Convenors
Ivana Rapoš Božič, Masaryk University (corresponding author)
ivana.rapos.bozic@fss.muni.cz
Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Masaryk University
jaworsky@fss.muni.cz
Despite the reluctance of many contemporary societies to engage in open discussions about racism, experiences with ethnoracial Othering continue to mark the everyday lives of many immigrants and ethnic minorities. Understanding the different facets of contemporary racism, their impacts on the lives of people who are being racialized, and s well as the various tactics of resistance to racialization thus represent highly relevant topics in social scientific research. Yet studying racism is a notoriously complex task that requires a reflexive and situated approach which is simultaneously sensitive towards research participants and critical in its interpretation of their often-painful experiences.
This panel aims to open a critical and interdisciplinary discussion about novel ethnographic approaches in research on racism and racialization by building on recent theoretical and methodological reflections in the field of ethnic and racial studies. First, by considering the recent calls for an ethnoracial ontology (Ifatunji, 2024), it invites researchers to consider the complex interplay of race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, and other personal characteristics as triggers of racialization. Second, by acknowledging the tendency of racialization to acquire distinct articulations depending on the local historical, social, and political context of places (Nowicka, 2018), as well as on the perceived characteristics of racialized groups (Kalmar, 2023), it invites the researchers to consider the contextual nature of racism. Third, by building on recent methodological reflections on studying racism (Wojnicka, Nowicka 2023), the panel invites researchers to critically assess the potential and limits of specific research methods.
Taking these sensitives as a starting point, we are particularly interested in contributions that utilize space- and place-sensitive methodologies, such as walking interviews (O’Neill, 2017), memory work (Khawaja, 2022), or a combination of narrative interviews with ethnographic observations (Weyers, 2023).
Open questions
- How to include space and place into the study of racism?
- How to study the impact of local context on the experience of ethnoracial Othering?
- How to study racism in research contexts in which the importance of race as a category of distinction is being actively downplayed in the public discourse?
- How to elicit rich narrative accounts on experience with ethnoracial Othering?
- How to navigate the challenges of positionality in research on ethnoracial Othering?
Keywords
racism; racialization; ethnoracial; migration; reflexivity; urban space.
Sub-disciplines or cross-disciplinary areas of concern
ethnic and racial studies; migration studies; qualitative research; ethnography; cultural sociology; urban studies.
References
Ifatunji, M. A.
2024 «Toward an Ethnoracial Ontology for the Study of Race and Ethnicity: The Case of African Americans and Black Immigrants in the United States», in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 10, 3, pp. 301–318.
Kalmar, I. (2023). Race, racialisation, and the East of the European Union: An introduction. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 49(6), 1465–1480.
Khawaja, I.
2022 «Memory work as engaged critical pedagogy: Creating collaborative spaces for reflections on racialisation, privilege and Whiteness», in Nordic journal of social research, 13, 1, pp. 94-107.
Nowicka, M.
2018 «”I don’t mean to sound racist but … ” Transforming racism in transnational Europe», in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41, 5, pp. 824–841.
O’Neill, M.
2017 «Walking, well-being and community: racialized mothers building cultural citizenship using participatory arts and participatory action research», in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 41, 1, pp. 73–97.
Weyers, R.
2023 «Producing whiteness through urban space: the socio-spatial construction of white identities in Amsterdam», in Identities, pp. 1–18.
Wojnicka, K., Nowicka, M.
2023 «Unveiling racism through qualitative research: The politics of interpretation», in Qualitative Research, 0, 0.
Convenors’ bios
Ivana Rapoš Božič is a post-doctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Masaryk University. She is a cultural sociologist who specializes in qualitative research methods. Her current research interests lie at the intersection of migration studies, civil society studies, and the sociology of art. Her recent work has been published by Migration Studies, European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology, and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. She is a co-author of the book A Critical Cultural Sociological Exploration of Attitudes toward Migration in Czechia: What lies beneath the fear of the thirteenth migrant (Lexington Books 2023).
Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky is a professor of sociology at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and Faculty Fellow at Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology. She recently co-authored A critical cultural sociological exploration of attitudes toward migration in Czechia: What lies beneath the fear of the thirteenth migrant (Lexington Books 2023). Her current research focuses on in-depth cultural sociological analysis and reconstruction of public issues such as perceptions of migration, the «reverse sociology» of migrant responses to racialization and Othering, and political polarization. Her recent work has been published in the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Migration Studies, and Visual Studies.