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- Convenors:
-
Linda Martina Mülli
(University of Basel)
Ignacio Fradejas-García (University of Oviedo)
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- Stream:
- Work
- Location:
- VG 3.107
- Start time:
- 27 March, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel addresses work and life in the UN context and other international bodies engaged in multilateral development, peace building and humanitarian aid. Following the agents´ perspectives, it explores organizational cultures and power relations between and within headquarters and field offices.
Long Abstract:
More than 70 years passed since the foundation of the UN and the rise of multilateral development organizations. However, the knowledge about daily work and life in this particular transnational social field is still at a developing phase. This panel aims to grasp life and work of international civil servants and other international professionals, such as diplomats or experts, understanding them both as individuals as well as agents who play a crucial part in the field of international bodies´ activities.
Moreover, this transnational social field includes other less visible and more precarious workers, such as national and local staff, volunteers, consultants, interns and other service providers. Thus, the panel brings into focus the different forms of economic, social, cultural and symbolic capitals (Bourdieu 1990, 1984) and other valuable resources such as the mobility capital or motility (Kauffman et al., 2004) that are playing a differential role within the UN context and beyond.
Presenters are invited to address the following topics:
- International and local/national relations: cosmopolitism, bubbles, elitism, liminalities, inequalities, barriers and borders;
- Career paths, trajectories, itineraries, biographies;
- Field and headquarters intersections: habitus and capitals;
- Hiring practices and assessment processes;
- Life-work problematic: dwelling, home-land, m(p)aternity, family, security, ethical dilemmas, traumas, ambitions, harassment, gender relations, etc.;
- Transnational bureaucratic systems: hierarchy, power and decision-making;
- Reproduction of post-colonial settings and practices;
- Corruption, bribery;
- Analytic/practical categories of international bodies' workers;
- Forms of investigative anthropology, modes of studying up/through/across.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Linda Martina Mülli (University of Basel)
Paper short abstract:
This paper addresses the interdependence of careers and biographies of early career professionals employed in the UN headquarters in Geneva and Vienna through the analysis of their narrations and strategies of self-positioning.
Paper long abstract:
This paper addresses the interdependence of work and career related factors with individual biographic circumstances of early career professionals employed in the two European headquarters of the United Nations located in Geneva and Vienna. In view of highly competitive assessment processes of the UN system, it explores aims and strategies of mobile highly skilled individuals who seek to establish themselves as international civil servants.
Through the analysis of the informants' narrations and strategies of self-positioning within the UN system in particular and the field of international life and work context in general, this paper aims to understand international civil servants both as individuals and as agents of a large bureaucracy. The research study this paper is based on ultimately seeks to describe what could be grasped under the notion of 'habitus of transnational life and work'.
Maria Rosa Garrido (University of Fribourg)
Paper short abstract:
This research explores historical transformations of multilingual professional identities for/by ICRC delegates. The intersection between institutional trajectory and mobile careers constructs a form of cosmopolitan capital based on English as a lingua franca and language learning in the field.
Paper long abstract:
The goal of this presentation is to explore historical transformations in the construction of multilingual professional identities for and by delegates at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with headquarters in Geneva (Switzerland). It investigates the intersection between the ICRC's trajectory and individual careers, with a focus on multilingualism and language learning in delegates' mobile trajectories after the ICRC's opening to an international labour market in 1992. The data comprise ethnographic interviews with ICRC delegates who were active between 1970 and 2015 triangulated with recruitment materials published between 1989 and 2016.
The opening of delegate positions to non-Swiss nationals gradually transformed institutional linguistic requirements and delegates' repertoires. The ICRC was historically a Francophone institution, with English required for expatriate positions, and "internationalisation" reinforced English a lingua franca. New generations come from more diverse linguistic backgrounds and show more interest in language learning for humanitarian work. The delegates' biographies play a great role in their employability since English and French are institutionally required and tested, with working languages like Arabic or Spanish as assets. Concurrently, their humanitarian careers shape and are shaped by their linguistic repertoires since delegates learn new languages (e.g. Tamil & Arabic) during their missions, often in response to unplanned linguistic needs, and are allocated missions owing to their linguistic competences.
The ICRC constructs entrepreneurial selves whose "cosmopolitan capital" (Igarashi and Saito 2014, Jansson 2016) allows them to navigate international contexts through English, as in UN agencies, and to (minimally) learn local languages in the field.
Andrea Steinke (Centre for Humanitarian Action)
Paper short abstract:
The paper will analyze a proposed Brazilian way of peacekeeping employed in the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).
Paper long abstract:
The country of Haiti has been under a UN stabilization mission since 2004. MINUSTAH, la Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti, represents one of the longest UN peacekeeping mission currently deployed as well as the only one in the Americas.
One particular aspect of the mission is the fact that the military of MINUSTAH is exclusively composed of non-Western countries and headed by Brazil which provides the Force Commander as well as the largest troop contingency.
The proposed paper will analyze the specific role of Brazil and its deployed soldiers from four axes. It embarks on an ascribed south-south cultural proximity between Haiti and Brazil that is secondly built upon intensely in forms of civil military cooperation (CIMIC) and thirdly results in a specific "Brazilian way of peacekeeping" which aside from its ascribed merits for the Haitian population fourthly also profits the Brazilian military.
The data is drawn from fieldwork in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and includes perspectives of expatriate MINUSTAH personnel, especially Brazilian military, but also NGO employees involved in civil military cooperation, and will be balanced with Haitian views on the presence of MINUSTAH in Haiti.
Ignacio Fradejas-García (University of Oviedo)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the dwelling and home-making problems faced by national, local and international aid workers along their work-life trajectories.
Paper long abstract:
On a worldwide scale, the aid workers are the operators of the aid machineries. They manage a complex industry that is operating globally by heterogeneous aid organizations fuelled by different donors and objectives. Their global practices have changed following breaking events, as some failure responses —Rwanda, Somalia, Balkans, etc.— or because of violent attacks on aid staff. It has driven the aid sector to more professionalization, securitization and bunkerization, increasing the distance to the people in need and pushing the industry to remote management practices. While the specific context and organization rules are shaping dwelling and home-making needs, practices and imaginaries, new technologies and innovative methods to mobilize information, people and things have been adopted rapidly by the aid sector. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Goma (RD Congo) and Gaziantep (Turkey), it analyses every day practices that are shaped, constrained and limited by aid work.