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CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON CULTURE AND GENDER

The Centre for Research on Culture and Gender at the Department of Languages and CulturesGhent University, supports research and scholarly exchange on questions of identity, difference and diversity in a globalized world from the perspective of critical inquiry, qualitative and interdisciplinary research methodologies.

The Centre brings together scholars and students from the arts, humanities and social sciences, in collaboration with other disciplines, interested in the study of culture in intersection with gender and/or other identity markers such as sexuality, ethnicity, class, nation and religion.

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Agenda

  • Mon
    27
    Mar
    2023

    Caring for the patient, caring for the nation: the figure of the care worker in a language training for migrant job seekers

    12-13:30Faculteitzaal, Blandijn 2 (1st floor)
    Lunch seminar

    In this lunch seminar, Sara Nyssen will talk about her ethnographic research in one of the trainings of non-Dutch speaking care workers. In order to address unemployment among migrant job seekers as well as shortages in the care sector, the Flemish employment service organizes language trainings to prepare non-Dutch speaking job seekers for an education and subsequent employment as a nurse or caregiver. My ethnographic research in one of these trainings shows that knowledge of Dutch was by no means the sole criterion for selection and evaluation: assessment of job seekers was (partly) based on whether they were seen as good (future) care workers. As such, there was a lot of attention for job seekers’ selves in the course, specifically through the use of psychological terminology. In this lunch seminar I will argue that this concern for care workers’ selves cannot be separated from a concern for the people they have to take care of. I will explore what kind of patient emerges from the image of the ideal care worker, and what this reveals about how care work is imagined, and about who is (and isn’t) seen as suitable for care work.

    About the speaker

    Sara Nyssen holds a master’s degree in social and cultural anthropology and is currently a PhD researcher in sociolinguistics at Ghent University. Her research is an ethnography of a language training for the care sector aimed at migrant job seekers, with a focus on language, labor and personhood.

    This lunch seminar will be on-campus only and it will take place at the faculty room of Blandijn (Faculteitszaal, Blandijnberg 2, 9000 Gent). You can register sending an email at carla.besorabarti@ugent.be

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