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- Convenor:
-
Mahmoud Jaraba
(Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Send message to Convenor
- Chairs:
-
Dina Siegel
(Utrecht University)
Mahmoud Jaraba (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
- Format:
- Workshop
- Transfers:
- Closed for transfers
- Location:
- Seminargebäude S14
- Sessions:
- Thursday 2 October, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
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 1 Thursday 2 October, 2025, -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
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.
Contribution short abstract
This contribution examines the concept of 'clan crime' in Germany, highlighting its intersection with migration, marginalization, and securitization. It critiques stigmatizing narratives and emphasizes the need for empirically grounded approaches to understanding clan-based criminality
Contribution long abstract
This paper critically examines the concept of 'clan crime' as it is constructed and contested in Germany. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork since 2015, it explores how narratives surrounding so-called clan-based criminality intersect with issues of migration, marginalization, and securitization. The term 'clan crime,' often linked to specific migrant communities, has become a focal point in public and political discourses, frequently reinforcing stigmatizing and essentialist perspectives.
This study interrogates the socio-political construction of 'clan crime,' questioning how these narratives contribute to processes of exclusion and 'uncommoning,' wherein entire communities are portrayed as threats to societal norms. By analyzing the intersection of structural marginalization and familial or networked criminality, the paper highlights the ethical and methodological challenges of researching these dynamics.
The discussion aims to provide a nuanced understanding of clan-based criminality that avoids reductive stigmatization, instead emphasizing the broader structural and cultural contexts in which such phenomena emerge. This contribution seeks to inform more ethical and empirically grounded approaches to studying and addressing the complexities of crime within migrant communities in Germany.