Solidarities, Political Kinship, and Racial Imaginaries: Eastern Europe as an EU Frontier Today

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

Historically regarded primarily as a region of emigration, more recently Eastern Europe is becoming accustomed to the arrivals of immigrants and refugees. Migration is an increasingly contested topic in regional politics, but it would be a mistake to assume that hostility to immigration in CEE simply mirrors the themes of anti-immigrant discourses in Western Europe and North America. Equally, movements of solidarity with people who migrate are distinctive compared to similar activism in western countries. This roundtable explores how Eastern Europeans draw on historical experiences and national mythologies to justify their responses to the arrivals of foreigners on their borders and in their neighbourhoods. How do these justifications translate into policy and practice? From violence perpetrated by state functionaries and ordinary citizens against asylum seekers from the Global South arriving via the Belarussian route, to grassroots migrant rights activism and mobilisation to support refugees from Ukraine, we have seen diverse manifestations of hostility and racism, and hospitality and solidarity. The eastern EU frontier looms larger in the public imaginary today than at any point since EU enlargement, giving rise to contradictory imperatives of control and care. Drawing on recent problematisations of race and racism in Eastern Europe (Kalmar, Lewicki), political kinship (Dzenovska), creolization (Boatca), performative democracy (Matynia), domopolitics (Walters) and postsocialism as critique (Aradau), we propose this roundtable as an appropriate format to map the emerging configurations of hostile and hospitable environments. We ask to what extent their rationales and legitimacy draw on local and regional history, memory, and experience.

Sub Unit

• Anthropology, Cultural Studies

Chair

• Karolina Follis, Lancaster U (UK)

Roundtable Members

• Manuela Boatca, U of Freiburg (Germany)

• Dace Dzenovska, U of Oxford (UK)

• Ivan Kalmar, U of Toronto (Canada)

• Daria Krivonos, U of Helsinki (Finland)

• Elzbieta Matynia, The New School for Social Research