Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Institut für Europäische Ethnologie

Who speaks? Who acts? Who listens? A comparative analysis of anti-racist groups and their understanding of (anti)racism, race and colonial heritage

The killing of George Floyd in 2020 drew new attention to the topic of racism and colonial heritage. It sparked discussions about definitions of racism and anti-racist practices beyond the US. One effect was that local anti-racist groups in Europe gained a renewed focus on their longstanding demands to remove racist street names and symbols, address historical wrongs, and acknowledge postcolonial and post migrant realities.

This interdisciplinary ethnographic study examines how anti-racist groups and urban governments conceptualise, problematize, and counter racism in Zurich, Berlin, and Oakland. It asks: What can contemporary debates about racist street names and symbols tell us about how we negotiate race, space and belonging in cities? Based on interviews and ethnography, this project uses urban studies and postcolonial and postmigrant perspectives to examine grassroots and institutional understandings of racism, anti-racism, and urban space. It contributes to ongoing debates on the articulations between the colonial past and present and narratives on identity and belonging in cities.

Bio Claudia Wilopo, Postdoctoral Fellow

Claudia Wilopo (she) is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Her research interests include anti-racist practices, asylum, (urban) citizenship, engaged scholarship, illegalised migration, racism, racial profiling, and solidarity movements. For her PhD at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology at the University of Basel, she conducted an ethnography of illegalisation in the city of Zurich, seeking to bring together feminist methods and approaches from intersectionality, critical border, and citizenship studies. She is also active in the Alliance against Racial Profiling and the Commission for Justice for Nzoy.

Link to publications can be found here.

https://kulturwissenschaft.philhist.unibas.ch/de/personen/claudia-wilopo/