Dr. Sarah Schilliger
After graduating in sociology, political science and philosophy at the University of Zurich, Sarah Schilliger was a (senior) research and teaching fellow at the Department of Sociology at the University of Basel. In 2017/18 she was awarded an SNF postdoc mobility fellowship to spend two years at the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies (IMIS) at the University of Osnabrück and at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University in Toronto. Since 2019, she is a Research Associate at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies, University of Bern. Currently, she teaches at the Universities of Fribourg and Basel and at the International Master’s Programme ‘Social Work as a Human Rights Profession’ in Berlin.
For her dissertation entitled ‘Caring without Borders?’ (2014), she ethnographically researched the working and living realities of Polish live-in care workers who take care of elderly people in Swiss private households. In doing so, she linked the development of this precarious labor market to changing gender relations, current transformations in the migration regime and welfare state restructuring in the care sector. In her postdoctoral research (habilitation), she explores transformations of citizenship politics and negotiations about participation and social rights in the context of temporary and irregular migration. Currently, she focuses on local bordering practices, ‘urban citizenship’ and the emergence of new legal regimes in dealing with (irregular) migration.
Sarah Schilliger is a member of the scientific advisory board of Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Dissertation
Pflegen ohne Grenzen? Polnische Pendelmigrantinnen in der 24h-Betreuung. Eine Ethnographie des Privathaushalts als globalisiertem Arbeitsplatz
Research project
Urban Borderscapes, Negotiated Citizenship and Social Infrastructures in Solidarity Cities
Research Foci
Migration and border regime research | sociology of inequality | sociology of work (especially unpaid/paid care work) | social infrastructure/welfare state | social theory (praxeological perspectives and feminist theories) | ethnography
