I am a PhD Candidate at VID Specialized University in Oslo, Norway. A social scientist trained in social anthropology, my main areas of academic interest are socio-economic inequalities, social integration, and social exclusion. My research concerns youth in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Nordic countries. I am currently working on youth marginalization and religious organizations in Oslo, and have previously conducted fieldwork to study privileged upbringings at a boarding school in Kenya. My work has appeared in YOUNG – Nordic Journal of Youth Research and an anthology published by James Currey.
I have participated in Youth at the Margins (YOMA), a Nordic-South African research project on marginalized youth and faith-based organizations. The project expired at the end of 2016, but the main results are not yet published. My research for the project concerned young people not in education, employment, or training (NEET young people) and religious organizations in a city district of Oslo. The research included Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist organizations. Based on this, I currently have papers in progress on the NEET concept, religious organizations’ activities and engagements for young people, and religious organizations’ role in social integration in highly diverse contexts. My planned doctoral dissertation will address the role of religious organizations in social integration on local, national, and supranational levels.
The concept of ‘not in education, employment, or training’ (NEET) has gained wide usage in youth research over the last two decades. This article reviews the concept’s background and discusses how it is linked to population statistics. Drawing on literature within the fields of anthropology, sociology, and educational research, as well as field research conducted in Norway, the article discusses how, by meeting young people categorized as NEET for interviews and participant observation, researchers can address other aspects of their lives than have been counted. Researchers who meet young people find that the concept means different things in everyday speech than in published research. The article concludes by suggesting how research based on meeting young people categorized as NEET can contribute to a body of knowledge that has mainly been produced by counting NEET young people. See the journal’s website for access options.
This chapter is based on ethnographic research among students from an international boarding school in Kenya who volunteer at a Bible Club for children from poor families. I show how volunteering as encounters across vast socioeconomic differences feeds into the formation of the students as privileged subjects. I understand volunteering in relation to two other modes of engagement with the ‘people outside the gates’ of the school that are commonly portrayed in the anthropological literature on gated communities: their exclusion as peril and their inclusion as labor. Volunteering works to a very different effect from these. While volunteering, the students relate to the children as members of a public towards which they have responsibilities but of which they are not themselves part. Volunteering thereby affirms the students’ privilege and instills dispositions for loving and responsible exercise of it in them. See the publisher’s website or JSTOR for more information and access options.
‘Us and them: Reflections about how faith-based organisations perceive young people at the margins in a multi-cultural city district of Oslo.’ Paper presented with Kari Karsrud Korslien at Diaconia in Dialogue: The Challenges of Diversifying Contexts, ReDi Biannual Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 16 September 2016.
‘Understanding youth marginalisation through NEET: A South African – Nordic European exchange of perspectives.’ Paper presented with Ignatius Swart at Diaconia in Dialogue: The Challenges of Diversifying Contexts, ReDi Biannual Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 16 September 2016.
‘Religious Organisations as Communication.’ Paper presented at Construction and Disruption: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere, Socrel Annual Conference, Lancaster, England, 13 July 2016.
I have been a seminar tutor for bachelor level courses in social anthropology and development studies at the University of Oslo (autumn 2011 to spring 2013). I have also been an external examiner for master theses submitted to the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo.
My private e-mail address is bjorn@hallste.in. For further contact details, please see my page at VID’s website. I also have profiles on Google Scholar and Academia.edu.