Migration > Aktiviteter > Migrationsinitiativets seminarer > Professional Migration
Research Seminar: Professional Migration
Time and place: November 6 2009, 13:15-16:00. University of Copenhagen, Øster Farimagsgade 5, 1353 København K, room 18.1.08.
Program:
13:15-13:25: Welcome by Karen Fog Olwig
13:25-13:55: Presentation by Vered Amit
13:55-14:25: Presentation by Anne-Meike Fechter
14:25-14:35: Coffee break
14:35-15:05: Presentation by Rikke Hoelgaard Andersen
15:05-15:20: Comments by Birgitte Refslund Sørensen
15:20-16:00: Discussion
Speakers and papers
Vered Amit, Professor, Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Career Choices and Constraints among Traveling Consultants: Distinctive desires and systemic orientations
In this paper I will be concerned with the practices and narratives of development consultants, based in Canada, whose work involves frequent and repeated travel between the global North and South. In many respects the travels and work lives of these consultants could be treated as exemplars of the dictims of flexibility that have often been associated with particular paradigms of capitalism. Yet the narratives of these professionals are more likely to emphasize their movements as largely voluntary journeys of adventure and self discovery rather than as adaptations to systemic restructuring and corporate imperatives. In this paper I therefore want to consider whether claims of individuality and autonomy can be persuasively articulated with systemic transformations. Specifically I want to explore the divergent ways in which prevailing politico-economic formulations of ‘flexibility' are implicated in the career choices of a diverse range of mobile Canadian consultants and their sense of authorship over the attendant outcomes.
Anne-Meike Fechter, Lecturer, Anthropology, Sussex Centre for Migration Research, University of Sussex: Capital Lifestyles? Aidworkers as Migrants in the City
This paper focuses on the ways in which international aidworkers inhabit particular urban spaces, and the meanings associated with these. While the phenomenon of migrants clustering in (particular parts of) a city are a well-documented phenomenon, I suggest that aidworkers' dwelling practices also need to be understood in relation to the rationale for their presence in Cambodia, namely to develop the country. Following a particular strand of development discourse, spatial relations are associated with moral values - that is, ‘closeness' to the beneficiary communities is desirable, whereas distance from them becomes problematic. However, it seems that the increasing professionalisation and bureaucratisation of aid work have brought about more ‘urban lifestyles' of aidworkers, whose jobs require their presence in the capital, whereas forays into rural areas become comparatively rare. Given this tension, the paper explores the living and working practices of international aidworkers in the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. It asks how their professional identities relate to their different ways of living in the city, considers the potential dilemmas they may face, and the experiences and choices resulting from these.
Rikke Hoelgaard Andersen, MSc (Anthropology), University of Copenhagen: At home in the world? - On Danish Expatriates in Delhi, India
In this paper I will be concerned with Danish expats living in Delhi, India, and explore how they perceive and deal with the fact that they are strangers in a foreign country. In many ways this group of privileged western travelers can be seen as exemplars of the typical cosmopolitan "at home in the world". Yet my field work among these Danes shows that, rather than feeling at home in their new social and cultural context, they constantly seek and create spaces that can help them cope with their position as strangers in a foreign environment. I will argue that the Danes seek refuge in demarcated spaces, such as their private homes, the social community with other expats and the luxurious hotels, in order to escape the perceived "Indian chaos" in the city where they confront explicit social differences and inequalities. I further argue that the spaces of refuge are never safe from the intrusion of the "outside" and that they therefore always need to be negotiated, especially in the daily interaction with servants. I will explore how the Danish expats with their middle-class background are absorbed into the local expat culture and how they experience a new affluent upper-class lifestyle in a context of great inequality, as the expat culture is locally articulated into the hierarchical structures of Indian society with remnants of a the colonial past.
Discussant: Birgitte Sørensen, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen.