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Andrea Spehar

Senior Lecturer

Department of Political Science
Telephone
+46 31-786 11 92
Mail
andrea.spehar@pol.gu.se
Fax
+46 31-786 45 99
Visiting address
Sprängkullsgatan 19
41123 Göteborg
Room number
B430
Postal address
Box 711
40530 Göteborg

About Andrea Spehar

Presentation

Andrea Spehar is associate professor in political science and director of Centre on Global Migration (CGM) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Current research

Her fields of interest comprise migration and gender policy development in Europe. Her work has appeared, among others, in the Journal of European Public Policy, Comparative European Politics, Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, Eastern European Politics & Societies and International Feminist Journal of Politics.

She is currently working on the following research projects:

Refugee Migration and Cities: Social Institutions, Political Governance and Integration in Jordan, Turkey and Sweden (SIPGI) (2019-2025). This project asks how urban municipalities address forced migration, considering how it not only changes the social composition of neighborhoods but also influences norms and behaviors within them. This project provides an infrastructure for collaboration between international scholars with expertise in migration studies, political science, and anthropology in Sweden and the Middle East. Using innovative methods including large N surveys, elite interviews, urban ethnography, and experiments using virtual reality 360-video technology, this project investigates and analyzes the nexus between political and social institutions in shaping processes of integration and fills a critical gap in migration studies. Hosted at the Centre on Global Migration (C GM), School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg (UG), it consolidates collaboration with the Program on Governance and Local Development (UG), the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University, and the Migration Research Centre at Koc University, Istanbul. The project is project funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Citizen and democracy education for newly arrived adult migrants? A policy ethnographic study of Civic Orientation in three urban municipalities in Sweden (2019-2023). The aim of this policy ethnographic project is to study the program ‘Civic Orientation for newly arrived adult migrants’, which was introduced in 2010. The research focuses on how this program is interpreted, understood and organized locally in three urban municipalities in Sweden. Civic orientation aims to facilitate integration and includes conveying ‘Swedish’ values. Empirically, the project fills a knowledge gap about what happens in the actual educational practices, how actors interact and communicate and how policy is implemented. The project will be carried out by an interdisciplinary team, which includes a multilingualism scholar, a political scientist, a sociologist and an educational researcher. The civic orientation will be studied at three different societal levels: a policy and organizational level, an institutional education level and a participants' individual level with stories of experiences from the program. Several methods will be used: text analysis, observation, recording and interviews. Theoretically, the project will contribute, in addition to combining a discursive narrative approach and new institutionalism theory, to intersectional perspectives on migration and integration, with special focus on ethnicity, gender and religion. Dialogue seminars with the organizers of Civic Orientation will be organized for exchange of experiences and presentation of results. The project is project funded by the Swedish Research Council.

MERGING “Housing for immigrants and community integration in Europe and beyond: Strategies, policies, dwellings, and governance”. (2020-2023). MERGING is an interdisciplinary H2020 project of migrant integration through participatory housing initiatives. It brings together seven disciplines from 10 partners to test an innovative approach aiming to facilitate and ensure the sustainability of migrants’ integration process. MERGING reviews existing knowledge, integration policies and initiatives across macro (European migration policies), meso (regional economic & social systems) and micro (individual practices) levels in which housing occupies a prominent place.