Disa Helander

I am a researcher and teacher in gender studies at Umeå Centre for Gender Studies (UCGS).

My main research interests are centered within three different areas: migration and borders; knowledge, power and the body; and family and sexuality, and combinations of these. Theoretically, I have primarily worked with postcolonial feminism, queer theory, and feminist science and technology studies.

In my PhD thesis “Bordering through genetics: DNA testing, family reunification and Swedish migration control” (2023) I address questions regarding what family is, the consequences of migration control, and how migration control is constructed as legitimate and natural, how different forms of knowledge are valued in relation to each other, and how knowledge, power and politics relate to each other. One of the conclusions in my thesis is that the use of a form of evidence or knowledge that is considered to be as reliable and infallible as DNA testing helps to legitimise and naturalise migration control. It serves to maintain the idea that migration control is a relatively unproblematic, uncomplicated sorting process of determining who is allowed to be where, and that this can be done according to the principle of administrative justice. The thesis is primarily situated in relation to three different research fields: feminist, queer critical studies of borders and migration, feminist and queer family and kinship studies, and feminist science and technology studies.

On a more general level, several of my research interests revolve around how state bureaucracy and administration interact with and reproduce existing inequalities - linked to, for example, racialisation, sexuality, nation, and gender - their subjectifying consequences and the possibilities for resistance and criticism. Another research focus concerns how knowledge and power are interwoven, for example how constructions of scientificity are mobilised in different contexts and what consequences this has.