Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology. My specialization includes migration and transnationalism, especially with regard to kinship, care and generational relations. More recently I work on deportation, humanitarianism and pro-migrant solidarity. Empirical research was conducted in Haiti, Cape Verde and Brazil, as well as in the respective diasporic settings in North America and Europe. Address: https://www.ifeas.uni-mainz.de/professuren/prof-dr-heike-drotbohm/
Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology , 2024
The provision of humanitarian care, even under emergency conditions, is not confined to the clear... more The provision of humanitarian care, even under emergency conditions, is not confined to the clearly demarcated, politically legitimated, and administratively controlled interventions of large-scale humanitarian organizations. While representations of, and engagements with, suffering, the formalized organization of assistance, and the political regime of aid have coalesced into an institutionally distinct field of humanitarian logic and practice, there have always been complementary—informal or spontaneously established—modes of humanitarian engagement, such as soup kitchens, charity, philanthropy, neighborly aid, or solidarity initiatives. Like institutionalized and often highly bureaucratized forms of humanitarianism with a clear political mandate, these more informal initiatives are promoted by both secular and faith-oriented actors and may connect recipients and givers of care in hierarchical and ambivalent ways.
In recent years, a growing spread and differentiation of such forms of informal crisis- related care has been observed in all parts of the world. In kindergartens, schools, community centers, churches, mosques, gyms, squats, or under bridges, nonprofessional helpers—students, volunteers, activists—collect donations, distribute food and clothing, offer language training, provide legal and bureaucratic counseling, or share their leisure time with “those in need”. The fact that humanitarian support is offered by highly diverse types of individuals and organizations with diverging degrees of formalization and political capital is certainly not new. However, in this theme section we argue that the social, political, and affective type of relationship that has been established between these different forms and scales of aid—as well as among all involved actors in informal settings of humanitarian care—is a distinguishing feature of the contemporary world.
In the course of last two decades, the notion of care has become prominent in the social and cult... more In the course of last two decades, the notion of care has become prominent in the social and cultural sciences. As a result of this proliferation of care in several disciplinary fields, we are observing not only the expansion of its conceptual meaning, but also an increasing imprecision in its usage. A growing amount of literature focuses on the intersection between work, gender, ethnicity, affect, and mobility regimes. In view of this growing field of literature and complementing earlier approaches, Alber and Drotbohm argue that an interpretation of care in relation to three different concepts, namely work, kinship and the life-course, will facilitate empirical and conceptual distinctions between the different activities that are labeled as care.
website: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/anthropological-perspectives-on-care-erdmute-alber/?isb=9781137513434
"Der Sammelband arbeitet den Beitrag von Reflexivität für das Verständnis der Beziehung von Kultu... more "Der Sammelband arbeitet den Beitrag von Reflexivität für das Verständnis der Beziehung von Kultur, Gesellschaft und Migration anhand von drei Schwerpunkten heraus:
1. Politiken kultureller Differenz
2. Transnationale Perspektiven
3. Ethnizität und Diversität.
Dafür werden Autorinnen und Autoren mit unterschiedlichen disziplinären Hintergründen aus Deutschland, Österreich, der Schweiz und den USA zusammengeführt. Im Zentrum steht die Beziehung zwischen der intellektuellen Krise, welche die bisherigen Grundbegriffe der Integrations- und Migrationsforschung erfasst hat, und der Entwicklung neuer thematischer Zuschnitte, theoretischer Konzepte und Forschungsansätze."
"This introduction outlines the theoretical framework of this special issue on “Afro-Atlantic All... more "This introduction outlines the theoretical framework of this special issue on “Afro-Atlantic Alliances”. After summarizing key moments in the history of anthropological research along the Atlantic rim, the authors reflect on the interdisciplinary encounter which shapes the current debate on Afro-Atlantic cultures. By introducing “alliances” as a conceptual framework, ideas of relatedness and belonging as well as of entangled histories are recomposed in order to establish a methodology which aims at provincializing the traditional centers of power and at overcoming a methodological nationalism. This special issue brings together contributions on the impact of historical forms of return migration to Sierra Leone, on the meanings of contemporary migrant return visits to Cape Verde; on Mozambican students’ agency in Cuba as well as in their country of origin; on Cuban artists’ impact on race as an outcome of travelling between and performing in Havanna, Paris and New York; on transnational Yoruba religious networks in Cuba as well as on Cuban and Brazilian actors’ strategies with regard to their religious practices and their migrant status in Germany. In the afterword to this thematic issue recent paradigm shifts in the study of the Afro-Atlantic world are discussed."
Beiträge der Regionalgruppe Afroamerika auf der Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde... more Beiträge der Regionalgruppe Afroamerika auf der Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde in Halle (Saale) 2007. Marburg: Curupira.
Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology , 2024
This article explores central dimensions of different forms of asymmetric care that fall between ... more This article explores central dimensions of different forms of asymmetric care that fall between the competences of overlapping civil society organizations. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in São Paulo, Brazil, the article follows migrants arriving and integrating across different nodes of reception, including church-based NGOs, humanitarian organizations, and activist housing projects. Overlaps between these different forms of reception, care, and control do not arise only when migrants refer to different organizational structures. Instead, numerous formal and organizational similarities complicate a clear separation of these domains of asymmetric care. By concentrating on incidents when the encounters between migrant activists and Brazilian activists are disturbed, this article traces the mutual irritation of diff erently positioned actors, who calibrate their moral claims and produce new understandings of "worthiness."
Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2024
This introduction outlines the contemporary emergence of new forms of informal crisis-related car... more This introduction outlines the contemporary emergence of new forms of informal crisis-related care, which both complement and contradict classical forms of humanitarian assistance. The introduction traces the spread, blurring, and differentiation of novel forms of non-state assistance and support against the backdrop of increasingly widespread criticism of large-scale international aid. Tackling regimes of care beyond the exceptionality of a crisis notion, the introduction then summarizes how the three contributions and the commentary to this theme section employ the lens of aff ect for exploring how these highly intersubjective forms of encounter are experienced, performed, and refl ected on.
An Anthropology of Disappearance. Politics, Intimacies, and alternative Ways of Knowing, 2023
In transnational social fields, absences are both a normalized element of the everyday and a trou... more In transnational social fields, absences are both a normalized element of the everyday and a troubling void indicating the uncertainties of maintaining contact across spatial distances. This chapter considers ‘social disappearances’, in which the absent person is the agent, and the consequences of this type of absence for cross-border relationships. Using fieldwork conducted in Cape Verde, the chapter traces how the ab/normality of absences is sensorily grasped when the not-there and the elsewhere are accompanied by silences and – under certain temporal, social and political conditions – transform, or are transformed, into disappearances. The chapter argues that dis- and reappearances are matters of perception and perspectivity, of empowering access to unequally distributed information and, in some cases, of collective agreements regarding opacity.
This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.
[open access] Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Volume 12, Number 3, pp. 354-367, 2021
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/845688
In São Paolo’s ancient center, squats provide protective sp... more https://muse.jhu.edu/article/845688 In São Paolo’s ancient center, squats provide protective spaces to thousands of residents who cannot or do not want to access the formal and highly gentrified housing market. At the same time, these formerly abandoned buildings are also a site of the political struggle and claim the right to decent communal living. This paper traces the motives and aspirations of different types of squatters, such as activists, internal and international migrants as well as refugees. Through the notion of “aspirational anxieties” it concentrates on the uncomfortable emergence and recognition of power asymmetries inherent in the affective dimensions of solidarian future-making. By showing how dis- and emplacement are experienced by actors with contrasting and eventually irreconcilable biographical experiences, this paper warns against a normative understanding of the notion of displacement.
