Between Prefigurative Politics and Collaborative Governance: Vernacular Humanitarianism in the Migration Movements of 2015

Sutter, Ove

doi:10.16995/ee.1242

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Fontanari and Borri, 2017; Hamann and Karakayali, 2016). Since then, scholars have increasingly turned to analyzing these “vernacular humanitarianisms” (Brković, 2023; Sutter, 2020), asking about their potential for unsettling the hierarchical logics of formal humanitarianism and the inherent coloniality of Europe’s asylum and border regimes (Picozza, 2021; Rozakou, 2017; Sandri, 2018). Sandri and Bugoni (2018) have focused on aspects of improvisation and informality as defining the work of volunteer groups in Calais’ “Jungle,” showing how these “makeshift humanitarians” came to develop more overt political stances by refusing to cooperate with state bordering and surveillance practices.…”

Section: Local Activism In a Post-reception Post-welcome Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Makeshift activism and the afterlives of refugee welcome in Covid-19 Italy

Lanari

2024

Critique of Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article captures a shift occurring at the peripheries of the Italian asylum system where, as reception infrastructures are progressively gutted, dismantled, and transformed into security apparatuses, local organizations refocus their efforts on helping refugees and asylum seekers carve out spaces of agency and autonomy in the time-space after institutional reception. I introduce the concept of “makeshift activism” to describe this relentless, creative patching together of solutions to support migrant emplacement beyond and – sometimes – against the confines of official programs. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in one of the world’s first Covid-19 hotspots – Italy’s Veneto region, I take the pandemic as a magnifying glass to expose the precarious nature of this activism but also its potential for prefiguring alternatives to the state’s (non-existent) paths towards long-term inclusion. More broadly, I shift the anthropological gaze towards charting the afterlives and aftermaths of refugee “welcome” in less spectacular locales, such as mid-size cities and small municipalities in peripheral mountain regions.

show abstract

Section: Local Activism In a Post-reception Post-welcome Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

Makeshift activism and the afterlives of refugee welcome in Covid-19 Italy

Lanari

2024

Critique of Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the last fi ve years, there has been a clear increase of anthropological interest in the grassroots humanitarianism (McGee and Pelham 2018), voluntary humanitarianism (Sandri 2018), domestic humanitarianism (Altman 2019), everyday humanitarianism (Brković 2016b;Horstmann 2017;Richey 2018;Sandberg and Andersen 2020), solidary humanitarianism (Rozakou 2017), activist humanitarianism (Reda and Proudfoot 2020), vernacular humanitarianism (Brković 2017;Sutter 2020), demotic humanitarianism (Taithe 2019), diaspora humanitarianism (Kleist 2021), distributed humanitarianism (Dunn forthcoming) and similar forms of 'humanitarianism from below' (Kloos 2020) and 'citizen aid' (Fechter and Schwittay 2019). Th ere has also been somewhat of a split in analytical foci when discussing this sort of informal support between the Global North and the Global South.…”

Section: Growing Interest In Small-scale Humanitarianismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vernacular Humanitarianisms

Brkovič¹

2023

Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

There has been an increase of anthropological interest in small-scale humanitarianisms that make situated claims to universality. The articles in this collection demonstrate that some genealogies of such situated universalisms have been explored more than others. Focusing on vernacular humanitarianisms, the goal is not to celebrate the standpoint of ‘radical alterity’ but rather to acknowledge that imagining and recognising similarities of people's experiences is not reserved for the Western European epistemology. Anthropological research of small-scale humanitarianisms points to situated, alternative and sometimes even decolonising visions and practices of ‘the humanity’ understood as a framework for imagining and recognising broadly shared experiences. This collection asks how vernacular humanitarianisms are performed in everyday life, enabling particular forms of ethics, power and inequality. Thus, it keeps possibilities of social critique in sight and moves a conversation towards an ethnographically attuned perspective that explores the role of vernacular humanitarianisms in various projects of governance. Depuis cinq ans, les anthropologues s'intéressent de plus en plus aux formes de l'humanitarisme à petite échelle qui, compte tenu du contexte socio-historique, visent un caractère d'universalité. Les articles publiés dans ce numéro de la revue montrent que quelques généalogies ont été explorées plus que d'autres. Les nouvelles expressions de la vie humanitaire émergent aujourd'hui remettent en question les divisions entre les pays du Nord, les pays du Sud, et les pays de l'Est. En mettant l'accent sur les idées et pratiques de l'humanitarisme vernaculaire, notre objectif n'est pas de célébrer le point de vue d'une ‘altérité radicale’. Il s'agit plutôt d'admettre que la capacité d'imaginer et de reconnaître les similitudes dans l'expérience humaine n'est pas limitée à l’épistémologie de l'Europe occidentale. La recherche anthropologique sur les humanitarismes à petite échelle révèle des visions et des pratiques de ‘l'humanité’ alternatives et sans connotations coloniales, qui sont conçues comme un cadre moral permettant d'envisager et d'identifier des expériences communes. Cet ensemble d'articles offre une approche critique pour étudier comment les humanitarismes vernaculaires sont manifestes dans la vie de tous les jours, et donnent lieu à des différents types d’éthique, pouvoir et inégalité. Nous proposons de concentrer sur les possibilités de critique sociale et d'avancer vers un point de vue ethnologique pour étudier le rôle d'humanitarismes vernaculaires en rapport avec des projets de gouvernance.

show abstract

“…Propelled by a spirit of historical reparation and the mantra of wir schaffen das (we can do this), German civil society reacted to the unprecedented numbers of arrivals with a remarkable wave of solidarity. Much has been written about the German Willkommenskultur (culture of welcome) emerging from the ‘long summer of migration’ (Hess et al, 2017) and the opposite poles of vernacular humanitarianism (Dinkelaker et al, 2021; Sutter, 2020) and anxieties over loss of control (Zehfuss, 2020) it brought about. Yet, while debates about the Willkommenskultur have largely focussed on Germany, Merkel's decision to temporarily suspend the EU’s long‐established practices of deterrence and border control set in motion a chain of events that profoundly affected the political orientation of Europe as a whole.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultures of unwelcome: Understanding the everyday histories of exclusionary practices – A view from across the German border

Lems

2022

International Migration

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article sheds light on the socio‐cultural dynamics Merkel's open‐door policy set in motion in Austria. Based on the Anti‐Merkel discourses that came to infiltrate Austrian mainstream politics, it will show how the summer of displacements 2015 led to a pronounced move to the right. While many commentators have tended to link the post‐2015 triumph of reactionary parties to the sense of crisis caused by the few months the European Union opened its borders to asylum seekers, the article demonstrates that we need to be more careful in our analyses of the roots of exclusion. By zooming in on the everydayness of anti‐cosmopolitan practices in an Austrian mountain community, it argues that if we are to understand the current backlash against liberal and cosmopolitan ideas we need to pay attention to genealogies of exclusionary practices, or ‘cultures of unwelcome’.

show abstract

Between Prefigurative Politics and Collaborative Governance: Vernacular Humanitarianism in the Migration Movements of 2015

Cited by 4 publications

References 26 publications

Makeshift activism and the afterlives of refugee welcome in Covid-19 Italy

Makeshift activism and the afterlives of refugee welcome in Covid-19 Italy

Vernacular Humanitarianisms

Cultures of unwelcome: Understanding the everyday histories of exclusionary practices – A view from across the German border

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About