Events – CGS Seminar Series – Racism and Migratism: The Relevance of a Critical Differentiation
Racism and Migratism: The Relevance of a Critical Differentiation
25 February, 2016
5 PM, DLT, SOAS
Dr Alyosxa Tudor, (Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London and Gender Institute, LSE)
My paper revisits (Western European) critical migration studies and feminist approaches to migration with the insights from postcolonial theories and transnational feminism. I suggest that a critical differentiation of racism and migratism is needed in postcolonial and transnational feminist understandings of racism and migration, in order to sharpen the critique of racism in postcolonial Europe. I elaborate on the assumption that the equalization of racism and the ascription of migration and the homogenizing use of ‘culture’ and ‘nation’ in the field of critical migration studies render Europeans of Color unthinkable, as abject positions in migration discourses, even within knowledge production on ‘migration’ with critical intentions. My approach is a theoretical work that intervenes in academic and activist knowledge productions on migration that rely on so called ‘neo-racism’ concepts and construct Europe as a space free from racialization. Drawing on queer, trans and feminist, postcolonial and anti-racist interventions my research investigates the ongoing presence and legacy of colonialism in constructions of Western nations, intellegible Europeaness and migration.
Biography
Dr Alyosxa Tudor is currently a Senior Teaching Fellow, Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London with focus on ‘Gendering Diasporas and Migration’ and LSE Fellow in Transnational Gender Studies at the Gender Institute, London School of Economics. They have worked in the past as an Assistant Researcher at the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies, Humboldt University, in Berlin, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre of Gender Excellence, Linköping University, in Sweden. Alyosxa is the author of the 2014 monograph ‘from [al’manja] with love’, which revisits critical migration studies with the insights of postcolonial and decolonial approaches and carves out a perspective on power relations that brings together transnational feminism and ‘trans(gender) politics’.