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Fischer, Carolin
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Fischer, Carolin
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Voici les éléments 1 - 2 sur 2
- PublicationAccès libre(Doing) belonging as technology of power: how the principle of ‘gender equality’ governs membership in Swiss society(2024)
; ; ; This paper analyses how the principle of gender equality informs politics of belonging in Switzerland. We propose to conceptualize ‘doing belonging’ as a technology of power and we examine how actors in (non-)institutional settings employ it as part of professional and personal action. The paper draws on two case studies: an ethnography of institutions in charge of Swiss naturalization procedures and a series of qualitative interviews with migrant descendants. It unpacks how individuals negotiate belonging in different social contexts that are marked by specific power relations. First, we reveal how ideas of gender equality shape the implementation of state policies in naturalization procedures by selectively assessing the candidates according to their national and assumed cultural background. Second, we show how naturalized individuals are doing belonging when confronting external ascriptions as being ‘gender unequal’. The analysis contributes to a better understanding of the role the principle of gender equality plays in politics of belonging enacted at a micro-sociological and individual level, thus illuminating the gendered underpinnings of migration politics. - PublicationAccès libreKnowledge production, reflexivity, and the use of categories in migration studies: tackling challenges in the field(2020-4-22)
; ; Recent debates in migration studies target the non-reflexive use of categories that derive from nation-state- and ethnicity-centred epistemologies. However, what a category is and how categorization works remain undertheorized. Our paper addresses this gap. Through a qualitative study on experiences of Othering among migrant descendants in Zurich (CH) and Edinburgh (UK), we scrutinize the perspectival, political, and performative nature of categories. We show how the persons informing our study were highly reflexive when using the category migrant descendant: They contested, negotiated, and navigated it in multiple ways. Although this specific category is firmly embedded in the “national order of things”, it ultimately proved to be inclusive. We argue that reflexivity in the field can not only create space for the often-muted voices of research participants, but also helps to overcome important pitfalls that derive from issues of legitimacy, representation, and power relations in scientific knowledge production.