Population, Space and Place (open access) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp.2421, 2021
In this article, we draw on the volatile complexity of African migrant trajectories in Central Am... more In this article, we draw on the volatile complexity of African migrant trajectories in Central America to broaden the scope of transnational scholarship. These trajectories are characterised by mobilities as well as immobilities, taking shape in particular local contexts. By focusing on the interplays between displacement and emplacement that are part of these trajectories, we aim to increase our understanding of the extent to which migrants still ‘on the move’ experience both temporal embeddedness and cross-border connectedness, thereby acknowledging and unravelling transnational lives as they ‘touch the ground’ en route. To do so, we build on long-standing scholarly commitments in Central and South America and recent field research in Costa Rica. We go into selected empirical cases to discuss the dynamics of travelling, dwelling and travelling again as part of African migrant trajectories across Central America. We then explore the value of a ‘shifting’ transnational social field perspective and indicate some challenges for future trajectory research. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp.2421
The categories that define people on the move must be understood as unstable, contingent, and pro... more The categories that define people on the move must be understood as unstable, contingent, and provisional processes. This paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship that explores the lived complexities of migrant categorization and their social implications. Based on fieldwork in Brazil and Central America, the paper investigates the processual character of categorization by intertwining temporal and spatial dimensions, focusing on specific events to understand the occasions, circumstances, and intentions that bring about adapted or entirely new categories. An eventful notion of categorization demonstrates not only how categories come into being but also how categories remain connected to particular events that are recognized or produced in response to movement. These categories stick to the identity of a subject in transit, confirming and solidifying it; however, they can also challenge the subject's legal stability, generating new insecurities and (im-)mobilities.
Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft, 2020
This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic to reflect on the relationship between governance and solid... more This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic to reflect on the relationship between governance and solidarity. It considers how a social model based on self-regulating individuals has been complemented by a new form of state dirigisme reliant on evocations of solidarity. However, this configuration may be approaching the limits of its viability. Given that governance relies on the robust internalization and execution of both care and control and on an ethos of renunciation, especially among the middle and upper classes, the paper proposes the need for analyses that better incorporate concepts of social inequality.
This article looks at the interaction between transnational family relationships, on the one hand... more This article looks at the interaction between transnational family relationships, on the one hand, and family-related immigration policies, on the other. Taking the conflicting concerns that arose between administrative decision-makers and family members during an attempt to reunite a Cape Verdean family spread across several countries as an example, the questions of what ‘family’ means, what relationships are included and the nature of the elationships involved answered differently by different actors will be shown. The article discusses the way in which the regulation of transnational mobility according to specific categories of eligibility is giving social ties a concrete legal form which can run contrary to the social conventions and conceptions of migrants and their families. The focus is on both the normative categories that have repercussions for the core of the social sphere and on the family practices that react to these categorizations.
This earlier working paper was later published as: A shifting yet grounded transnational social f... more This earlier working paper was later published as: A shifting yet grounded transnational social field: Interplays of displacement and emplacement in African migrant trajectories across Central America. In: Population, Space and Place Volume27, Issue5.
Abstract:
Recent discussions of migrant trajectories or journeys indicate that focusing on circumscribed origins and destination settings is not enough for understanding contemporary transnational lives. The many migrants that are en route for extended periods of time, especially in the so-called Global South, and the recognition that their increasingly complex trajectories cannot be regarded as mere empty transit space, disconnected from life elsewhere, present us with the challenge to broaden the transnational scope. Drawing inspiration from the recent increase of African migrants in Central America, this paper addresses volatile transnational lives by focusing on the dynamics between displacements and emplacements. Whereas even the more sophisticated notions of displacement often evoke images of passivity and being ‘cut off’, articulations of emplacement emphasize how ‘the displaced’ also actively re-embed and reshape their cross-border lives locally. Thus, migrants engage in dynamics of smuggling, state surveillance, humanitarian assistance, daily consumption, employment, imagining and planning in the (temporary) host localities of their trajectory. To what extent are transnational lives made possible, lived and contested in such contexts of forced semi-permanence or deliberate temporality? How does a transnational perspective help us understand the experiences of these migrants and the dynamics of these localities? How does a focus on ever evolving trajectories enrich our understanding of how transnational lives are shaped? This paper introduces a theoretical perspective on the simultaneous articulation of displacement and emplacement through migrant trajectories, which will allow us to acknowledge and unravel transnational lives as they ‘touch the ground’ en route.
in: Alber, Erdmute and Heike Drotbohm (eds.) 2015: Anthropological Perspectives on Care. Work, Ki... more in: Alber, Erdmute and Heike Drotbohm (eds.) 2015: Anthropological Perspectives on Care. Work, Kinship and the Life-Course. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology , 2024
The provision of humanitarian care, even under emergency conditions, is not confined to the clear... more The provision of humanitarian care, even under emergency conditions, is not confined to the clearly demarcated, politically legitimated, and administratively controlled interventions of large-scale humanitarian organizations. While representations of, and engagements with, suffering, the formalized organization of assistance, and the political regime of aid have coalesced into an institutionally distinct field of humanitarian logic and practice, there have always been complementary—informal or spontaneously established—modes of humanitarian engagement, such as soup kitchens, charity, philanthropy, neighborly aid, or solidarity initiatives. Like institutionalized and often highly bureaucratized forms of humanitarianism with a clear political mandate, these more informal initiatives are promoted by both secular and faith-oriented actors and may connect recipients and givers of care in hierarchical and ambivalent ways.
In recent years, a growing spread and differentiation of such forms of informal crisis- related care has been observed in all parts of the world. In kindergartens, schools, community centers, churches, mosques, gyms, squats, or under bridges, nonprofessional helpers—students, volunteers, activists—collect donations, distribute food and clothing, offer language training, provide legal and bureaucratic counseling, or share their leisure time with “those in need”. The fact that humanitarian support is offered by highly diverse types of individuals and organizations with diverging degrees of formalization and political capital is certainly not new. However, in this theme section we argue that the social, political, and affective type of relationship that has been established between these different forms and scales of aid—as well as among all involved actors in informal settings of humanitarian care—is a distinguishing feature of the contemporary world.
In the course of last two decades, the notion of care has become prominent in the social and cult... more In the course of last two decades, the notion of care has become prominent in the social and cultural sciences. As a result of this proliferation of care in several disciplinary fields, we are observing not only the expansion of its conceptual meaning, but also an increasing imprecision in its usage. A growing amount of literature focuses on the intersection between work, gender, ethnicity, affect, and mobility regimes. In view of this growing field of literature and complementing earlier approaches, Alber and Drotbohm argue that an interpretation of care in relation to three different concepts, namely work, kinship and the life-course, will facilitate empirical and conceptual distinctions between the different activities that are labeled as care.
website: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/anthropological-perspectives-on-care-erdmute-alber/?isb=9781137513434
"Der Sammelband arbeitet den Beitrag von Reflexivität für das Verständnis der Beziehung von Kultu... more "Der Sammelband arbeitet den Beitrag von Reflexivität für das Verständnis der Beziehung von Kultur, Gesellschaft und Migration anhand von drei Schwerpunkten heraus:
1. Politiken kultureller Differenz
2. Transnationale Perspektiven
3. Ethnizität und Diversität.
Dafür werden Autorinnen und Autoren mit unterschiedlichen disziplinären Hintergründen aus Deutschland, Österreich, der Schweiz und den USA zusammengeführt. Im Zentrum steht die Beziehung zwischen der intellektuellen Krise, welche die bisherigen Grundbegriffe der Integrations- und Migrationsforschung erfasst hat, und der Entwicklung neuer thematischer Zuschnitte, theoretischer Konzepte und Forschungsansätze."
