Project Title: NORDHOST: Nordic Hospitalities in a Context of Migration and Refugee Crisis

Project Aims & Objectives:

NORDHOST: Nordic Hospitalities in a Context of Migration and Refugee Crisis
Is there anything specific about Nordic forms of hospitality which are developing in the encounters between arriving migrants and civil society receiving projects?
NORDHOST included researchers from many disciplines to approach value issues connected to migration and hospitalities in the
Nordics. Nordhost was developed as a research project to explore how practices of hospitality towards and with migrants developed in civil society in the Nordic countries. The background was the increasing tightening of restrictions on refugees that we could observe as a reaction to the “refugee crisis” in 2015.
The researchers in Nordhost came from all the faculties that collaborated at UiO: Nordic: law, theology, social sciences, and humanities. Their methodological and theoretical perspectives were of course different. But the most interesting thing about all the articles, books and doctoral dissertations written within the Nordhost project is the emphasis on migrants’ own practices.
The hospitality we aimed to uncover was primarily a practice of sharing and exchange in respect for differences and expectations. Hospitality is a relational practice and when such practices occur, attitudes and solidarity of lasting significance are formed. These experiences also correspond with research on migration in other areas of the world than the Nordic countries.

Scholars/Institutions: Trygve Wyller, Katja Franko, Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Arne Johan Vetlesen, Kaia Rønsdal, Dorina Damsa, Cathrine Thorleifsson, Helena Margrethe Strandli Schmidt, Maria Hernández Carretero, Vanessa Barker, Synnøve Kristine Nepstad Bendixsen, Kristina Helgesson Kjellin, Cecilia Nahnfeldt, Lena Näre, Hans-Joachim Sander, Kaspar Villadsen, Maartje van der Woude, Rasmus Willig, Laura Bjørg Serup Petersen, Paula Merikoski

 

Scholars/Institutions: University of Oslo

Countries Involved: Austria; Netherlands; Denmark; Sweden; Finland.

Start Date: November 10, 2017

End Date: May 21, 2024

Research Methods: Many subprojects with different methods. Methodologcial focus on practices of migrants.

Findings/Outcomes:

Rønsdal, Kaia Dorothea Mellbye Schultz (2018). Calling Bodies in Lived Space. Spatial Explorations on the Concept of Calling in a Public Urban Space. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ISBN 9783525570913.

Project Webpage: https://www.uio.no/english/research/strategic-research-areas/nordic/research-groups/nordhost/

Funding Institution: Funded by the strategic research funds of Oslo University

Keywords: Nordic welfare states, civil society, refugees, hospitality, migrant practices

Country of Publication:

• Norway

Project Title: Between aspiration and reality: Labour market integration of recently arrived refugees in Rogaland, Norway (MAVI)

Project Aims & Objectives:

In the autumn of 2015, Norway received a historically high number of refugees, who have been, or currently are obligated to participate in the two-year introductory programme that helps them into further education or work. There is a lot of excitement about how, for example, Syrians, a relatively new group in Norway, will do in the labour market in the years ahead. Will they repeat the success story of the Bosniers who came onthe1990s and are often lauded as “integration winners” (Dzamarija, 2016), or will the labour force participation be low due to other factors?

The introductory program

Since 2010, the national goal has been that at least 55% of participants in the introductory programme should go directly into work or education after two years in the programme, and that 70% of participants should be in work or education one year after completing the introductory programme. The recent report “Introductory programme and Norwegian training: What works – for whom?” (Djuve et al., 2017) noted that in 2016 that only Hammerfest and Ålesund met the national targets when looking at the proportion of refugees in work four years after the introduction programme (71% for Ålesund and 70% for Hammerfest). For Stavanger, the share was 52% in the same year, while for Sandnes it was 57%. Although several of the Rogaland municipalities do better than many other municipalities, it is still lower than the national goals. There is a debate about whether the introductory programme fulfill its promise. Djuve et al. (2017) shows that there are large municipal variations in how the scheme is organised and implemented, and that in some cases these affect the outcomes. They also document that there are measures in the introductory programme that have little effects. Work is currently underway at the government level to further develop the introduction programme and other education programmes for adult immigrants.

