Paper short abstract:

In Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia Roma are also the most distanced “Others” in their own societies but this stateless group is very good at using a state to protect its identity. Anthropologists can ask: is effective use of the state institutions really leaves the traditional way of thinking unchanged?

Paper long abstract:

Roma people are stateless group living in all European countries. But being stateless is not equal to being out of state organization. In the contemporary world it is the state which formulates the great deal of the rules of living for individuals and groups. And it also shapes the way of thinking of contemporary Europeans. But Roma can think the state over in their traditional way which states are unable to control. In countries where I have conducted my research - Lithuania, Poland and Slovakia - they are also the most distanced "Others" in their own societies. As centuries ago the Roma leaders are trying to protect consistency of their group and at the same time protect for Roma people the safe place in structures of dominant society. Often they start to think that realizing that aim demands the modern way of acting corresponding with the way of contemporary non-Roma thinking. However, the Roma tradition and the elders are essential and have a decisive influence on 'modern' Roma leaders. Paradoxically, the analysis of their activities reveals that the adoption of modern rhetoric (e.g. referring to the phenomenon of discrimination, minority rights and national ideology) and taking the example of other European minority groups are consistent with the traditional Roma adaptive strategy. They use the state (and even the transnational institutions of EU) to protect their internal divisions, traditions and rules. The question is: is it only a strategy or has it changed their traditional ways and has "infected" the Roma with "state thinking"?

Paper short abstract:

The relationship between individuals and the state in Rwanda is often described as dominated by the state and its development policies. How such policies are challenged or used to secure power is shown using the example of schemes targeting the Twa, a group classified as insufficiently integrated.

Paper long abstract:

The relationship between individuals and the state in Rwanda today is often described as one clearly dominated by the state: with his disciplinary power the state seeks to reform individuals along norms tied to key issues like reconciliation, development and national unity. Institutions such as state-run civic education or solidarity camps help to inculcate the population with the desired ideals of development and modernism. On its way to modernism, the state has classified its citizens using indicators of resources and education and has identified the Twa, a population group standing at the margins of society, as 'those who are left behind by history', i.e. as an insufficiently developed and integrated 'other'. The development programs targeting the Twa (like housing schemes) have evoked mixed reactions, with critics emphasizing that the Twa have no choice but to obey the state's orders.

In this reading of social reality in Rwanda, the state is constructed as the decisive actor whose disciplinary power controls almost every aspect of public life and leaves virtually no space within discourse and practice to express discontent.

However, missing in this view are the instances where Twa or their lobby organisations subtly challenge the state's homogenising policies or otherwise comply for strategic reasons. In my paper I seek to explore how different stakeholders either gain power from integration policies targeting the Twa or face them in ways that challenge the notion of an overly powerful Rwandan state.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will address the process of integration of non-Estonian speakers in Estonia as a never-ending process of constant reproduction and domestication of "the Other". It will focus on the complex relations between the Russian-speaking population of Estonia and the fetishised State, addressing the changing rhetorics of the citizenship value.

Paper long abstract:

Incorporating the idea of Michael Taussig on fetish which absorbs what it represents, and the idea of Giorgio Agamben that democracy was born with the need to have a body, I will address the disembodiment and emptiness of the fetishised State which injects the political into the people's lives and bodies. Approaching the process of integration in Estonia from the perspective of a continuous practice I will argue that although Integration Programs have deadlines, the integration process by itself is rather imagined and enacted as a never-ending discourse of constant reproduction and domestication of the "other".

This paper will address discrepancies and convergences between two different organisations - one governmental, the other grassroots - that address the issue of Russian minority integration in Estonia. Drawing from the fieldwork conducted in two different non-governmental organisations from 2009 to 2011, I will focus on the changing discourse of citizenship in Estonia, which moves towards a greater flexibility. Finally, the paper will elaborate on the reasons why the Russian-speaking population of Estonia is addressed as "the Other" but not as a "minority" by the state authorities, as well as by the Russian-speakers themselves.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will address the complex relationship between West African transnational musicians and EU immigrant integration policies. I will argue how mobile and fluid transnational practices function to de-fetishize straightforward and catch-all phrases such as „integration“ and „social cohesion“.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws from 2 years of intermittent fieldwork in Benelux-France-Germany amongst West African transnational musicians, with the final goal of making an ethnographic documentary about "life in movement". In this presentation, I will specifically address the complex relationship between these musicians and immigrant integration policies. I will argue that categories such as integration and social cohesion, in the case of the EU, are predicated on a discourse of assimilation and acculturation. However, transnational practices do not conform to many of the assumptions that are pinned to integration discourse, because transnationalism is rooted on movement and fluid identity politics. My paper will be an ethnographically informed account that shows how strategies of integration of West Africam transnational musicians based in the Benelux-France-Germany area are characterized by enduring cultural continuities rather than by assimilating or acculturating into the host society.

