Martin Bak Jørgensen
Biographic Data
| ID | 97499 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martin Bak Jørgensen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martin Bak |
| FAMILY NAME | Jørgensen |
| SIGNATURE | JØRGENSEN M B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aalborg University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0104-8543 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 37 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 254 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Critical transitions in migration studies: Comparative Migration Studies’ 10thanniversary issue
In the past decade, dynamic geopolitical events have led to major migration movements worldwide.The launching of Comparative Migration Studies (CMS) in 2013 to promote comparative research in the field of migration studies (Saharso and Scholten, 2013) coincided with some of these major migration developments.The journal emerged at a time when the field was undergoing rapid transformation, incorporating newer methods, geographies and theories to s…
Commoning Cosmopolitanism: Solidarity Beyond Capital, Borders, and Sameness
Approaches to situated and located cosmopolitanism offer the opportunity to think of the formation of a universal community, which demands equality and social justice and is rooted in urban and local practices. This article delves into this perspective by connecting the literature on cosmopolitanism, the commons, and solidarity. Based on a sociospatial conception of solidarity, the notion of “commoning cosmopolitanism” is developed as a framework…
Immigrant Inclusion and Municipalism in a Danish Context
This paper explores municipalism in a Danish context. The notion of municipalism has over the last decade gained both renewed academic traction and developed as a political practice, especially in a Southern European context. Within this framework, municipalities have sought to develop alternative policy frameworks targeting societal challenges such as climate change, sustainability, diversity and also immigrant inclusion and integration. These p…
Social theory and migration research in dialog
Migration' has received less attention in social theory compared to other topics, and at the same time, migration research is often said to have a 'theory deficit.' Against this background, we argue that it is mutually beneficial to relate and link social theory and migration research more closely. On the one hand, a stronger reference to social theories is important for migration research to break down prevailing views on migration and to furthe…
Gramsci, social theory and migration
The work of Antonio Gramsci implies, in comparison with Karl Marx, a shift toward civil society, rather than state, as an intermediate category between economic structures and political institutions. Gramsci offers indeed an integral state composed of the political society (which exercises coercion) and civil society (which generates consensus). Thus, civil society becomes the site of production and contestation of ideas, the elaboration and diff…
Negotiating Borders through a Politics of Scale: Municipalities and Urban Civil Society Initiatives in the Contested Field of Migration
In contrast to the increasingly repressive migration policies at national and supranational scales, new pro-migrant policies, networks, and practices of support have been initiated at the local scale. In numerous European municipalities, political visions and concrete experiences of inclusive approaches in the field of migration have emerged in recent years that combine questions of the right to global freedom of movement and social rights. While…
Contending Global Apartheid: Transversal Solidarities and Politics of Possibility
Contending Global Apartheid: Transversal Solidarities and Politics of Possibility spells out a plea for utopia in a crisis-ridden 21st century of unequal development, exclusionary citizenship, and forced migrations. The volume offers a collection of critical essays on human rights movements, sanctuary spaces, and the emplacement of antiracist conviviality in cities across North and South America, Europe, and Africa. They proceed from the idea tha…
Migration Mobile: Border Dissidence, Sociotechnical Resistance, and the Construction of Irregularized Migrants
This open access book offers an account of the very different technologies implicated in border crossing and migration management. Borders have been sites of contestations and struggles over who belongs and who does not, who is and is not allowed to move freely in transnational or national spaces. Embedded as they are in the bordering process, policing and security practices produce the irregularity and illegitimacy of the migrating subject. At t…
Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies: Caring For (Big) Data
Anna is one of the initiators to, and research leader of, "the Asylum Commission" (https
Danish is never a Requirement for these Jobs: Platform Housecleaning in Denmark through a Migration Lens
The worldwide expansion of digital labour platforms has a transformative impact on labour markets, reconfiguring employment relations and labour management both on a local and global scale. Lately, the growing literature on digital labour platforms is increasingly documenting how platform workers around the world are to a great extent migrants. Our article draws on data from empirical research on digital platforms providing housecleaning in Denma…
What makes an expert? Doing migration research in Denmark
What makes a migration expert? Taking Bourdieu’s understanding of the academic field as its point of departure, this article outlines the field of migration research in Denmark. Migration and integration are heavily politicised topics in Denmark as in many other countries. The migration field has also been influenced by this politicisation. The migration research field is an open field which means that academic knowledge producers are not the onl…
