The postmigrant generation between racial discrimination and new orientation: from hegemony to convivial everyday practice

ABSTRACT

The “postmigrant perspective”, which arose in the German-speaking countries and has been adopted internationally, offers a counter-hegemonic alternative to the everyday racist and ethnicizing discourses on migration. To understand migration as historical normality, to engage in migration research as social analysis and to focus centrally on the perspectives of the postmigrant generation leads to a rupture. This entails a radical interrogation of the binary thinking around migrants and non-migrants, which has significantly shaped not only established migration research but other areas as well. The present article, proceeding from a postmigrant perspective, analyses semi-narrative interviews with adolescents on their experiences of discrimination and racism. We seek to show there that the young people of the postmigrant generation have been impacted by everyday racist and ethnicizing discourses, but have not been subjugated by them. Despite encountering restrictive conditions, they develop empowering convivial everyday practices, from which society ought to learn something.

KEYWORDS:

• Postmigrant generation
• migration
• racism
• discrimination
• conviviality
• young people

The concept “postmigrant generation”¹ – which in the true sense of the term initially means something like “after migration” – has been developed in recent years in the German-speaking areas in Europe and has now become increasingly utilized in research likewise internationally (see, for example: Foroutan 2019; Foroutan, Karakayali, and Spielhaus 2018; Hill and Yildiz 2018; Yildiz 2015; and internationally: Bromley 2017; Caglar 2016; Moslund 2019; Schramm, Moslund, and Petersen 2019; Stewart 2017; Wiest 2020; Yildiz and Hill 2017). In academic discourse, various aspects are associated with this designation, thematizing social realities and conditions pointing in a certain direction, which can roughly be termed a counter-hegemonic production of knowledge.

What characterizes the “postmigrant” is an open mode of thinking, a vantage from which historical and current developments in the global, national and local context are reinterpreted and contextualized (Bojadzijev 2012; Bojadzijev and Römhild 2015). Three central ideas, in particular, characterize postmigrant thinking. First, the history of migration is narrated anew; that leads to a different genealogy of the present. Second, migration research is liberated from its special role and is established as a critical social analysis. Third, the focus is directed especially to stories and perspectives of the next generations (here called postmigrant generation), who were not themselves migrants, but who have experiences of migration as personal knowledge and shared memory. The present article deals with these succeeding generations, which in public discourse are accorded a migration background: young persons who in society experience discrimination and racism in a different way, grapple with that and position themselves in this confrontation. Our thesis is that from this springs a new counter-hegemonic culture, a convivial ethics, which is highly relevant for living together in society in the globalized world.

On the genealogy of what is postmigrant

The “post” in postmigrant designates not just a condition of “afterward” in the sense of a clear and unambiguous process. Rather, what is necessary here is to sketch a genealogy of migration and to radically rethink the total overall context into which migration discourses flow. A postmigrant reading of social conditions thus points to an epistemological turn: it entails a radical interrogation of binary thinking grounded on a distinction between migrants and non-migrants, which to date has significantly shaped not only established migration research but other areas as well.

In contrast with customary ethnic-national narratives, postmigrant discourse does not examine the achievements of a person. Rather it focuses on the processes of dislocation and new location, ambiguity and boundary thinking. The concept of “in-between”, which we employ here metaphorically, appears characteristic for postmigrant practices, designs and plans for living and forms of articulation. In those practices, plans for living and forms of expression, established national clarities and seemingly unambiguous continuities are ruptured; the dualisms therein of Western/non-Western, locals/foreigners, which previously determined hegemonic normality, are subjected to radical interrogation.

The postmigrant perspective is closely related to post-colonial theory. The post-colonial discourse deals with the legacy of European colonialism, questions Eurocentric historiography, and criticizes the continuation of European dominance. It shifts the focus to the perspective of the former colonized and their experiences and takes “the cultural and historical hybridity of the postcolonial world […] as the paradigmatic place of departure” (Bhabha 2004, 31). Homi K. Bhabha’s theoretical concepts of the “third space” and the “in-between” can explain (post)migrational situations, that are characterized by ambiguous positionings and discontinuities (Yildiz 2019, 385f.). Being “in-between” means also being in transition, or as Gloria Anzaldúa calls it “Nepantla”, a Nahuatl term meaning “in-between space”: “It is a limited space, a space where you are not this or that but where you are changing” (Anzaldúa 1999, 237). The post-colonial discourse breaks with powerful dualisms like “us vs. them” and focuses on the normality of multiple belongings, mobility and indefinite positionings (Yildiz 2019, 386). In this perspective, which also connects with “diaspora studies”, home is “the lived experience of a locality” (Brah 1996, 192).

