Nauja Kleist
Biographic Data
| ID | 87479 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nauja Kleist |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nauja |
| FAMILY NAME | Kleist |
| SIGNATURE | KLEIST N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Danish Institute for International Studies |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4154-427X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 347 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Introduction to the Special Issue
An Integral Part of Our Lives”
This article examines Somali WhatsApp groups as socio-technical gathering spaces used for emergency assistance during crises. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Nairobi and Mogadishu, and a case study of a WhatsApp group mobilising drought relief in 2022, we explore how platform usage is shaped by social norms, care practices and kinship structures to enable mobilisation, coordination, and distribution of aid. Inspired by scholarship on communic…
Care and Politics in Action
This paper examines the humanitarian engagement of Somali diaspora businesswomen in Zambia and it interacts with political and commercial interests. Focusing on a network of businesswomen in Lusaka and their chairwoman, Guddomiso Shamso Sheikh Ali, we investigate the gendered mobilisation, delivery, and communication of emergency relief in response to the 2020 Qardho flash floods in Puntland, Somalia. The ethnographic case study employs qualitati…
Mediating Mobility in West Africa
How do migrants enact their mobilities in contexts where formalized labor migration is minimal, and where the European fight against irregular African migration is restricting the possibilities for informal border crossings? And which roles do cultural norms, social institutions, and individual agency play in facilitating migration? To answer these questions, this article offers a comparative reflection on the growing interest in the mediation of…
Moving Horizons
This article delves into the experiences of hypermobile Somali migrant youth, who have moved frequently with their families across multiple countries and continents. Born to refugee parents in Europe or North America, their lives are influenced by their parents' pursuit of a better life, including security, education and cultural and religious values, thereby decentering narrow hierarchies of destination. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Türkiy…
‘These days, things have changed’
While climate-related mobility has been part of life in Africa for centuries, existing literature on migration in the context of climate change generally lacks a historical perspective. This paper historicises climate-related migration in the Northern Savannah Zone of Ghana, with specific focus on the Upper West Region, drawing on climate data, a survey of 403 households, and interviews and focus group discussions with farmers. It demonstrates th…
Anja Simonsen
Anja Simonsen: Tahriib - Journeys into the unknown. An Ethnography of Uncertainty in Migration
Follow the computers
This paper contributes to our understanding of the social life of used computers in West Africa through analysis of the sending, distribution, recognition, and reception of recycled equipment. Based on multi-sited and longitudinal fieldwork in Denmark and Ghana, it employs George Marcus' suggestion of following things as a methodological selection device for ethnography. Theoretically, it engages the concept of affective circuits to address how t…
Mobility
In this keyword, I reflect upon African diaspora in a mobilities perspective, exploring analytical and empirical resonance and tensions. Despite the boom of diaspora and mobilities studies in the last decades, research explicitly linking these two literatures is still nascent. Exploring diaspora through a mobilities perspective, I suggest that attention to regimes of mobilities and migratory trajectories can yield important insights. The first pe…
Editors’ Statement
Trajectories of involuntary return migration to Ghana
Disrupted migration projects
This article contributes to the theorization of involuntary return and moral economies in the context of economic crisis and vulnerability prompted by restrictive migration regimes and conflicts. Drawing on fieldwork in a rural town in Ghana where international labour migration is an established livelihood, it analyses deportations from North Africa, Israel and Europe and emergency return from Libya following the civil war in 2011. The article ar…
Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration
This volume examines the relationship between hope, mobility, and immobility in African migration. Through case studies set within and beyond the continent, it demonstrates that hope offers a unique prism for analyzing the social imaginaries and aspirations which underpin migration in situations of uncertainty, deepening inequality, and delimited access to global circuits of legal mobility. \n \nThe volume takes departure in a mobility paradox th…
Introduction
This introduction discusses the hope boom in anthropological studies, suggesting that it reflects two converging developments: a sense of increasing unpredictability and crisis, and a sense of lack of political and ideological direction in this situation. We further identify two overall trends in the anthropological literature gathered under the rubric of hope: an emphasis on hopefulness against all odds and one on specific formations of hope and…
Pushing development
Flexible Politics of Belonging
This article analyses how the Ghanaian state has been involved in diaspora mobilisation since independence, including both the so-called African and Ghanaian diasporas. It presents two overall arguments. Firstly, the article shows that Ghanaian diaspora mobilisation draws upon the legacy of mid-century political Pan-Africanism, though with a neoliberal focus from the 1990s. From the 2000s, this legacy merges with the global trend of diaspora-deve…
Introduction
During the last decade, African diasporas have emerged as agents of change in international development thinking. Diasporas are being courted by donors, sending states, and NGOs for their contributions to development in their countries of origin; praised for their remittances, investments and knowledge transfer. This Introduction seeks to scrutinise critically these processes, examining issues of governance and categorisation in relation to Afric…
Modern chiefs
Journal Article Modern chiefs: Tradition, development and return among traditional authorities in Ghana Get access Nauja Kleist Nauja Kleist * *Nauja Kleist ([email protected]) is project senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. I am grateful for comments and questions from Rita Abrahamsen, Sara Dorman, and two anonymous reviewers as well as from Bruno Riccio, Kristine Krause, Katharina Schramm, Lindsay Whitfield, Peter Hans…
Negotiating Respectable Masculinity
Following years of civil war, many Somalis are displaced in Western countries as refugees or family re-unified persons. This situation has caused multiple losses of social position and upheavals in gender relations. Although both men and women are subject to these changes, Somalis describe the situations of men as more difficult. Taking departure in multi-sited fieldwork in Copenhagen, Somaliland and London, this article explores how Somalis nego…
Mobilising 'The Diaspora
Recently, the development initiatives of so-called 'diasporas' have gained the attention of policy-makers, scholars, NGOs, and migrants themselves. Migrants and 'diasporas' are seen as agents of development, who not only remit money to their countries of origin, but also transfer ideas of political, social, and cultural change. This article examines linkages between identity, transnational politics and development. Logics of transnational mobilis…
In the Name of Diaspora
Since the early 1990s, the concept of diaspora has propagated in migration studies and gradually been appropriated by many migrant groups, who describe themselves as ‘diasporas’ in relation to political mobilisation and self-portrayal. In this article, claims made in the name of diaspora and their conditions for possibility are analysed through a focus on Somali migration. Two main arguments are presented. Firstly, that the identity category of ‘…
A heart made of habhab but with Danish Manners – Negotiating Gender and Political Positioning in Transnational Fields
How do migrants negotiate gender and political positions in a transnational social field? What happens when migrants move between different locations? This paper examines these questions through a case study of a Somali woman and her life in Denmark and Somaliland
"In the interests of the quality of life of all citizens". Citizenship, Gender and Migration in a Globalising Europe
in the interests of the quality of life of all citizens". Citizenship, Gender and Migration in a Globalising Europe
Krig
Når hjemme er mere end et sted - Møder med Danmark blandt somaliere i diaspora
Hjem og tilhørsforhold får en særlig betydning i diaspora. En somalisk kvindes og mands italesættelser af livet i Danmark viser, hvordan møderne med velfærdssamfundet er med til at skabe forskellige fortællinger om "somalisk kultur", hvor køn står i centrum
Introduction
This introduction discusses the hope boom in anthropological studies, suggesting that it reflects two converging developments: a sense of increasing unpredictability and crisis, and a sense of lack of political and ideological direction in this situation. We further identify two overall trends in the anthropological literature gathered under the rubric of hope: an emphasis on hopefulness against all odds and one on specific formations of hope and…
Disrupted migration projects
This article contributes to the theorization of involuntary return and moral economies in the context of economic crisis and vulnerability prompted by restrictive migration regimes and conflicts. Drawing on fieldwork in a rural town in Ghana where international labour migration is an established livelihood, it analyses deportations from North Africa, Israel and Europe and emergency return from Libya following the civil war in 2011. The article ar…
In the Name of Diaspora
Since the early 1990s, the concept of diaspora has propagated in migration studies and gradually been appropriated by many migrant groups, who describe themselves as ‘diasporas’ in relation to political mobilisation and self-portrayal. In this article, claims made in the name of diaspora and their conditions for possibility are analysed through a focus on Somali migration. Two main arguments are presented. Firstly, that the identity category of ‘…
Mobilising 'The Diaspora
Recently, the development initiatives of so-called 'diasporas' have gained the attention of policy-makers, scholars, NGOs, and migrants themselves. Migrants and 'diasporas' are seen as agents of development, who not only remit money to their countries of origin, but also transfer ideas of political, social, and cultural change. This article examines linkages between identity, transnational politics and development. Logics of transnational mobilis…
Negotiating Respectable Masculinity
Following years of civil war, many Somalis are displaced in Western countries as refugees or family re-unified persons. This situation has caused multiple losses of social position and upheavals in gender relations. Although both men and women are subject to these changes, Somalis describe the situations of men as more difficult. Taking departure in multi-sited fieldwork in Copenhagen, Somaliland and London, this article explores how Somalis nego…
Introduction
During the last decade, African diasporas have emerged as agents of change in international development thinking. Diasporas are being courted by donors, sending states, and NGOs for their contributions to development in their countries of origin; praised for their remittances, investments and knowledge transfer. This Introduction seeks to scrutinise critically these processes, examining issues of governance and categorisation in relation to Afric…
Trajectories of involuntary return migration to Ghana
Modern chiefs
Journal Article Modern chiefs: Tradition, development and return among traditional authorities in Ghana Get access Nauja Kleist Nauja Kleist * *Nauja Kleist ([email protected]) is project senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. I am grateful for comments and questions from Rita Abrahamsen, Sara Dorman, and two anonymous reviewers as well as from Bruno Riccio, Kristine Krause, Katharina Schramm, Lindsay Whitfield, Peter Hans…
Flexible Politics of Belonging
This article analyses how the Ghanaian state has been involved in diaspora mobilisation since independence, including both the so-called African and Ghanaian diasporas. It presents two overall arguments. Firstly, the article shows that Ghanaian diaspora mobilisation draws upon the legacy of mid-century political Pan-Africanism, though with a neoliberal focus from the 1990s. From the 2000s, this legacy merges with the global trend of diaspora-deve…
Follow the computers
This paper contributes to our understanding of the social life of used computers in West Africa through analysis of the sending, distribution, recognition, and reception of recycled equipment. Based on multi-sited and longitudinal fieldwork in Denmark and Ghana, it employs George Marcus' suggestion of following things as a methodological selection device for ethnography. Theoretically, it engages the concept of affective circuits to address how t…
Mediating Mobility in West Africa
How do migrants enact their mobilities in contexts where formalized labor migration is minimal, and where the European fight against irregular African migration is restricting the possibilities for informal border crossings? And which roles do cultural norms, social institutions, and individual agency play in facilitating migration? To answer these questions, this article offers a comparative reflection on the growing interest in the mediation of…
Moving Horizons
This article delves into the experiences of hypermobile Somali migrant youth, who have moved frequently with their families across multiple countries and continents. Born to refugee parents in Europe or North America, their lives are influenced by their parents' pursuit of a better life, including security, education and cultural and religious values, thereby decentering narrow hierarchies of destination. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Türkiy…
A heart made of habhab but with Danish Manners – Negotiating Gender and Political Positioning in Transnational Fields
How do migrants negotiate gender and political positions in a transnational social field? What happens when migrants move between different locations? This paper examines these questions through a case study of a Somali woman and her life in Denmark and Somaliland
Dette nummers samlede anmeldelser
I dette nummer anmeldes følgende: "På trods... 100 års kvindehistorie" (Hanne Dam), "Den excellente præstation. Elitesport, kvinder og karriere" (Inge Kryger Pedersen), "Sygeplejesagens pioner, Henny Tscherning" (Esther Petersen), "Mellan ansvar & magt" (Gunilla Carlstedt og Annika Forssén), "TV-værter, kommercialisering og køn i Norden" (Vibeke Pedersen m.fl.), "Den demokratiske udfordring" (Goul Andersen m.fl.)
Dette nummers samlede anmeldelser
I dette nummer anmeldes følgende: "Byen tæmmes. Kernefamilie, sociale reformer og velgørenhed i 1800-tallets København" (Karin Lützen), "Fædre og fødsler" (Svend Aage Madsen), "En mor bliver til - hvordan oplevelsen af moderskab forandrer dig for bestandig" (Daniel N. Stern, Nadis Bruschweiler-Stern og Alison Freeland), "Køn, virksomhed og kompetence" (Eva Bendix Petersen). "Feminisme og litteraturvidenskab" (K&K temanummer), "Det bløde punkt" (J…
Når hjemme er mere end et sted - Møder med Danmark blandt somaliere i diaspora
Hjem og tilhørsforhold får en særlig betydning i diaspora. En somalisk kvindes og mands italesættelser af livet i Danmark viser, hvordan møderne med velfærdssamfundet er med til at skabe forskellige fortællinger om "somalisk kultur", hvor køn står i centrum
Migration og medborgerskab i en globaliseret verden
Det te temanummer afKvinder, Køn & Forskning saetter fokus på køn, migration og medborgerskab. 1 Indlaeggene undersøger og debatterer kønsrelationer, mobilitet, tilhørsforhold, og hvordan migranters medborgerskab skabes, forhandles eller reproduceres i mødet med vaertslandet og tvaers over graenser.Udgangspunktet er, at migration finder
Dette nummers samlede anmeldelser
I dette nummer er følgende blevet anmeldt: "Børn, løgn og kvinder - et opgør med ligestillingsbedrebet" (Lone Nørgaard), "En rigtig mor? En beretning om moderskab og karriere" (Lena Wennberg), "Brutte Løfter. En kulturhistorisk studie av kjønn og ære, 1700-1900 (Kari Telste), "Statepolicy and Gender system in the Two German States and Sweden 1945-1989" (Rolf Torstendahl (red.)), "Arbejderhistorie nr. 4/2000 Tema: Arbejderbevægelsen og familien" (…
"In the interests of the quality of life of all citizens". Citizenship, Gender and Migration in a Globalising Europe
in the interests of the quality of life of all citizens". Citizenship, Gender and Migration in a Globalising Europe
Krig
A heart made of habhab but with Danish Manners – Negotiating Gender and Political Positioning in Transnational Fields
How do migrants negotiate gender and political positions in a transnational social field? What happens when migrants move between different locations? This paper examines these questions through a case study of a Somali woman and her life in Denmark and Somaliland
Mobilising 'The Diaspora
Recently, the development initiatives of so-called 'diasporas' have gained the attention of policy-makers, scholars, NGOs, and migrants themselves. Migrants and 'diasporas' are seen as agents of development, who not only remit money to their countries of origin, but also transfer ideas of political, social, and cultural change. This article examines linkages between identity, transnational politics and development. Logics of transnational mobilis…
In the Name of Diaspora
Since the early 1990s, the concept of diaspora has propagated in migration studies and gradually been appropriated by many migrant groups, who describe themselves as ‘diasporas’ in relation to political mobilisation and self-portrayal. In this article, claims made in the name of diaspora and their conditions for possibility are analysed through a focus on Somali migration. Two main arguments are presented. Firstly, that the identity category of ‘…
Negotiating Respectable Masculinity
Following years of civil war, many Somalis are displaced in Western countries as refugees or family re-unified persons. This situation has caused multiple losses of social position and upheavals in gender relations. Although both men and women are subject to these changes, Somalis describe the situations of men as more difficult. Taking departure in multi-sited fieldwork in Copenhagen, Somaliland and London, this article explores how Somalis nego…
Modern chiefs
Journal Article Modern chiefs: Tradition, development and return among traditional authorities in Ghana Get access Nauja Kleist Nauja Kleist * *Nauja Kleist ([email protected]) is project senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies. I am grateful for comments and questions from Rita Abrahamsen, Sara Dorman, and two anonymous reviewers as well as from Bruno Riccio, Kristine Krause, Katharina Schramm, Lindsay Whitfield, Peter Hans…
Flexible Politics of Belonging
This article analyses how the Ghanaian state has been involved in diaspora mobilisation since independence, including both the so-called African and Ghanaian diasporas. It presents two overall arguments. Firstly, the article shows that Ghanaian diaspora mobilisation draws upon the legacy of mid-century political Pan-Africanism, though with a neoliberal focus from the 1990s. From the 2000s, this legacy merges with the global trend of diaspora-deve…
Introduction
During the last decade, African diasporas have emerged as agents of change in international development thinking. Diasporas are being courted by donors, sending states, and NGOs for their contributions to development in their countries of origin; praised for their remittances, investments and knowledge transfer. This Introduction seeks to scrutinise critically these processes, examining issues of governance and categorisation in relation to Afric…
Pushing development
Hope and Uncertainty in Contemporary African Migration
This volume examines the relationship between hope, mobility, and immobility in African migration. Through case studies set within and beyond the continent, it demonstrates that hope offers a unique prism for analyzing the social imaginaries and aspirations which underpin migration in situations of uncertainty, deepening inequality, and delimited access to global circuits of legal mobility. \n \nThe volume takes departure in a mobility paradox th…
Introduction
This introduction discusses the hope boom in anthropological studies, suggesting that it reflects two converging developments: a sense of increasing unpredictability and crisis, and a sense of lack of political and ideological direction in this situation. We further identify two overall trends in the anthropological literature gathered under the rubric of hope: an emphasis on hopefulness against all odds and one on specific formations of hope and…
Disrupted migration projects
This article contributes to the theorization of involuntary return and moral economies in the context of economic crisis and vulnerability prompted by restrictive migration regimes and conflicts. Drawing on fieldwork in a rural town in Ghana where international labour migration is an established livelihood, it analyses deportations from North Africa, Israel and Europe and emergency return from Libya following the civil war in 2011. The article ar…
Trajectories of involuntary return migration to Ghana
Mobility
In this keyword, I reflect upon African diaspora in a mobilities perspective, exploring analytical and empirical resonance and tensions. Despite the boom of diaspora and mobilities studies in the last decades, research explicitly linking these two literatures is still nascent. Exploring diaspora through a mobilities perspective, I suggest that attention to regimes of mobilities and migratory trajectories can yield important insights. The first pe…
Editors’ Statement
Follow the computers
This paper contributes to our understanding of the social life of used computers in West Africa through analysis of the sending, distribution, recognition, and reception of recycled equipment. Based on multi-sited and longitudinal fieldwork in Denmark and Ghana, it employs George Marcus' suggestion of following things as a methodological selection device for ethnography. Theoretically, it engages the concept of affective circuits to address how t…
‘These days, things have changed’
While climate-related mobility has been part of life in Africa for centuries, existing literature on migration in the context of climate change generally lacks a historical perspective. This paper historicises climate-related migration in the Northern Savannah Zone of Ghana, with specific focus on the Upper West Region, drawing on climate data, a survey of 403 households, and interviews and focus group discussions with farmers. It demonstrates th…
Anja Simonsen
Anja Simonsen: Tahriib - Journeys into the unknown. An Ethnography of Uncertainty in Migration
Mediating Mobility in West Africa
How do migrants enact their mobilities in contexts where formalized labor migration is minimal, and where the European fight against irregular African migration is restricting the possibilities for informal border crossings? And which roles do cultural norms, social institutions, and individual agency play in facilitating migration? To answer these questions, this article offers a comparative reflection on the growing interest in the mediation of…
Political science (17 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity (13 works) · Law (12 works) · Diaspora (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Politics (9 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Philosophy (8 works)