"This introduction outlines the theoretical framework of this special issue on “Afro-Atlantic All... more "This introduction outlines the theoretical framework of this special issue on “Afro-Atlantic Alliances”. After summarizing key moments in the history of anthropological research along the Atlantic rim, the authors reflect on the interdisciplinary encounter which shapes the current debate on Afro-Atlantic cultures. By introducing “alliances” as a conceptual framework, ideas of relatedness and belonging as well as of entangled histories are recomposed in order to establish a methodology which aims at provincializing the traditional centers of power and at overcoming a methodological nationalism. This special issue brings together contributions on the impact of historical forms of return migration to Sierra Leone, on the meanings of contemporary migrant return visits to Cape Verde; on Mozambican students’ agency in Cuba as well as in their country of origin; on Cuban artists’ impact on race as an outcome of travelling between and performing in Havanna, Paris and New York; on transnational Yoruba religious networks in Cuba as well as on Cuban and Brazilian actors’ strategies with regard to their religious practices and their migrant status in Germany. In the afterword to this thematic issue recent paradigm shifts in the study of the Afro-Atlantic world are discussed."
Beiträge der Regionalgruppe Afroamerika auf der Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde... more Beiträge der Regionalgruppe Afroamerika auf der Tagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde in Halle (Saale) 2007. Marburg: Curupira.
Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology , 2024
This article explores central dimensions of different forms of asymmetric care that fall between ... more This article explores central dimensions of different forms of asymmetric care that fall between the competences of overlapping civil society organizations. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in São Paulo, Brazil, the article follows migrants arriving and integrating across different nodes of reception, including church-based NGOs, humanitarian organizations, and activist housing projects. Overlaps between these different forms of reception, care, and control do not arise only when migrants refer to different organizational structures. Instead, numerous formal and organizational similarities complicate a clear separation of these domains of asymmetric care. By concentrating on incidents when the encounters between migrant activists and Brazilian activists are disturbed, this article traces the mutual irritation of diff erently positioned actors, who calibrate their moral claims and produce new understandings of "worthiness."
Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 2024
This introduction outlines the contemporary emergence of new forms of informal crisis-related car... more This introduction outlines the contemporary emergence of new forms of informal crisis-related care, which both complement and contradict classical forms of humanitarian assistance. The introduction traces the spread, blurring, and differentiation of novel forms of non-state assistance and support against the backdrop of increasingly widespread criticism of large-scale international aid. Tackling regimes of care beyond the exceptionality of a crisis notion, the introduction then summarizes how the three contributions and the commentary to this theme section employ the lens of aff ect for exploring how these highly intersubjective forms of encounter are experienced, performed, and refl ected on.
An Anthropology of Disappearance. Politics, Intimacies, and alternative Ways of Knowing, 2023
In transnational social fields, absences are both a normalized element of the everyday and a trou... more In transnational social fields, absences are both a normalized element of the everyday and a troubling void indicating the uncertainties of maintaining contact across spatial distances. This chapter considers ‘social disappearances’, in which the absent person is the agent, and the consequences of this type of absence for cross-border relationships. Using fieldwork conducted in Cape Verde, the chapter traces how the ab/normality of absences is sensorily grasped when the not-there and the elsewhere are accompanied by silences and – under certain temporal, social and political conditions – transform, or are transformed, into disappearances. The chapter argues that dis- and reappearances are matters of perception and perspectivity, of empowering access to unequally distributed information and, in some cases, of collective agreements regarding opacity.
This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.
[open access] Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Volume 12, Number 3, pp. 354-367, 2021
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/845688
In São Paolo’s ancient center, squats provide protective sp... more https://muse.jhu.edu/article/845688 In São Paolo’s ancient center, squats provide protective spaces to thousands of residents who cannot or do not want to access the formal and highly gentrified housing market. At the same time, these formerly abandoned buildings are also a site of the political struggle and claim the right to decent communal living. This paper traces the motives and aspirations of different types of squatters, such as activists, internal and international migrants as well as refugees. Through the notion of “aspirational anxieties” it concentrates on the uncomfortable emergence and recognition of power asymmetries inherent in the affective dimensions of solidarian future-making. By showing how dis- and emplacement are experienced by actors with contrasting and eventually irreconcilable biographical experiences, this paper warns against a normative understanding of the notion of displacement.
Population, Space and Place (open access) https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp.2421, 2021
In this article, we draw on the volatile complexity of African migrant trajectories in Central Am... more In this article, we draw on the volatile complexity of African migrant trajectories in Central America to broaden the scope of transnational scholarship. These trajectories are characterised by mobilities as well as immobilities, taking shape in particular local contexts. By focusing on the interplays between displacement and emplacement that are part of these trajectories, we aim to increase our understanding of the extent to which migrants still ‘on the move’ experience both temporal embeddedness and cross-border connectedness, thereby acknowledging and unravelling transnational lives as they ‘touch the ground’ en route. To do so, we build on long-standing scholarly commitments in Central and South America and recent field research in Costa Rica. We go into selected empirical cases to discuss the dynamics of travelling, dwelling and travelling again as part of African migrant trajectories across Central America. We then explore the value of a ‘shifting’ transnational social field perspective and indicate some challenges for future trajectory research. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/psp.2421
The categories that define people on the move must be understood as unstable, contingent, and pro... more The categories that define people on the move must be understood as unstable, contingent, and provisional processes. This paper contributes to a growing body of scholarship that explores the lived complexities of migrant categorization and their social implications. Based on fieldwork in Brazil and Central America, the paper investigates the processual character of categorization by intertwining temporal and spatial dimensions, focusing on specific events to understand the occasions, circumstances, and intentions that bring about adapted or entirely new categories. An eventful notion of categorization demonstrates not only how categories come into being but also how categories remain connected to particular events that are recognized or produced in response to movement. These categories stick to the identity of a subject in transit, confirming and solidifying it; however, they can also challenge the subject's legal stability, generating new insecurities and (im-)mobilities.
Geschichte und Gesellschaft. Zeitschrift für Historische Sozialwissenschaft, 2020
This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic to reflect on the relationship between governance and solid... more This paper uses the COVID-19 pandemic to reflect on the relationship between governance and solidarity. It considers how a social model based on self-regulating individuals has been complemented by a new form of state dirigisme reliant on evocations of solidarity. However, this configuration may be approaching the limits of its viability. Given that governance relies on the robust internalization and execution of both care and control and on an ethos of renunciation, especially among the middle and upper classes, the paper proposes the need for analyses that better incorporate concepts of social inequality.
This article looks at the interaction between transnational family relationships, on the one hand... more This article looks at the interaction between transnational family relationships, on the one hand, and family-related immigration policies, on the other. Taking the conflicting concerns that arose between administrative decision-makers and family members during an attempt to reunite a Cape Verdean family spread across several countries as an example, the questions of what ‘family’ means, what relationships are included and the nature of the elationships involved answered differently by different actors will be shown. The article discusses the way in which the regulation of transnational mobility according to specific categories of eligibility is giving social ties a concrete legal form which can run contrary to the social conventions and conceptions of migrants and their families. The focus is on both the normative categories that have repercussions for the core of the social sphere and on the family practices that react to these categorizations.
This earlier working paper was later published as: A shifting yet grounded transnational social f... more This earlier working paper was later published as: A shifting yet grounded transnational social field: Interplays of displacement and emplacement in African migrant trajectories across Central America. In: Population, Space and Place Volume27, Issue5.