The postmigrant vantage brings into view new differences, which render the customary attribution of difference questionable. The postmigrant perspective makes the experience of migration its paradigmatic point of departure; it places front and centre the previously marginalized ways of knowing, deconstructing those ideological discourses about migration and integration. It calls for a radical revision of a Western-defined historical normality. Walter D. Mignolo speaks in this context of a “Euro-centered geography of knowledge” (2012, 161), Achille Mbembe remarks that global decolonization also needs European self-decolonization (Mbembe 2021). Consequently, the postmigrant perspective is close in thought to Foucaultian genealogy and ideology-critical approaches of postcolonial theorizing.

The idea of telling stories from the perspective and experience of migration, making visible previously marginalized and ignored forms of knowledge, points to a resistant and counter-hegemonic practice, which is central within postmigrant thinking, a kind of contrapuntal reading of social and societal conditions (Said 1993, 32). Edward Said’s writings have shown how certain historical continuities crystallize, how certain forms of knowledge become privileged; and how in this way other stories and experiences are scarcely perceived and remain invisible. Reading against the grain means in this connection turning one’s glance toward those who have been excluded, the suppressed and marginalized.

In recent years, the succeeding generations, whose parents or grandparents were immigrants, have attracted the focus of public and scientific² debate. The neologism “migration background” has come to be used to refer to this group. Those to whom this label is applied often react with annoyance to this labelling practice. They do not wish to be reduced to some sort of “background”. This practice of reference and labelling, which is often bound up with the question of belonging, is in permanent confrontation with the dominant society, even if those involved deal in different ways with this.

Members of the postmigrant generation confront and grapple with the established discourse on migration and integration, which renders persons deficient objects that have to be integrated; they create counter-images and forge attitudes grounded on solidarity (Rotter and Yildiz 2021), as the following passage by Vina Yun, who belongs to the postmigrant generation, succinctly expresses:

We won't let you define us any more. Instead we define ourselves. But this “we” is not unitary, it is grounded rather on an alliance, one which becomes real through collective actions, when we conceive specific attitudes and practices […] We are not united by fate but rather by the shared relation to a migrant experience and a marginalized knowledge. (Yun 2020, 7)

The postmigrant generation – that, like the first immigrant generation, is permanently confronted with negative attributions – would appear to be in a better position to grapple and deal with ambiguous and ambivalent realities of life and to create a “culture of conviviality” in the postmigrant society. For this generation, “being in-between” is part of their everyday normality and a form of living; it is a kind of creative disorientation, as the following comments by the Viennese rapper Dino Izic alias Rapper Dynomite reflect in a striking and incisive manner:

In the meantime, I feel like I’ve already arrived, ‘cause I've noticed that this condition of being in-between is what I am. That’s my life. I don’t have to try to live like my parents. Or like other folks. I live with both sides that influence me. That’s OK. You don’t have to bend and break yourself in order to fit in somewhere. (Dino Izic alias Rapper Dynomite, formerly a refugee from the war in Yugoslavia, quoted from Wiener Zeitung, 15–16 Feb. 2020, 2)

On the basis of what has been stated above, the postmigrant reading can be described as a resistant practice of knowledge production, which also opens up new spaces of possibility for (political) modes of subjectivation beyond hegemonic interpretations.

