Paper short abstract:

The vigilant response of residents of Barrio Logan in San Diego to unwanted infrastructural development challenged quotidian coloniality and contributed to their subjectivity as Chicanos, defined by the US-Mexican borderland that they inhabit.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how coloniality shapes lifeworlds in Barrio Logan in the city of San Diego in the US-Mexican borderland, and is challenged and resisted through engagement with infrastructure in ways unexpected by its planners. The Coronado Bridge, which passes over the Chicano neighbourhood of Barrio Logan and was constructed in 1969 without taking into account the views of the neighbourhood’s inhabitants, represents a physical manifestation of the coloniality that those in the neighbourhood experience on a daily basis. We draw on anthropological perspectives on infrastructure to argue that the character of infrastructure is not fixed, but is in constant flux from the moment of its construction. Residents of Barrio Logan resisted unwanted infrastructure by incorporating it into a park they subsequently constructed themselves autonomously, using the bridges supports as canvasses for murals depicting Chicano myth and history. The park represents a radical refusal to acquiesce to dominant Anglo-American hegemonic visions of belonging north of the border. The murals, depicting revolutionary Latin American figures who have resisted US imperialism in the continent assert aspirations to political equality and subvert hegemonic ideas about the US within its own borders and emphasise cultural and political connections that cross borders. We use Jacques Rancière’s concepts of subjectivation and aesthetic politics to argue that through actions contesting the coloniality of their everyday experience, resistance to dominant narratives of belonging, which themselves incorporate vigilance, have become a significant aspect of Chicano subject-formation.

Paper short abstract:

Brexit, secularism, and changing demographics are transforming Northern Irish life. Protestant-Unionists living in the borderlands are interpreting, confronting, and resisting these changes through performances of “pastness” which package memories, reproduce temporalities, and reinforce boundaries.

Paper long abstract:

Today—a centenary since Irish partition, fifty years since the start of the Troubles, and with Brexit finally reaching somewhat of a denouement—the Northern Irish land border is without check-points but metaphorical, symbolical, and allegorical boundaries remain, and notions of religious and national identity are in states of transformation. What it means to remember the past and what this contributes to community cohesion and divisions is widely debated, as people question what it means to be a “Protestant,” “Catholic,” and “Northern Irish.” Drawing on fieldwork with Protestant-Unionist communities in County Armagh, my paper discusses how collective memory and temporalising practices are key to these debates—sociocultural features whereby boundaries of self and other are drawn, and religious and nationalist identities are grounded.

I posit that remembering in Armagh occurs through “mnemonic packaging”: a technique in which multiple time periods and narratives are iconised and packaged together, retold by and to the community in objects, spaces, and discourses, creating the effect of a single symbol of this community, their view of history, and the universe itself—a conflation of time, ethnicity, and theology that re-establishes community boundaries. The spectres of Brexit, secularism, and Catholic-Republicanism are interpreted through the forms of pastness that mnemonic packaging produces, with Protestant-Unionists understanding, confronting, and sometimes resisting these imminent changes through the memories, narratives, and temporalities they elect to consider. My paper discusses these constructs of pastness and examines how borderland Protestant-Unionists are uniting and disuniting in the face of political and religious transformation.

Paper short abstract:

Polish authorities deny right of Muslim refugees to enter the country in several practices described as 'border spectacle'. Often inhumane treatment is resisted by many people living in border zone. This racialised Islamophobia contrast with generous welcome offered to war refugees from Ukraine.