Abstract:
Recent discussions of migrant trajectories or journeys indicate that focusing on circumscribed origins and destination settings is not enough for understanding contemporary transnational lives. The many migrants that are en route for extended periods of time, especially in the so-called Global South, and the recognition that their increasingly complex trajectories cannot be regarded as mere empty transit space, disconnected from life elsewhere, present us with the challenge to broaden the transnational scope. Drawing inspiration from the recent increase of African migrants in Central America, this paper addresses volatile transnational lives by focusing on the dynamics between displacements and emplacements. Whereas even the more sophisticated notions of displacement often evoke images of passivity and being ‘cut off’, articulations of emplacement emphasize how ‘the displaced’ also actively re-embed and reshape their cross-border lives locally. Thus, migrants engage in dynamics of smuggling, state surveillance, humanitarian assistance, daily consumption, employment, imagining and planning in the (temporary) host localities of their trajectory. To what extent are transnational lives made possible, lived and contested in such contexts of forced semi-permanence or deliberate temporality? How does a transnational perspective help us understand the experiences of these migrants and the dynamics of these localities? How does a focus on ever evolving trajectories enrich our understanding of how transnational lives are shaped? This paper introduces a theoretical perspective on the simultaneous articulation of displacement and emplacement through migrant trajectories, which will allow us to acknowledge and unravel transnational lives as they ‘touch the ground’ en route.
in: Alber, Erdmute and Heike Drotbohm (eds.) 2015: Anthropological Perspectives on Care. Work, Ki... more in: Alber, Erdmute and Heike Drotbohm (eds.) 2015: Anthropological Perspectives on Care. Work, Kinship and the Life-Course. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
En el presente capítulo, rastreo la sinuosa trayectoria de migrantes que han sido deportados invo... more En el presente capítulo, rastreo la sinuosa trayectoria de migrantes que han sido deportados involuntariamente a sus países de origen por fuerzas estatales. El contexto, de deportación, se centra en la dinámica entre la ciudadanía formal por un lado, y las economías morales de pertenencia y membresía por el otro. Basándose en el trabajo de campo antropológico en Cabo Verde, une criolla nación isleña situada en el África occidental en donde la deportación está produciendo una nueva minoría social, este artículo examina la confluencia social y las prácticas legales formales del ejercicio de membresía en campos transnacionales. Se argumenta que la comprensión de la inclusión social y la percepción de pertenencia están integradas en los discursos morales sobre la “ley” y “justicia”, ya que circulan dentro de los campos sociales transnacionales. En el contexto de la migración de retorno forzado, la ciudadanía surge como un espacio para demandar la legitimidad y la integración y del mismo modo se convierte en un modo esencial de la formulación de condicionalidades para la integración y la exclusión social.
In: Knoerr, Jacqueline & Christoph Kohl in press: The Upper Guinea Coast in Global Perspective. London: Berghahn
Based on anthropological research of the Cape Verdean islands of Fogo and Brava, this chapter foc... more Based on anthropological research of the Cape Verdean islands of Fogo and Brava, this chapter focuses on migrant return visits and their particular meaning for ‘regrounding home’, understood as an idea and a social construction as well as a physical place. After reflecting on the particularities of Cape Verde as a creole and transnational society since its historical beginnings, the author examines the banderona, festivities celebrating the local patron saint, which for centuries has annually drawn thousands of migrants back to their islands of origins. What initially served as a hierarchic moment between colonial masters and slaves later evolved into a transnational ritual that celebrates the upward social mobility of those visitors and allowes for some redistribution of their material gains. Presently these ritualized return visits constitute an important opportunity for reaffirming social ties and negotiating asymmetric family relations. While non-migrant islanders make use of the festivities for articulating their needs and seeking diasporic support, migrants express their social visibility and their willingness to contribute to a transnational livelihood. The author also analyses this articulated interest in maintaining ‘home ties’ in the context of recent shifts in the world economy, which has forced migrants to reassess their living arrangements in the diaspora as well as the viability of an eventual permanent return.
Deportation, as a coerced and involuntary mode of return migration, contradicts common assumption... more Deportation, as a coerced and involuntary mode of return migration, contradicts common assumptions and understandings of transnational livelihoods. This can be felt particularly strongly in the realm of the family – the social sphere where migration is facilitated and enacted. Drawing on anthropological fieldwork in Cape Verdean transnational social fields, this paper applies a gendered perspective in examining how deportation affects individual positions within transnational families. It examines how female and male deportees try to re-establish their social and affective lives after their return and also takes into account the perspective of family members who continue to live in the (former) destination country and who have to cope with the absence of a deported relative. These findings reveal power relations and social inequalities produced by state removal, unfolding not only between states and non-citizen residents, but also among family members whose lives are divided involuntarily by state borders. The article comes to the conclusion that deportation not only ‘reverses’ the position of migrants in their (alleged) countries of origin, but that these processes of ‘reversal’ extend to all achievements of migratory family lives – both in the migrants’ country of origin as well as in the country of destination.
This paper introduces a collection of articles that share ethnographic perspectives on the inters... more This paper introduces a collection of articles that share ethnographic perspectives on the intersections between deportation, anxiety and justice. As a form of expulsion regulating human mobility, deportation policies may be justified by public authorities as measures responding to anxieties over (unregulated) migration. At the same time, they also bring out uncertainty and unrest to deportable/deported migrants and their families. Providing new and complementary insights into what deportation’ as a legal and policy measure actually embraces in social reality, this special issue argues for an understanding of deportation as a process that begins long before, and carries on long after, the removal from one country to another takes place. It provides a transnational perspective over the ‘deportation corridor’, covering different places, sites, actors and institutions. Furthermore, it reasserts the emotional and normative elements inherent to deportation policies and practices emphasising the interplay between deportation, perceptions of justice and national, institutional and personal anxieties. The papers cover a broad spectrum of geographical sites, deportation practices and perspectives and are a significant and long overdue contribution to the current state of the art in deportation studies.
Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Zusammenspiel von grenzüberschreitend gelebten Familienbezieh... more Dieser Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Zusammenspiel von grenzüberschreitend gelebten Familienbeziehungen auf der einen Seite und familienbezogenen Einwanderungspolitiken auf der anderen. Anhand eines Entscheidungskonflikts im Hinblick auf eine angestrebte Familienzusammenführung, der zwischen den in mehreren Ländern lebenden Mitgliedern einer Familie und administrativen Entscheidungsträgern ausgetragen wird, wird gezeigt, dass die Frage, was 'Familie' ist, welche Beziehungen dazu gezählt werden und welche Beziehungsinhalte damit verbunden werden, von Seiten dieser Akteure unterschiedlich beantwortet wird. Der Beitrag problematisiert, dass im Zuge der Regulation grenzüberschreitender Mobilität, die über spezifische Berechtigungskategorien erfolgt, eine rechtliche Konkretisierung sozialer Bindungen stattfindet, die den sozialen Konventionen und Konzeptionen von MigrantInnen und ihren Angehörigen widersprechen kann. Im Zentrum der Betrachtung stehen sowohl die administrativen Entscheidungen über grenzüberschreitende Mobilität, deren normative Kategorien ins Innere des Sozialen zurückwirken, als auch die familialen Praxen, die auf diese Kategorisierungen reagieren.