Racism in the postmigrant society

In recent years, the postmigrant perspective has been drawn on more explicitly for analysing racism (Espahangizi et al. 2016; Foroutan 2020; Tsianos and Karakayali 2014). We would like to link up with that discussion adding our own reflections here. Accordingly, postmigrant societies are “[…] spaces of tension […] in which racist inclusions and exclusions are formed anew” (Espahangizi et al. 2016, 17). The tension is between the state’s recognition of being a country of immigration and a heterogeneous migration society³ coupled with its liberal, anti-racist basic attitude, accompanied at the same time by a continuation of racist and colonial discourses, structures, practices and subjectivations. Migration in these societies is both a historical reality and normality as well as an “obsession” (Spielhaus 2012, 97). Through these the social orders, barriers to access and national we-identities are negotiated (Foroutan 2016, 231). Proceeding from this dynamics, inclusion and exclusion in postmigrant societies can be explained. A central means of power here is racism (operating intersectionally), which is manifested according to Stuart Hall in everyday social practices:

Racism is a social practice in which bodily features are employed to classify specific groups in the population, such as when the population is not divided into poor and rich, but for example into Whites and Blacks. In brief, bodily features function in racist discourses as carriers of meaning, as signs within a discourse of difference. Something arises that I would like to term a racist classification system that is based on “racialist” characteristics. (Hall 1989,⁴ 913)

While the biologically grounded classic racism, though simultaneously continuing, is increasingly a focus of public disdain, the racist discourses with a broad impact have shifted in the direction of a “differentializing racism” (Taguieff 1985). This form of “neo-racism” (Balibar 1992), “cultural racism” (Barker 1982) or also “racism without races” (Hall 1989) expands the biologically conceived concept of “race” by means of a culturally infused supplementary concept:

Both the discourses of “race” and “ethnicity,” then, work by establishing a discursive articulation or “chain of equivalences” (Laclau and Mouffe 1985) between the social/cultural and the biological registers, which allows differences in one signifying system to be “read off” against equivalents in the other chain. (Hall 1990) Biological racism and cultural differentialism therefore constitute, not two different systems, but racism’s two registers. (Hall 2000, 110f)

This new racism then impacts especially young persons of the postmigrant generation. They are confronted with various forms of discrimination, where biologically-based racism, cultural racism/“cultural differentialism” (Hall 2000) and “ethnicization” (Bukow and Llaryora 1988) constitute the central manifestations, which in part overlap but also differ one from the other. They share in common that on the basis of a pan-societal “racialist knowledge” (Terkessidis 2004), or “racial knowledge” (Goldberg 1993) – that is, produced and secured institutionally and in everyday practice, operating in a racist consensus – they lead on to a “culture of dominance” shaped by racism (Rommelspacher 1995).

Racism in the postmigrant society of Austria is concretely manifested within the interplay between historically longstanding elements of colonial racism, antisemitism, antiziganism, anti-Slavic racism, anti-Muslim racism, and new forms emergent around culture, religion, migration, integration and asylum (Foroutan 2020).

Racisms in the postmigrant societies in the German-speaking areas of Europe have thus been for many centuries a part of everyday life. Discrimination and racism become an everyday routine, frequently learned subconsciously. In this context Stuart Hall speaks of an “implicit racism”, pointing there to such forms of practice becoming normalized and part of everyday life. In postmigrant societies that perceive themselves to be non-racist or even anti-racist, racism, alongside the open forms still in existence now as before, is frequently formulated and articulated implicitly and by means of codes:

In this connection Stuart Hall talks about an “inferential racism,” meaning “those apparently naturalized representations of events and situations relating to race (…) which have racist premises and propositions inscribed in them as a set of unquestioned assumptions. These enable racist statements to be formulated without ever bringing into awareness the racist predicates on which these statements are grounded”. (Hall 1990, 12f.)

The postmigrant perspective on racism seeks to look in a non-dualistic approach (on the non-dualistic epistemic principle, see Mitterer 2011) at both levels within this dynamics of tension: hegemonic discourses and actor capable of taking action. However, the postmigrant vantage always begins with the experiences of migration itself and is interested in its practices, and thus new processes of location and positioning, attitudes, forms of articulation and ideas, without overlooking powerful discourses, structures and practices. In other words: we conceive of the restrictive living conditions together with the emancipatory practices. Our analytical perspective on racism is thus firmly in the tradition of studies which focus on precisely these experiences with racism, culturalism and ethnicization. We have an interest in experiences of discrimination and racism (Kilomba 2010; Mecheril 2003; Scharathow 2014; Terkessidis 2004) in daily life (vide Philomena Essed and her concept of “everyday racism” 1991) and wish to know how those interviewed deal with that.

