Welcome to the homepage of Dr. Barbara Franz, political scientist, author, and professor at Rider University! On this site, you will find blogs, papers, and links of interest.
I am a professor of Political Science at Rider University’s College of Liberal Arts working on migration, borders and security. My most recent book is Immigrant Youth, Hip Hop, and Online Games: Alternative Approaches to the Inclusion of Working-Class and Second Generation Migrant Teens (Lexington Books: 2015). Based on research of youth groups in Vienna, Austria, the book examines non-institutional approaches to facilitate immigrant inclusion through the examples of three alternative projects—online gaming, Hip Hop, and social work (commonly referred to as street work)—that have impacted the lives of urban working-class youth, specifically those with immigrant roots. The book showcases an alternative to Europe’s largely failed integration policies, which have either insisted on immigrants’ rigid assimilation or left immigrants to fend for themselves. It specifically argues that small-scale settings provide a unique opportunity to open up spaces for discouraged and disaffected youth to gain self-worth and dignity. While the book focuses on identity formation and the teenagers’ agency, it argues that only projects that include both “newcomer” and “native” can aid in overcoming exclusionary attitudes and policies, eventually allowing some form of social bonding to take place.
My earlier book Uprooted and Unwanted (Texas A& M University Press: 2005) traces refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1990s to Vienna, Austria, and New York City, USA and gives an ethnographic account of the strategies, skills, and informal networks used by Bosnian refugees, particularly women, in order to adapt to official policies and administrative practices in their host societies.
Browse this site for more information on my books or other publications. Or visit my Rider site.
Photo by Shlomit Mendilow
Cited in the November 3, 2023, edition of the Austrian daily, Der Standard “Nebenschauplätze des Krieges”
Featured in the recent ASCINA Newsletter:
February 27, 2022: Featured in the Mercer County Library podcast about the war in Ukraine
Recent speaking events in Budapest:
