Suchergebnisse

This article presents a reflective account of the research process related to my longterm ethnographic fieldwork on activism in Malmö—an important site of pro-migrant and antiracist activism in Sweden—between 2013 and 2016. Employing ethnographic methods in the field of political activism raises questions about positionality, impact, possible overidentification with the people or groups studied, and distinctions between theory and action and epistemology. Being an insider to the field geographically (as a resident of the city and neighbourhood in focus) and ideologically (leftist politics), was highly advantageous for gaining access to the field and in building trust and close communication with radical activists. At the same time, my closeness raised challenges. Examples discussed in the article are related to the academic-activist relationship with a specific focus on negotiating positions in the field, and the ethical concerns related to studying a politically charged field. These reflections aim to offer transparency in terms of the impact these aspects' have had on my research, while at the same time being aware of the limitations of reflexivity.

Written at the intersection of migration studies, urban studies, and research on activism, this thesis contributes to the exploration of solidarities born on the ground in an urban context marked by immigration and economic restructuring. Based on ethnographic material collected 2013­–2016 in Malmö, Sweden, it examines alliances and friendships generated across social, cultural, ethnic, and legal divides through a particular political practice—activism as carried out by the extra-parliamentarian left. A decisive aspect is the particularity of Malmö, a city with a high density and diversity of activist groups, and Möllevången, the neighbourhood where their actions are concentrated. Möllevången is conceptualised in this thesis as an incubator for resistance to the dispossessing effects of neoliberal economic restructuring and urban gentrification. Special attention is devoted to activist groups that, at the time of fieldwork, affected the most people through their large mobilisations and solidarity-based work. While not negating differences among activists or between activists and racialised migrants in precarious legal conditions, the thesis highlights their shared experiences of co-creating political spaces and interests—commoning. This kind of embodied solidarity requires activists to experiment with non-hierarchical and non-normative ways of structuring social relations, a process filled with challenges, ambivalences, and conflicts. The thesis shows how activists cope with challenges and what they perceive as achievements. Furthermore, it shows that—despite the ever-increasing anti-immigrant rhetoric, restrictive migration policies, and neoliberalisation of the commons—solidarity and commoning contribute to pathways of migrant emplacement: re-establishing life in a particular locality, building networks, making friends, and developing a feeling of belonging to a new place. Not only does the activists' commitment to radical equality and mutual aid create certain pathways for emplacement in the city, it also enables the political socialisation of some migrants and paves the way for a new generation of migrant activists in Malmö.

AbstractResearch from the United States has shown that the 9/11 terrorist attacks activated individuals' ethnocentric predispositions to structure public opinion toward several political and social issues. Beyond this overall finding, several aspects of the activation hypothesis remain unexplored, including its geographical and substantive scope. Using the quasi-random timing of terrorist attacks during the collection of the 2016 GGSS, we demonstrate the terrorism-induced activation of ethnocentrism in Germany. Specifically, a cascade of terrorist attacks involving immigrants in the summer of 2016 activated ethnocentrism among native Germans to predict (lower) support for civil liberties relative to security concerns after its influence had been absent just a month before. Further, we show that the activation of ethnocentrism holds up in a series of robustness checks and is not explained by alternative factors, including other predispositions.

Inspired by the potentials of web-based collaboration, in 2014, a group of social scientists, students and information specialists started tinkering with software and methodology for open online collaborative research. The results of their research led to a gathering of academics at the #ethnography Conference Amsterdam 2014, where new material was collected, shared and collaboratively interpreted. Following the conference, they continued to develop software and methodology. In this contribution, we report on the aims, methodology, inspiring examples, caveats and results from testing several prototypes of open online research software. We conclude that open online collaborative interpretation is both feasible and desirable. Dialogue and reflexivity, we hold, are able to transcend separated perspectives and stimulate agreement on a set of distinct interpretations; they simultaneously respect the multiplicity of understandings of social phenomena whilst bringing order into this diversity.