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Anja Karlsson Franck

Senior Lecturer

School of Global Studies
Telephone
+46 31-786 14 14
Mail
anja.franck@globalstudies.gu.se
Visiting address
Konstepidemins väg 2
41124 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 700
40530 Göteborg

About Anja Karlsson Franck

I am Associate Professor in Peace and Development Studies and hold a PhD in economic geography.

My main research interests relate to international migration and borders. I am particularly interested in how migrants and refugees navigate increasingly restrictive and securitized border regimes - and how the strategies that they adopt in turn impact states' ability to govern migration. I have for example studied how a precarious legal status impacts how we understand and maneuver the urban borderscape, how (petty) corruption is used as a means to navigate internal border controls and how humor and laughter can function as a coping strategy as well a means to refuse subordination.

In my ongoing research projects I collaborate with scholars from the University of Gothenburg (GU) and the University of Amsterdam (UvA) to further investigate these issues. Together with Darshan Vigneswaran (UvA) I work in a project funded by Vetenskapsrådet (VR) to study how migrants from Myanmar/Burma seek protection during their migration trajectories to Malaysia and Thailand. In another VR-funded project (run together with Joseph Anderson and Joakim Berndtsson (GU) and Saskia Bonjour, Polly Pallister-Wilkins and Darshan Vigneswaran (UvA)) we examine implementation and accountability in the EU's outsourcing of its borders to Africa.

My interest in how migrants and refugees navigate increasingly securitized border landscapes has also led to an interest in societal security at large. In a recently initiated project (with Maria Stern (GU), Richard Georgi (GU), Chris Agius (Swinburne University of Technology) and Simon Turner (Lund University)) we investigate the phenomenon of "prepping" and what it tells us about how societal security and preparedness are being imagined and practiced, and by whom.

In my teaching I have, apart from issues relating to migration and security, taken an interest in football as a societal phenomenon. I convene the course Football and Global Politics, in which we take an interest in the connections between supporter cultures and identity, the commercialization of modern football and governance.