The ethics of conviviality

Against the backdrop of hegemonic discourses and structures, we call the experiences, everyday practices and designs for living of the successor generations an “ethics of conviviality”. By ethics, following Michel Foucault we mean the relations to self, life practices and the arts of living that are under the banner of the motto “the art of not being governed thusly” (1992, 12). Subjects are not only subjugated; they also shape themselves in powerful spaces, and as a result, have possibilities for resistance and power-relative autonomy. The concept of conviviality can be traced back to Ivan Illich and Serge Latouche. The notion of conviviality, which also is meant to encompass action and thought in community, serves as a tool for criticizing neoliberal ideas and economic structure as well as the associated image of “Homo oeconomicus” (Illich 2014).

Drawing on Amanda Wise and Greg Noble, we define conviviality as “the capacity to live together” (Wise and Noble 2016). The concept of conviviality has proven itself to be a theoretical perspective providing new knowledge in empirical migration research (for an overview, see Nowicka and Vertovec 2014; Wise and Noble 2016; exemplary studies are Back and Sinha 2016, 2018; Noble 2013; Wise and Velayutham 2014; Valluvan 2016; Wessendorf 2016). It is thus already possible to speak of a “convivial turn” (Neal et al. 2013). In the present article, we refer principally to Paul Gilroy (2004) and to the work of Les Back and Shamser Sinha (2016, 2018), who transposed the idea of conviviality to experiences of migration and the development of a new culture of living together (Gilroy 2004, xi).

Convivial culture – a culture that is flourishing in Britain’s urban areas and in postcolonial cities around the world – seeks to discover a new value in our ability to live with difference without becoming anxious, fearful, or violent. (Gilroy 2004, i.)

Gilroy thinks that convivial culture is manifest and can be found in emancipatory practices and resistant attitudes in everyday life. These practices or convivial abilities are often developed under restrictive living conditions and are frequently excluded, controlled and in part also criminalized in public discourses. Gilroy’s analysis of Great Britain revealed a society of domination looking back – in a view infused by “postimperial melancholia” (Gilroy 2004, 98) – to a past imperial and colonial greatness. In this society, racism and thinking in terms of “race” is a historical and current legitimation for social inequality. However, this discursive formation is continuously challenged, so that racisms no longer present themselves as “empty, interpersonal rituals” but “have started to mean different things” (Gilroy 2004, xi). Differences that are dramatized as racist in public discourses are here something “normal”, “banal”, yes, almost “boring” (Back and Sinha 2016, 526).

Building on these reflections, Les Back and Shamser Sinha (2016, 2018) observed young adults in London and their daily practices, interpreting these as a “culture of conviviality”. This involves abilities and resources that help young adults to live and survive in a metropolis that is torn apart by racism (Back and Sinha 2016, 527):

Recognition of conviviality does not mean there is an absence of racism. The concept draws attention to an alternative understanding of culture, one which is principally interested in what people do in their everyday lives instead of always only reducing them to their cultural background (Back and Sinha 2016, 527f.).

In the course of their study in London, they researched 30 adult migrants on the basis of a collaborative ethnography. As a result, Back and Sinha reconstructed a “toolbox of convivial capabilities” from the material (Back and Sinha 2018, 135). First of all, the participants have developed the capability of “attentiveness and curiosity” (Back and Sinha 2018). They view the multicultural reality of London with a mixture of attentiveness and sober assessment. Second, they have learned to be concerned about life in the city and to have empathy with others. Third, the young adults have an orientation to the world, they have learned to think in global terms and to overcome what is local. Fourth, they have developed an “aversion to the pleasures of hating” (Back and Sinha 2018, 138), which doesn’t mean that they also do not themselves exclude some people. But they have begun to build up a “common culture”. Finally, the test persons have managed, despite restrictive conditions, to create a home for themselves in London, and in doing so to establish and engage in convivial relations (Back and Sinha 2018, 141ff.).

Making convivial everyday culture the point of departure means turning an analytical eye toward the “archives of silence” (Le Goff 1992), what has been peripheralized and pushed aside, what is forgotten, excluded, in short looking toward marginalized, ignored experiences. The cultural anthropologist Regina Römhild notes:

We all are familiar with such moments that repeatedly emerge in everyday life, briefly opening up a window onto other spaces of possibility that transcend boundaries: whether interactions on the subway, the anonymity of the urban public sphere, in the neighborhood, school classroom, on the job. They point to a long tradition of shared experiences of a common life under conditions of inequality, difference and exclusion. (Römhild 2018, 64)

To privilege and make visible these convivial resources in everyday life does not intend to mean that discriminating and racist structures are ignored. What is important rather is to think of the two phenomena interlinked together and to contextualize them anew.

Empirical study: the postmigrant generation

Fundamental for working out a convivial ethics of the postmigrant are the experiences of young persons with discrimination and racism. To render these experiences visible, fifteen interviews were conducted with postmigrant youths and adolescents in Innsbruck in the framework of a research project at Innsbruck University.⁵ From these 15 interviews, a detailed analysis was conducted on the 10 most informative interviews. Of these, eight interviews were evaluated for writing the present article. The eight interviews utilized for this article were chosen because they display a certain shared particular heterogeneity, making visible in diverse ways racism, cultural hegemony as well as convivial and migrant counter-strategies. In contrast with the study by Back and Sinha, most of the participants are part of the postmigrant generation, and do not live in a metropolis but rather all reside in the city of Innsbruck.⁶

The adolescents and young adults – Amir, Milena, Mira, Davud, Azra, Sina, Nassim and Mina – were articulate interviewees. Amir is 15 years old, a schoolboy and lives together with his parents in his city of birth, Innsbruck. Amir’s parents emigrated from Iran to Austria. Mira is 20 years old and was born and raised in Innsbruck. In public and institutional contexts, she is read as being a Muslim and has experienced racism in this connection. Milena is 25 years old. She was born and grew up in Serbia and came to Innsbruck to study. Davud is 22 years old, born and raised in Innsbruck. On the basis of the migration story of his parents, he is perceived as a “person with a migration background”. Azra is 25 years old. She was born in Istanbul and came at the age of 2 with her parents to Innsbruck. Due to “language deficiencies” ascribed to her, she was educated in a “special needs school”. Sina is 28, was born and raised in Innsbruck. Her grandparents came to Austria from Turkey as so-called guest workers, and although her parents were born in Austria, she tells about repeated experiences of discrimination. Nassim is 22 years old, was born and raised in Austria. Nassim’s mother came to Austria to study and established her family there. Mina, 14 years old, is the youngest of the test persons and attends a school in Innsbruck. She was born in Iran. Mina’s father emigrated from Afghanistan to Iran, where he met Mina’s mother. They fled in 2015 as a family to Austria. The young persons can be described as having had a successful education, they are attending or did attend secondary schools, and several are studying at university. Azra also managed to transfer from a special needs school to a regular school. Except for Milena and Mina, they all possess Austrian citizenship.

This sample makes clear the heterogeneity of these young persons, who in public and institutional settings are essentialized by the label “from a migration background”. Not visible here, for example, are the experiences of Jewish Austrians, Black Austrians, Roma and Sinti in Austria, who in regard to racism have experienced something similar but also something different.

In order to guarantee a certain openness, the conversations were conducted as semi-narrative interviews. They began with an introductory initial question and the participants were accorded the option to freely narrate. As they spoke and depending on the situation, specific targeted supplementary questions were also asked. The interviews were tape-recorded and then transcribed.

In evaluating the material, we oriented ourselves largely to “grounded theory” as developed by Glaser and Strauss (1998) and to the concept of the “understanding interview” of Kaufmann (1999). We focused intentionally on the life practice of the young persons, and were interested in the lower-lying territories of everyday life and most especially the marginalized kinds of knowledge that rarely appear in public discourse. This theoretical understanding is central and constitutive for our study and shapes our perspective. In our view, the research itself constitutes a reflexive situation, a discursive practice in which the interviews and the researchers participate.

We see the semi-narrative interviews as contingent models for the living of young persons who have been socially shaped and are at the same time capable of taking autonomous action. In looking at these models for living that become visible in the interview situation, it is, therefore, also fundamental that one proceeds from a multiplicity of perspectives. These perspectives can differ according to context, circumstances and the discursive connection, and can in the process also open up very different and in part contradictory viewpoints. Precisely the multi-perspectival approach to one’s own life story makes clear that there is not just one single memory of an event but rather a multiplex of different memories. Narration is for that reason never only reproduction but rather always the production of new views of the world, new historical spaces of experience, horizons of expectation and how they are dealt with in the present.