Paper long abstract:

Four hundred kilometres borderline between Poland and Belarus was drawn in 1945. In 2004 it became an external border of the EU. Changing border regimes did not prevent local communities from collaborating. In 2021 Belarussian authorities ‘facilitated’ transportation of migrants from Middle East and Afghanistan seeking refuge in the EU. Polish government denied them entry and imposed a state of emergency in the border zone barring outsiders from entering it, what forefends, inter alia, direct help for refugees as well as media coverage of the events. On top of that, a border wall is under construction. ‘Illegal migrants’ who manage to cross the border are subjected to harsh treatment, including pushbacks. Local people react to this policing regime differently: from fear and rejection of refugees to compassion and support for them. Help extended to people wandering in freezing woodlands is an act of resistance to authorities that violate human rights and deny humanitarian aid. These phenomena are interpreted in the context of attitudes towards imagined Muslim ‘Others’ in Poland. Politicised Islamophobia was heated up by populists during the ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015 and revived again in 2021. In the nationalist's propaganda Muslim refugees have been consistently ostracised, dehumanised, even animalised. Such discriminatory acts are supported by an ongoing ‘border spectacle’, which confirms authorities’ resoluteness in securing nation state’s interests and its cultural integrity. Exclusionary practices towards racialised Muslims assume a new significance in the view of the open border policy and generous help offered to war refugees from Ukraine (2022).

Paper short abstract:

The paper outlines the phenomena of the future-oriented forms of local activism rooted in single-industry towns of the Ukrainian government-controlled territory of Donbas region and how the mixture of post-conflict reality intersected with civil society-strengthening projects of recent years.

Paper long abstract:

Prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine I have researched the actions of the future-oriented forms of activism in a context of single-industry towns in the Ukrainian government-controlled territory of Donbas region. I would like to show how the mixture of post-conflict reality and old stereotypes about the region intersect with civil society-strengthening projects that started to flourish after 2014 up to the 2022 full-scale war.

I intend to specifically highlight actions of young, local groups which future-oriented forms of activism aim to create the change in a challenging environment of monotowns, where they weave between two main actors: the state and town-forming enterprises. The influent external models of activism created new modes of engagement functioning on intersection of foregoing and alluvial models of 'being a citizen', new patterns of adjustment to political and social reality and re-gaining agency. In my consideration I turn to the meanings of counter-spaces understand as 'spaces occupied by the symbolic and the imaginary' (Lefebvre 1991) and the imaginary of better future building process where hope is seen as a driving force of activism and engagement as well as any actions in general (Appadurai 2013, Montoya 2015, Sliwinski 2016, Kleist and Jansen 2016). I believe this is especially a case of vulnerable places like post-conflict Donbas monotowns where Jeffrey C. Goldfarb's (2006, 2008) theory of politics of small things and James C. Scott's (1990) theory of infrapolitics seem to be more appropriate in describing this 'creeping change'.

Paper short abstract:

I focus on North Cyprus as a border situation exploring be/longing through creative tactical forms. I elaborate on the tactics of everyday resistance within the contested nature of the polity where identities, borders and “culture” are entwined in histories of political violence and displacement.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I focus on North Cyprus as a border situation, as a site of performative cultural production and ask how current locality and temporality produce creative tactical forms to collage be/longing particularly in the period post 2003, semi-opening of crossing points which were closed since 1974 inter-communal violent conflict. 20th century witnessed the mass displacement of many communities who were on the margins of the modern nation which was followed by a process of gathering. North Cyprus has become one of those places where diverse groups of people forcibly fled from and also gathered at. I attempt to explore the dynamics of this process of gathering asking how the communities of North Cyprus collage homes, resist the precarity of political non-recognition and be/long to this divided locality characterised with a long period of limbo. de-Certeau (1988) draws our attention to the role tactical forms of everyday life and creativity play to resist social norms entangled in disciplinary mechanisms. In this context, I elaborate on how be/longing is (co)-created through the everyday where, tongues, crossing regulations, identity cards and foreign currencies come into dialogue with embarrassment, fantasies, songs and nostalgia. On this line, I ask: how can creative tactical forms of everyday resist the contested nature of the polity? Can eating and drinking practises and colourful paintings over gunshots become trajectories of hope? How are identities, borders and “culture” entwined in histories of political violence and displacement?