Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - POLITICS (The politics of anti-racism in Europe and Latin America: knowledge production, decision-making and collective struggles)

Teaser

The struggle against racial oppression has been defining processes in the political formation of Latin American and European societies. The anti-colonial/anti-enslavement struggle and the fight against fascist regimes/state terror have shaped our understanding of dignity...

Summary

The struggle against racial oppression has been defining processes in the political formation of Latin American and European societies. The anti-colonial/anti-enslavement struggle and the fight against fascist regimes/state terror have shaped our understanding of dignity, justice and equality. Since the end of World War II, the different approaches towards acknowledging of the Nazi genocide, anti-apart-heid and national liberation struggles, and immigrants’, indigenous and black movements have influ-enced how racism is understood and (mis)recognised. POLITICS starts from the assumption that ‘anti-racism requires historical memory, recalling the conditions of racial degradation and relating contem-porary to historical and local to global conditions’ (Goldberg 2009, 21). Linear/progressive narratives do not account for the complexity of anti-racist politics within wider power relations and specific con-ditions for change. In this sense, POLITICS considers that anti-racism as politics is heterogeneous, in-volving different and competing understandings of race and racism and their historical configurations (Lentin 2004; Gotkowitz 2011). Research and policy debates thus need to make a distinction between nonracialism (‘to sidestep historical legacies of racial injustice’), anti-racialism (‘a commitment to end-ing racial reference’) and anti-racism (‘to critically address and redress those legacies’) (Goldberg 2015, 18-22; 162-172). Therefore, anti-racism has diverged from legal provisions for redressing individual acts of discrimination to more comprehensive policies of structural change such as affirmative action. Accordingly, the overarching research question of the POLITICS project is: What different and diverg-ing understandings of anti-racism are at work in European and Latin American contexts regarding how (post-)colonial histories and current configurations of structural injustices are approached and inter-preted? The main objective of POLITICS is to innovate knowledge on anti-racism that brings about a greater understanding of how historically rooted injustices are being challenged by institutions and grassroots movements. More specifically, the study has two core goals: (a) the analysis of pro-cesses of knowledge production about ‘race’ and (anti-)racism in the spheres of (inter)national gov-ernmental politics, public universities and grassroots movements; (b) the examination of diverse paths of denunciation and collective mobilisation against everyday racism concerning police practice and representations in the mass media.

Work performed

The team during the year 2018 was involved in two types of activities: critical reading of the theoretical reference that compose the bibliographic basis of the Project (example: collection of bibliography pertinent to the theme of the project, elaboration of critical reviews). We hold biweekly seminars to discuss the chosen texts and participation in international congresses with scholars (more than 15 congresses) .At the same time, in 2018 the team was mapping and articulating possible people to be interviewed for field work in Brazil, Peru, Portugal and Spain. Some interviews came to be held but the work during that year was focused on the articulation and mobilization of key individuals and institutions for research in the four contexts for the year 2019.

Final results

The work carried out in the year 2018 will allow the team to be developing the fieldwork in a more assertive, critical and articulated way. The readings made throughout the current year as well as the initial mapping of the people and institutions that are key to the research will enable deep immersion in the field.