Sabine Strasser | Bern University (original) (raw)
Papers by Sabine Strasser
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , 2024
The removal of undocumented migrants has become a widespread preoccupation of current European mi... more The removal of undocumented migrants has become a widespread preoccupation of current European migration politics and one of the most emotionally contentious state practices of our times. Not only right-wing populists and their constituencies demand an increase in expulsions, but also mainstream society. Others accuse these positions of being racist or lacking humanism and instead promote solidarity to help people seeking protection in Europe. These divisive views and migrants’ often long-term experience of being ‘unwanted’ and deportable provoke strong and often irreconcilable emotions. The ethnographic explorations assembled here zoom in on the ‘affective economies’ inherent in the arbitrary processes and unpredictable experiences of removals of people from Europe to different parts of the world. This special issue puts forward a twofold argument: First, conceptually, we argue that a focus on affects is indispensable in order to fully unearth the complexities of removal processes. And second, methodologically, we contend that an ethnographic approach, with its deep and often long-term commitment of researchers to their respective field(s) including multiple actors, is essential to comprehensively grasp the affective economy of removal.
In recent years, European states have increasingly taken to deportation and state-assisted "... more In recent years, European states have increasingly taken to deportation and state-assisted "voluntary" return as means of migration control. Deportation is high-ranking on the political agenda and often publicly debated as an issue of protection from threat. Administrations frame the forced return of rejected asylum seekers and "illegal" migrants in judicial terms, as a matter of the rule of law. For those affected, deportation is in most cases an existential experience of brute coercion that shatters dreams and ambitions, producing anxieties and often despair and anger, but perhaps sometimes also hope for a new beginning. These emotional effects of deportation are not limited to the deportees themselves but affect also supporting volunteers in the country of deportation who see their often years long efforts of assistance ruined, as well as the deportees' social context in the country of return, where hopes and expectations are equally destroyed. Such emotio...
This special issue explores the ways unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe active... more This special issue explores the ways unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe actively deal with the intensification of exclusionary practices towards migrants and refugees. In the Introduction we aim to set the scene for the individual articles by sketching the various political, historical and discursive levels at which the unaccompanied minor has come to be constructed as a crisis figure in Europe. We show how the sense of exceptionality attached to this figure translates into ambiguous and at times extremely contradictory social practices that have far-reaching effects on the lives of refugee youth. In paying attention to the conceptual flaws and dangers inherent in linking unaccompanied minors to ideas of crisis, we aim to demonstrate the importance of taking seriously the ways young people themselves make sense of the ascriptions, ideas and practices they are subject to. We suggest that ethnographically driven research that lays the focus on the ways young people actively navigate the ambiguous social landscapes they are confronted with can form an important means to move beyond the simplistic and ahistorical models of explanation put forward by frameworks of crisis.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale , 2019
In recent years, precarity has become the norm rather than an exception in contemporary European ... more In recent years, precarity has become the norm rather than an exception in contemporary European aca-demia. This special issue on politics of precarity examines the economic, social and political crisis-effects of the neoliberal turn in academia. It analyses how austerity measures and authoritarian politics have led to a proliferation of precarity among, mostly young, scholars.
Social Anthropology, 2019
On politics and precarity in academia David Loher (ed) Sabine Strasser (ed) Daniel Monterescu Esr... more On politics and precarity in academia
David Loher (ed)
Sabine Strasser (ed)
Daniel Monterescu
Esra Dabağcı
Ester Gallo
Cris Shore
Akhil Gupta
Chandana Mathur
Lorena Anton
Rodica Zane
Annika Lems
Shahram Khosravi
Zeynep Sarıaslan
Noel B. Salazar
Ainhoa Montoya
Marta Pérez
Uroš Kovač
Alice Tilche
Giacomo Loperfido
Patricia Matos
Kiri Santer
Eli
Loher, D., Strasser, S., Monterescu, D., Dabağcı, E., Gallo, E., Shore, C., Gupta, A., Mathur, C., Anton, L., Zane, R., Lems, A., Khosravi, S., Sarıaslan, Z., Salazar, N.B., Montoya, A., Pérez, M., Kovač, U., Tilche, A., Loperfido, G., Matos, P., Santer, K. and Thorkelson, E. (2019), On politics and precarity in academia. Soc Anthropol, 27: 97-117. doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12695
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 2016
Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
For this special issue we are bringing together six ethnographic cases of intimate uncertainties ... more For this special issue we are bringing together six ethnographic cases of intimate uncertainties that are situated within different regimes of reproduction, healthcare and borders in and beyond Europe. These ethnographic inquiries exemplify unprecedented settings of moral ir/responsibility shaping the intimate on different scales and in various sites of power (agencies, clinics, borderlands). These uncertainties in times of major transitions from old to new moral orders, from industrial to postindustrial, from welfare to austerity spark off a renewed debate on moral economy. The authors of these contributions all focus the theoretical lens of moral economy squarely onto the intimate.
A crisis – once perceived as a decisive moment of intense difficulty and danger – is increasingly... more A crisis – once perceived as a decisive moment of intense difficulty and danger – is increasingly being seen as a protracted experience, even as part of everyday life. The multiple crises of the Eurozone, as well as the armed conflicts in Iraq, Syria and the Ukraine, have recently caused global concern. The condition of emergency has seemingly become a continuous companion of global entanglement and neoliberal policies. Nonetheless, as soon as a certain situation is framed in terms of a crisis, debate becomes heated and allows for interventions that are unlikely to occur under " normal " conditions. Against this background I aim for a shift of the analytical framework, or, more precisely, instead of focussing on the descriptions of a certain crisis, humanitarian interventions, global responses and/or the victims' agency, I will discuss the effects of crises in relation to the distribution of power. I will investigate the crisis of multiculturalism in the EU and compare its effects with border and refugee crises. I will show how a " crisis " powerfully contributes to the construction of a particular object of knowledge, and shapes moral obligations as well as political and legal responses. Departing from contested transnational moral responsibilities and state interventions, I will discuss the " crisis effect " as a contribution to " repressive autonomy " and " lethal borders " .
TSANTSA – Journal of the Swiss Anthropological Association
The Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern inaugurated its new lecture serie... more The Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern inaugurated its new lecture series Anthropology Talks in September 2015. The fi rst guest was James Ferguson, professor at the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. The lectures and workshops focused on the questions of poverty and (re)distribution that Ferguson, a scholar with a pronounced political commitment, deals with in his new book Give a Man a Fish (2015a). Ferguson's thinking involves, within a context of widespread unemployment, a creative tension between ethnographic curiosity and political concerns about poverty reduction. Through projects that «just give money to the poor» (2015a: 2), his work examines what such interventions do in people's everyday lives, and how they might direct us towards a new politics of distribution, or «proletarian politics today,» as the main lecture's title suggested (Ferguson 2015b).
This article is concerned with the questions that have been given much less attention in politica... more This article is concerned with the questions that have been given much less attention in political and nationalism studies as how people with transnational relations and multiple belongings deal with ethnicity, nationality, and gender, and how they, given their multiple connectedness, criticize nationalism, essentialism, and racism. In this context, I am interested in biographical narrations, informal networking and political strategies used by Austrian citizens with Turkish backgrounds who are involved in local, national and transnational contexts. The multiplicity of connectedness expressed in biographical narratives and networks leads to the complexity of claims for justice. JEL Classification Codes: Z00.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-03626-3\_2
Transnational marriages and family reunification have recently been assessed as two of the main o... more Transnational marriages and family reunification have recently been assessed as two of the main obstacles to integration in Austria. They have been increasingly problematized and kept under surveillance when partners from third countries – in Austria, particularly from Turkey – have been involved. Nonetheless, a great number of Turkish migrants and their descendants prefer to marry partners from their “country of origin”. In this paper I discuss practices of and discourses on family formation across borders, based on ethnographic fieldwork in a small town in Austria. My findings show that transnational marriages in Austria are often conflated with forced and fictitious marriages and consequently rejected as fraudulent or “violence in the name of tradition”. Furthermore, legal provisions against problematic marriages do not liberate women but repress their autonomy.
Transkulturelle Psychiatrie — Interkulturelle Psychotherapie, 2006
Anthropology of The Middle East, 2010
European Societies, 2008
As ‘Eurobarometer’ surveys indicate, European populations are increasingly sceptical about furthe... more As ‘Eurobarometer’ surveys indicate, European populations are increasingly sceptical about further EU enlargement, especially as far as Turkey is concerned. Austria's rejection of negotiations with Turkey has been remarkable. While the Austrian government has been in line with European council resolutions, policy makers of different parties have reiterated their claim for alternatives to full membership for Turkey. Furthermore, opinion polls have shown that the Austrian population's refusal of Turkey is above EU average. Embedded in the popular arguments why Turkey should stay outside the EU, we find what Ralf Grillo has called ‘cultural anxiety’: essentialist views of ‘our’ and ‘their’ culture cause fears about a fast growing and predominantly Muslim population that would flow into EU labour markets and threaten ‘us’, in particular ‘our’ democracy, equality and human rights. Against this backdrop my interest will neither be focused on a further analysis of whether Turkey is sufficiently prepared for EU accession nor on the European Union's absorption capacity. In this paper I will rather focus on the emergence of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic cultural practices of selfing and othering in order to better understand the extensive refusal of Turkey's EU accession in Austria.
