Mobility and Transnational Iceland

Mobility and Transnational Iceland MOBILITY AND TRANSNATIONAL ICELAND Current Transformations and Global Entanglements Edited by Kristín Loftsdóttir, Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir, and Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson UNIVERSITY OF ICELAND PRESS Reykjavík 2020 Two anonymous reviewers have peer-reviewed each article in this book. Anna Lísa Rúnarsdóttir supervised the review. We thank our reviewers for their contribution. This publication, grant no. 163350-051, was supported by the Icelandic Research Fund. Mobility and Transnational Iceland Published by the University of Iceland Press Editors: Kristín Loftsdóttir, Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir, and Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson Proof reading: Allan Rettedal, Daniel Teague, and Randi W. Stebbins Cover design: Hildur Erna Sigurjónsdóttir Layout: Helgi Hilmarsson Printing: Litlaprent ehf. Bodytext: Electra LH 10,3 / 13,8 © Text Authors All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holders. Reykjavík, 2020 U201921 ISBN: 978-9935-23-226-7 Table of Contents 1. Mobility and Transnational Iceland: Current Transformations and Global Entanglements .................. 7 Kristín Loftsdóttir and Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir 2. Becoming an Immigration Country: The Case of Iceland 1990–2019 .................................................... 23 Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir and Ólöf Garðarsdóttir 3. Racism and Racialization in Iceland ............................................. 39 Kristín Loftsdóttir 4. “When you are a Professional”: Highly Skilled Immigrants’ Exper iences of the Tension between Avowed and Ascribed Identity ............................................................................ 53 Þóra H. Christiansen and Erla S. Kristjánsdóttir 5. Travelling Faith: Transnational Context from Iceland ................. 71 Kristján Þór Sigurðsson 6. An Expatriate in Iceland: Adjusting to the New Culture .............. 83 Svala Guðmunsdóttir, Árelía Eydís Guðmundsdóttir and Auður Inga Ísleifsdóttir 7. Non-refoulement and Personal Circumstances in EU Law – the Icelandic Context ................................................................. 97 Erna K. Blöndal 8. Migrant Families with Disabled Children: “I came here to make my family situation better” .................................................... 115 Guðbjörg Ottósdóttir, Unnur Dís Skaptadóttir and Snæfríður Þóra Egilson 9. Care in the Migration Context: A Comparative Study of Czech and Icelandic Parents’ Childcare Arrangements ............ 129 Lenka Formánková, Ásdís Aðalbjörg Arnalds and Guðný Björk Eydal 10. The Impact of Globalisation, Mobility and Austerity on Icelandic Medical Migration .................................................... 147 Kjartan Páll Sveinsson 11. “Our Way of Working is Very Different from That of the Big Nations Down There”: The Icelandic Coast Guard, Exceptionalism and Fortress Europe ............................................. 163 Eyrún Ólöf Sigurðardóttir and James Rice 12. “Not like Every Other Tourist with a Selfie Stick”: Voluntourism in Iceland ................................................................ 179 Guðbjörg Linda Rafnsdóttir, Jónína Einarsdóttir and Ástrós Anna Klemensdóttir 13. Selfies, Sovereignty, and the Nation-State: Into the Modern World at the National Museum of Iceland ..................... 193 John Bodinger de Uriarte 14. Mobilizing the Arctic: Polar Bears and Puffins in Transnational Interplay .................................................................. 209 Katla Kjartansdóttir and Kristinn Schram 15. How Welcoming are Icelanders? Attitudes toward Immigration over Time and in the European Context ................. 229 Sigrún Ólafsdóttir 16. Black Protests in Iceland: Transnational Flows and Entanglements ............................................................................... 247 Anna Wojtyńska Contributors ........................................................................................... 263 — 6 — K RISTÍN L OFTSDÓTTIR AND U NN U R D ÍS S K APTADÓTTIR Mobility and Transnational Iceland Current Transformations and Global Entanglements Introduction This book is a product of the project of excellence titled ‘Mobility and Transnational Iceland.’ The project sought to stimulate conversation between scholars in the social sciences working on mobility and to encour- age new research on different kinds of mobility in relation to Iceland. The book showcases some of the diverse ways that mobility and transnationalism have characterized Iceland. It covers a wide spectrum of research from different disciplines and perspectives. Mobility has intensified globally, accelerating in step with various tech- nological innovations which have shaped Iceland as well. Increased mobility to and from Iceland must be contextualized within various social and economic changes, including Iceland becoming a member of the Euro- pean Economic Area in 1994. This required various legal and institutional changes that have facilitated particular kinds of global mobility (Wade and Sigurgeirsdóttir 2011; Sigurjónsson and Mixa 2011). At the same time, these changes have also limited mobility, for example, due to restrictions for populations outside of Europe. A focus on spatial mobility has been an international trend in the last few decades, as the term ‘mobility turn’ re- flects (see Salazar and Smart 2011; Urry 2000). In migration studies, this is seen, for example, in the development of transnational approaches that ex- amine not only the causes of migration and settlement in a new society, but also temporary moves and continuing ties with countries of origin (Faist 2013; Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004). In Iceland, these theoretical discussions have become important in understanding the ongoing processes of diversification, and they are also significant because mobility to and from Iceland has often been downplayed (Loftsdóttir and Skaptadóttir 2009). This book prioritizes research focusing on the present when analyzing — 7 — K RISTÍN L OFTSDÓTTIR AND U NN U R D ÍS S K APTADÓTTIR mobility and Iceland even though some articles have a strong historical focus. By prioritizing the present, we are not downplaying the importance of mobility in the past, which has included various migrant mobilities, such as the migration of Icelandic people to South America (Eyþórsdóttir and Loftsdóttir 2016) and North America in the 19th century (Kjartansson 1980), or the historic importance of migrant communities in shaping the country, for example, Danish migrants (Ellenberger 2016), musicians at the beginning of the 20th century (see Melsted 2016), or the Germans who arrived after WWII (Ísberg 2016). This introduction seeks to position the different chapters of the book within larger scholarly discussions on mobility and summarize other research conducted on mobility in relation to Iceland. The introduction starts with an overview of some wider scholarly discussions of mobility and transnationalism. Then the discussion turns to mobility in Iceland, highlighting important changes, such as the economic liberalization in the 1990s and the economic crash of 2008, which have affected migration to and from the country as well as the various manifestations of mobility to and from Iceland. Furthermore, this overview contextualizes the chapters of the book in the wider scholarly exchange on migration in relation to Ice- land. Although focusing on mobility and transnationalism, the theoretical approaches applied in the different chapters of the book are highly interdis- ciplinary. The authors come from diverse disciplines which are shaped by different methodological and theoretical concerns. A World of Mobility and Transnational relations In the past, mobility was often theorized as an abnormal condition rather than a constant feature of human life (Salizar and Smart 2011). However, recently, mobility research has focused not only on people and their different types of mobility e.g., economic migrants, refugees, expatriates, or tour- ists, but on “everything that exhibits both movement and stasis” (Mavhunga et al. 2016, 50). The concept transnationalism, comes out of research on globalization and mobility. It has been an important topic the last few decades. As with the concept of mobility, transnationalism appears in various contexts of different and intersecting phenomena (Vertovec 1999, 448). The transnational critique of methodological nationalism, furthermore, showed how scholars tended to prioritize the nation as the only relevant context (Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013; Wimmer and Glick Schiller — 8 — M OBI L ITY AND T RANSNATIONA L I CE L AND 2002) while ignoring the complexities of intersecting identities and subject positions (Anthias 2012). Moreover, some of the earlier celebratory views of globalization have been criticized for downplaying inequalities in migration trajectories, the growing importance of border control and securitiza- tion, and how boundary-making affects mobilities (Fassin 2011). In anthropology, where the editors have their intellectual roots, globalization has been one avenue of thinking about mobilities and transnational connections. When many scholars began to emphasize globalization as a homogenizing force, anthropologists stressed the need to look at the different ways in which global forces were adapted and manipulated on the ground (Xavier et al. 2002). The concepts of global

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