While social welfare provision based on ideals of egalitarian redestribution is strongly associated with Scandinavian welfare states, all states have some set of provisions for citizen protection. Transnational migrants with connections to more than one nation state can both fall between and benefit from multiple welfare regimes. Migrants who find themselves on uncertain ground with regard to benefits often activate parallel systems of care and networks of support, more or less institutionalized (through families, local communities, religious or political organization etc) and existing side by side with state-based welfare provisions.

With a focus on practices of transnational social protection, this seminar opens for a comparative discussion on the relationship between state-based provisions of welfare (such as education, health, social security) and other forms of social protection transcending national borders (remittances, relief aid, investments etc) seen from the perspective of migrants themselves. It will specifically address how reciprocal obligations for care and protection (social, economic, legal) are being reconfigured in contexts of transnational migration and how this contributes to change in both state-citizen relations and relations between individuals and collectivities based on kin and peer affiliations.

The seminar is open to all.

Programme

Thursday, June 7

10.45-11.00      Welcome by Karen Valentin, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University

11.00-12.00      Transnational Social Protection: Setting the Agenda by Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College and Harvard University

12.00-13.00      Lunch 

CARE AND PROTECTION OF/BY IMMIGRANTS AND THE DANISH WELFARE STATE

13.00-13.45      Transnational Kin Obligations, Family Reunification and the Danish Welfare State by Karen Fog Olwig, Department of                                           Anthropology, Copenhagen University

13.45-14.30      Older Turkish immigrants and family care by Anika Liversage, VIVE – the Danish national center for social science research

14.30-15.00      Tea/coffee

15.00-15.45      Longing for law and order: Two Feet and changing obligations of care among Indians in Tanzania and the UK by Cecil Schou                                 Pallesen, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University

15.45-16.30      Fighting for collective care and welfare: An analysis of migrant activism and imaginaries of ‘highly-skilled’ migrants in                                             Denmark by Ashika Niraula, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University

Friday, June 8

COLLECTIVE TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL PROTECTION AND THE MOBILIZATION OF MIGRANT COMMUNITIES

9.00-9.45         Caring as an articulation of transnational social development: The case of Afghans in Denmark by Mikkel Rytter and Narges                                   Ghandchi, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University

9.45-10.30        Somali-Swedish engagement in transnational social protection – moral obligations, personal ambitions and networks of care                                  by Nauja Kleist, Danish Institute for International Studies

10.30-11.00      Tea/coffee

11.00-11.45       Lonely in Exile: the Iranian political opposition abroad, and the resource mobilization issues for influencing politics in the                                      homeland by Dalir Barkhoda, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University

11.45-12.30       Diasporic connections, political engagements and expectations of return: The case of Nepali student migration to Denmark                                    Karen Valentin, Danish School of Education, Aarhus University

12.30-13.30      Wrapping up …. and sandwiches