Mitteilungen Der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 2000
Lexikon der Globalisierung
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , 2024
The removal of undocumented migrants has become a widespread preoccupation of current European mi... more The removal of undocumented migrants has become a widespread preoccupation of current European migration politics and one of the most emotionally contentious state practices of our times. Not only right-wing populists and their constituencies demand an increase in expulsions, but also mainstream society. Others accuse these positions of being racist or lacking humanism and instead promote solidarity to help people seeking protection in Europe. These divisive views and migrants’ often long-term experience of being ‘unwanted’ and deportable provoke strong and often irreconcilable emotions. The ethnographic explorations assembled here zoom in on the ‘affective economies’ inherent in the arbitrary processes and unpredictable experiences of removals of people from Europe to different parts of the world. This special issue puts forward a twofold argument: First, conceptually, we argue that a focus on affects is indispensable in order to fully unearth the complexities of removal processes. And second, methodologically, we contend that an ethnographic approach, with its deep and often long-term commitment of researchers to their respective field(s) including multiple actors, is essential to comprehensively grasp the affective economy of removal.
In recent years, European states have increasingly taken to deportation and state-assisted "... more In recent years, European states have increasingly taken to deportation and state-assisted "voluntary" return as means of migration control. Deportation is high-ranking on the political agenda and often publicly debated as an issue of protection from threat. Administrations frame the forced return of rejected asylum seekers and "illegal" migrants in judicial terms, as a matter of the rule of law. For those affected, deportation is in most cases an existential experience of brute coercion that shatters dreams and ambitions, producing anxieties and often despair and anger, but perhaps sometimes also hope for a new beginning. These emotional effects of deportation are not limited to the deportees themselves but affect also supporting volunteers in the country of deportation who see their often years long efforts of assistance ruined, as well as the deportees' social context in the country of return, where hopes and expectations are equally destroyed. Such emotio...
This special issue explores the ways unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe active... more This special issue explores the ways unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe actively deal with the intensification of exclusionary practices towards migrants and refugees. In the Introduction we aim to set the scene for the individual articles by sketching the various political, historical and discursive levels at which the unaccompanied minor has come to be constructed as a crisis figure in Europe. We show how the sense of exceptionality attached to this figure translates into ambiguous and at times extremely contradictory social practices that have far-reaching effects on the lives of refugee youth. In paying attention to the conceptual flaws and dangers inherent in linking unaccompanied minors to ideas of crisis, we aim to demonstrate the importance of taking seriously the ways young people themselves make sense of the ascriptions, ideas and practices they are subject to. We suggest that ethnographically driven research that lays the focus on the ways young people actively navigate the ambiguous social landscapes they are confronted with can form an important means to move beyond the simplistic and ahistorical models of explanation put forward by frameworks of crisis.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale , 2019
In recent years, precarity has become the norm rather than an exception in contemporary European ... more In recent years, precarity has become the norm rather than an exception in contemporary European aca-demia. This special issue on politics of precarity examines the economic, social and political crisis-effects of the neoliberal turn in academia. It analyses how austerity measures and authoritarian politics have led to a proliferation of precarity among, mostly young, scholars.