We are here to stay” vs. “Europe’s best hotel”: Hamburg and Athens as Geographies of Solidarity
Using a theoretical framework conceptualising mobility regimes, solidarity, as well as scales and “sanctuary/solidarity cities”, this article examines notions of locally scaled solidarity by looking at Hamburg and Athens. We undertake comparisons on three dimensions. First, between the historical and institutional context of migration in Germany and Greece. Second, between urban movements in Hamburg and Athens. Finally, between the balance sheet …
Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies: Caring for Data
Transversal Solidarities and the City: An Introduction to the Special Issue
The special issue contributes to the exploration of transversal solidarities counterpoised to an exhausted neoliberalism on the one hand and a xenophobic populism on the other. It tracks contours of a multifarious countermovement, traversing 'race', class and gender, driven by reimaginings of the common and the renewal of democracy. The emphasis is on the understanding of contending urban justice movements, welcoming communities and their liaison…
On Transversal Solidarity: An Approach to Migration and Multi-Scalar Solidarities
This article develops a conceptualisation of transversal solidarity in relation to migration and migrants. It reflects different ways of practicing, organising and articulating solidarity. We proceed through a conceptualisation of solidarity in terms of 'transversal solidarity' relating to three dimensions involved in solidarity practices from below and discuss how to bridge their respective dichotomies: identity and the related in-group and out-…
Nostalgia and Hope: Intersections between Politics of Culture, Welfare, and Migration in Europe
This open access book shows how the politics of migration affects community-building in the 21st century, thereby focusing on the discursive conceptualization of migration in contemporary European politics and on welfare and culture both within party politics and beyond
Tracing the future of migrants' labour relations. Experiences of institutionalised migrant precarity in Denmark and Greece
Solidarity and the 'Refugee Crisis' in Europe
Solidarity Cities and Cosmopolitanism from Below: Barcelona as a Refugee City
The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ provoked a wave of solidarity movements across Europe. These movements contrasted with attitudes of rejection against refugees from almost all EU member states and a lack of coordinated and satisfactory response from the EU as an institution. The growth of the solidarity movement entails backlash of nationalized identities, while the resistance of the member states to accept refugees represents the failure of the co…
A goat that is already dead is no longer afraid of knives: Refugee Mobilizations and Politics of (Necessary) Interference in Hamburg
This article investigates the political activism undertaken by sub-Saharan West-African migrants residing in Hamburg. The article looks into political activism and resistance by exploring a politics of interference and emergence of new political subjectivities among African migrants. As stated by the refugees, they “did not survive the Nato war in Libya to die on the streets of Hamburg”. The struggle works on different scales. It is based on a cr…
Dependent, Deprived or Deviant? The Case of Single Mothers in Denmark
The article explores how categories of deserving and undeserving groups are established in policy designs and how social target groups are constructed according to such distinctions. Institutionalised systems of exclusion and inclusion have a profound impact on citizenship and substantial democracy. Neoliberalist political ideas and attitudes have strengthened the focus on deserving and undeserving groups over the last years and spurred a popular…
Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences
In Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences, edited by Carl-Ulrik Schierup and Martin Bak Jørgensen, the contributing authors look into precarity. Precarity has become a buzzword in as well academia as among activist. The book depicts precarity as being both a condition and a mobilizing force for resistance. The volume asks questions that investigate conditions and resistance across diverse cases such as first generati…
Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances
Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances
An Introduction to the Special Issue. Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences
The current special issue examines the range and strength of analysing contemporary transformations and struggles through the lens of ‘precarity’. Rather than defining a single precariat, the interest is in exploring ‘varieties of precarity’. These take different forms in different parts of the world, on different scales and in different socio-economic contexts, and yet they share certain characteristics in terms of conditions and capacity for ag…
The Diverging Logics of Integration Policy Making at National and City Level
This paper examines the institutional logics of migration policy making at local city level, comparing four Danish municipal approaches. Using a theoretical framework on political opportunity structures, policy frames, and institutional logics, the paper argues that divergences between national and local level can be explained not only as an unsuccessful transposition of nationally formulated policies, but also as an outcome of divergence in alte…
Deservingness in the Danish context: Welfare chauvinism in times of crisis
This article examines categories of deservingness in social policy. It argues that immigrant groups are positioned differently according to their status and perceived ‘value’ for society. On the one hand, most states need several types of migrant labour; on the other hand, they wish to limit other types of migrants. The balance between humanitarian obligations and this urge to control has led to the development of ambiguous policy designs. This t…