Inventar der Migrationsbegriffe [https://www.migrationsbegriffe.de/solidaritaet], 2022
Der Begriff Solidarität wird im Alltag gerne bedenkenlos mit Migration und Flucht in Verbindung g... more Der Begriff Solidarität wird im Alltag gerne bedenkenlos mit Migration und Flucht in Verbindung gebracht. Welche konkreten Beziehungen und Handlungsinhalte jedoch mit dem Begriff bezeichnet werden, ist nur schwach bestimmt. Der vorliegende Beitrag zeichnet daher zunächst die Begriffshistorie und daraus hervorgegangene widersprüchliche Bedeutungsdimensionen nach. Anschließend werden anhand von Beispielen des pro-migrantischen Aktivismus in Europa die Herausforderungen von Solidaritätsvarianten beleuchtet, die aus dem Impuls des Mitgefühls entstehen (‚Mitgefühlsolidarität‘). Daran wird deutlich, dass der Solidaritätsbegriff mitunter auf einer rein diskursiven Ebene oder als Form der Selbstbeschreibung eingesetzt wird, um gesellschaftliche Ideale zu formulieren. Gleichzeitig sind gerade im Migrations- und Fluchtkontext die konkreten, in den sozialen Nahraum eingelagerten solidarischen Praktiken von ökonomischen oder symbolischen Ungleichheiten zwischen den Gebenden und den Empfangenden von Unterstützungsleistungen gekennzeichnet. Obwohl eigentlich inkludierend gedacht, kann diese pro-migrantische Solidarität daher paternalistische und viktimisierende Dimensionen vor allem dann entfalten, wenn die soziale Distanz aufrechterhalten wird. In Konstellationen also, in denen keine neue Gemeinschaftsform angestrebt und die exkludierenden Dimensionen der eigenen Gesellschaft weder hinterfragt noch verändert werden, nützt der Solidaritätsbegriff letzten Endes der Aufrechterhaltung bestehender symbolischer Grenzen.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology , 2022
[https://oxfordre.com/anthropology/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.001.0001/acrefore-97801908... more [https://oxfordre.com/anthropology/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.001.0001/acrefore-9780190854584-e-411] To care about and for others—that is other people, collectivities, plants, animals, or the climate—is a mundane and ubiquitous act. At some point in life, almost every human being needs to be cared for, encounters care, and eventually provides care. In anthropology, the critical notion of care provides an analytic tool for seriously considering life’s contingencies and for understanding the ways that people ascribe meaning to different kind of acts, attitudes, and values. This chapter argues that the concept’s normative dimension forms part of a cultural binarism that hierarchizes the world according to differently valued spheres of existence. Concentrating on this normativity as inherent to the notion, the chapter distinguishes three complementary empirical fields: care as (globalized) social reproduction, care as institutionalized asymmetry, and care beyond human exceptionalism. It becomes clear that care oscillates between two different perspectives, producing a particular tension. On the one hand, the care concept features a protective and conservative dimension that is congruent with the past. On the other hand, the concept incorporates a transformational dimension through its notions of development, progress, and improvement. To move beyond our own (potentially or inevitably) academic, Eurocentric, or human-centric understanding of the notion, this essay suggests moving “care beyond repair.” We can do so, first, by asking what role research plays in this differentiating ethics and, second, by identifying perspectives and positionalities that, at first glance, appear indistinct or inarticulate and hence do not confirm already-familiar categories of evaluation and distinction. Seen this way, care beyond repair draws attention to the making and unmaking of human existence.
https://www.scielo.br/j/mana/a/D4JyPrSY85YCP49SXY5DTFx/?lang=pt Importar-se com os outros e cuida... more https://www.scielo.br/j/mana/a/D4JyPrSY85YCP49SXY5DTFx/?lang=pt Importar-se com os outros e cuidar dos outros – sejam outras pessoas, coletividades, plantas, animais ou o clima – é um ato cotidiano e recorrente. Em algum momento da vida, quase todos os seres humanos precisam ser cuidados, são cuidados e, por fim, cuidam. Na antropologia, a noção crítica de cuidado constitui uma ferramenta analítica para considerar seriamente as contingências da vida e para compreender os modos como as pessoas atribuem sentido a diferentes tipos de atos, atitudes e valores. Este artigo argumenta que a dimensão normativa do conceito é parte de um binarismo cultural que hierarquiza o mundo de acordo com esferas da existência às quais são atribuídos valores distintos. Concentrando-se nesta normatividade como algo intrínseco à noção, o artigo estabelece uma distinção entre três campos empíricos complementares: o cuidado como reprodução social (globalizada), o cuidado como assimetria institucionalizada e o cuidado para além do excepcionalismo humano. Fica claro que o cuidado oscila entre duas perspectivas distintas, produzindo uma tensão específica: por um lado, o conceito de cuidado apresenta uma dimensão protetora e conservadora ligada ao passado. Por outro, incorpora uma dimensão transformativa por meio de suas noções de desenvolvimento, progresso e aprimoramento. Para ir além de nossa própria concepção (potencial ou inevitavelmente) acadêmica, eurocêntrica ou humanocêntrica da noção de cuidado, este ensaio sugere levar “o cuidado além do reparo”: podemos fazê-lo, em primeiro lugar, indagando qual é o papel da pesquisa nesta ética da diferenciação e, em seguida, identificando perspectivas e posicionalidades as quais, à primeira vista, parecem indistintas ou desarticuladas e, por isso, desafiam categorias já familiares de avaliação e distinção. Encarado desta maneira, o cuidado além do reparo nos chama a atenção para o fazer e o desfazer da existência humana.
In contemporary migration policy and practice across the globe, deportation has emerged as an app... more In contemporary migration policy and practice across the globe, deportation has emerged as an apparently inevitable response to real, or otherwise perceived, migration crises. A skeptical attitudetoward the analytic use of “crisis” in the context of deportation is called for, as is the need to concentrate on the political genealogy of the term, which culminates in the justification of “emergency” policies and the implementation of new measures of control. Yet, at the same time—when states govern undocumented or unwanted residents through deportation and employ the notion of crisis for justifying irregular and often violent acts towards deportable subjects—a situation emerges that indeed shares key characteristics with the definition of crisis. Not only deportees, but also their families and other community members perceive the threat, the execution, and the outcome of deportation as a radical disruption from the norm, a break of a situation considered normal, stable, and healthy. By means of distinguishing different levels of perceptions as well as rationales of linking deportation to the notion of crisis, the transformative element inherent in deportation is revealed, which complicates popular and political notions of membership, security, and mobility.
In: Bastia, Tanja and Ron Skeldon (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Migration and Development. London, New York: Routledge. Ch. 50., 2020
This chapter summarizes German-speaking scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds. It trac... more This chapter summarizes German-speaking scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds. It traces how the perception of migration in the context of the development agenda has shifted from a derogatory to a valorising and again to a critical one since the 1990s. While the discursive connection of migration and development has changed in the course of time, many authors agree on the unprecedented intensity and the hype that surrounded the migration-development nexus in the past 15 years. After summarizing the positions of several key authors, the chapter clarifies specificities of the German context, before examining how different types of actors and organizations perceived migrants as new actors of development, and how this affected the migrants. This overview ends with the competing policy agendas in the context of contemporary migration management, which often result in a tightening of border control and in a securitization of migration. In this context, issues of migration and development have been substituted by questions of displacement, asylum and the externalization of European borders. Today, social practices of supporting newcomers coexist with an increasingly restrictive asylum politics and an upheaval of right-wing and nationalist political movements.
Beer, Bettina, Hans Fischer, Julia Pauli: Ethnologie. Einführung in die Erforschung kultureller Vielfalt., 2017
In diesem Beitrag befasse ich mich zunächst kurz mit der historischen Herausbildung der Migration... more In diesem Beitrag befasse ich mich zunächst kurz mit der historischen Herausbildung der Migrationsethnologie innerhalb des Faches . Anschließend nehme ich mit Multikulturalismus, Integration, Diaspora und Transnationalismus einige Schlüsselkonzepte in den Blick, anhand derer sich wichtige Forschungskonjunkturen und Denkansätze der vergangenen Dekaden gut erläutern lassen. Im hinteren Teil gehe ich exemplarisch auf jene epistemologische Perspektiven ein, die sich aus gegenwärtigen politischen Trends, wie der Versicherheitlichung der Migrationspolitik und der wachsenden Bedeutung der Flüchtlingsthematik ergeben haben. Ich ende mit einem Blick auf die Verflechtung zwischen der ethnologischen Wissensproduktion und dem Forschungsgegenstand, um an die Notwendigkeit einer selbstreflexiven Haltung sowohl innerhalb der Wissenschaft als auch in anwendungsbezogenen Arbeitsfeldern zu erinnern.
