Janine Dahinden on demigrantization, feat. Maissam Nimer

To kick off season 4 of Borders & Belonging, host Maggie Perzyna explores the concept of "demigranticization" in migration research with Janine Dahinden and Maissam Nimer. They discuss how the label "migrant" is not objective but rather a political construct rooted in nation-state logic that can reinforce harmful power structures and exclusion. 

Both scholars argue that migration research should step back from treating migration as an isolated phenomenon and instead examine how societies create "others" to define themselves, connecting migrants' struggles with those of other marginalized groups. Despite the dark political climate and rise of populism, they find hope in growing critical voices within academia and emerging solidarities between migrantized and non-migrantized communities.

Guests: Janine Dahinden, Professor of Transnational Studies, University of Neuchâtel; and Maissam Nimer, Associate Professor of Sociology, Akdeniz University.

To find books, publications, and media mentioned in this episode please see the show notes.

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Transcript

Maggie Perzyna  

Welcome to season four of Borders & Belonging, the podcast that explores migration through bold research, new ideas and stories that connect those findings to the real world. This season, we're talking with migration scholars whose ideas have left a lasting mark on the field, then we dig deeper to uncover the past that brought them here, the turning points, lived experiences and insights that shape the theories redefining how we understand mobility, borders and belonging. Each scholar has been asked to nominate an up-and-coming researcher whose work they admire. In the chat, established voices and emerging thinkers come together in conversation to explore the connective tissue between the past, present and future of migration studies. From the personal to the political, from theory to practice, these conversations uncover not just what our guests study, but how their lives and work have helped shape the field and where they see it heading next. Today, we're exploring the demigranticization of migration research with some of the leading thinkers in the field.

Maggie Perzyna  

Dr Janine Dahinden is a professor at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland. Janine is widely recognized for shaping how we think about migration and belonging, but her story starts much earlier, long before she became a leading voice in the field, in a household where the clues to her curiosity and drive were already taking shape. 

Janine Dahinden 

I can say this. I'm really from a working-class background. My parents have been a bit overwhelmed with this child who was smart, I would say. So, I was a very active child, very much interested in reading. I have been reading every week, like 10 or 20 books. I went to the local library. I did a lot of sports. I did artistic gymnastic and I very much like my friends. So, also a lot of normal things. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Whether she was lost in a book or performing on the gym mat, Janine was always finding new ways to express herself. But it wasn't until the 1990s in Zurich, that her true calling began to take shape.

Janine Dahinden  

I always thought it was an interesting time. I grew up with the many critical theories that have been developed during the 90s, and I got familiarized with them when I did my studies. And I really think this helped me to make clear a lot of things I couldn't really put into phrases or labels before. So, for instance, I grew up with Judith Butler's Gender Trouble. I kind of feel like I'm a kind of born feminist, but this really helped me a lot to understand what's going on, or during my studies, was this very important and huge critique from what was called in those times, from the women of colour and women from the South, a huge critique towards white liberal feminists, and so this was absolutely fundamental for my intellectual becoming, I would say. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Those early years also opened doors to experiences that would quietly shape the questions driving her work today.

Janine Dahinden  

I was also living in Zurich, and I was living in a commune. I mean, this was the form of living I did until my 30s. So, living with people, we tried to create new forms of families. I think it was a very, for me, a very interesting time. And it was also a time, I think, kind of the fundamental for what I was interested in later in my academic career was already starting to build up. But it's really just two examples which I think still today have their impact on how I do research, how I do theorize the world, how I do theorize what I see on the field. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Janine has a gift for seeing people and the places they call home, which defines her work, and it partly stems from her love of photography and the outdoors. Janine says that not many people know this about her, but when she can combine her two passions, it becomes an important part of her routine. 

Janine Dahinden  

I really like being in nature, and particularly moving in nature, I'm running, I'm hiking, I'm biking. I'm not doing this for competition or something, but because being in the nature is good for myself. And I think if we do this kind of job, we all have to find our ways, how we can refill our batteries. And for me, it is really moving by being in the nature. And I'm doing this quite often, so at times it's just overwhelming, and then I take pictures, but I'm often outside, and it's really something I really like to do.

Maggie Perzyna  

Janine's creative vision and interests extend past university walls, but they don't exclusively lead to nature. They also reached the cinema where she's a different kind of silent observer.

Janine Dahinden  

I can't talk about cinema because I really like cinema. The Locarno Film Festival, I went every year when I was young, also when my son was almost three months old or six months old, we went. So, that's really something I always liked. So, I really enjoyed it. I met with a friend there. We watched every day, three or four movies. And you know, I like this kind of film festival going. They really immerse into the film. 

Maggie Perzyna  

One of her favorite films is called, 'Oslo Stories', an English trilogy by Norwegian filmmaker Dag Johan Haugerud.

Janine Dahinden  

I really liked it. I liked the way the characters have been presented, the way people talked to each other. In this film was a lot of talking. So, it wasn't a film where really the artistic film thing was in the foreground. It was rather the dialogues, which I really liked.

Maggie Perzyna  

And Janine understood early in life that pursuing a career in migration research is sometimes like following a movie script complete with plot twists and hurdles to overcome.

Janine Dahinden  

You know, sometimes you have a career and there are twists and things going this direction and then in the other and I think that's very important also to say, because, particularly young scholars, at times, they feel like they have to make a decision and then go straight. But that, for me, was important. I was confronted very early in my childhood with these questions of unfairness or inequalities, and I couldn't put it, of course, in social science terminology, but I think this is one of my main motivations, really, to better understand inequalities, discrimination or unfairness.

Maggie Perzyna  

Janine's search for answers led her attention to the collapse of Yugoslavia in the early 90s. Her focus? the Albanian speaking migrants in the area who moved to Switzerland.

Janine Dahinden  

That's also why I basically started to write my PhD on social networks of Albanian speaking migrants from former Yugoslavia living in Switzerland. And this was a time where this group in Switzerland has been one of the most stigmatized and discriminated group. I mean, if you have been an Albanian speaker person from former Yugoslavia, you have been incredibly touched by racism, by discrimination, by everything. At the same time, we didn't know a lot about these people. It was more really about labels, stereotypes, about gender inequality, patriarchy, violence. So, a very complicated field, but this was the moment when I decided to work on the social network.

Maggie Perzyna  

For Janine, her work is about the people, first and foremost. They serve as both the catalyst and the byproduct of any discussion.

Janine Dahinden  

I stayed in this field of migration, even though I do not often do research with migraticized people, because I'm really more interested in how do we create societies by producing others. So, how can we create the "we" by excluding others? But of course, migrants are one of our, migranticization is one of the technologies how societies reproduce themselves.

Maggie Perzyna  

Janine's belief in people and community doesn't only apply to her research. She hopes her work leaves behind a similar blueprint for her peers and the academic community she represents.

Janine Dahinden  

I hope I can leave some trace in when it comes to critical and reflexive thinking within migration studies. I think what I care about a lot is actually to have a kind of, maybe to put it in scientific words, a kind of feminist ethics of care within academia, meaning, I prefer collaboration to competition. I prefer thinking in networks instead of just thinking myself. I very much care about supporting young scholars. I tried to do my best. Of course, you always can do better, probably, but I think if I also would be quite happy if I could leave some traces in this way. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Now that we’ve been introduced to Janine, we’re bringing Maissam Nimer into the conversation. She’s a sociologist at Akdeniz University in Turkey. Maissam’s research focuses on education, language, inequality, and the political economy of migration research. Drawing on her own experience as a migrant, she critically examines how research agendas and policies are shaped by the priorities of the Global North. It’s so wonderful to have you both on the show today!

Janine Dahinden  

Hi, Maggie. It's great being here, and thanks a lot for an invitation.

Maissam Nimer  

Hello, Maggie. I'm also very happy to be here. Thanks.

Maggie Perzyna  

So, let's just dive in. Janine, in what has become a foundational paper, you made a plea for the demigranticization of research on migration and integration. What did you mean and why does it matter for how we study migration today? 

Janine Dahinden  

Well, first of all, thanks a lot for this invitation. It's really a pleasure to join you and to discuss also with Maissam, whom I really appreciate. Maybe I can answer your question by starting in this way; well the category 'migrant' and often together with related terms, like 'immigrants', 'people with migration background', 'second generation migrants', 'refugees'. Now they often have this facade of being self evident. This means that these labels, they are routinely used and employed in academia, in political, in public discourses, but also in everyday interactions. So, this means that actually, we have a kind of huge normalization of the idea that there is something like migrant and non-migrant citizens. The scholarship has clearly demonstrated that rather than being objective or stable, the label 'migrant' is actually deeply normative and political, and in particular, it is born out of the logic of the modern nation state, but also intertwined, I think, with other legal historical legacies, like, for instance, coloniality. So, what do I want to say is that not all human movements or mobilities are actually classified as migration. We can think of tourists or of highly qualified who we call maybe expatriates. So, there are some particular process that only some people, they become ascribed migrancy, or also, not only ascribed, but also they come to be seen or categorized, governed and hierarchized as migrants, always in opposition to these others who are not marked or non-migrant citizens. And I think this difference is extremely important also for migration studies. If migration the category migration, is actually the result of the modern nation state logic, then migration studies might also be the result of the modern nation state logic. If migration is always the anomaly, then we need experts to investigate it, to make research on it, etc. So, when we have this kind of migranticized worldview, migration scholars might run the risk of become reproducers of this migranticized worldview, and this can be problematic for different reasons, I would argue, and others, I think, argue as well. First, does this means in our work, we can reproduce hegemonic power structures which are deeply embedded in the nation state logic, this idea there is something natural, we nativist, non-migrant and others, and we, they are a threat to us, and there are migration regimes that have been built up, etc. But also, I think even more, in today's discussions, which are, I think, very problematic, at least in Europe, where really right-wing narratives have been deeply normalized, we can actually play in the hand of these ideologies. So, there is this risk that migration scholars become kind of migranticizers themselves. And my suggestion was this couple of years ago to de-migranticize the research. So, to take a step back and actually to see how does it come that some people are ascribed migrancy? When is the condition important to be a migrant, empirically, theoretically, but also politically? So, it's really stepping back from this assumption that migration is an objective category, and I argue that when we de-migranticize our research, then we really better position to examine how migration matters, both to the individuals concerned, but also to the state and others, and we can much better point also to the violence which is produced by these migration regimes which are put in place and so on.

Maggie Perzyna  

Maissam, Janine nominated you to join the conversation today. How has her work influenced your thinking about the way that knowledge is produced?

Maissam Nimer  

Yeah, so I'm very glad to have been nominated by Janine, and I'm very happy we work together. We're together on a reflexivities board, and for many years now, we've been collaborating closely in the same kind of mindset, and what I can do is maybe echo some of what she said about this wave, this danger that has been very dominant among migration scholars that had risen before that had already been at a summon where migration scholars are reproducing and are following imperatives of policy makers in terms of the terminology that is being used. And this migranticization is part of that phenomenon where policymakers are the ones who are setting the agenda, and scholars are often reproducing. I myself have fallen into that trap, as have I have been myself labeled as a migration scholar. I became one after 2015 and I must say that reading Janine’s piece was a turning point for me. I became more aware of it, and I started looking at seeing how we can move from seeing migration as a special, separate phenomenon, challenging the idea of even the field, and that is an idea that has been more and more dominant lately, this idea of going beyond migration studies as a self-contained field, but rather whether or not this field should exist at all. And this has been gaining a lot of traction, as I said, in among scholars, we can talk more about that. But instead, what I've been trying to go towards is looking more at how people move across social ecologies. So, instead of when we are regrouping migrants and non-migrants, as Janine pointed out, in such a rigid way, we miss seeing the commonalities in the struggle between migrants and other non-migrants, so and other undesirables, what are called as undesirables in the literature as well, which could be Roma populations, which could be ethnic minorities, etc. And so people who are, for instance, from the same class position, may share more, whether they are migrants or not. So, it's basically class could dominate those and by rigidly separating them, we are undermining the potential for struggle to emerge, for a kind of, for solidarity to emerge between people who have more in common than just being migrants.

Maggie Perzyna  

So, maybe just to build on that, how do you both imagine the field of migration studies evolving if de-migranticization becomes a guiding principle? Maissam?

Maissam Nimer  

I would think of research similar to what Janine suggested about looking more into social theories that might integrate migration as a part of it but not taking it the other way around. Rather than having the migration studies being the heart of the topic, migration could be one phenomenon among many, or one identity marker among many, because one cannot deny, of course, that being a migrant comes with its own privileges and limitations and barriers and difficulties. But it has to be exactly as said, as part of a wider range of identity markers. And so, in that sense, migration trajectories can be looked at within class structures, labour markets, histories of marginalization. In that sense, connecting the migrants, as I mentioned earlier, with other undesirables, other racialized group, other minorities, or Roma communities, for instance, but also, not necessarily. Also, with other people who share similar characteristics in other ways than being migrants. And so, in that sense, migration would no longer be treated as isolated, as an isolated field, but as part of a bigger study of society as a whole. How I envision it.

