning, makes it impossible to understand the pain of the other, hierarchises the victims and separates the fight against anti-Semitism from the fight against racism. Instead of fighting this culture of suspicion, it strengthens the enemies of post-migrant society.
Prof. Dr. phil. Vassilis S. Tsianos teaches Sociology at the University of Applied Sciences in Kiel, Germany. His research interests include the sociology of the post-migrant society, sociological racism research, and the biometricisation of the European border. Vassilis Tsianos is the chairman of the Council for Migration and a member of the European Union's Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) expert commission. He is currently working on a textbook on racism in social structures and living environments for Kohlhammer Verlag, which, following Critical Race Studies, analyses institutionalised forms of racism in a post-migrant society.