Projects
Language and legal counselling: A linguistic ethnography of multilingual support in the legal assistance to asylum seekers in Belgium Ghent University
This project proposes a linguistic-Âethnographic study of multilingual practices in legal advice consultations with asylum seekers in Belgium. It investigates how the multilingual resources and strategies used by lawyers and their minority language clients are valued, managed and legitimized in these consultations, thereby aiming to develop more nuanced understandings of language support needs in migration-Ârelated service encounters.
An Ethnography of Human-Bee Relations in the Context of the Commercialisation of Beekeeping in West Tanzania Ghent University
Beekeeping is a widespread practice with a long history in Tanzania. The culture of beekeeping is diversifying due to the emergence of commercial beekeeping prompted by the high price of honey on the world market. Drawing on the many indications for the importance of bees and honey in religious, social, subsistence, and increasingly, commercial settings in Tanzania, this project argues for the need to move beyond the anthropocentric study of ...
From Welfare to Care Urbanism. Moving from Ethnography to Projective Scenarios in Héliport and Brigittines High-rise Social Housing Estates, Brussels KU Leuven
The political imperative of residents’ participation infiltrates the ongoing renovation of post-war housing estates and their surroundings in Brussels. While these participatory processes and results are questionable, residents’ lived experience of place is rarely used as leverage. Critically evaluating current social housing renovation strategies, the research wonders: Which spatial scenarios can be identified from residents’ inhabitation ...
Fluid discours. A multi-sited ethnography of development aid in the water sector Ghent University
The research project observes power/knowledge dynamics in the global network of development actors in the water sector. Data is obtained from multi-sited, multi-level ethnography: at the local level, data was collected from field research in the Inner Niger Delta in Mali; participant observations were conducted within an international NGO and at the headquarters of a multi-lateral agency.
Lawyering between counselling and adjudication: a sociolinguistic ethnography of legal assistance in the Belgian asylum procedure Ghent University
The asylum procedure is a complex, politicized and sensitive process. It has also been described as essentially ‘discourse-based’, as the decision of whether someone is granted asylum is determined by the performance of oral narratives during asylum interviews and their textual (re)production in reports and decisions. This is the front stage or ‘adjudication’ side of the procedure. On the backstage or ‘legal counselling’ side of the ...
Exiled and separated: a multi-sited ethnography of Eritrean refugees and their families attempting to reunite. University of Antwerp
Children's rights in appellate asylum proceedings: a legal ethnography Ghent University
This project will for the first time empirically investigate how the key actors in appellate asylum proceedings engage with children’ rights When the Commissioner-general for Refugees and Stateless Persons in Belgium does not recognize asylum seekers as refugee and/or does not grant them subsidiary protection, the latter can file an appeal before the Council for Alien Law Litigation The role of children’ rights in such appellate asylum ...
An ethnography of the importance of a particular school and broader social contexts in the development of ethnic stereotypes and experiences of racism and discrimination with secondary school students in Flanders. Ghent University
This study relies on ethnographic research in two Flemish secondary schools to explore ethnic minority students’ experiences with racism and discrimination, the ethnic stereotypes majority and minority groups develop of each other and the factors and processes explaining differences in experiences with racism ena discrimination and ethnic stereotyping.