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Dahinden, Janine
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Dahinden, Janine
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Professeur.e ordinaire
Email
janine.dahinden@unine.ch
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Voici les éléments 1 - 10 sur 13
- PublicationAccès libreExploring the social organization of difference at the interface of mobility and peripherality: Ethnographic study in a Swiss valley(2023-06-28)
; This thesis sheds ethnographic light on the small Swiss valley of Val-de-Travers, a region of 12,000 inhabitants located in the canton of Neuchâtel, on the border with France. Inspired by critical and reflexive studies on migration, it proposes an in-depth analysis of the discourses and daily practices that participate in the construction of a local order in constant negotiation, at the interface of different forms of mobility and lived and situated experiences of peripherality. Based on a qualitative field study conducted between 2019 and 2021, this thesis apprehends the Val-de- Travers through two of its main and interwoven characteristics. On the one hand, the diversity of past and present mobilities that intersect. Indeed, for decades, countless foreign workers, cross-border workers, tourists, refugees, and residents of other Swiss regions have been crossing the region to work or live there. At the same time, young people, job seekers, families and retirees have left the valley in search of professional, educational, or economic opportunities. On the other hand, the Valley is characterized by its peripherality: a complex set of experiences and imaginaries that refer both to its asymmetrical political and economic relationship with a neighboring city (Neuchâtel); to a romantic celebration of the valley’s authenticity as a rural periphery sheltered from globalization and modernization; a supposedly superior value of seemingly unconditional solidarity; a region characterized by scattered settlement and low population density in public spaces; a region adjacent to a national border; or a tourist region with natural sites and industrial heritage. By adopting a posture at the interface, this thesis explores how the different forms of mobility that traverse and shape the valley articulate, resonate, or come into tension with the lived and imagined experiences of peripherality; and vice versa. Indeed, the position and evolution of the valley in the global, national, and cantonal political economy contribute significantly to the daily dynamics of selfidentification and social categorization. This thesis thus seeks to understand how people who visit, live, or work in this place make sense of their daily environment and negotiate the social organization of difference, namely the way in which differences between individuals and collectives, and the social categories associated with them, are produced, represented, appropriated, and organized. It shows how the lived and situated experiences of these different dynamics generate discourses and practices that participate in the emergence of an (imagined) community characterized by the coherent assemblage of its heterogeneity. By focusing on the everyday experiences of ordinary people, it also highlights how the categories, boundaries and regulations of the nation-state permeate everyday life and articulate with other social and symbolic differentiations beyond ethno-national categories and governmental logics. In the form of a collection of scientific articles, the analysis is composed of three parts, each illuminating not only specific dynamics of the articulation between mobilities and peripherality, but also proposing specific and original conceptualizations to approach this articulation. The first paper explores the emergence of what I call an imagined community of fate, which can be understood as the result of dynamic and nested forms of boundary-work in which the most important categories and markers are socioeconomic rather than nation and ethnicity based. The second article documents the discourses and everyday practices that participate in the emergence of a regime of (im)moral mobilities. Exploring in particular border mobilities (whether to work or to buy goods and services), I demonstrate how ordinary inhabitants categorize these mobilities in terms of good or bad and put in place informal strategies of regulation. The third article explores how the presence of people assigned to stigmatized categories of difference – in this case, refugees, cross-border workers and “cas sociaux” – generates varied and interrelated representations of experiences of peripherality. Depending on the situation, these categories of difference are presented as familiar strangers, as space invaders, or as peripheral figures. - PublicationAccès libreMemories of the "liberation of Kosovo" among Albanian-speaking activists in Switzerland:: narrating transnational belonging to the nation(2019)
; ; - PublicationAccès libreGender representations in politics of belonging: An analysis of Swiss immigration regulation from the 19th century until today(2017)
; The literature increasingly recognises the importance of gender in defining the boundaries between national societies and migrants. But little is still known about the history and changes of mechanisms that shape the role of gender as category of difference. Based on a critical case study of Switzerland, this article examines how gender is implicated in the politics of migrant admission and incorporation and underlying notions of ‘the other’. Drawing on theories of boundary work, we show that gendered representations of migrants are mobilised by different actors to advance their claims and calls for certain forms of immigration control and migrant integration. Since the late 19th century, gendered representations of Swiss nationals and migrant others shift from classical gender ideas to culturalised post-colonial interpretations of gender roles and, most recently, to normative ideas of gender equality. As part of these changes, migrant women moved from the periphery to the core of public and political attention. Concomitantly, categories of difference shift from the intersection of gender and social class to an intersection of gender, culture and ethnicity. Local particularities of Switzerland – the idea of ‘overforeignisation’ and the system of direct democracy – play a significant role in shaping categories. But Switzerland’s embeddedness in transnational fields emerges as equally important. The article expands on recent research and illuminates how changing dynamics of categorisation and othering facilitate the construction of nations and national identities in a transnationalised world. - PublicationAccès libreL’élan bénévole: Une analyse compréhensive de l’engagement bénévole auprès des migrant·e·s en Suisse romande. Contextes, motivations, pratiques et enjeux réflexifs(2017)