My presentation will also discuss how ethnographic film-making has informed my initial conclusions and framed my research questions in specific ways.

Paper short abstract:

Considering the relationship between individuals and the state, the paper will explore the images of “ethnic entrepreneurs” as a technique of taking care of oneself and others, depending on the practices of “immigrants” in Berlin.

Paper long abstract:

Considering the relationship between individuals and the state, the paper will explore the images of "ethnic entrepreneurs" in Berlin, considering the practices of "immigrants" from Turkey.

The "ethnic entrepreneur" is a reflection on changing categories of the "other" through memories and practices: an "other" that emerged through an inclusive exclusion (Agamben, 1998, 15-29); an "other" that has turned from a symbol of minimizing socio-political costs and maximizing economic profits into a category of social concern that needs to be integrated; a "tolerated" "other" that has competitive, participating, calculating and cooperative skills in a world of declining profitability of mass-production industries and increasing crises of social welfare policies; an enterprising "other" without the need for direct political intervention; an efficient "other" that can shape, socialize and maximize capacities of its members with ethics of autonomy and responsibility (Donzelot, 1997).

Having its historical features at the junction of political, economic, social, cultural and intellectual endeavors, "ethnic entrepreneurship" has been constituted as a technique of taking care of oneself and others (à la Foucault). Consequently, it has become a form of subjectivity that can be exemplified in the compromises between autonomous individualism and social engagement, between memories and future plans, between social policies and individual imaginations, between "problems" and "potentials".

Through the practices and knowledge of "ethnic entrepreneurship", the paper will examine the conditions of change, the political rationalities and the mechanisms of othering keeping in mind the relationship between Turkey, Germany and "Europe" since the beginning of the 1960s.

Paper short abstract:

On the basis of field material from Latvia I will explore the concept of 'the pockets of state' ,i.e., geographic and/or institutional areas inside a state where there is (almost) no state. I argue that this is an adaptation to a situation when the state itself is too uncertain to rely upon.

Paper long abstract:

With this paper I want to bring home the ideas that James Scott and Pierre Clastres applied to distant 'areas of refuge', i.e., that there are groups of people who defy the idea of inevitability of the state by voluntarily withdrawing from it. I use material from Latvia - a country which on the one hand had been incorporated in various state-like formations for at least 1000 years but on the other hand has experienced a great instability of the institution of state. Despite the uniformity that is suggested by the idea of the territory of a state, I argue that the 'intensity' of a state may fluctuate significantly inside its borders. In order to demonstrate such fluctuations I describe how people in Latvia react to unpredictability of the state by emphasising their need to stay 'independent' of the state - by organising their own informal economic world and avoiding other state institutions when possible. I conceptualise these areas (geographic or institutional) where the presence of the state can hardly be felt as the pockets of state. The pockets of the state are not necessarily criminal organisations (although may be treated as such by the state representatives) but rather mundane life of people (mostly but not exclusively) in distant rural areas of contemporary Latvia. I argue that this is an adaptation to a situation when the state itself is too uncertain to rely upon. (This presentation is based on author's work in interdisciplinary project "Development Strategies and Changing Cultural Spaces of Latvia's Rural Residents" (University of Latvia / European Social Fund 2009/0222/1DP/1.1.1.2.0/09/APIA/ VIAA /087).

Paper short abstract:

The concepts of vulnerability, self-reliance, and threat undergirding the Iraqi refugee resettlement program not only functioned as ideologies in the reification of state sovereignty, but also were mobilised in contesting state sovereignty in the promotion of strengthened refugee protection.

Paper long abstract:

The resettlement of Iraqi refugees to states in the global north was framed as a means for protecting the rights of the most vulnerable "others" and for increasing their self-reliance. It also served as a filter for resettlement states to screen out those refugees deemed to have insufficient "integration potential" or to be security threats. This paper considers the classifications of vulnerability and rights, self-reliance and integration, and inadmissibility and threat undergirding the Iraqi refugee resettlement program. It theorises that these concepts functioned as ideologies in the reification of sovereignty, the assertion of the neoliberal state, the production of hyper-visible and invisible refugee bodies, and the normalisation of the citizen as the ideal political subject. At the same time, however, these ideologies were also mobilised by refugees and UNHCR to contest the fetishisation of state sovereignty, as tensions emerged between agendas for humanitarian aid and human rights protection, and refugees appropriated ideologies of vulnerability towards their own protection interests. These practices and tensions, while at once reproducing the legal fiction of sovereignty as the normative mode of politics, also may have opened possibilities for sovereignty to be contested, shifted, and de-territorialised in the promotion of strengthened refugee protection.