Janine Dahinden  

Yeah, I think, I think I have quite similar ideas, actually. Well, first of all, I think it's really interesting, because quite a lot of scholars have taken up this idea of de-magnetization, and they put pushed it further, and they changed the meanings. And that is really nice, I would say. But I think what to be common to what I observe in this field is that we might go towards questions of how are differences socially organized and produced, and my migranticization is always, I think, intersectionally with other categories of difference, really an important issue here, but really bring it back, as Maissam said, to social theory. So, what I'm really interested in my work is how those societies produce themselves by producing the others. Because you cannot produce others without producing yourself. No, it's all it's always relational. So, I cannot talk about you without talking about us. And I think that's really interesting. And migranticization, or what I call migranticization, technology of power, is really yet to produce and reproduce also this national unit. And if you go towards the social theory, then you can take it on board migranticization, but also other categories of difference, and maybe also on a more on a policy level, I think de-migranticization is also interesting when it comes to policy, because we could think about social policy in maybe a rather traditional way, in terms of fighting struggles, against inequalities, taking migranticization on board, but in all these complexities, also Maissam actually pointed to. So, I think this is really, really important, not policies for migrants or migrantized people, but fighting inequalities through social policy in a more general way, while being really, really sensitive to intersectional workings of inequalities.

Maggie Perzyna  

Maissam, you've spoken about how your own experience as a migrant shaped your perspective as a sociologist, can you share how your journey led you to migration research?

Maissam Nimer  

Perhaps I can start by the fact that I was born into "quote", I mean, I don't know if I, I mean, I learned later to call it refugeehood, but I was born away from the country where my parents grew up, so, I obviously did not know that country because it was war torn at the time when I was born. And so, it's Lebanon and so, I didn't even know that country then, and I grew up 12 years without knowing it, but knowing as a narrative, as a dream, or as a memory of my parents. And so, I set foot there for the first time at that age, and then when I was 12, and then when the war had calmed down, or almost was, almost over. And so, that kind of it didn't at that time, of course, didn't feel like refugeehood. I didn't put a name on it. I didn't put anything on it. So, it was just the way things were. But then later on, my academic path took me in a direction where I actually studied. I did my PhD at that time on social inequalities and development programs in the Middle East. I feel like this particularity of having been migrant slash refugee myself, and studying and having been brought into this field of looking has made me more, as opposed to, perhaps a position where I could have been more privileged and less - I see things, perhaps a little bit more with a little bit more reflexivity, let's say. And that's maybe what brought me to questioning the migration field as a whole and being sensitive maybe to those ideas. I mean, it helped me see what others, perhaps, are not seeing at the moment, if they come from a privileged place where they are not. I mean, some are seeing it despite not having had this experience. So, it's not, it's not a sine qua non, but it's also, it did help me, part personally, to see those things and kind of question and hold things not at face value, in terms of those concepts, in terms of this integration, seeing the symbolic violence involved in the way policymakers and the way researchers also are conducting fieldwork in this area, in this field. Particularly in the South, the way it responds to imperatives from the North, where the funding comes from, the political economy of the research that's hidden. So, I feel like my experience kind of sensitized me in some ways, and that's what makes it important, maybe, and valuable.

Maggie Perzyna  

Thank you so much for sharing your story, Maissam. 

Maggie Perzyna  

Both of you question the term integration. Why is that word so problematic, and what kinds of assumptions does it carry? 

Janine Dahinden  

Well, I think it connects to what we have been discussing before. Because the question is, who actually is seen as in need, as being in need of integration. In general, it's migrantisized people who are declared to be in need of integration. So, we have, it's very, very closely linked, of course, to this idea of migranticization or de-migranticization. And I mean, there is, there are some recent, really great work on integrationism, also from colleagues, from our Standing Committee at IMICOE on reflexivities and knowledge production, from Iva [Dodevska], from Stefan [Manser-Egli] and others. And the idea is really that, basically, there are always people who are seen as not in need of integration. And those who are seen as in need of integration, they are migrantized subjects. And this means, of course, they are actually excluded by just the idea of integration, because they are defined as not belonging, even if they belong for a long time. So, this is quite, I think it's a quite similar process at stake, which we have been discussing, actually, before.