In an attempt to offer some food for critical thinking for understanding the particularities of “... more In an attempt to offer some food for critical thinking for understanding the particularities of “vernacular humanitarianism” (Brkovic 2017), “solidarity humanitarianism” (Rozakou 2017) and the ‘neoliberal borderlands’ of help (Besteman 2016), I use this blog post to explore the pitfalls of encounters in a social setting in which helpers try to move beyond the logics, terms and temporalities of large-scale, formalized versions of humanitarian aid, and the recipients of help navigate a support structure that is both informalized and hyper-diversified. I trace the trajectory of Rosemonde, a woman originally from Haiti, who I met while carrying out anthropological fieldwork on migratory trajectories in São Paulo, Brazil, and combine short interview samples with ethnographic impressions from the field.
In this thematic week we aim to think through the notion of displacement. At a time that is marke... more In this thematic week we aim to think through the notion of displacement. At a time that is marked by unprecedented movements of refugees and migrants on the one hand, and deep-seated anxieties of becoming a “stranger to one’s own land” (Hochschild 2016) on the other, we believe that it is pivotal to reconsider this idea from various perspectives. Bringing together eight social anthropologists who give insights into their on-going ethnographic research in different parts of the world, we tackle this theme by giving precedence to the often-dialectical ways displacement and emplacement are experienced, lived and made sense of by groups and individuals.
As populações móveis enfrentam muitas barreiras uma vez que chegam em um lugar novo. O abrigo, di... more As populações móveis enfrentam muitas barreiras uma vez que chegam em um lugar novo. O abrigo, dimensão espacial do ‘refúgio’, encontra-se nas raízes do conceito do asilo. O abrigo como direito social deve muito à noção de hospitalidade e está intimamente conectado à dignidade humana de cada pessoa, independentemente do seu status de residência. Contudo, encontrar um lugar seguro não deixa de ser um desafio chave para a maioria dos refugiados e outros migrantes, especialmente durante a primeira fase após a sua chegada, quando lhes faltam os respectivos meios financeiros, contatos locais e conhecimentos do idioma para poder articular as suas necessidades mais básicas. ma pesquisa antropológica foi realizada em São Paulo, megalópole em expansão e maior cidade do hemisfério ocidental, onde mais de doze milhões de pessoas lutam pelo ‘direito à cidade’. Atualmente, uma ampla camada da população brasileira não tem acesso à moradias acessíveis financeiramente e, por isso, moram nas áreas periféricas, em favelas ou em bairros abandonados no centro da cidade.
Mobile populations face many barriers once they arrive at a new place. Shelter, the spatial dimen... more Mobile populations face many barriers once they arrive at a new place. Shelter, the spatial dimension of ‘refuge’, lies at the roots of the concept of asylum. As a social right it owes much to the notion of hospitality and is closely connected to the human dignity of every person, regardless of his or her residency status. However, finding a safe place remains a key challenge for most refugees and other migrants, especially in the first phase after their arrival, when they lack the respective financial means, local contacts, and eventually the language for articulating even their most basic needs
When Jacky was deported from the USA to Cape Verde, his life came to a sudden standstill. Within ... more When Jacky was deported from the USA to Cape Verde, his life came to a sudden standstill. Within a short time his face grew deep wrinkles; it looked resigned, exhausted, and drained. Merely at his age of 45, Jacky looked like an old man.
Anthropologist Heike Drotbohm is looking at a recent picture of Jacky and is puzzled. She met him six years ago and now she can hardly recognize him. While peering at more pictures of deported migrants she met between 2006 and 2008 on Cape Verde during her fieldwork, she is compelled to make the same conclusion. All of these people seemed to have aged disproportionally fast.
Their faces, it seems, tell us uncomfortable stories about the transition from a mobile and independent life to the forced immobility on Cape Verde: an arrow-shaped archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean that the men left many years ago.
Allegra. A Virtual Lab of Legal Anthropology, Dec 3, 2014
In this post we wish to underline the importance of taking a transnational perspective over what ... more In this post we wish to underline the importance of taking a transnational perspective over what we have termed the deportation corridor, and we will do so by drawing on the contributions that formed part of a special issue we edited for the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies entitled ‘Deportation, Anxiety, Justice: New Ethnographic Perspectives.’
By connecting the notion of the corridor to the enactment and the experience of deportation, we wish to highlight a spatial, institutional and affective state of transit, which appears permanent and transitory at the same time.
Call for Proposals for International Workshop, to be carried out at Johannes Gutenberg-University... more Call for Proposals for International Workshop, to be carried out at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany, in June 2024
Based on our double session at the DGSKA conference in Munich this July, we are now sending the e... more Based on our double session at the DGSKA conference in Munich this July, we are now sending the extended Call for Papers for next year’s international workshop in Mainz (10-12 July 2024) that we organise on the same topic as the next big event of our DGSKA Working Group “Politik- und Rechtsanthropologie – Political and Legal Anthropology"
International and Transdisciplinary Summer School for PhD Candidates
Telling People Apart: Sortin... more International and Transdisciplinary Summer School for PhD Candidates Telling People Apart: Sorting, Grouping and Distinguishing June 18th - June 24th, 2023 Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany Organized by the Collaborative Research Centre 1482 - Studies in Human Categorisation The Collaborative Research Centre 1482 “Studies in Human Categorisation” [Humandifferenzierung] invites you to a summer school at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz from June 18th-24th, 2023. In five work-intensive days (plus voluntary program on June 18th and 24th), we will examine a phenomenon that is as ubiquitous as it is fundamental: Human beings continuously differentiate and categorise each other in a variety of ways, for example by age, gender, nationality, religion, language, race, attractiveness, but also by dietary habits or music preferences. In an exchange with renowned experts from various disciplines, conceptual and methodological foundations for the study of human categorisation will be discussed in different formats.
People considered to be ‘in transit’ do not traverse this often-extended transit space in a void.... more People considered to be ‘in transit’ do not traverse this often-extended transit space in a void. They encounter, dwell in, and engage with particular places along the routes of their journey towards a desired destination. In the literature on borders, migration and humanitarianism, many of these places remain invisible, especially if they are not located in major cities or near a heavily monitored nation-state border. They may be constructed as ‘remote’, ‘peripheral’, or ‘marginal’ from a scholarly and policy point of view. However, we wish to emphasize and interrogate the centrality of these places as key sites in the shaping of migrant trajectories, from the surveillance and care they experience, to the re-creation of social ties and the struggles over communication, documentation, and onward travel. Moreover, the histories of these places, their (geo)political positioning, ethnic and religious diversity, socioeconomic dynamics and local actors – who may be mobile themselves – interact with passing and dwelling migrants. But how, exactly, do these interactions, these entanglements of what moves and what stays, shape these places?
Call for papers for the panel 'Deportation as Friction' at the 2nd Mobilities-Development confere... more Call for papers for the panel 'Deportation as Friction' at the 2nd Mobilities-Development conference, Radboud University, Nijmegen, June 8-9 2017: Friction in a Mobile World. Panel organizers: Nauja Kleist, Danish Institute for International Studies and Heike Drotbohm, Dep. of Anthropology and African Studies, University of Mainz. Deadline April 7.
