University of Applied Sciences and Arts Ottersberg

Activity: Visiting an external institution types › Research and Teaching at External Organisation

Description

The talk focuses on “crisis” as an opportunity for radical transformation and hope for change rather than a problem, a disaster and/or a threat. The tendency to view refugees/migrants as economic rather than socio-political actors presents an obstacle to investigating the numerous ways in which diverse groups of migrants exercise political agency, often moving beyond more explicit forms of mobilisation and protest. Moving away from the representation of the migrant/refugee as Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer – a living being with fewer rights than the citizens of nation-states – it theorises on the active engagement of refugees as agents for change in the host-society. It proposes to explore how migrants exercise their agency to construct new forms of active citizenship through a politics of care in this moment of political and economic instability and in the midst of the pandemic. This ‘politics of care’ allows migrants/refugees to develop a political consciousness in which caring is invoked as a symbol of power to build new kinds of citizenship and solidarity (Hill Collins 2000a; Bassel and Emejulu 2017). Looking at ‘food’ as a paradigm of common good and a caring praxis, this talk looks at a number of food-related projects and initiatives run by refugees and/or in collaboration with refugees in Athens. ‘Care’ is a political act within the so-called ‘solidarity movement’ that empowers migrants/refugees to claim their social and active citizenship.
Period13 Apr 2021
VisitingUniversity of Applied Sciences and Arts Ottersberg
Degree of RecognitionInternational

Keywords

  • crisis
  • active citizenship
  • refugees
  • solidarity
  • mutual aid
  • Greece
  • feminist methodologies

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