Maissam Nimer  

Yeah, here I completely echo Janine's viewpoint. It also problematically reflects what we discussed as the policy driven agendas of researchers. So, it shows that research is often framed in response to the policy makers agendas, and priorities, and imperatives. And in that sense, we end up just trying to we are trapped, let's say we become trapped in a situation where we have to solve the integration problem. So, it becomes like something, like an issue which the policymaker wants to solve, and they need sociologists to tell them how to solve it. So, in that sense, it becomes dangerous as scholars. If that becomes our mere function, then we kind of lost the whole idea of doing sociology, or of doing social sciences in a more constructive way, or in a more productive way, and we become just basically serving policymakers, rather than becoming concerned with what people are really experiencing and understanding the phenomenon.

Maggie Perzyna  

Such an interesting point. So, maybe building on that, if you had the ear of policymakers tomorrow, what would you urge them to rethink or redesign? Janine, let's start with you. 

Janine Dahinden  

Well, I think that's a very difficult question, because it's, I think what we're talking about this on the one and it goes, it is about policies, but it is about much more fundamental things. It's really about structural issues in terms of, I mean, could we have states without the nation in it, for instance? I mean, how can we create societies and maybe also feeling of belonging without national belonging? I think this, this really would change a lot. But this is not about policy. This is really about visions of another world, I would say. So, when it just comes about policy, I really think we should absolutely reframe policies in terms of social policy, which is, as I said before, really focusing on trying to get rid of all these inequalities which we see, of all these racisms. Also we have different form of racism which partly are, of course, also related to migranticization, but also to racialization. So, it should be a kind of anti-migrantism, if you like, to policies as much as anti-racist policies. But then again, how can you do this? When we structure, we have this nation state, which have this very, very strong logic, of course, to exceptionalize certain mobilities across borders, or certain people living in countries they do not have, do not have the citizenship, for instance. So, I feel like policy is one thing we can start with, but actually we also need to develop really bigger visions. And I think we clearly see this nowadays, also, in particular in Europe, but also, I think in Canada or in the US, that we really need to think about new forms of living together, because we have right wing narratives which are so deeply normalized meanwhile. And the question really is, how can we change this again? How can we come up with other narratives beyond the problematic migrant, who needs to be governed, who needs be integrated, who needs to be assimilated, and so on.

Maggie Perzyna  

Maissam any thoughts?

Maissam Nimer  

Yeah, yeah, I'll build on this by maybe giving a very concrete example from my work. So, when we look at specifically in the field of education and language, which I looked at for several years, there is this policy that started in Europe, namely in Germany, as per my observation. I mean, it might have it might be happening also elsewhere, but I know for a fact that it is in Germany, and that's where it kind of came through to Turkey. And it's this policy of creating what were called integration classes and the idea consists of putting students who are of migrant backgrounds into separate classes which are called integration classes. And those have been widely criticized in the literature, because what happens in those classes is it becomes, there's no clear endpoint. So, people are lumped with other people, with the same disadvantages and they are not subject to very objective criteria. It very much depends on the teacher's evaluation of the person. And then the teacher decide after one, two or three years if that person can join back the normal classes or not. But of course, this means a delay of one to three years in that child's education trajectory, so they become late in their curriculum, and they kind of depend on those and a lot of things come into that judgment, into that subjective judgment. Also, literature has looked at that very widely. And so, Turkey, when the Syrian presence increased, they also saw that model as a model that needs to be adopted. They saw it as a there were a lot of complaints from directors and teachers, "we are not able to handle all those newcomers who are not speaking Turkish and who are not managing to follow". So, they thought that this model would be good to replicate, and they started replicating it here as well, and it had similar effects, if not worse. I mean, it kind of put them on a separate scheme. And then in the end, what those students have ended up doing, in many cases, is going into Imam Hatip schools. They are caught. So, those are schools that are forming Imams, and they are more religiously based, and the fact that there's more Arabic happening there means that those students don't need to struggle so much with Turkish as and they have a lot of Arabic courses to counteract the Turkish. So, in some ways, it allowed them to join the curriculum. But of course, those Imam Hatip schools are our technical schools. They're not in the mainstream, and they kind of are not easy to cross from, from there to universities and so it's kind of created this different and unique setup - the danger of reifying so, strongly the migrants and non-migrants, rather than finding policies and developing policies that are more equal to everyone, or that are more fair. And so, in that sense, maybe looking away from those integration focused frameworks where integration is a problem, and rather an equal access framework where rights are prioritized, what Janine said, a more equal society where opportunities are equal participation is thought of for all residents, regardless of their status, regardless and in that sense, yeah, that will avoid those types of, yeah, very essentializing and very marginalizing policies.