; Ce travail de mémoire propose d’aborder une perspective compréhensive de l’engagement bénévole auprès des migrant-e-s en Suisse romande. L’analyse des discours des personnes engagées tente d’appréhender la complexité des enjeux qui entourent leurs parcours au sein de collectifs d’engagement variés (associations, institutions et collectifs citoyens). Il sera possible d’entrevoir les motivations qui les ont poussés à s’engager ainsi que les processus entourant les pratiques et les enjeux qu’ils soulèvent. Seront également abordées les questions de désengagement ainsi que des interrogations particulières des bénévoles face à cet engagement spécifique dans le domaine de la migration. En trame de fond, se dessine l’importance du contexte sociopolitique et des éléments structurels qui jouent un rôle prédominant dans l’engagement des bénévoles auprès des migrant-e-s. - PublicationAccès libreChanging Gender Representations in Politics of Belonging: A Critical Analysis of Developments in Switzerland(2016)
; The literature increasingly recognises the importance of gender in defining the boundaries between national societies and migrants. But little is still known about the history and changes of mechanisms that shape the role of gender as category of difference. Based on a historical case study of Switzerland this paper examines how gender is implicated in the politics of migrant admission and incorporation and underlying notions of ‘the other’. Drawing on theories of boundary work we show that gendered representations of migrants are mobilised by different actors to advance their claims and calls for certain forms of immigration control and migrant integration. Since the late 19th century gendered representations of Swiss nationals and migrant others shift from classical gender ideas to culturalized post-colonial interpretations of gender roles and, most recently, to normative ideas of gender equality. As part of these changes, migrant women moved from the periphery to the core of public and political attention. Concomitantly, categories of difference shift from the intersection of gender and social class to an intersection of gender, culture and ethnicity. Local particularities of Switzerland – the idea of ‘over-foreignization’ and the system of direct democracy – play a significant role in shaping categories. But Switzerland’s embeddedness in transnational fields emerges as equally important. The paper expands on recent research and illuminates how changing dynamics of categorisation and othering facilitate the construction of nations and national identities in a transnationalized world. - PublicationAccès libreUnderstanding the dynamics of transnational formations among Albanian-speaking migrants in Switzerland by bringing in theories of mobility, social inequality and ethnicity(2014)It is nowadays beyond controversy that transnational phenomena are part of migrants’ reality and that the transnational perspective is indispensable to understand migration processes. However, I argue however that the potential of the transnational perspective could be better exploited by linking it to other social scientific theories contributing hereby to a more general theorization of migration processes. On behalf of an analysis of the different transnational formations that have emerged among Albanian-speaking migrants in Switzerland since the Second World War, I will show that insights from theories of mobility, of social inequality and of ethnicity help to understand these identified different forms of being transnational.
- PublicationAccès libreDisentangling Religious, Ethnic and Gendered Contents in Boundary Work: How Young Adults Create the Figure of ‘The Oppressed Muslim Woman’(2014)
; - PublicationAccès libreCities, Migrant Incorporation, and Ethnicity: A Network Perspective on Boundary Work(2013)n this article, I am interested in the different types of boundaries emerging in a city characterized by a highly diverse population. The analysis of the personal social networks of 250 inhabitants of a small Swiss City—different types of migrants as well as non-migrants—supplemented by data from qualitative interviews brings to light the important categories for the creation of boundaries and the place of ethnicity among them. The inhabitant’s network structures display specific network boundaries that are translated into symbolic and also social boundaries: four different clusters emerge among the population, pointing to their stratified social positioning in this city. Hereby an interplay of nationality, education, local establishment, mobility type, “race,” and religion are the most important structuring factors. It becomes clear that the common ideas of assimilation cannot grasp the complexity of the “categorical game” at place in this city when it comes to migrant’s incorporation.
- PublicationAccès libreIslam and gender in the boundary work of young adults in Switzerland(2012)
; - PublicationAccès libre"Un Africain restera un Africain: discours ethniques de migrant-e-s d'origine africaine en Suisse(2011)
; Frésia, MarionL’affiche des Moutons Noirs et les différentes initiatives lancées par l’UDC sur l’immigration et le régime d’asile ainsi que, plus récemment les déclarations de l’ancien directeur de l’Office fédéral des migrations concernant la criminalité des requérants d’asile nigérians, permettent de saisir la problématisation croissante ces dernières années de la population migrante d’origine africaine en Suisse. Sur la base d’entretiens réalisés avec des migrant-e-s d’origine africaine, le présent mémoire s’intéresse ainsi à la façon dont des individus parlent de leur affiliation avec un groupe socialement dévalorisé. Ancré dans une approche interactionniste de l’ethnicité, il s’agit de comprendre la portée performative de l’existence d’une identité sociale négative appliquée à un certain groupe dans la manière dont des individus sont amenés (ou pas) à reprendre à leur compte cette appartenance. L’analyse discursive montre ainsi que si l’appartenance au groupe peut sembler évidente aux yeux de ses individus, évidence rattachée à une certaine couleur de peau, les sentiments à l’égard de cette appartenance au groupe sont ambivalents et relèvent de phénomènes complexes de distanciation et de revendication. La signification rhétorique de l’appartenance à un groupe "Africain" apparaît ainsi d’abord au sein de dialectiques reprenant et prolongeant la différence établie entre Suisses et "Africains" et entre Suisses et étrangers par rapport à laquelle ces individus se positionnent, notamment en faisant appel à une certaine rhétorique basée sur la notion d’"intégration".