Research Question
The project’s overall research questions are formulated as follows:

Scholars/Institutions: Center for Intercultural Communication at VID Specialized University, Oleksandr Ryndyk, Kari Storstein Haug, Norma Wong, Benedicte Nessa, Zubia Willmann Robleda, Memory Jayne Tembo, Gunhild Odden

Start Date: June 3, 2019

End Date: June 01, 2022

Research Methods: Mixed methods: interviews of refugees and asylum seekers. Following refugees over time, and some as long as over 3 years. Interview of introductory advisers and NAV supervisors; observeation of meetings between these and participants in the introductory programme, observation of interaction between refugees in the introduction programme and teachers in classrooms; interview a smaller selection of representatives from civil society, preferably voluntary sector and religious sector. Collection of quantitative data such as register data to describe and analyse the relationship between residence time, place of residence, national background, labour market association and income.

Findings/Outcomes:

Nessa, B. (2023), One Step Forward and Two Steps Back: The Role of Civil Society Organizations in Reversed Integration Processes among Refugees inNorway, Nordic Journal of Migration Reseasrch Vol. 13(3), pp.1-18.

Wong, N. (2020), A scoping review of literature on labour market integration of newly arrived refugees in Norway: Report from a systematic literature search, Stavanger, VID, https://hdl.handle.net/11250/2659638

Project Webpage: https://www.maviproject.no/

Funding Institution: University fund Stavanger

Keywords: Norway, refugees, work market integration, introducation program, Norwegian social services, civil society, Rogaland

Country of Publication:

• Norway

Project Title: Municipalities' cooperation with the private sector in the implementation of the introduction program

Scholars/Institutions: NORCE

Start Date: December 10, 2018

End Date: June 14, 2019

Findings/Outcomes:

This report discusses cooperation between the public, private, and voluntary sectors in the implementation of the introduction program. The purpose of the report is to provide knowledge about the contributions of non-public actors in the municipalities’ introduction program and – without taking a stance on whether this is desirable in itself – to assess how non-public actors could potentially be involved in a beneficial way. This includes partnerships where non-public actors, on behalf of the municipality, deliver services within the introduction program, and collaborations where the municipality has agreements with non-public actors for measures and activities that complement the introduction program. By non-public actors, we mean commercial companies of various sizes, fully or partially municipally-owned commercial companies, social entrepreneurs, and voluntary (non-profit) organizations. Of central interest is what characterizes good models of cooperation between municipalities and non-public actors in the

Project Webpage: https://www.norceresearch.no/prosjekter/kommunenes-samarbeid-med-privat-sektor-i-gjennomforingen-av-introduksjonsprogrammet

Funding Institution: IMDI

Country of Publication:

• Norway

Project Title: Civil society participation among immigrants in Norway

Project Aims & Objectives:

In this report, we follow up on the report Organizational Engagement among Immigrants (Eimhjellen and Arnesen, 2018) by further analyzing the same data set from Statistics Norway (SSB). Here, we examine the relationships between volunteer work and trust, between volunteer work and political participation, and between volunteer work and informal caregiving among immigrants in Norway. To follow up on the findings from the 2018 report, which highlighted a particularly low level of engagement among Poles, we also discuss the reasons and background for this based on existing literature and interviews with representatives of Polish voluntary organizations in Norway. The analyses of the SSB data show that there is a correlation between volunteer work and trust among immigrants, and that participation in so-called bridging organizations—organizations that bring together people across various characteristics—has a particularly positive correlation with trust. However, volunteer work is neither the most important nor t

Scholars/Institutions: NORCE

Start Date: -

End Date: -

Project Webpage: https://www.norceresearch.no/prosjekter/kommunenes-samarbeid-med-privat-sektor-i-gjennomforingen-av-introduksjonsprogrammet

Funding Institution: IMDI

Country of Publication:

• Norway

Project Title: Effects of racism and discrimination on integration in the labor market

Project Aims & Objectives:

Commissioned by the Norwegian Directorate of Integration and Diversity (IMDi), the Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research, and Education (NIFU) has produced a report on the effects of racism and discrimination on labor market integration. The report is part of a larger project.

Scholars/Institutions: NIFU

Start Date: -

End Date: -

Project Webpage: https://www.imdi.no/om-imdi/rapporter/2022/effekter-av-rasisme-og-diskriminering-pa-integrering-i-arbeidslivet/

Funding Institution: IMDI

Country of Publication:

• Norway