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- Convenor:
-
Mahmoud Jaraba
(Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Workshop
- Transfers:
- Closed for transfers
Short Abstract:
This workshop employs ‘dark anthropology’ to scrutinize the intersections of migration, crime, and radicalization in Western contexts. It addresses the ethical, methodological, and theoretical challenges of researching these issues.
Long Abstract:
This workshop delves into the entangled domains of migration, crime, and radicalization through the lens of dark anthropology, offering a critical examination of how these phenomena are constructed and contested in Western societies. Central to our inquiry are the ethical and methodological challenges that arise when engaging with communities that are simultaneously marginalized and securitized.
Drawing on ongoing ethnographic research, we will interrogate how narratives of crime and radicalization contribute to processes of ‘uncommoning,’ wherein migrant communities are systematically excluded from the social commons. The workshop will critically explore how anthropological praxis can navigate these contested spaces, questioning how researchers can ethically access and represent these communities without reinforcing hegemonic discourses.
Participants will be encouraged to engage with the theoretical implications of studying migration within the broader framework of power, exclusion, and resistance. By foregrounding a nuanced analysis that avoids essentialism and stigmatization, the workshop aims to foster new methodological approaches that are both ethically sound and theoretically robust.
Through this workshop, we seek to contribute to anthropological debates on the role of the discipline in addressing contemporary global challenges. By examining the intersection of migration, crime, and radicalization, we aim to elucidate how anthropology can critically engage with—and potentially transform—the dominant narratives that shape public and political discourses.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Contribution short abstract:
This paper examines "mafia ubiquity" focusing on 'ndrangheta transnational families from Calabria to the world. By analyzing TikTok accounts alongside field research, it highlights how digital communication influences mafia identity, perpetuates ideology, and shapes behaviors across cultures.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper explores the concept of "mafia ubiquity" through a dark anthropology lens, focusing on the radicalization processes within transnational families and communities associated with the 'ndrangheta, the mafia organisation from Calabria, extending from Calabria to digital platforms like TikTok. It examines how the intertwining of translocal and transnational identities shapes the behaviours, beliefs, and social dynamics of ‘ndrangheta members and families as they navigate multiple cultural contexts. By analyzing a series of TikTok accounts from within or around these families primarily between Calabria, Australia, Germany and Canada and by pairing the virtual ethnography with data from qualitative research on the field (in Australia and Italy), this study explores the dual pressures of maintaining traditional mafia values while adapting to new environments. The research underscores the role of digital communication in fostering connections across borders, facilitating not only the ubiquity of criminal groups and their social capital, but also the radicalization of younger generations exposed to both familial legacies and contemporary social media influences. Through a nuanced understanding of translocality and transnationalism, this paper reveals how the 'ndrangheta's presence in various locales, amplified and supported by specific narratives in platforms like TikTok, contributes to the perpetuation of its ideology and practices, ultimately reshaping and anchoring the identity of its members in a globalized world. The findings offer critical insights into the complexities of contemporary organized crime, identity formation, and the socio-cultural factors that drive radicalization within mafia communities.
Contribution short abstract:
The paper looks at the (post-)digital mise-en-scène of the rallies of the Bürgerbewegung Pax Europa. Applying multi-sited ethnography, I look at the performative making of the very scenario the rallies warned about: the supposedly threatening “grand replacement” of Europeans by (Muslim) migrants.
Contribution long abstract:
In the course of 2022, the so-called Bürgerberwegung (citizen’s movement) Pax Europa organized nationwide rallies in Germany, that reached a large audience through livestreaming on YouTube and Twitch. At peak times, the streams reached 100,000 views, often within a few hours. The rallies were crafted to warn about the supposedly threatening “great replacement” or the “islamization of Europe.” At the same time, the mise-en-scène of the rallies, and especially the way the were mediatized for an online spectatorship choreographed that very scenario they “warned” about, by provoking violent counter-protests and choreographing “migrant mobs.”
Through participant observation and conversations with rally visitors and participants offline, as well as participant observation in the livechat of the streams and in associated Telegram chat groups, I analyze how (post-)digital communities of “resistance” emerge. In order to document the density of the rallies as (post)-digital events, I used the possibilities offered by digital ethnography: pausing and replaying of live streams, a close reading of live-chat commentaries, thick comparison of online and offline events that are actually taking place simultaneously through a form of live-digital ethnography (Maly 2024). This condensation of the rally as a (post-) digital event points to the central importance of provocation, shared memetic speech and curated virality. I will read the ethnographic material against the backdrop of far right strategies such as metapolitics and accelerationism.
Contribution short abstract:
Germany’s private security industry has grown rapidly, peaking in 2015-16 after the arrival of over a million refugees. This paper examines the peculiar role of refugees in this growth, many of whom found themselves working as guards in a system profiting from fear of criminality and informality.
Contribution long abstract:
Germany’s private security industry has experienced dramatic economic growth over the past two decades, peaking in 2015-16, in the aftermath of the arrival of over a million refugees. The leasing out of security contracts to private entities in the protection of reception centers and refugee camps was one cause of this growth. The moral panics regarding the presence of unknown, unvetted strangers from the Global South, was another. Yet, the immense popularity of these jobs among my refugee interlocutors in Berlin poses a particularly troubling paradox. Even as images of young, African and Arab men were used to stoke spectacular fears about insecurity, those same bodies now increasingly occupy the working force of the companies that emerged to tackle the supposed crisis of migrant criminality. This paper examines how these bodies, caught between spectacle and labor are put to work in the production of both demand for, and supply of (in)security. I show how labour practices of organised informality, combined with a mediatized politics of criminality, fear and insecurity to sharpen the symbolic and socio-legal boundaries between newcomers. Indeed, as guards in a private security industry looking to maximize profits through subcontractors, those young refugee and migrant men that found themselves doing the labour of security found themselves pushed increasingly into the shadows of the formal economy. With such marginalization comes the increasing threat of exclusion from the commons, as legal status for asylum seekers and refugees is made increasingly dependent on participation in the formal economy.
Contribution short abstract:
Germany’s language-based integration policies aim to accelerate newcomer inclusion but often delay socioeconomic incorporation, compounding marginalization. Drawing on ethnographic research in Berlin, the paper shows how migrants counter these effects via informal commons and acts of solidarity.
Contribution long abstract:
In response to over 1.3 million displaced persons seeking asylum in Europe since 2014, Germany introduced increasingly stringent language learning requirements as part of its integration model for adult newcomers. Such policies make German language proficiency a prerequisite for access to formal work and long-term legal security, while ostensibly aiming to accelerate the socioeconomic participation refugees and migrants. However, based on over 7 years of ethnographic fieldwork within languages classrooms and employment offices in Berlin, this paper argues that these policies instead significantly slow and delay newcomers' socioeconomic incorporation. These temporal consequences thus compound the bordering effects of language-based immigration and asylum policy, often keeping newcomers’ in protracted periods of waiting and uncertainty as they navigate access to the labor market, citizenship and sociocultural belonging.
Counteracting these slowing and indeed marginalising effects, newcomers from Syria and Ukraine create informal commons through acts of solidarity including peer-led language networks, informal employment strategies, and advocacy efforts, thus enabling joint strategies of acceleration and navigation within rigid institutional structures.
Combining anthropological approaches to migration and temporality as well as research in within dark anthropology and the anthropology of commoning, this paper considers, on the one hand how integration policies like Germany’s produce and reproduce conditions of inequality, dominance and hopelessness for often highly racialized newcomer communities. On the other, it demonstrates the ways in which ethnographic accounts newcomers’ lived experiences reveal everyday practices of solidarity and communal belonging which disrupt and defy institutional procedures and the power dynamics of EU migration policies.
Contribution short abstract:
This paper examines the intersection of migration and exclusion via ethnographic research with West African migrants in Germany. It addresses the struggles of migrants in legal limbo, ethical challenges in doing fieldwork and the role of anthropology in challenging exclusionary migration narratives.
Contribution long abstract:
This paper investigates the intersections of migration, exclusion, and oppression through a dark anthropology lens, based on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2024 with ten West African migrants in Germany. It examines the lived experiences of migrants navigating precarious spaces between legality, toleration status, and survival while officially obliged to leave the country. The research highlights the ethical and methodological challenges of studying marginalized individuals subject to securitization, deportation, and social exclusion. Particular attention is given to the power asymmetry between the researcher, employed by a governmental research institute, and the migrant participants. As well as the researchers positionality and negotiations with the employer regarding the availability of ethnographic material.
These dynamics critically shape the fieldwork process and the data produced, underscoring the need for ethical rigor to safeguard participants’ dignity and agency. The paper also reflects on how migrants with uncertain residence status are instrumentalized in Western societies, with a special focus on Germany, to uphold exclusionary policies. It explores the risks of academic work unintentionally reinforcing narratives of threat and illegality when discussing migration.
