Welcome to the migration seminar!

PhD planning seminar: Who belongs to ‘we, the people’? Mapping national belonging and membership in Sweden’s second-generation

Profile: Melissa Mae Cruz, doctoral student in International Migration and Ethnic Relations, Malmö University

Reader: Magdalena Ulceluşe, Associate senior lecturer, Malmö University

Supervisors: Pieter Bevelander, Professor, Malmö University
Nahikari Irastorza, Associate professor, Malmö University

Abstract

Children of immigrants in Sweden were born in the country, grew up in its institutions and mostly hold citizenship, yet many say they will never be "Swedish enough." That is puzzling in a country that ranks highest in global integration rankings and where national identity is widely described in civic terms. This planning seminar will outline a PhD project that explores this puzzle by studying national belonging among Sweden's second generation. Drawing on Yuval-Davis's politics of belonging, the project sees national belonging as a relational process with two sides. The first is felt belonging: emotional attachment and feeling at home, the second is recognition by others as part of the nation, and both are shaped by intersecting social positions such as race/ethnicity, religion and class.

In this seminar, I will present this conceptual framework along with an overview of the research done on national belonging and second-generation Swedish individuals. I also present preliminary results on the project analyzed through the Diversity and Inclusion Survey (DIS), one of the few Swedish surveys that combine self-identification with how others classify respondents to answer questions about belonging, among other outcomes such as political participation and citizenship.

Short bio

Melissa Mae Cruz is a doctoral student at Malmö Institute for Migration Studies (MIM) and her project will investigate the inclusion of Sweden's second-generation through quantitative and qualitative methods. She has a BA in Sociology with a focus in diversity and inequality from the University of California, Irvine and an MSc in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Lund University. She is a proud second-generation American and a migrant to Sweden as of four years

Attendance

This is a hybrid seminar, you are welcome to connect via Zoom or join us at MIM seminar room, floor 9. To attend on campus, please gather by the reception area at 13.05.

Zoom link

If you have any questions, send an email to mim@mau.se.

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