Saara Pellander

Introduction

As Director of the Migration Institute I am responsible for leading, developing and supervising the fulfillment of our foundation’s purpose, as well as organizing its operational activities.

I have worked on the regulation of cross-border intimacies and family reunification especially from the perspectives of governmentality and its effects, as well as media representations of (forced) migration. I am the editor in chief of the Migration Institute’s publication series as well as its Migration-Muuttoliike journal.

Projects

TRIM: Transforming Immigration Systems for Future Skills (Strategic Research Council 2025-2028)

Mobile Futures: Diversity, Trust, and Two-Way Integration (Strategic Research Council 2022-2027)

INDEFI: Intimate geographies of bordering. Deportability and its effects on Finnish citizens with foreign spouses and their extended families(Suomen Akatemia, 2022-2025)

Essential publications

Articles:
Pirkkalainen, P., & S. Pellander (2025) From protecting rights to questioning them: Shifts in the depiction of forced migration in Finnish editorials between 1981 and 2004. In J. Leinonen, M. Tervonen, H. O. Frøland, C. Hoffmann, S. Jalagin, H. Vad Jønsson, & M. Thor Tureby (eds.), Forced Migrants in Nordic Histories Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 253-275.
https://doi.org/10.33134/HUP-32-11
 
Pellander, S. (2023) “Buy me love: Entanglements of citizenship, income and emotions in regulating marriage migration.” Cross-Border Marriages. Routledge. 140-155. 
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003372400
 
R. Shindo, Ö. Altan-Olcay, E. Balta, H. van Houtum, A. van Uden, P.K. Rajaram, M. Coward, M., S. Pellander and J. Huysmans (2023) “Collective discussion: Movement and Carceral spatiality in the pandemic.” International Political Sociology 17(3). 
https://doi.org/10.1093/ips/olad011
 
Pellander, S. (2022) “Gender, emotions and vulnerability: mediated responses to deportations in the aftermath of the refugee reception crisis.” Nationalism and Democracy in the Welfare State. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 166–183.
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788976589.00018
 
Kotilainen, N. & Pellander S. (2022) “(Not) Looking Like A Refugee: Symbolic Borders of Habitus in Media Representations of Refugees.” Media History 28(2): 278-293. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2021.1932445
 
Leinonen, J. & S. Pellander (2020) “Temporality and everyday (in) security in the lives of separated refugee families.” Family life in transition. Routledge, 118-128.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429024832
 
Hiitola, J. & S. Pellander (2019) “The alien child’s best interest ignored: When notions of gendered parenthood meet tightening immigration policies.” NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research 27(4): 245-257.
https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2019.1655093
 
Palander, J. & S. Pellander (2019) “Mobility and the security paradigm: how immigration became securitized in Finnish law and policy.” Journal of Finnish Studies 22(1-2): 173-193.
https://doi.org/10.5406/28315081.22.1.2.10
 
Tervonen, M., S. Pellander, N. Yuval-Davis (2018) “Everyday bordering in the Nordic countries.” Nordic Journal of Migration Research 8(3): 139-142.
https://doi.org/10.2478/njmr-2018-0019
 
Pellander, S. & K. Horsti (2018) “Visibility in mediated borderscapes: The hunger strike of asylum seekers as an embodiment of border violence.” Political Geography 66: 161-170. 
https://doi.org/DOI:10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.01.005
 
Pellander, S. (2018) “The Ageing Body as a Bordering Site.” Nordic Journal of Migration Research 8(3): 159-166.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/48711709
 
Horsti, K. & S. Pellander (2015) “Conditions of cultural citizenship: intersections of gender, race and age in public debates on family migration.” Citizenship Studies 19(6-7): 751-767. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2015.1008998
 
Pellander, S. (2015) ““An acceptable marriage” marriage migration and moral gatekeeping in Finland.” Journal of family issues 36(11): 1472-1489.
https://doi.org/DOI:10.1177/0192513X14557492
 
Leinonen, J. & S. Pellander (2014) “Court decisions over marriage migration in Finland: a problem with transnational family ties.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40(9): 1488-1506.
https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2013.846825
 
Books:
Kettunen, P., S. Pellander & M. Tervonen (2022) eds. Nationalism and democracy in the welfare state. Edward Elgar Publishing. 
https://doi.org/10.4337/9781788976589.00008
 
Pirkkalainen, P., E. Lyytinen & S. Pellander (2022) eds. Suomesta poistetut: näkökulmia karkotuksiin ja käännytyksiin. Vastapaino. 
https://doi.org/10.58181/VP9789517689960
 
Vad Jønsson, H., E. Onasch, S. Pellander & M. Wickström (2013) eds. Migrations and welfare states: Policies, discourses and institutions. Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Nordic Centre of Excellence NordWel. NordWel Studies in Historical Welfare State Research; vol. 3.
 
Supervision
Second supervisor, doctoral researcher, Doctoral Programme of Social and Behavioural Sciences (Sociology), University of Turku