Sophia University institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2019

The First Years in The New Country: How Refugees to Sweden Experienced Institutions of Integration in the 1990s and the 2010s

Gregg Bucken-Knapp
Professor, School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

19:00-20:30, March 30th, 2020
10-301 Sophia University Yotsuya Campus

The key focus of this talk is on how refugees to Sweden from Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995), and more recently from Syria (2014-2018), make sense of their involvement in programs intended to foster refugee integration. These include experiences from formal programs, such as language education, civic orientation, validation of education qualifications, and labor market initiatives. But it also focuses on how refugees make sense of less formal aspects of their journeys toward integration: the presence (or lack of) professional and personal networks; their perceptions of inclusion in (or exclusion from) Swedish society; and their general evaluation of the institutions and organizations tasked with refugee integration. Additionally, this talk will address the added value of refugee voices for achieving a more nuanced understanding of the impact of integration policies; and it will also consider the extent to which the case of Sweden may have relevance for Japan.

Gregg Bucken-Knapp (Ph.D. The George Washington University, 1999) is Professor in the School of Public Administration, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. His broad research interest is immigration and integration policy, chiefly in a European context. He has previously been awarded a US Fulbright Grant, as well as grants from the Swedish Research Council and the former Danish Social Science Research Council. Recently, he has worked on projects financed by the European Commission and the Swedish Innovation Agency. Among other journals, his articles have appeared in Comparative European Politics, Human Rights Review, International Migration, and Journal of European Public Policy. He has also published monographs and edited anthologies with Lexington Books, Palgrave Macmillan and State University of New York Press. During autumn term 2019, Bucken-Knapp was on sabbatical at the University of Tokyo as part of the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Education Teaching Sabbatical Program.

This talk is organized by David H. Slater (Professor, FLA) / Lecture in English, No RSVP required

Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture: 7-1 Kioicho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102-8554 / Web：http://icc.fla.sophia.ac.jp/index.html