Social Anthropology, 2019
On politics and precarity in academia David Loher (ed) Sabine Strasser (ed) Daniel Monterescu Esr... more On politics and precarity in academia
David Loher (ed)
Sabine Strasser (ed)
Daniel Monterescu
Esra Dabağcı
Ester Gallo
Cris Shore
Akhil Gupta
Chandana Mathur
Lorena Anton
Rodica Zane
Annika Lems
Shahram Khosravi
Zeynep Sarıaslan
Noel B. Salazar
Ainhoa Montoya
Marta Pérez
Uroš Kovač
Alice Tilche
Giacomo Loperfido
Patricia Matos
Kiri Santer
Eli
Loher, D., Strasser, S., Monterescu, D., Dabağcı, E., Gallo, E., Shore, C., Gupta, A., Mathur, C., Anton, L., Zane, R., Lems, A., Khosravi, S., Sarıaslan, Z., Salazar, N.B., Montoya, A., Pérez, M., Kovač, U., Tilche, A., Loperfido, G., Matos, P., Santer, K. and Thorkelson, E. (2019), On politics and precarity in academia. Soc Anthropol, 27: 97-117. doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12695
Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 2016
Anthropological Journal of European Cultures
For this special issue we are bringing together six ethnographic cases of intimate uncertainties ... more For this special issue we are bringing together six ethnographic cases of intimate uncertainties that are situated within different regimes of reproduction, healthcare and borders in and beyond Europe. These ethnographic inquiries exemplify unprecedented settings of moral ir/responsibility shaping the intimate on different scales and in various sites of power (agencies, clinics, borderlands). These uncertainties in times of major transitions from old to new moral orders, from industrial to postindustrial, from welfare to austerity spark off a renewed debate on moral economy. The authors of these contributions all focus the theoretical lens of moral economy squarely onto the intimate.
A crisis – once perceived as a decisive moment of intense difficulty and danger – is increasingly... more A crisis – once perceived as a decisive moment of intense difficulty and danger – is increasingly being seen as a protracted experience, even as part of everyday life. The multiple crises of the Eurozone, as well as the armed conflicts in Iraq, Syria and the Ukraine, have recently caused global concern. The condition of emergency has seemingly become a continuous companion of global entanglement and neoliberal policies. Nonetheless, as soon as a certain situation is framed in terms of a crisis, debate becomes heated and allows for interventions that are unlikely to occur under " normal " conditions. Against this background I aim for a shift of the analytical framework, or, more precisely, instead of focussing on the descriptions of a certain crisis, humanitarian interventions, global responses and/or the victims' agency, I will discuss the effects of crises in relation to the distribution of power. I will investigate the crisis of multiculturalism in the EU and compare its effects with border and refugee crises. I will show how a " crisis " powerfully contributes to the construction of a particular object of knowledge, and shapes moral obligations as well as political and legal responses. Departing from contested transnational moral responsibilities and state interventions, I will discuss the " crisis effect " as a contribution to " repressive autonomy " and " lethal borders " .
TSANTSA – Journal of the Swiss Anthropological Association
The Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern inaugurated its new lecture serie... more The Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern inaugurated its new lecture series Anthropology Talks in September 2015. The fi rst guest was James Ferguson, professor at the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. The lectures and workshops focused on the questions of poverty and (re)distribution that Ferguson, a scholar with a pronounced political commitment, deals with in his new book Give a Man a Fish (2015a). Ferguson's thinking involves, within a context of widespread unemployment, a creative tension between ethnographic curiosity and political concerns about poverty reduction. Through projects that «just give money to the poor» (2015a: 2), his work examines what such interventions do in people's everyday lives, and how they might direct us towards a new politics of distribution, or «proletarian politics today,» as the main lecture's title suggested (Ferguson 2015b).
This article is concerned with the questions that have been given much less attention in politica... more This article is concerned with the questions that have been given much less attention in political and nationalism studies as how people with transnational relations and multiple belongings deal with ethnicity, nationality, and gender, and how they, given their multiple connectedness, criticize nationalism, essentialism, and racism. In this context, I am interested in biographical narrations, informal networking and political strategies used by Austrian citizens with Turkish backgrounds who are involved in local, national and transnational contexts. The multiplicity of connectedness expressed in biographical narratives and networks leads to the complexity of claims for justice. JEL Classification Codes: Z00.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-658-03626-3\_2
Transnational marriages and family reunification have recently been assessed as two of the main o... more Transnational marriages and family reunification have recently been assessed as two of the main obstacles to integration in Austria. They have been increasingly problematized and kept under surveillance when partners from third countries – in Austria, particularly from Turkey – have been involved. Nonetheless, a great number of Turkish migrants and their descendants prefer to marry partners from their “country of origin”. In this paper I discuss practices of and discourses on family formation across borders, based on ethnographic fieldwork in a small town in Austria. My findings show that transnational marriages in Austria are often conflated with forced and fictitious marriages and consequently rejected as fraudulent or “violence in the name of tradition”. Furthermore, legal provisions against problematic marriages do not liberate women but repress their autonomy.