To contribute to an in-depth understanding of the differentiations and interconnections of human ... more To contribute to an in-depth understanding of the differentiations and interconnections of human (im)mobility, this panel aims to highlight and 'locate' migrant trajectories through focusing on both displacement and emplacement, and on the role of migration industries herein.
In this panel, we wish to discuss deportation as 'friction', understood as precarious and disrupt... more In this panel, we wish to discuss deportation as 'friction', understood as precarious and disrupted interconnections in a situation characterized by stratified globalization, a diversification of migration industries and restrictive mobility regimes.
This panel, organized by Heike Drotbohm & Annika Lems, aims to bring together anthropologists wor... more This panel, organized by Heike Drotbohm & Annika Lems, aims to bring together anthropologists working on forced migration in different world areas to assess the present situation and discuss whether and how anthropological approaches to experiences of refugeeism, displacement and asylum contribute to new analytical frameworks.
Although large swaths of the social sciences view the concept of vulnerability critically, it rem... more Although large swaths of the social sciences view the concept of vulnerability critically, it remains central to reflecting on how people differentiate each other and themselves from others. Sedimented in differentiating terms, ideas and policies – and often in emotional discourses and representations – perceptions of vulnerability express divided and stratified understandings of a person’s or a group’s exposure to life’s contingencies. As a combination of political, technical and moral forms of assessment, vulnerability is distributed unequally across gendered, generational and spatial lines. Often, it works as a culturalised shorthand for shared understandings of ‘deservingness’, referring to biographical framings, particular situations of exposure, or material and environmental threats.
Recognising the rapidly changing contents and contours of this controversial notion, we will use this international workshop to inquire into the dynamics of differentiating categories that shed light on how vulnerability and the eligibility for care are enacted, stabilised and justified but also claimed, contested and rejected. Presentations from multiple perspectives will adress vulnerability’s contested nature and volatility across various social and geographical settings and multiple actors’ perspectives.
The workshop's program can be found here:
https://humandifferenzierung.uni-mainz.de/event/rethinking-the-volatility-of-vulnerability-against-categorical-constraints
This conference introduces the notion of care into studies of humanitarianism. Care is a social a... more This conference introduces the notion of care into studies of humanitarianism. Care is a social activity produced by combinations of intimate and institutional practices. All of us need to be cared for, but care requirements are revealed more starkly and are often amplified in moments of acute need or emergency. At the same time, in emergency and disaster situations, quotidian care arrangements can themselves undergo a crisis. Everyday routines may need to be adapted and radically changing conditions can call into question established procedures, or demand alternative modes of action. Humanitarian intervention reconfigures caring institutions through new ways of knowing and representing suffering that emerge alongside organizational responses; it produces shifts in the organization and practice of care that profoundly reshape the sociality of those involved; and it is implicated in the production of new material environments that restructure the possibilities and limits of caring interventions.
In this thematic week we aim to think through the notion of displacement. At a time that is marke... more In this thematic week we aim to think through the notion of displacement. At a time that is marked by unprecedented movements of refugees and migrants on the one hand, and deep-seated anxieties of becoming a “stranger to one’s own land” (Hochschild 2016) on the other, we believe that it is pivotal to reconsider this idea from various perspectives. Bringing together eight social anthropologists who give insights into their on-going ethnographic research in different parts of the world, we tackle this theme by giving precedence to the often-dialectical ways displacement and emplacement are experienced, lived and made sense of by groups and individuals.
Dieses Seminar nutzt den Intersektionalitätsansatz, um sich mit der Verschränkung von unterschied... more Dieses Seminar nutzt den Intersektionalitätsansatz, um sich mit der Verschränkung von unterschiedlichen Dimensionen sozialer Ungleichheit im gegenwärtigen Brasilien zu befassen. Zentral für ein Verstehen der brasilianischen Gesellschaft ist das Zusammenspiel regionaler und transkontinentaler (Zwangs-)Migration, was Folgen für die gegenwärtige Konstituierung sozialer Gruppen hat, die unterschiedlichen ‚Rassen'-bzw. Klassen-und Geschlechterkategorien zugeordnet werden. Wir nähern uns zunächst der Verflechtung dieser drei Ungleichheitsdimensionen an, indem wir uns ein grundlegendes Verständnis jeder einzelnen Kategorie erarbeiten und uns dann mit dem historischen Gewordensein dieser Kategorien im modernen Brasilien befassen. Parallel dazu erarbeiten wir uns die Bedeutung der Kategorien innerhalb eines konkreten sozialen Feldes, indem wir eine (englischsprachige) Ethnographie zur Schönheitsindustrie Brasiliens (Edmonds, A.: Pretty Modern. Beauty, Sex, and Plastic Surgery in Brazil. Duke 2010) lesen. Auf diese Weise befassen wir uns mit der Frage, warum für schwarze Frauen der brasilianischen Mittelklasse der Zugang zu Schönheitsoperationen zentral ist und was dies über ihr soziales Umfeld, die damit verbundenen Institutionen, ihre Identität und das gegenwärtige Brasilien aussagt. In der Schlussphase des Seminars beziehen wir anhand weiterer ethnographischer Beispiele zusätzliche Ungleichheitsdimensionen hinzu und nutzen diese, um den Intersektionalitätsansatz nicht nur anzuwenden, sondern auch um ihn, entsprechend dem Ansatz von Winker & Degele (2009) um weitere Untersuchungsebenen auszuweiten.
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In recent years, a growing spread and differentiation of such forms of informal crisis- related care has been observed in all parts of the world. In kindergartens, schools, community centers, churches, mosques, gyms, squats, or under bridges, nonprofessional helpers—students, volunteers, activists—collect donations, distribute food and clothing, offer language training, provide legal and bureaucratic counseling, or share their leisure time with “those in need”. The fact that humanitarian support is offered by highly diverse types of individuals and organizations with diverging degrees of formalization and political capital is certainly not new. However, in this theme section we argue that the social, political, and affective type of relationship that has been established between these different forms and scales of aid—as well as among all involved actors in informal settings of humanitarian care—is a distinguishing feature of the contemporary world.
website: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/anthropological-perspectives-on-care-erdmute-alber/?isb=9781137513434
1. Politiken kultureller Differenz
2. Transnationale Perspektiven
3. Ethnizität und Diversität.
Dafür werden Autorinnen und Autoren mit unterschiedlichen disziplinären Hintergründen aus Deutschland, Österreich, der Schweiz und den USA zusammengeführt. Im Zentrum steht die Beziehung zwischen der intellektuellen Krise, welche die bisherigen Grundbegriffe der Integrations- und Migrationsforschung erfasst hat, und der Entwicklung neuer thematischer Zuschnitte, theoretischer Konzepte und Forschungsansätze."
Beiträge zum download: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-658-03626-3
This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.
In São Paolo’s ancient center, squats provide protective spaces to thousands of residents who cannot or do not want to access the formal and highly gentrified housing market. At the same time, these formerly abandoned buildings are also a site of the political struggle and claim the right to decent communal living. This paper traces the motives and aspirations of different types of squatters, such as activists, internal and international migrants as well as refugees. Through the notion of “aspirational anxieties” it concentrates on the uncomfortable emergence and recognition of power asymmetries inherent in the affective dimensions of solidarian future-making. By showing how dis- and emplacement are experienced by actors with contrasting and eventually irreconcilable biographical experiences, this paper warns against a normative understanding of the notion of displacement.