Maggie Perzyna  

Yeah, that's a great example of how the way we think about things actually plays out on the ground. So, maybe just to close up the conversation, when you think about where the study of migration is headed, what gives you hope and what keeps you up at night? Janine?

Janine Dahinden  

Well that's actually a very important question, I think, currently. Particularly in current circumstances, and maybe they are - I think I would like to distinguish between what gives me hope in academia and what gives me hope in the world. When it comes to these issues. I start with the second one. I mean migranticization is, I think this has become clear, extremely producing, really violences and it can be deadly. I mean, migration regimes can be deadly. We see this in the Mediterranean. They produce huge forms of racism, of inequalities and so on. But they also, these processes, also produce solidarities. I mean, solidarities often people together who - migrantized and non- migrantize people - they're starting projects. They're starting to volunteer. They're starting to, I mean, they have to be critical to everything which is humanitarianism. But nevertheless, I think there are new alliances and new solidarities also that are created also now. And I think this we we should build on this, and we should kind of try to better understand these solidarities. Where are they good? Where are they problematic, and what, how can we kind of sustain them also structurally. So, this is something which I think can give us hope, and this is a way also we could go forward. And within academia, I really think what we also see within migration studies is a change, these more critical voices. I think that really become more important in these last ten years. So, there are so many people thinking exactly about these issues. How can we do research without reproducing this power structure? How can we do research without becoming migrantizers? How can we do research differently? And I really think there's a bunch of people who suggested how we can do it differently without essentializing, without naturalizing this whole kind of category. I feel like it was more marginal, like ten years ago, but it really seems that this is more important, and also we have all this discussion currently in academia. Why does it make sense that I do research? How can I do research that it makes sense? How is being activist and doing research? How can I kind of do this together? What does this mean? What is engaged scholarship? So, I really think there are very important things also going on within academia which are quite also destabilizing, maybe some old structures. But I think this is important, and this gives me hope to be very, very clear in this, in this regard. So, these are just two fields where I think we also have possibilities to maybe go in slightly in other directions, and maybe change things also a little bit, even in historic times. 

Maggie Perzyna  

You didn't answer what keeps you up at night, which I kind of like, because you went to the hopeful part [laughs]

Janine Dahinden  

Yes, because…

Maggie Perzyna  

I don't even know if I should ask [laugh].

Janine Dahinden  

It's really so dark currently, so really, that's I really feel in this moment we need visions, and we need solidarities, and I see this also. We need also to change the way we do research. Not put out of force what we have, but also other that we can do it slightly differently at times. And I think them, in particular, young scholars. They think a lot about these issues, and they suggest other new forms of doing research, and I think that's promising also.

Maggie Perzyna

Maissam your thoughts?

Maissam Nimer  

Yeah, I'm again going to go into a very specific example, maybe to show the hope, to show that there is hope. And it has to do with the with what brought me and Janine also to work together, which is the IMISCOE network. This is the one of the biggest networks of migration scholars in Europe. And they organize a yearly conference and other events and so there, the last two years, the big conference that they hold, which, which hosts more thousands of researchers, migrant. Migration researchers have been about this, gaining reflexivity about those topics, and looking beyond the way we do research. And what is particularly interesting is that this particular body, this IMISCOE body, is founded by some of the very scholars that first popularized terms like integration. And so they were the ones who were working mostly in those policy terms and following policy imperatives. So, in that way, it feels like one, and in particular, the board, which I am proudly part of is, fighting the beast from inside the belly, as one might say, so it is very much like one of the biggest entity that is promoting this migrant, migrantized research that is actually opening the eyes of younger scholars, of people who are working in that field. So, that gives hope. Systemic change is, I mean, it's going to be undeniably slow. It's not going to be overnight. And the conversations are gaining a lot of tractions. And there are, of course, open questions that remain, as Janine said, how can we practically do this? How can we demigrantize while doing research and so those, I mean, a lot of them, are unsolved. There are some thoughts, some very good initiatives to start thinking. But are they going to really lead to meaningful transformation? And perhaps, my what keeps me up at night, at an academic level. Is it going to be a few years of this, and then it's going to be tokenistic, and going to be, will it stay at that level where we are just acting in every paper we do? Are we going to look like we are trying to go beyond that and then still continue to reproduce the same discourse in a few years, especially after this? Is it going to be a wave that's going to die or is it going to be a systemic change that's going to change, especially considering the societal level and the way policy is going, and that's also at the society level what keeps me up at night is this rise of populism, this dark place that the world has become, as Janine says, and there's nowhere to look that keeps us hopeful. So, in that sense, in that setup, how can we still have hope? Solidarity is a very nice one. I must say, I really like that, this perspective of going into, 'yes, let's be more together. And you know this negative and dark situation in which we are, if it does prompt solidarity, I same as Janine, would be very hopeful, and would be happy to be in that struggle.