Transkulturelle Psychiatrie — Interkulturelle Psychotherapie, 2006
Anthropology of The Middle East, 2010
European Societies, 2008
As ‘Eurobarometer’ surveys indicate, European populations are increasingly sceptical about furthe... more As ‘Eurobarometer’ surveys indicate, European populations are increasingly sceptical about further EU enlargement, especially as far as Turkey is concerned. Austria's rejection of negotiations with Turkey has been remarkable. While the Austrian government has been in line with European council resolutions, policy makers of different parties have reiterated their claim for alternatives to full membership for Turkey. Furthermore, opinion polls have shown that the Austrian population's refusal of Turkey is above EU average. Embedded in the popular arguments why Turkey should stay outside the EU, we find what Ralf Grillo has called ‘cultural anxiety’: essentialist views of ‘our’ and ‘their’ culture cause fears about a fast growing and predominantly Muslim population that would flow into EU labour markets and threaten ‘us’, in particular ‘our’ democracy, equality and human rights. Against this backdrop my interest will neither be focused on a further analysis of whether Turkey is sufficiently prepared for EU accession nor on the European Union's absorption capacity. In this paper I will rather focus on the emergence of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic cultural practices of selfing and othering in order to better understand the extensive refusal of Turkey's EU accession in Austria.
Mitteilungen Der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 2000
Lexikon der Globalisierung
Short description: This workshop explores the production, circulation and exchange of emotions tr... more Short description: This workshop explores the production, circulation and exchange of emotions triggered by deportations and state-assisted return in the context of unequal power relations including administrations, concerned citizens, organized activists and people on the move. Abstract: In recent years, European states have increasingly taken to deportation and state-assisted "voluntary" return as means of migration control. Deportation is high-ranking on the political agenda and often publicly debated as an issue of protection from threat. Administrations frame the forced return of rejected asylum seekers and "illegal" migrants in judicial terms, as a matter of the rule of law. For those affected, deportation is in most cases an existential experience of brute coercion that shatters dreams and ambitions, producing anxieties and often despair and anger, but perhaps sometimes also hope for a new beginning. These emotional effects of deportation are not limited to the deportees themselves but affect also supporting volunteers in the country of deportation who see their often years long efforts of assistance ruined, as well as the deportees' social context in the country of return, where hopes and expectations are equally destroyed. Such emotions include moral sentiments (Fassin) of injustice and denied deservingness. Deportations thus trigger a political economy of emotions that are produced, circulated and exchanged in uneven networks spread out in time and space in a context of unequal power relations. Given migrants' general condition of deportability (De Genova), this affective economy of forced return exceeds actual cases of deportation. We invite papers that address the affective economy of deportation, analysing the production and circulation of emotions in the context of deportation and return in the countries of departure and arrival and in the spaces in between. Papers have to be proposed through the conference's call-for-papers site: https://easaonline.org/conferences/easa2020/panels#8403
Identities Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2018
The death of Alan Kurdi, the boy washed ashore in Turkey in September 2015, provoked a global mor... more The death of Alan Kurdi, the boy washed ashore in Turkey in September 2015, provoked a global moral outcry. The pictures of the toddler went viral across social networks and in the media. Following these images across borders, we analyse moral and political responses to the ‘EU refugee crisis’ by illuminating the circumstances under which people feel, take on, and demand responsi- bility. Considering EU policies and their lethal consequences as mechanisms of an organised irresponsibility, we show how the circulation and modification of the images played on moral sentiments and on political demands in Europe and across the Mediterranean. The anthropological engagement with transna- tional moralities contributes to the analysis of politics of ir/responsibility of and against the EU border regime.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2019
This special issue explores the ways unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe active... more This special issue explores the ways unaccompanied refugee youth in and en route to Europe actively deal with the intensification of exclusionary practices towards migrants and refugees. In the Introduction we aim to set the scene for the individual articles by sketching the various political, historical and discursive levels at which the unaccompanied minor has come to be constructed as a crisis figure in Europe. We show how the sense of exceptionality attached to this figure translates into ambiguous and at times extremely contradictory social practices that have far-reaching effects on the lives of refugee youth. In paying attention to the conceptual flaws and dangers inherent in linking unaccompanied minors to ideas of crisis, we aim to demonstrate the importance of taking seriously the ways young people themselves make sense of the ascriptions, ideas and practices they are subject to. We suggest that ethnographically driven research that lays the focus on the ways young people actively navigate the ambiguous social landscapes they are confronted with can form an important means to move beyond the simplistic and ahistorical models of explanation put forward by frameworks of crisis.
Call for contributions to a roundtable at the 17th EASA Biennial Conference, Belfast, 26-29 July,... more Call for contributions to a roundtable at the 17th EASA Biennial Conference, Belfast, 26-29 July, 2022
Transformation, Hope and the Commons
