Events 2020

Magdalena Nowicka, Migrant masculinities at intersections of sexuality and racial hierarchies (via Webex, hybrid)

Across Europe, concerns with gender relations and the role of men for maintaining the status quo or contributing to more equality overlap with prejudice towards immigrants. The scholarly discourses mirror these concerns in how they focus on ethnic identity or (Muslim) religiosity as factors shaping male migrants’ attitudes towards non-heteronormative sexualities. Eastern European migrants are rarely in focus, and if, then singled out as homophobic. Approaching migrant masculinities from intersectional perspective, I show how Polish migrant men in Munich and Berlin construct others’ and own masculinities.  In the cases discussed in this lecture, Poles distance themselves from Muslims to signal proximity to Germans but distance themselves from Germans to be closer to their sense of ‘proper’ Polish masculinity. I identify a hybrid form of migrant aspirational and fluid masculinity that emerges in the context of migration and European and local ethnic hierarchies.

October 1, 2020
17:30h to 19:30h
MSA, 3.500 (max. capacity 40 people)

Webex, Meeting PW: 1234

Media Centre’s youtube channel

Magdalena Nowicka is Head of Department Integration at German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM-Institut) in Berlin and Professor for Migration and Transnationalism at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She holds a doctoral degree in Sociology from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, a Master of Arts degree in Cultural Studies from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland and a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from the University of Warsaw, Poland. Her research and teaching activities are in the field of transnational migration in Europe, cosmopolitanism and conviviality, social inequalities, diversity, racism and qualitative research methods.

Tilmann Heil, Sensing Rio de Janeiro. How newcomers understand the city in global context (via Webex, hybrid)

This lecture offers an ethnography of the arrival of newcomers from Europe and West Africa in the ‘marvellous city’ – Rio de Janeiro. I draw from qualitative fieldwork between 2014 and 2020, a period during which the city went through the seeming heights of Olympic Games and World Cup and subsequent decline experienced in political, economic, environmental, and health crises. The recent highs and lows sit within the longue durée of a colonial, imperial, and postcolonial (ex)capital with its grown regimes of conviviality in social differentiations, racialized hierarchies, and stark power asymmetries. I argue that it is more readily acknowledged in the case of Rio de Janeiro that migration and difference remain embedded in the global legacies of coloniality, racism, exploitation, and privilege than in European cities. In the latter, the actuality of these global legacies is primarily voiced in critique that opposes the silencing efforts that accompany the normative modern project. What can be learned from southern knowledges once they are allowed to speak to global questions of migration, arrival, urban inequalities, and conviviality?

October 22, 2020
17h to 19h
MSA, 3.500 (max. capacity 40 people)

Webex, Meeting PW: 1234

Media Centre’s youtube channel

Gabriella Sanchez: Beyond the Wall: Re/searching the US-Mexico border

“Who cares about the wall? I don’t give a damn about the wall” may be last statement one would expect to hear when discussing US-Mexico border dynamics. And yet, it is a common response among fronterizos when the topic of the border wall is brought up in conversations by researchers, journalists, politicians, policy makers and other outsiders. For those who call the border home, the obsession of the international community with the “big, beautiful wall” that Trump once promised Mexico would pay for was a trite concern four years ago, and remains so today. It is, however, an issue brought up every election circle, and whenever an international crisis emerges along the US-Mexico divide.  In light of the US election, what matters, and what will matter to the people of the US-Mexico border? Why should we care?

November 26, 2020
17h to 19h
Webex, Meeting PW: 1234

Media Centre’s youtube channel