Solidarity Cities and Cosmopolitanism from Below: Barcelona as a Refugee City
The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ provoked a wave of solidarity movements across Europe. These movements contrasted with attitudes of rejection against refugees from almost all EU member states and a lack of coordinated and satisfactory response from the EU as an institution. The growth of the solidarity movement entails backlash of nationalized identities, while the resistance of the member states to accept refugees represents the failure of the co…
An Introduction to the Special Issue. Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences
The current special issue examines the range and strength of analysing contemporary transformations and struggles through the lens of ‘precarity’. Rather than defining a single precariat, the interest is in exploring ‘varieties of precarity’. These take different forms in different parts of the world, on different scales and in different socio-economic contexts, and yet they share certain characteristics in terms of conditions and capacity for ag…
The politics and policies of welfare chauvinism under the economic crisis
The ongoing economic crisis that emerged in the wake of the global recession in 2008, and was followed by the more recent crisis of the Eurozone, has introduced new themes and remoulded old ways of approaching the welfare state, immigration, national belonging and racism in Northern Europe. This article identifies two main ways of understanding welfare chauvinism: 1) as a broad concept that covers all sorts of claims and policies to reserve welfa…
Precariat - What it Is and Isn't - Towards an Understanding of What it Does
Guy Standing's description of the precariat in his 2011 book has revitalized the debate on what the precariat is, and what it is not. Although the book faced criticism from labour studies, Marxist approaches and others, it opened up a new discussion of precarity under neoliberal capitalism. This article draws on understandings that link the notion of the precariat (and processes of precarization) to practices and investigates links between immigr…
We are here to stay” vs. “Europe’s best hotel”: Hamburg and Athens as Geographies of Solidarity
Using a theoretical framework conceptualising mobility regimes, solidarity, as well as scales and “sanctuary/solidarity cities”, this article examines notions of locally scaled solidarity by looking at Hamburg and Athens. We undertake comparisons on three dimensions. First, between the historical and institutional context of migration in Germany and Greece. Second, between urban movements in Hamburg and Athens. Finally, between the balance sheet …
Understanding the Research–Policy Nexus in Denmark and Sweden: The Field of Migration and Integration
This article investigates the role of expert knowledge in integration policy-making in the case of Sweden and Denmark. The two countries have developed very different integration policies and therefore provide an interesting comparison of the research–policy nexus. It is argued that social scientists play a role in the construction of policy narratives, but that their role can be very different. In Sweden, social scientists have been influential …
On Transversal Solidarity: An Approach to Migration and Multi-Scalar Solidarities
This article develops a conceptualisation of transversal solidarity in relation to migration and migrants. It reflects different ways of practicing, organising and articulating solidarity. We proceed through a conceptualisation of solidarity in terms of 'transversal solidarity' relating to three dimensions involved in solidarity practices from below and discuss how to bridge their respective dichotomies: identity and the related in-group and out-…
Tracing the future of migrants' labour relations. Experiences of institutionalised migrant precarity in Denmark and Greece
Framing Scandinavian Conceptualizations of Irregular Migration
In the academic literature there seems to be consensus on irregular migration being a marginal phenomenon in the Scandinavian countries. The reason for this is found in the highly regulated labour markets and strict control migration regimes both internally and externally. The article addresses the 'myth' of the non-presence of irregular migration in Scandinavia. Firstly, we look at how irregular migration is framed academically; secondly, we ana…
Negotiating Borders through a Politics of Scale: Municipalities and Urban Civil Society Initiatives in the Contested Field of Migration
In contrast to the increasingly repressive migration policies at national and supranational scales, new pro-migrant policies, networks, and practices of support have been initiated at the local scale. In numerous European municipalities, political visions and concrete experiences of inclusive approaches in the field of migration have emerged in recent years that combine questions of the right to global freedom of movement and social rights. While…
Transversal Solidarities and the City: An Introduction to the Special Issue
The special issue contributes to the exploration of transversal solidarities counterpoised to an exhausted neoliberalism on the one hand and a xenophobic populism on the other. It tracks contours of a multifarious countermovement, traversing 'race', class and gender, driven by reimaginings of the common and the renewal of democracy. The emphasis is on the understanding of contending urban justice movements, welcoming communities and their liaison…
Dependent, Deprived or Deviant? The Case of Single Mothers in Denmark
