How privilege and social status were defended and legitimised in times of political change is the topic of Liina Mustonen鈥檚 recently published ethnographic study, Revolutionary Anxieties: Defending Privilege in the Wake of the Egyptian 2011 Revolution. In it she examines how social actors in privileged positions opposed the political changes that followed the revolution that toppled the long-term President Hosni Mubarak鈥檚 regime during the Arab Spring of 2011.
鈥漁f course they were very worried when new political leaders came to power that they would lose those positions. And they often framed it in terms of Egyptian identity, but that identity is based on lifestyle and cultural capital that is not available to all Egyptians,鈥� says Mustonen.
She carried out her ethnographic fieldwork in Egypt from 2011 to 2014. During that period, the country鈥檚 first democratic elections were held and the Muslim Brotherhood鈥檚 candidate, Mohammad Morsi, came to power. He had not even been president for a month when their opponents Mustonen had been studying began to voice their criticism. After just over a year, Morsi was deposed by the military.
鈥淚nstead of only looking at the military, the book鈥檚 contribution is to look at other actors who contributed to the increasing wave of authoritarianism in Egypt,鈥� says Liina Mustonen.
鈥滻n the book I was particularly interested in how postcolonial hierarchies and ideas of being Western or modern were instrumentalised by a specific elite that considered itself more liberal than the rest of the Egyptians,鈥� she explains.
Mustonen鈥檚 research shows that the elite鈥檚 criticism was more about privileges and societal positions than actual political reforms. And that it is influenced by both contemporary and colonial stereotypes, portraying Western lifestyles as modern and superior, and the new political leaders as reactionary.
鈥漌hat is also interesting is how some of the rhetoric of this elite also bears resemblance to discourses about migrants in Europe. It would be interesting to further study that possible interconnection,鈥� she says.
In addition to Egypt, she has studied the relationship between privileged mobility and less privileged migration in Lebanon.
鈥滻t is striking how elite mobility is not even regarded as migration, whereas the mobility of racialized refugees and migrant workers is often seen as a major problem and heavily restricted.鈥�
The transnational dimension of hierarchies and discourses is also something that interests Liina Mustonen, how they are at the same time context-specific and transnational, and how they're being instrumentalised differently in different places.
In her current work, Liina Mustonen employs an intersectional approach to address issues of belonging and exclusion in Europe. She joins REMESO from the University of Helsinki, having previously taught at the University of Duisburg-Essen and defended her PhD at the European University Institute in Florence. Her research spans sociology, migration, gender and postcolonial studies, and she is also the joint editor-in-chief of the Nordic Journal of Migration Research.
Liina Mustonen is currently working on a research project in Germany, funded by the Kone Foundation. The project examines how people with backgrounds in the Arab Middle East are shaping the urban landscape and cultural life in Berlin and how they do so in a political climate influenced by far-right parties and growing opposition to immigration in Europe. In this way she hopes to understand how solidarity and diasporic affinities are shaped among those hardest hit by the current anti-immigration sentiment.
She is now bringing her experience and approach in research to her new role as an associate professor at REMESO, joining on September 1:
鈥淚 am very pleased to be working at an institution that is committed to independent research and, in my view, is not constrained by policy or regulatory restrictions. I value that independence. REMESO is a place where I am really looking forward to making a contribution.鈥�
