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Diane Sainsbury

Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow, 2003-2004

    Term

    Professional affiliation

    Lars Hierta Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, Sweden

    Wilson Center Projects

    "Welfare States, Immigration, and Citizenship: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion"

    Full Biography

    My experiences as an immigrant and permanent resident in Sweden have influenced the choice and design of my project. Born and educated in Seattle, I wanted to continue my studies in Europe after receiving degrees in political science and French literature from the University of Washington. I traveled to Stockholm to study for a master's degree, and after my master's degree, I went on to study for a doctorate degree, which I received in 1980. I was appointed full professor in the late 1990s and Lars Hierta Professor of Political Science in 2001. I went to Sweden thinking I would stay for one or two years, but I have spent nearly a lifetime in Sweden. The years of my stay comprised a period of enormous change in immigration and immigrant policies. When I first arrived in Sweden during the early 1960s, there were few restrictions on immigration. Once I had arrived, I applied for a resident permit and registered as a resident. In the late 1960s requirements became more rigorous; immigrants were required to have a permit before entering the country. Labor immigration ceased in 1972, but this did not stop immigration. Instead the composition of immigration changed; immigrants were now refugees or family members of immigrants already in Sweden. Although it is still commonplace to hear Sweden described as a small country with a very homogeneous population, such descriptions overlook the immigration of the past four decades. Today one out of ten inhabitants is foreign born, which is the same ratio as in the United States.In terms of my academic background, I approach this project as a comparativist whose research has dealt with welfare states and social policies, rather than as an international migration scholar. My earlier work has focused on gender and welfare states. I started teaching courses in women and politics in the early 1980s, but it was a course on women and comparative public policy in the late 1980s that sparked my interest in gender and welfare states. After presenting a conference paper on the topic, I became convinced that the paper had the makings of a book. In fact, it turned out to be two books, Gendering Welfare States (1994) and Gender, Equality and Welfare States (1996), and a couple of articles. Recently book chapters and articles from this early work have been reprinted in edited volumes, and I have conducted new research in this area.My current project grows out of a concern that comparative welfare state research has neglected the situation of immigrants. Just as it ignored the gender dimension, this research has largely glossed over the ethnic and racial dimension in shaping social rights. The neglect stems from a research paradigm that has been preoccupied with political economy and class, leaving little space for gender and ethnicity. To incorporate immigrants and ethnicity into the analysis of welfare states, a new framework must be devised to complement existing theories. I believe this prism will generate new understandings of social policies as well as useful policy lessons. Accordingly it is with great enthusiasm that I look forward to working on this project at the Woodrow Wilson Center during the coming year.
     

    Education

    B.A. (1961) Political Science, University of Washington, Seattle; B.A. (1962) French Literature, University of Washington; M.S. (1966) Political Science, Stockholm University; fil. lic. (1973) Political Science, Stockholm University; Ph.D. (1980) Political Science, Stockholm University
     

    Experience

    • Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University, 1998-2001
    • Research Fellow, Research School of Social Science, Australian National University, 1996, 2000
    • Associate Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University, 1992-98
    • Research Fellow, Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, 1995
    • Director of the International Graduate School, Stockholm University, 1991-92
    • Visiting Scholar, London School of Economics and Political Science, 1992
    • Visiting Professor, Scandinavian Department, University of Washington, Seattle, 1988

     

     

    Expertise

    Gender and welfare states; comparative social policy; women and politics; Scandinavian politics

     

     

    Major Publications

    • Gender, Equality and Welfare States (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
    • Gender and Welfare State Regimes, editor (Oxford University Press, 1999)
    • "Gender and the Making of Welfare States: Norway and Sweden," Social Politics, Spring 2001