Posts Tagged: colonialism

Aktualisiert am 9. Nov. 2015 Von gast 1 Kommentar

Beyond #refugeeswelcome: The Spectre of Racist Violence and Lessons from Refugee Resistance in Germany

This is the twelfth article in our series on refugees. For more information on the series, please click here.

by Joshua Kwesi Aikins and Daniel Bendix

The text reframes the current debate about refugees in Germany by contrasting Germany’s recent history of racist violence and limitations of asylum laws with the resistance and agency of refugee movements across Germany. Both provide an important lens to re-examine the simultaneous heralding of “welcome culture”, a sharp rise in arson attacks on asylum centres and the current legislative roll-back of refugee rights in Germany.

In bringing these perspectives together the text offers a corrective of both the current image of Germany as a welcoming champion of refugee rights and the problematic notion of refugees as objects of German policies and civil society “help” rather than subjects with a long history of resistance in Germany.

Aktualisiert am 1. Okt. 2015 Von gast 4 Kommentare

The Refugee Crisis and Our Connected Histories of Colonialism and Empire

This is the first article in our series on refugees. For more information on the series, please click here.

by Gurminder K Bhambra, University of Warwick

Attempts to address the current crisis often seek to make distinctions between ‘refugees’ and ‘migrants’ and between refugees / migrants and citizens. But, I suggest, these distinctions are part of the problem. Part of the solution is to rethink our histories of ‘national states’ – and the rights and claims they enable – through a ‘connected sociologies’ approach that acknowledges the shared histories that bring states and colonies together.

The crisis – or tragedy – currently playing out on, and within, the borders of Europe cannot have escaped anyone’s attention. Especially not after pictures of the body of the 3 year old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdi, circulated around the world. Equally shocking, although in a different way, were the images of refugees being taken, without their knowledge, to camps on trains in Hungary. The crisis is not new, but is newly gaining traction within European news media and wider political and public opinion. It is confused with ongoing debates on immigration, the free movement of people within the EU, and the nature of our obligations within international refugee law. While these are distinct issues, they are also, as I will go on to suggest in conclusion, profoundly connected through our shared histories of colonialism and neo-colonialism.

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