We don't remember the O‐Platz protest camp for the sake of it. Collective memories and visibility of migrant activism in Berlin

Abstract

The activists opposing border regimes in Berlin still vividly remember the migrant protest camp on Oranienplatz (O-Platz), a square in the neighborhood of Kreuzberg, a decade after its establishment in 2012. For them, the protest camp is the ideal type of mobilization against border regimes; the opportunity for racialized migrants to engage in politics and formulate grievances based on their own experiences of border regimes. O-Platz is remembered as a visible migrant grassroots protest in the backdrop of a history of invisibility of migrant struggles in Germany. In contrast, activists frame their mobilization after O-Platz as invisible and fragmented, despite the emergence of new networks and alliances, which, however, are not led by migrant activists. Collective memory bridges different movement phases and emphasizes the importance of visibility achieved by collective action centered around the experiences of subaltern groups, specifically racialized migrants with precarious legal status. I argue that memory work is crucial for countering the invisibility and erasure of grassroots migrant struggles in Germany. Memory work has an aspirational function as it transforms characteristics of past mobilization into aspirations for the present, especially in a phase where new

Limited Tools for Emancipation? Human Rights and Border Abolition

“…Their claims for freedom of movement and the abolishment of asylum shelters attracted the attention of mainstream media and the broader society (Bhimji, 2016(Bhimji, , 2020Langa, 2015;Stierl, 2019). Ten years later, activists continue to frame the protest camp as an instance where racialised migrants engaged in politics and formulated grievances based on their own experiences of border regimes (Perolini, 2022c). It is the protest camp's visibility, and its unprecedented role in shaping subsequent migrant mobilisations, that characterises Berlin as a site of contention against border regimes.…”