Wann: 14.-16.09.2022

Wo: Lissabon, Portugal

Kooperationspartnerin: Dr. Elsa Peralta, Universidade de Lisboa

Finanzierung: DAAD-Programm Hochschuldialog mit Südeuropa

Wann: 25.-28.09.2024

Wo: Chemnitz, Deutschland

Kooperationspartner:innen: Dr. Elsa Peralta, Universidade de Lisboa und Prof. Dr. Doris Wieser, Universidade de Coimbra

Finanzierung: DAAD-Programm Hochschuldialog mit Südeuropa

When: From April 2027 onward

Where: Portugal, Spain, East Germany

Cooperation partners: NOVA University Lisbon, International University of Catalonia (Barcelona), Chemnitz University of Technology

This project examines how migrant activists on the Iberian Peninsula and in Eastern Germany articulate postcolonial critique and contribute to the (re)imagination of democracy through the interplay of offline and online activist practices. Parties such as Chega in Portugal, Vox in Spain, and AfD in Germany mobilize divisive politics along colonial and racialized identity constructions. Migrants face increasingly precarious conditions while simultaneously challenging these dynamics. Following Foucault’s analysis of power and resistance (1978/79), such developments not only stabilize existing power relations but also enable forms of resistance and the emergence of new subjectivities.

Conducted with two doctoral researchers, the project builds on preliminary studies and existing networks in Portugal and Spain. The central research question is: How do migrant activists in both regions practice postcolonial critique in the context of the Europe-wide rise of the (far) right, and to what extent do their offline and online activities contribute to reimagining social cohesion, participation, and democracy Migrant activist networks are conceptualized as practices of citizenship beyond legal status (Nyers 2010; De Genova 2010). Social media can expand visibility while enabling community to be imagined and practiced differently. Drawing on Daniel Miller (2018), offline and online activism are understood as intertwined spheres. Methodologically, the project combines discourse and content analysis with ethnography and digital anthropology.

These regions differ not only in their colonial histories but also in their contemporary approaches to engaging with that past. Lisbon, as the former center of the Portuguese empire, continues to reproduce narratives of benevolent colonization (Estevens 2023). Barcelona’s ambivalent colonial positioning intersects with contemporary independence discourses and its self-image as a “solidarity city” (Kron 2021). Although Eastern German cities did not play a central role in the colonial project of the German Empire, they bear colonial traces, and engagement with this history varies regionally. Combined with the GDR legacy and intensified far-right mobilization since the 2018 riots, this renders Eastern Germany a space in which memory, representation, and participation are highly contested. The research group enables comprehensive mapping of migrant offline/online activism while addressing multilingual and multi-sited research challenges. Each doctoral project examines at least two cities and two to three activist groups within a general shared timeframe, while specific periods are defined by key local events, following situational analysis (Clarke 2011). Doctoral Project 1 focuses on the Iberian Peninsula, emphasizing postcolonial relations with former colonies and Northern Europe since the economic crisis; analytical axes include self-empowerment, global citizenship, and social cohesion. Doctoral Project 2 investigates Eastern German cities, analyzing activism in relation to the GDR legacy and migration policies since the 2018 riots; key axes are democratization and everyday participation. Complementing these doctoral projects, I will conduct an integrative research project that adopts a zoom-out perspective. It reflects on the group’s theoretical and methodological framework and assesses its analytical applicability for explaining social dynamics and fostering reflexive analysis. Drawing on the collected data, it develops a comparative synthesis of similarities and differences in offline and online activism across the regions.

When: From October 2026 on

Where: Iberian Peninsula

This project examines Spanish and Portuguese films that address power relations between the Iberian Peninsula and core Europe in the context of the recent economic crisis and the intervention of the “Troika” (ECB, IMF, European Commission). It asks how these films mobilize colonial history and postcolonial critique by localizing global memory and relating it to contemporary debates on inequality shaped by postcolonial and neoliberal power relations.

Although Spain and Portugal have historically been situated within the Global North, the economic crisis saw them discursively recast as an imagined “South.” Media framings such as “Popular Periphery” (Börsen Zeitung) or “Spain Abolishes the Siesta” (Süddeutsche Zeitung) reinforced a We/They distinction and revived culturalist racist stereotypes of the “corrupt, lazy” Southern European (Schneider 2013). Contemporary Spanish and Portuguese films respond to this repositioning from within. I distinguish between films addressing domestic crisis conditions and those foregrounding Iberia’s position vis à-vis Northern Europe. The latter challenge historical identification with the Global North and frame intra-European North–South relations as postcolonial (Villarmea Álvarez 2021).

The project examines how this shift is narrated and visualized in films such as São Jorge (2016), As mil e uma noites (2015), Perdiendo el norte (2015), and El Olivo (2016), which stage austerity, migration, and intra-European North-South relations while reproducing and problematizing images typically attributed to the Global South. These films reveal the overlap of national and colonial histories within contemporary European power relations (Peralta/Jensen 2017). Conceptually, subalternity is understood not as identity but as a relational position within power structures (Spivak 2016). Iberian crisis cinema thus depicts former colonial powers as subaltern actors within the European Union, complicating the equation of South with subalternity and suggesting a “North within the South” and a “South within the North” (Albrecht 2020). Methodologically, the project combines systematic film analysis with approaches from racial capitalism, postcolonial studies, intersectionality, and subaltern studies to analyze how collective memory, cinematic form, and spatial representation mediate global–local power relations.

The project on migrant offline online activism investigates how digital platforms and physical spaces co-produce practices of citizenship, political subjectivities, and alternative imaginaries of democracy. The project on Iberian crisis cinema analyzes how austerity, financial governance, and intra European North–South hierarchies are mediated through cultural production. Taken together, they examine how cultural actors—activists and filmmakers—mobilize historical memory and postcolonial critique to intervene in contemporary debates on inequality, belonging, and power. In doing so, the two projects advance an interdisciplinary cultural theory attentive to digital mediation, value regimes, and the contested constitution of culture.