Should a Swiss town have the right to vote on whether or not a Swiss-born woman of Turkish descent will have her citizenship application approved? Should immigrant children and adult learners take ‘Britishness' courses in school? Is religious pluralism possible in an age of increased anxieties about diversity? These are the sorts of questions that new faculty member Laurie McIntosh explores as an anthropologist of Europe.
McIntosh, assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology, uses immigration as a lens through which she studies issues of gender, citizenship, multiculturalism and race. "My research asks how communities in western societies make sense of the ideals of democracy and the principles of western political thought when they believe these standards fail to be realized in their lives," McIntosh said.
Immigration is a topic of intense political interest throughout the world, but McIntosh examined Norway, a country that often gets overlooked by North American scholars who study Europe. "The Scandinavian region has flown under the radar in immigration studies, because these countries are believed to be ethnically homogenous and beyond the reach of past and present patterns of migration into Europe," she said. "Even within European studies, France and Germany have predominantly been the site of social scientific inquiry for students and scholars. But in the past 50 years, Europe has been completely redefined by new immigration."
Norway has long been hailed as a place where concepts such as equality, solidarity, and human rights are well established. But arguments heard in public debate and mainstream media suggest that Norwegians are anxious about the increased diversity of their society, McIntosh said. "Pundits and political leaders maintain that many societal problems are a result of the inability, or refusal, of immigrants to fully integrate into Norwegian life and adopt Norwegian values. But when I speak to first and second-generation, or mixed-heritage Norwegians, who primarily, or only, understand themselves to be fully Norwegian, they ask, ‘what is it that society is really demanding of me?'"
What does a society do when its members report not being able to get a job interview until they change their name to one that sounds ‘less foreign,' or when newspaper headlines tell of an injured, semi-conscious African-Norwegian man denied medical care by ambulance workers? "In the past 10 years, stories like these have shaken Norwegian society to its core," McIntosh said. "Among immigrant populations, people tell me that, ‘No matter what we do, what it boils down to is, do you look Norwegian? Do you look like you belong?' So are we talking about values or are we talking about something else?"
Fluent in Norwegian, McIntosh spent two and a half years conducting ethnographic research-interviews, observations-in Oslo. That work included building relationships with immigrant and non-immigrant families, riding along with police officers in immigrant neighborhoods, interviewing government officials and caseworkers who worked with migration issues, and participating in a refugee assistance initiative. "I was invited to participate in the initiative as ‘refugee' myself, since I was also one of many types of ‘newcomers' to Norway. One year later, my role switched and I was able to provide assistance, while also doing follow-up research with many of the long-term volunteers in the program," McIntosh said. McIntosh is also working on a documentary about some of the families she encountered during her research, and a new project on the impact of asylum seekers in southern Europe.
She is passionate about encouraging students to think about Europe in new ways. "More than ever, our students understand that their future career success is tied to the global economy," she said. "Unfortunately, many students think of Europe primarily as a vacation site and overlook the region as a site of career possibility and scholarly interest. But Europe continues to have a greater impact on sectors of the United States' economy than any other region of the world."
McIntosh earned her doctoral degree in social anthropology with a second field in film and visual studies at Harvard University. As a postdoctoral fellow and visiting lecturer at Princeton University's Center for African American Studies, she completed research on the experiences of Norwegians of African descent. That work will be published in a forthcoming article in the journal African and Black Diaspora, and a chapter in the forthcoming anthology Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Engaging Blackness in Northern Europe.
McIntosh said she is excited to join the Duke faculty because of the Department of Cultural Anthropology's vibrant intellectual environment. "The department truly values interdisciplinary inquiry, and my own research necessitates that, because I am involved not only in anthropology, but in European studies, critical race and gender studies, and public policy. The proximity of Duke's Center for Documentary Studies also means that I will have the opportunity to continue my work in different forms of media in a dynamic artistic community."