Signe Askersjö

Om Signe Askersjö

• Doktorand i socialantropologi, Göteborgs universitet, 2020 –
• Masterexamen i socialantropologi, Stockholms universitet, 2016–2018
• Kandidatexamen i socialantropologi, Stockholms universitet, 2013–2016

How to think differently about difference: convivialities and contentions in a postmigration condition

"Swedish integration is malfunctioning", a statement that has become something of an axiomatic truth in political, academic, and social realms. The debate concerning integration repeatedly proceeds from the position that differences are inevitable and inescapable problems for society. This thesis strives to move beyond this ethos and challenges us to think otherwise.

Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork amongst employees at a large department store in Sweden, this project aspires to explore solidarities, convivialities, contentions and conflicts in encounters of plurality by closing in on different events, encounters, emotions and practices that are made relevant in understanding co-existence. I take inspiration from concepts such as 'postmigration' (Ring Petersen 2019) and 'post-Otherness' (Ndikung & Römhild 2013) as well as a fundamental 'de-migranticization' (Dahinden 2016) of the research process, when now nearing the issue through a three-folded approach.

Firstly, I consider the terminology of ‘integration’ to be inherently problematic in how it reinforces racialization, ethnicization and Othering processes of specific people that are considered Others in the Swedish society. The starting point for my project is therefore to turn the ‘logic of integration’ on its head and start from the position of the postmigration condition. By doing so I attempt to bridge the migrant/native divide in research and move beyond the ethno-focal lens which has foregrounded most integration research and created faulty epistemological assumptions. Secondly, I turn the focus to the mundane and everyday to illustrate how processes of intermingling are constantly happening and to understand the convivialities and contentions of the postmigration condition. Thirdly, by critically re-focusing the research, I investigate how social categories can be researched without becoming reified. To critically investigate the re/making of categories by both researcher and actors within the field illustrates how these categories become meaningful, and, thus, how they become important markers of identity.

Mitt projekt ingår i det Forte finansierade projektet: Att praktisera integration: Identitet och förhandlingar kring etnicitet, kultur och religion i den svenska vardagen, tillsammans med Lisa Åkesson och Jörgen Hellman.