Maggie Perzyna  

Well, you've both made amazing contributions to the field and we're so excited to keep following your work. So, we're trying something new this season. So, bear with us. We're going to do a last little lightning round. I'm going to just ask you a few quick questions, and we just want, like quick answers, just to end things off in a fun way. So, what is your favorite book?

Janine Dahinden  

Oh, that's a difficult one, not because I have so many favorite books. I like to theorize, and I like also feminists, like I really love the text of bell hooks, I must say. And at the same time, Michel Foucault with these kind of books, which really makes me think and makes me see the world differently. Also, as a scholar who really talked to me, I would say.

Maggie Perzyna  

Any thoughts Maissam, or no?

Maissam Nimer  

I'm hoping I'm not going to pronounce it wrong, but it's by the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adishi, her book Americana, resonated very much with me.

Maggie Perzyna  

I loved Americana. Great book. The second question, what policy buzzword do you think should disappear?

Janine Dahinden  

Policy buzzword, integration should disappear.

Maggie Perzyna 

Perfect.

Maissam Nimer  

I will think of it after we hang up, I'm sure. But, but integration, certainly.

Maggie Perzyna 

Favorite place that you've done field work or research, Janine?

Janine Dahinden 

Favorite place I've done research or field work...actually talking to cabaret dancers. Cool, where this was in Switzerland, yeah, in cabarets or outside of cabarets. It was really just a milieu I was not at all familiarized with, and this was so interesting. I mean, cabaret dances in Switzerland, of course, they are not Swiss. They always come from somewhere. So, now they, there is actually, there was a permit for cabaret dancers which now does not exist anymore. So, this was a couple of years ago, but I think this was one of the most of the researchers I really learned so much.

Maggie Perzyna  

Well, incidentally, the Cabaret is one of my favorite movies. Maissam, favorite place you've done field work or research.

Maissam Nimer 

In my case, it was in the southeast of Turkey in a city called Marden. I think the setting was just like a dreamy setting where it's a city made of it's constructed within the rocks, and it's a bit of a deserted type of climate. And so there, it's beautiful. It's all like made of those very beige rocks everywhere. And so it just felt so nice to navigate that city, to talk to the people. It was really magical.

Maggie Perzyna 

And the last question, one thing that we can't learn about you from your CV, Janine?

Janine Dahinden 

That I'm really a football supporter. I love football. Amazing! Maissam.?

Maissam Nimer 

I do really love to travel. And it is cliche.

Maggie Perzyna  

What's the favorite place you've ever been to travel?

Maissam Nimer  

I would say Vietnam, but there's also Egypt. Is also on my top place, this modern place where I did the fieldwork. Also it mixes the influences. There's a lot of Arabic speakers, there's a lot of Kurdish speakers, and they all kind of come together, Christians, Muslims together. And I think it's kind of, it is really a beautiful place.

Maggie Perzyna 

Well, I think that brings us to the end. Thank you both so much for taking the time out to share. It's really great to have you both, and it will be an exciting first episode of the season. I can't wait.

Janine Dahinden 

Great. Thank you.

Maissam Nimer 

Thank you.

Maggie Perzyna

Thanks so much to Janine Dahinden and Maissam Nimer for joining me today—and thank you for listening. This episode was produced by Toronto Metropolitan University journalism student Kristian Cuaresma, alongside Executive Producer Angela Glover. Special thanks to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and CERC Migration for making this conversation possible.  If you’re enjoying Borders & Belonging, follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, and share your thoughts with us on LinkedIn. For more on today’s conversation, check out the show notes.