The FSS Dissertation Award seeks to increase the high quality of empirical research in the broad field of social sciences. The granting of the FSS Dissertation Award is open to all FSS former PhD students that defended their dissertations in the past two years at the faculty.
Rosanne Anholt (Political Science & Public Administration)
Governing (In)security and the Politics of Resilience
Promotor: W.M. Wagner
Summary
Little is known about the significance and implications of governments, donors, international organizations, and (international) non-governmental organizations turning to ‘building resilience’ in response to crises of insecurity. Analysis of European Union policy documents in the area of security, humanitarian aid, and development assistance and interviews with humanitarian and development professionals working under the banner of the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan (3RP) in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, show that ‘resilience’ is understood as the selfreliance of affected states and populations, and that ‘building resilience’ requires localized responses and collaboration across long-standing policy siloes. In the context of the 3RP, ‘resilience-building’ aims at containing refugees in ‘the region’ by framing refugees as an economic development opportunity for refugee-hosting countries. These findings point to the need to continuously and critically reflect on interests and agendas informing policy and practice, and more broadly, on what is necessary for vulnerable individuals and social, economic, and political systems to recover from crisis.
Elena Bonanini (Social and Cultural Anthropology)
Reshaping Humanitarian Intervention in Greece
Promotor: D. Dalakoglous
Summary
This dissertation focuses on the reconfiguration of bordering and migration practices in Greece triggered by the implementation of the EU-Turkey Statement in March 2016 as a culmination of a series of political decisions on migrations aimed to address what was labelled a ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015. Such measures form part of the EU’s migration management, through practices of securitization of borders and humanitarian intervention. I approached the topic by examining the humanitarian intervention provided to newcomers, utilizing as an observation point a local non-governmental organization to explore how the measures are translated on the ground into the daily practices of humanitarian care. Building on the differing management of migration systems generated by the new measure according to geographical location – mainland and islands – I conducted my fieldwork research between April 2018 and May 2019 on a small southeastern Aegean Island, Tilos, and in Athens on the mainland, in an accommodation facility and a centre that provides integrated services respectively. The findings collected in both fieldsites ultimately indicate that the ‘refugee crisis’, attributed to the numerous arrivals, materializes instead in the reception system and the way in which migration is managed.
Robert Larruina (Organization Sciences)
The Winding Road to Meaningful Integration: A Ten-Year Multi-Perspective Approach to Unraveling Refugee Reception and Integration in the Netherlands
Promotor: K. Boersma & H. Ghorashi
Summary
Robert’s dissertation focuses on the reception and integration of refugees in the Netherlands by studying the work of civil society, volunteers, governmental organisations and refugees and their interactions between 2011 and 2021. His research aims to understand if refugees had the necessary social and institutional conditions to achieve meaningful integration and how different challenges at the social and political levels influenced that. By meaningful integration, he understands the integration that makes sense to refugees because it aligns with their lifeworlds and considers their possibilities and ambitions. In his research, he used the notion of bordering because this concept helps us see and understand from everyday actions to more subtle forms of exclusion that prevent refugees from having a fulfilling life in the Netherlands. The main motivation behind his research was observing civil society organisations trying to make refugee reception and integration more viable and the challenges and limitations governmental organisations presented to them. What is more, no matter the resources and time allocated to the refugee reception and integration in NL, there is a lot to be done (as constantly seen in the news) to give the right opportunities for refugees to become part of Dutch society.
Felicia Loecherbach (Communication Science)
Diversity of News Consumption in a Digital Information Environment
Promotor: W. van Atteveldt
Summary
This dissertation examines the impact of a digital information environment on media diversity and the types of political news people consume. The study is based on four sub-studies, two of which focus on methodological and conceptual challenges faced by researchers in studying media diversity in the digital environment. In Chapter 2, a systematic literature review of over 200 academic articles was conducted to identify gaps in existing research, revealing that most studies on media diversity rely on outdated ideas from an era dominated by mass media, and do not consider the impact of personalization and fragmentation. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the challenges associated with collecting digital traces for research purposes, including data access, privacy, and usability of data collection tools. The chapter offers recommendations on how researchers can collect data from multiple platforms and devices to improve their studies. Chapter 4 and 5 examine the impact of fragmentation and personalization on news diversity. The main findings of these studies show that fragmentation leads to less diverse news consumption, whereas personalization leads to more niche and diverse consumption. Overall, the dissertation concludes that the digital environment has fundamentally changed the way people engage with news and that media diversity research needs to evolve to reflect these changes, considering aspects such as personalization and fragmentation.
Moos Pozzo (Sociology)
Language playfulness of contextual navigators: Young refugees’ language strategies for inclusion in the Netherlands
Promotor: H. Ghorashi
Summary
Moos Pozzo conducted PhD research with young refugees between the ages of 12 and 23 in the Netherlands. Her research is entitled “Language playfulness of contextual navigators: Young refugees’ language strategies for inclusion in the Netherlands”. It focuses on the experiences and employment of languages during their participation and integration trajectories from their stay in the Dutch asylum seekers centres until living in society for several years. Despite that the integration policy increasingly emphasizes that learning Dutch is key to participation and integration, the language strategies of young refugees – consisting of their language learning, language choices and multilingual co-creations - have so far remained unexamined. By including these young people in the choices of methods and eventually through co-creation of the entire research process, the research uncovers how they constantly develop and adapt their language strategies to deal with the paradoxes between participation and integration policy expectations and their real-life experiences.
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