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Illustrating new resistance strategies and mobilisations, this volume examines how EU citizens and refugee populations in Germany have opposed asylum policies and coped with hostile migration regimes. Taking as her starting point occupations of a Berlin square in 2012, the author weaves an auto-ethnographic account of her own involvement in solidarity and refugee resistance groups with archival examinations of various strategies. The book analyzes how activism is sustained in multiple ways: media solidarity groups challenge mainstream depictions; radio shows attempt to decolonize the media and resist the category of 'refugee'; a group of women comprised of migrants and asylum-seekers publish their accounts; solidarity groups help migrants to find temporary housing; campaigns align with existing groups or engage with political conversations more broadly to challenge populism, racism, and anti-migrant sentiment. As she bridges practical solidarity, media activism, and other strategies, Fazila Bhimji builds a framework to show how these tactics interrelate, interrogating specifically if the fragmentation of strategies limits anti-racist struggles, or whether providing manifold outlets for a collective struggle helps to build solidarity.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Chapter 2: The Racialization of Asylum-Seekers and Refugees in the Everyday in the German State.- Chapter 3: Heterogeneity and Dynamics of Tent Protests and Squatting: The Refugee Movement at Oranienplatz.- Chapter 4: Practical Solidarity, Encounters and Transformative Possibilities: A Case Study.- Chapter 5: Intersectional Feminist Solidarity and Activism amongst Refugees and Migrants at International Women's Space.- Chapter 6: There is Empowerment in the Air: Media Activists Decolonize the Radio.- Chapter 7: Conclusion: Reconsidering Activism and Solidarity.
About the author
Fazila Bhimji is Senior Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. She is the author of
British Asian Muslim Women, Multiple Spatialities and Cosmopolitanism (Palgrave, 2012).
Report
"The monograph offers the richest ethnography of the Berlin-based refugee movement to date. ... the book is a must-read for all those interested in migration and refugee social movements and who think that fighting for a borderless world/movement is necessary struggle." (Ziga Podgornik Jakil, Sociologus, Vol. 71 (2), 2021)