By addressing these tensions, the paper offers strategies for conducting anthropology that both interrogates dominant narratives and prioritizes the autonomy of those at the margins. This contribution advances discussions on ethical research practices and the discipline’s role in critically engaging with power, migration, and resistance.
Contribution short abstract:
This contribution analyzes Hizb ut-Tahrir’s retrotopic ideologies and their social and political impact using Bauman's theory. It explores narratives of exclusion, their influence on marginalized communities, and proposes ethical approaches to interreligious and intercultural engagement.
Contribution long abstract:
This study employs Bauman’s Retrotopia theory to critically investigate Hizb ut-Tahrir’s (HT) ideological narratives and their socio-political impact. As a transnational Islamist organization, HT advocates for a global caliphate grounded in an idealized version of the past. The research highlights how HT’s selective referencing of Islamic traditions constructs exclusionary narratives that undermine pluralistic values and propagate monolithic governance models.
The analysis raises pivotal ethical and methodological questions concerning the representation of marginalized communities often affected by exclusion and securitization. By focusing on the dynamics between religious identity and political authority, the study underscores how retrotopic ideologies erode trust in democratic structures and contribute to social fragmentation.
The methodological approach combines textual analysis of HT’s primary sources with classical Islamic texts, identifying ideological discontinuities. This interdisciplinary inquiry integrates sociological and political frameworks and draws from ethnographic case studies on HT’s influence in European Muslim communities, particularly in Germany. These case studies shed light on the challenges researchers face when accessing and representing securitized groups while upholding ethical research standards.
Key findings reveal that HT’s narratives reshape historical religious concepts to justify exclusionary political agendas. These narratives contribute to social stigmatization, reinforce negative stereotypes, and exacerbate the marginalization of vulnerable groups.
This contribution aligns with the conference theme by examining how ideological frameworks assert political power and challenge intercultural and interreligious ethics. It advocates for diverse interpretations of Islamic governance, ethical academic practices, and inclusive dialogues to disrupt exclusionary discourses and promote cohesive, pluralistic societies.
Contribution long abstract:
The militarization of borders and the restrictive policies implemented by the European Union to protect the so-called "Fortress Europe" have made the operations of smuggling increasingly challenging along the Balkan route. It is not only law enforcement making irregular hazardous: armed human smuggling groups have resorted to capturing people-on-the-move, an emergent repertoire of violence and exploitation, with systematic kidnappings and torture. The nomenclature of‘gangs’ to describe organised groups that facilitate movement (smugglers) has entered the lexicon of the media-state discourse. The image of the smuggler as a collective of unscrupulous entrepreneurs from the muslim world, putting the lives of their fellow compatriots in danger is a useful folk devil to present to western audiences as the pretext for further eroding civil liberties. Thus, the researcher is presented with a conundrum; how does anthropology avoid presenting the violent side of organised border groups without reproducing the demonisation of mobile (transit) communities along routes? Moreover do researchers tell the stories of those abused by smuggling groups without failing to narrativise the youth that have carried out the abuse, their histories of war trauma, hyper masculinity in an uncertain bordered reality. Without making direct connections to the everyday processes of horizontal power among migrant-transit communities (ie Smugglers) and mobility regimes, anthropology fails to challenge the situated material conditions in which border-transit crime takes place.
Contribution short abstract:
Conducting research on organized crime within family-based structures presents significant challenges, particularly in gaining access to the field.
Contribution long abstract:
Conducting research on organized crime within family-based structures presents significant challenges, particularly in gaining access to the field. The secrecy and distrust inherent in such environments demand careful negotiation, persistence, and the establishment of personal connections to build trust with participants. These challenges are compounded by complex ethical questions, including balancing the need for confidentiality with the responsibility to report certain types of information, navigating potential risks to participants and researchers, and avoiding the unintended stigmatization of broader communities.
This study focuses on the case of criminal hamulas in the 'mixed city' of Jaffa, Israel, based on fieldwork conducted on Israeli organized crime. The findings reveal the structure of family-based organizations, their modus operandi, spheres of activity, and the dynamics of ongoing criminal feuds between Arabic hamulas. The analysis also delves into the roles of both criminal and non-criminal family members, examining their loyalty, duties, and recruitment processes in the context of these feuds. By addressing both methodological and ethical considerations alongside empirical findings, this research provides a nuanced understanding of the complexities surrounding Arabic criminal hamulas and offers critical insights into the study of organized crime in family-based systems.