Article 1 - the orange wave

Good news about the course in Norrköping - I passed! Yeah, the course leaders sent me an e-mail yesterday and I couldn't have a better start of the weekend. They praised my work and encouraged me to try to publish the course-paper in a journal.

This is exactly what I'm trying to do. The work with my first real scientific article has started. Inspired by concepts as transnational entrepreneurship, regional growth and literature about why Dutch migrants leave the Netherlands, I have written a text. This text was commented on during a conference in Örebro. I will revise it soon and send it to Dieter Müller, my second supervisor from Umeå. He will visit us in Örebro at the end of March and comment on my paper. His comments are of course valuable and I will revise the paper again and try to submit and present it at the Nordic Geographers Meet in Finland at the beginning of June. Who knows, after this, I might be able to send it to a scientific journal such as Population, Space and Place or Entrepreneurship and Regional Development. In the meantime, I need some more statistics and references to relevant literature.

Also in the meantime, I am and will be lecturing in various courses. Economic Geography, the same course as last semester; a course on how to write a thesis; and a guestlecture in a course about social work. This last lecture is a good challenge to me, as I will try to combine some interesting knowledge about migration studies with Area-studies and my own study.

Also, it is interesting to follow the current developments in the migrant recruitment industry. A close familymember to me has visited the Emigration Fair in March 2009 in Utrecht and sent me some interesting information and a good report about this. Placement will organise a fair in April and Region Dalarna is of course continuing their recruitment.

It is really exciting to try to combine this information into a good article just around the time of celebrating my 30th birthday, as well as raising our son and preparing for moving houses!