Project News - Page 4

Recent article portrays EUMARGINS’ research on inclusion and exclusion in Europe.

Aftenposten, one of Norway’s largest newspapers, covered the EUMARGINS-project on April 16th 2010. The heading of the article is “Immigration. Integrated, but excluded”. The article presents some of the findings from EUMARGINS' first book, which will be published by Ashgate in June. This book provides a review of current research, statistics, laws etc in 7 European countries. In the newspaper article, project leader Katrine Fangen also analyses some findings from the project's sample of more than 200 lifestory interviews with young adult immigrants.

The article 'How EU integration bars the persecuted from finding refuge in Europe' was published by the Guardian on Monday 16 August 2010. In the article, Professor Les Back from the London-based EUMARGINS research team argues that asylum seekers' experiences are uncomfortably close to a dark recent past that spawned the EU ideal. Read the whole article.

On the Ashgate webpage you can now find a presentation of EUMARGINS book 'Inclusion and Exclusion of Young Adult Migrants in Europe - Barriers and Bridges'. In addition to a short introduction to the forthcoming publication, endorsements from John Solomos and Roger Hewitt are included. 

We are happy to announce that the Ashgate Publishing Group has accepted to publish a book based upon the national context reviews and the transnational review resulting from the first phase of the EUMARGINS project. The forthcoming book will focus on barriers and bridges that young adults with immigrant background are facing in Europe today, and discuss their conditions for inclusion and exclusion.

The UP2YOUTH project was financed by the EU’s 6th framework program. At the final conference of this project, both main findings of UP2YOUTH were presented, but also findings from other EU-funded projects which focus on young people and exclusion.

EUMARGINS research team members recently met for a 2-days project meeting (July 15-16, 2010) in Gothenburg, Sweden. All the research sites were represented, thus participants from Estonia, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, the UK and Sweden contributed in the discussions. The main topic of the meeting was analyses of the data collected, which will result into the second book of the project. The meeting took place at the Faculty of Education at the University of Gothenburg, and most of the participants were accommodated at the Villa Fridolin in the city centre. The XVII ISA World Congress of Sociology was taking place in Gothenburg at the same time, thus many of the EUMARGINS researchers could also partake in this event. In addition, three EUMARGINS papers were presented during the Congress.

On September 10 and 11, representatives for all the seven national teams of EUMARGINS met in London for a 2-days project meeting. The meeting was hosted by Professor Les Back and Dr. Shamser Sinha at Goldsmiths College in New Cross (South East London). In this meeting, in addition to the indoor sessions dealing with important methodological and analytical issues relevant for the forthcoming months, the researchers had a practical session in the streets of London, with aims of getting better at how a camera might visualize manifestations of inclusion and exclusion of young adult immigrants.

In the aftermath of the 2-days EUMARGINS Project Meeting in Nancy (France), the symposium: Youths with ‘immigrant’ background and professional insertion will take place on April 30th, 2009. 

Representatives from all seven research institutions recently met in Nancy, France. During the 2-days meeting from April 28 to 29, the project partners discussed methodological aspects, the finalization of the national context reports, the transnational analysis and the first policy brief. In addition general technical issues related to the workings of the project group were discussed, as well as the necessity to start thinking about EUMARGINS’ publications. The EUMARGINS Project Committee met on the second day, and on April 30 a symposium on young migrants' insertion into the labour market was organized by the French team. In the latter, researchers and stakeholders from the sectors of education, health and labor were present.

Underdevelopment and global inequality are two interlinked prompts for migration. They help condition and produce London’s multiculture.

On May 22-23, 2009, the final dissemination conference of the European Collaborative Research Project (FP6) TRESEGY will take place in Lleida in Barcelona. The full title of the project is "Toward a social construction of an European youth: the experience of inclusion and exclusion in the public sphere among second generation migrated teenagers". It is a project that has many parallells to EUMARGINS, both in terms of subject, methodology and localities. EUMARGINS' participants from France, Italy and Spain have been involved with TRESEGY and will participate in the conference. Findings from the project will be presented and discussed. EUMARGINS' Project Coordinator Katrine Fangen will also take part as keynote speaker.  