The article explores how categories of deserving and undeserving groups are established in policy designs and how social target groups are constructed according to such distinctions. Institutionalised systems of exclusion and inclusion have a profound impact on citizenship and substantial democracy. Neoliberalist political ideas and attitudes have strengthened the focus on deserving and undeserving groups over the last years and spurred a popular…
Gramsci, social theory and migration
The work of Antonio Gramsci implies, in comparison with Karl Marx, a shift toward civil society, rather than state, as an intermediate category between economic structures and political institutions. Gramsci offers indeed an integral state composed of the political society (which exercises coercion) and civil society (which generates consensus). Thus, civil society becomes the site of production and contestation of ideas, the elaboration and diff…
Danish is never a Requirement for these Jobs: Platform Housecleaning in Denmark through a Migration Lens
The worldwide expansion of digital labour platforms has a transformative impact on labour markets, reconfiguring employment relations and labour management both on a local and global scale. Lately, the growing literature on digital labour platforms is increasingly documenting how platform workers around the world are to a great extent migrants. Our article draws on data from empirical research on digital platforms providing housecleaning in Denma…
A goat that is already dead is no longer afraid of knives: Refugee Mobilizations and Politics of (Necessary) Interference in Hamburg
This article investigates the political activism undertaken by sub-Saharan West-African migrants residing in Hamburg. The article looks into political activism and resistance by exploring a politics of interference and emergence of new political subjectivities among African migrants. As stated by the refugees, they “did not survive the Nato war in Libya to die on the streets of Hamburg”. The struggle works on different scales. It is based on a cr…
Crises Now and Then-Comparing Integration Policy Frameworks and Immigrant Target Groups in Denmark in the 1970s and 2000s
Understanding the Research–Policy Nexus in Denmark and Sweden: The Field of Migration and Integration
This article investigates the role of expert knowledge in integration policy-making in the case of Sweden and Denmark. The two countries have developed very different integration policies and therefore provide an interesting comparison of the research–policy nexus. It is argued that social scientists play a role in the construction of policy narratives, but that their role can be very different. In Sweden, social scientists have been influential …
Categories of difference in science and policy: Reflections on academic practices, conceptualizations and knowledge production
Categories of difference have a crucial position in academic research as well as policy-making. They serve to distinguish and differentiate between groups in society. They can appear in the shape of crude dichotomies or in complex and sophisticated forms resting on constructivist and intersectionalist perspectives. Nevertheless, using categories of difference also creates something into existence and there may be implications through the particul…
The Diverging Logics of Integration Policy Making at National and City Level
This paper examines the institutional logics of migration policy making at local city level, comparing four Danish municipal approaches. Using a theoretical framework on political opportunity structures, policy frames, and institutional logics, the paper argues that divergences between national and local level can be explained not only as an unsuccessful transposition of nationally formulated policies, but also as an outcome of divergence in alte…
Framing Scandinavian Conceptualizations of Irregular Migration
In the academic literature there seems to be consensus on irregular migration being a marginal phenomenon in the Scandinavian countries. The reason for this is found in the highly regulated labour markets and strict control migration regimes both internally and externally. The article addresses the 'myth' of the non-presence of irregular migration in Scandinavia. Firstly, we look at how irregular migration is framed academically; secondly, we ana…
Researching Irregular Migration: Concepts, numbers, and empirical findings in a Scandinavian context
Crises Now and Then-Comparing Integration Policy Frameworks and Immigrant Target Groups in Denmark in the 1970s and 2000s
Immigration and civil society New ways of democratic transformation
In this special issue, we consider it essential to understand the potential of “democratic transformation”, fostered by civil society, not as a transition to democracy but as a way of deepening democracy. In our understanding democratic transformation is based on the power of organized civil society actors to challenge the institutional order rather than an achievement measured against the main characteristics of representative democracy. The sev…
Church Asylum – new strategies, alliances and modes of resistance
This article discusses the possibilities for democratic transformation in a landscape of political closure. Taking the case of Church Asylum [Kirkeasyl] as an example of new ways of resistance and participation in contemporary Denmark the articles argues that although the established political channels are characterised by closure alternatives may be formulated outside the parliamentarian system. Using contemporary perspectives on social critique…
Politics of Dissent
Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances
Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances
An Introduction to the Special Issue. Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences
The current special issue examines the range and strength of analysing contemporary transformations and struggles through the lens of ‘precarity’. Rather than defining a single precariat, the interest is in exploring ‘varieties of precarity’. These take different forms in different parts of the world, on different scales and in different socio-economic contexts, and yet they share certain characteristics in terms of conditions and capacity for ag…
The politics and policies of welfare chauvinism under the economic crisis
The ongoing economic crisis that emerged in the wake of the global recession in 2008, and was followed by the more recent crisis of the Eurozone, has introduced new themes and remoulded old ways of approaching the welfare state, immigration, national belonging and racism in Northern Europe. This article identifies two main ways of understanding welfare chauvinism: 1) as a broad concept that covers all sorts of claims and policies to reserve welfa…
Deservingness in the Danish context: Welfare chauvinism in times of crisis
This article examines categories of deservingness in social policy. It argues that immigrant groups are positioned differently according to their status and perceived ‘value’ for society. On the one hand, most states need several types of migrant labour; on the other hand, they wish to limit other types of migrants. The balance between humanitarian obligations and this urge to control has led to the development of ambiguous policy designs. This t…
Precariat - What it Is and Isn't - Towards an Understanding of What it Does
Guy Standing's description of the precariat in his 2011 book has revitalized the debate on what the precariat is, and what it is not. Although the book faced criticism from labour studies, Marxist approaches and others, it opened up a new discussion of precarity under neoliberal capitalism. This article draws on understandings that link the notion of the precariat (and processes of precarization) to practices and investigates links between immigr…
Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences
In Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences, edited by Carl-Ulrik Schierup and Martin Bak Jørgensen, the contributing authors look into precarity. Precarity has become a buzzword in as well academia as among activist. The book depicts precarity as being both a condition and a mobilizing force for resistance. The volume asks questions that investigate conditions and resistance across diverse cases such as first generati…
Dependent, Deprived or Deviant? The Case of Single Mothers in Denmark
The article explores how categories of deserving and undeserving groups are established in policy designs and how social target groups are constructed according to such distinctions. Institutionalised systems of exclusion and inclusion have a profound impact on citizenship and substantial democracy. Neoliberalist political ideas and attitudes have strengthened the focus on deserving and undeserving groups over the last years and spurred a popular…
Solidarity and the 'Refugee Crisis' in Europe
Solidarity Cities and Cosmopolitanism from Below: Barcelona as a Refugee City
The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ provoked a wave of solidarity movements across Europe. These movements contrasted with attitudes of rejection against refugees from almost all EU member states and a lack of coordinated and satisfactory response from the EU as an institution. The growth of the solidarity movement entails backlash of nationalized identities, while the resistance of the member states to accept refugees represents the failure of the co…
A goat that is already dead is no longer afraid of knives: Refugee Mobilizations and Politics of (Necessary) Interference in Hamburg
This article investigates the political activism undertaken by sub-Saharan West-African migrants residing in Hamburg. The article looks into political activism and resistance by exploring a politics of interference and emergence of new political subjectivities among African migrants. As stated by the refugees, they “did not survive the Nato war in Libya to die on the streets of Hamburg”. The struggle works on different scales. It is based on a cr…
Nostalgia and Hope: Intersections between Politics of Culture, Welfare, and Migration in Europe
This open access book shows how the politics of migration affects community-building in the 21st century, thereby focusing on the discursive conceptualization of migration in contemporary European politics and on welfare and culture both within party politics and beyond
Tracing the future of migrants' labour relations. Experiences of institutionalised migrant precarity in Denmark and Greece
What makes an expert? Doing migration research in Denmark
What makes a migration expert? Taking Bourdieu’s understanding of the academic field as its point of departure, this article outlines the field of migration research in Denmark. Migration and integration are heavily politicised topics in Denmark as in many other countries. The migration field has also been influenced by this politicisation. The migration research field is an open field which means that academic knowledge producers are not the onl…
We are here to stay” vs. “Europe’s best hotel”: Hamburg and Athens as Geographies of Solidarity
Using a theoretical framework conceptualising mobility regimes, solidarity, as well as scales and “sanctuary/solidarity cities”, this article examines notions of locally scaled solidarity by looking at Hamburg and Athens. We undertake comparisons on three dimensions. First, between the historical and institutional context of migration in Germany and Greece. Second, between urban movements in Hamburg and Athens. Finally, between the balance sheet …
Research Methodologies and Ethical Challenges in Digital Migration Studies: Caring for Data
Political science (32 works) · Sociology (32 works) · Law (28 works) · Politics (24 works) · Political economy (18 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Migration, Refugees, and Integration (14 works) · Law (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (10 works)