Public appearance and witnessing in two Berlin migrant activist groups

Bibliographic Data

ID12905415
AuthorsIrit Dekel (0000-0002-5045-9755, Indiana University Bloomington, corresponding author)
Year2025
Publication date2025-12-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMemory Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/17506980251388323
OpenAlexW4417415776
LanguageEN
References cited36

This article analyses two Berlin-based migrants’ groups: the International Women* Space and Anu: the literary Middle East Union who, in their memory activism, create witnessing platforms and call for state accountability for its discrimination of refugees and migrants. I examine virtual and in-person events organized by both groups in 2020–2024, reports in the German and international press on those events, as well as the groups’ own publications. I show that these memory activists expressly establish a politics of solidarity in discourse-based interventions, in which they address racism, inequality and invisibility. I argue that the groups’ self-authorizing public ventures enable witnessing and mutual recognition among metropolitan residents. This analysis is significant for understanding how non-citizen memory activists enact a space of appearance, in which they establish social presence, cultivate agency and imagine alternative futures

Accountability · Agency (philosophy · German · Metropolitan area · Politics · Public space · Refugee · Solidarity · State (computer science · German Colonialism and Identity Studies · Memory, History, Trauma, Identity · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

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