Abstract:
Recent discussions of migrant trajectories or journeys indicate that focusing on circumscribed origins and destination settings is not enough for understanding contemporary transnational lives. The many migrants that are en route for extended periods of time, especially in the so-called Global South, and the recognition that their increasingly complex trajectories cannot be regarded as mere empty transit space, disconnected from life elsewhere, present us with the challenge to broaden the transnational scope. Drawing inspiration from the recent increase of African migrants in Central America, this paper addresses volatile transnational lives by focusing on the dynamics between displacements and emplacements. Whereas even the more sophisticated notions of displacement often evoke images of passivity and being ‘cut off’, articulations of emplacement emphasize how ‘the displaced’ also actively re-embed and reshape their cross-border lives locally. Thus, migrants engage in dynamics of smuggling, state surveillance, humanitarian assistance, daily consumption, employment, imagining and planning in the (temporary) host localities of their trajectory. To what extent are transnational lives made possible, lived and contested in such contexts of forced semi-permanence or deliberate temporality? How does a transnational perspective help us understand the experiences of these migrants and the dynamics of these localities? How does a focus on ever evolving trajectories enrich our understanding of how transnational lives are shaped? This paper introduces a theoretical perspective on the simultaneous articulation of displacement and emplacement through migrant trajectories, which will allow us to acknowledge and unravel transnational lives as they ‘touch the ground’ en route.
In recent years, a growing spread and differentiation of such forms of informal crisis- related care has been observed in all parts of the world. In kindergartens, schools, community centers, churches, mosques, gyms, squats, or under bridges, nonprofessional helpers—students, volunteers, activists—collect donations, distribute food and clothing, offer language training, provide legal and bureaucratic counseling, or share their leisure time with “those in need”. The fact that humanitarian support is offered by highly diverse types of individuals and organizations with diverging degrees of formalization and political capital is certainly not new. However, in this theme section we argue that the social, political, and affective type of relationship that has been established between these different forms and scales of aid—as well as among all involved actors in informal settings of humanitarian care—is a distinguishing feature of the contemporary world.
website: http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/anthropological-perspectives-on-care-erdmute-alber/?isb=9781137513434
1. Politiken kultureller Differenz
2. Transnationale Perspektiven
3. Ethnizität und Diversität.
Dafür werden Autorinnen und Autoren mit unterschiedlichen disziplinären Hintergründen aus Deutschland, Österreich, der Schweiz und den USA zusammengeführt. Im Zentrum steht die Beziehung zwischen der intellektuellen Krise, welche die bisherigen Grundbegriffe der Integrations- und Migrationsforschung erfasst hat, und der Entwicklung neuer thematischer Zuschnitte, theoretischer Konzepte und Forschungsansätze."
Beiträge zum download: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-658-03626-3
This open access edition has been made available under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license thanks to the support of the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.
In São Paolo’s ancient center, squats provide protective spaces to thousands of residents who cannot or do not want to access the formal and highly gentrified housing market. At the same time, these formerly abandoned buildings are also a site of the political struggle and claim the right to decent communal living. This paper traces the motives and aspirations of different types of squatters, such as activists, internal and international migrants as well as refugees. Through the notion of “aspirational anxieties” it concentrates on the uncomfortable emergence and recognition of power asymmetries inherent in the affective dimensions of solidarian future-making. By showing how dis- and emplacement are experienced by actors with contrasting and eventually irreconcilable biographical experiences, this paper warns against a normative understanding of the notion of displacement.
Abstract:
Recent discussions of migrant trajectories or journeys indicate that focusing on circumscribed origins and destination settings is not enough for understanding contemporary transnational lives. The many migrants that are en route for extended periods of time, especially in the so-called Global South, and the recognition that their increasingly complex trajectories cannot be regarded as mere empty transit space, disconnected from life elsewhere, present us with the challenge to broaden the transnational scope. Drawing inspiration from the recent increase of African migrants in Central America, this paper addresses volatile transnational lives by focusing on the dynamics between displacements and emplacements. Whereas even the more sophisticated notions of displacement often evoke images of passivity and being ‘cut off’, articulations of emplacement emphasize how ‘the displaced’ also actively re-embed and reshape their cross-border lives locally. Thus, migrants engage in dynamics of smuggling, state surveillance, humanitarian assistance, daily consumption, employment, imagining and planning in the (temporary) host localities of their trajectory. To what extent are transnational lives made possible, lived and contested in such contexts of forced semi-permanence or deliberate temporality? How does a transnational perspective help us understand the experiences of these migrants and the dynamics of these localities? How does a focus on ever evolving trajectories enrich our understanding of how transnational lives are shaped? This paper introduces a theoretical perspective on the simultaneous articulation of displacement and emplacement through migrant trajectories, which will allow us to acknowledge and unravel transnational lives as they ‘touch the ground’ en route.
for, as is the need to concentrate on the political genealogy of the term, which culminates in the justification of “emergency” policies and the implementation of new measures of control. Yet, at the same time—when states govern undocumented or unwanted residents
through deportation and employ the notion of crisis for justifying irregular and often violent acts towards deportable subjects—a situation emerges that indeed shares key characteristics with the definition of crisis. Not only deportees, but also their families and other community members perceive the threat, the execution, and the outcome of
deportation as a radical disruption from the norm, a break of a situation considered normal, stable, and healthy. By means of distinguishing different levels of perceptions as well as rationales of linking deportation to the notion of crisis, the transformative element
inherent in deportation is revealed, which complicates popular and political notions of membership, security, and mobility.
ma pesquisa antropológica foi realizada em São Paulo, megalópole em expansão e maior cidade do hemisfério ocidental, onde mais de doze milhões de pessoas lutam pelo ‘direito à cidade’. Atualmente, uma ampla camada da população brasileira não tem acesso à moradias acessíveis financeiramente e, por isso, moram nas áreas periféricas, em favelas ou em bairros abandonados no centro da cidade.
Anthropologist Heike Drotbohm is looking at a recent picture of Jacky and is puzzled. She met him six years ago and now she can hardly recognize him. While peering at more pictures of deported migrants she met between 2006 and 2008 on Cape Verde during her fieldwork, she is compelled to make the same conclusion. All of these people seemed to have aged disproportionally fast.
Their faces, it seems, tell us uncomfortable stories about the transition from a mobile and independent life to the forced immobility on Cape Verde: an arrow-shaped archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean that the men left many years ago.
By connecting the notion of the corridor to the enactment and the experience of deportation, we wish to highlight a spatial, institutional and affective state of transit, which appears permanent and transitory at the same time.
Telling People Apart: Sorting, Grouping and Distinguishing
June 18th - June 24th, 2023
Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany
Organized by the Collaborative Research Centre 1482 - Studies in Human Categorisation
The Collaborative Research Centre 1482 “Studies in Human Categorisation” [Humandifferenzierung] invites you to a summer school at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz from June 18th-24th, 2023. In five work-intensive days (plus voluntary program on June 18th and 24th), we will examine a phenomenon that is as ubiquitous as it is fundamental: Human beings continuously differentiate and categorise each other in a variety of ways, for example by age, gender, nationality, religion, language, race, attractiveness, but also by dietary habits or music preferences. In an exchange with renowned experts from various disciplines, conceptual and methodological foundations for the study of human categorisation will be discussed in different formats.
Recognising the rapidly changing contents and contours of this controversial notion, we will use this international workshop to inquire into the dynamics of differentiating categories that shed light on how vulnerability and the eligibility for care are enacted, stabilised and justified but also claimed, contested and rejected. Presentations from multiple perspectives will adress vulnerability’s contested nature and volatility across various social and geographical settings and multiple actors’ perspectives.
The workshop's program can be found here:
https://humandifferenzierung.uni-mainz.de/event/rethinking-the-volatility-of-vulnerability-against-categorical-constraints