Born in Kinshasa, Congo, Joseph migrated to London as a refugee at the age of eight. He is now 18 years old and has UK citizen status. Shamser Sinha and Les Back from the London-based research team have met Joseph numerous times, and he has told them about growing up as a young migrant in London.

From August 2009 there is need for research assistance with EUMARGINS at the University of Oslo. Students with a Bachelor degree (minimum) in Social Sciences, basic experiences with qualitative methods and who have interest in research within the field of migration are potential candidates. Verbal Norwegian skills and good proficiency in written English are required. Persons with ethnic minority backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

There is need for assistance with field work (qualitative interviews, observations, photography), transcribing interviews and editing research publications (language, layout), amongst others. Workload will vary in time.  

For further questions please contact Katrine Fangen at (47) 22 85 52 44 or Kirsten Fossan at (47) 22 85 52 13.  

If you are interested, please send a brief application with your CV attached to admin-eumargins@sosgeo.uio.no. 

We accept applications consecutively until August 1st 2009.  

Read the Norwegian announcement.

EUMARGINS' researcher Professor Les Back was keynote speaker at the Conference 'YOUTH 2010: Identities, Transitions and Cultures' which took place at the University of Surrey from Tuesday 6 July to 8 July 2010. In his talk, Les Back shared some findings from EUMARGINS. 

The Aftenposten article that portrayed EUMARGINS’ research on inclusion and exclusion in Europe on April 16th 2010, was followed by a comment on April 24th, written by two masterstudents in cultural psychology. On May 18th, an answer to this comment written by EUMARGINS' project coordinator Katrine Fangen, together with the research assistants Brit Lynnebakke and Erlend Paasche, was published in the same newspaper, clarifying some of the main issues of the first presentation. Read their response article below.

On 11th of May, project coordinator Katrine Fangen will give a lecture at the seminar-series "New genders - Different Claims". The lecture is being held at the Centre for Inter-Disciplinary Gender research at the University of Oslo, Gaustadalléen 30 D, room 420. It starts at 1.15pm and ends at  3.30pm

On 24th of February 2010, Professor Les Back from the London-based EUMARGINS Research team participated in the 'Multicultural Dialogues Conference' at the London School of Economics. His talk 'The New Hierarchies of Belonging' was based upon EUMARGINS research data.

On January 20 and 21, 2010, representatives for all the seven national teams of EUMARGINS met in Tallinn in Estonia for a 2-days project meeting. A main theme for the meeting was planning of the forthcoming analytical process of the 30 interviews with young adults of immigrant backgrounds from seven contexts, all together a collection of more than 200 in-depth interviews. The research group will write a book that includes the voices of this large variety of people with different immigrant background residing in Europe.

Our project's first book will be available in June this year. Please view a description of the content below.

From April 28 to 29 EUMARGINS is having a project meeting in Nancy in France. The meeting is hosted by our French partner institution AROFE.

Coordinator Katrine Fangen presented EUMARGINS for the research advisors at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Oslo. Title of presentation: 'Challenges and possibilities in an EU-project'

Coordinator Katrine Fangen presented EUMARGINS at the post doctoral-programme in nursing science, University of Oslo. The presentation focused on the application period, negotiation and kick-off of the project.

There is a lot of activity going on with EUMARGINS at the moment. A transnational analysis based upon the national context reports is being written, as well as the first policy brief is taking shape. The project will be represented at a European Youth Research Seminar in Brussel in March. Shortly, EUMARGINS' logo will be finalized and made public.  

Our second project meeting was held in Genoa from January 7-8, 2009. Representatives from all research institutions gathered at DiSA; the Department of Anthropological Science of the University of Genoa. Agenda for the meeting was adjustment of national context reports in order to secure the comparative dimension, as well as some discussions regarding the forthcoming interview phase. The EUMARGINS Project Committee had a separate meeting.

All national research teams are now fully occupied with writing the national context reports, based on earlier qualitative and quantitative research, available statistics, information on laws etc.