The narratives of Davud, Azra, Sina, Nassim, Amir, Milena, Mira and Mina reveal both the continuity and actuality of cultural hegemony as well as everyday racism, and also point to counter-hegemonic postmigrant practices. These practices will be presented in detail below and are termed asethics of conviviality.

Building blocks of a convivial ethics of what is postmigrant

We wish to designate the first of the building blocks reconstructed from the interviews as the formation of new micro-belongings. The adolescents and young adults find and create for themselves significant micro-belongings, far removed from nationalistic, culturalistic, class-specific and gender-specific containers. To be somewhere in-between and beyond national stagings of identity and belonging becomes a veritable pattern for living within the globalized world. When Amir is asked where he feels he belongs, whether for example in and to a country or a group, he replies: “Not to a country. But I feel more that I belong to a group of my friends”. Milena thinks in this connection: “To the university, yes. I see myself as worker on the uni staff”. She continues: “But right now not belonging to a specific country, not to Serbia or Austria. I mean, for me, like, it’s the people who are important”. Sina comments on how she confronted her parents with the ambiguity associated with national belonging and then tried to develop a new perspective:

My parents, like, they always say sometime they’re going to return to Turkey, go back. But I don’t think they will. I think they’re just dreaming of that. But actually […] I mean, like every time we’re back in Turkey during the summer, well, it’s only a matter of time until my mom gets sick and tired of it there and feels homesick … (she laughs), I mean, homesick for Austria. And then I always get a bit upset and tell her: “But mom, hey look, you can’t feel homesick [for Austria] when you actually feel at home in Turkey” (Sina laughs). Yet I say that intentionally […] actually she knows very well that Turkey is not where she’s at home now, and that she wouldn’t be able to stand it staying on there (laughter). But everything that actually is far away always has its certain effect, is always worth striving for […].

Sina bids adieu to unambiguous modes of belonging and draws attention to the multifarious possibilities for self-positioning, which her family indeed in practical terms is already implementing. She critiques the either-or binary thinking of her parents that is expressed and manifested negatively: in alternating episodes of homesickness. Sina intimates a positive transnational positioning in the interview sequence – a simultaneous “here and there”.

However, that does not explicitly mean that the national attributions play no role. The postmigrant generation is constantly confronted with attributions and interpellations, appeals to provide some information. They know very well the associated discourses, always the same, regarding “integration”, “identity”, “culture” and “religion”, that continually make them into “Others”, and they already know that things are demanded of them that they cannot fulfil – even if they want to, as Nassim states:

But that’s, well, I mean, that’s the problem with integration. You can do what you want, it’s never enough. Maybe that’s the reason why I never really can become an Austrian or want to be one. You act, you do your thing, see, you achieve something […]. And after you’ve done all that, they want still more from you. At a deeper level. […] They even want to change your emotions, your attitudes and feelings.

When the young people in the postmigrant generation reflect on their heterogeneous life worlds, they notice that the most important spaces of their belonging are their circle of friends, local neighborhood, sometimes the place they work at and their sports association. These dynamic, heterogeneous and convivial “micro-publics” (Amin 2002, 969; Back and Sinha 2016, 528) are systematically overlooked in hegemonic discourses on “integration” and “identity”.

Second, as a building block, the interviewees demonstrate anti-hegemonic practices of ironization and humor. Knowledge about the culturalizing and racist invocations to act in a certain way causes these youth to develop very different strategies of antiracist resistance – often quite pragmatic, depending on the context. Davud talks about how he has dealt with culturalizing attributions in class at school:

Look, like I’ve had to give a lecture about Iran five thousand times. And again and again, I mean, until I was sick of hearing it. And my friends were too. But that’s simply what they wanted, see. […] In music classes: Iranian music, in geography classes something about Iran in any case, in art classes I had to tell a bit about Persian artists. And so on & so on.. […] It upset me. And then I simply decided to make a kind of joke about it (he laughs). […] I had for the 100th time to give a talk in geography class about … Iran. And so I just called it: a trip through Iran. And then I unloaded all the clichés (he laughs). I brought along a prayer rug. We had one at home for grandma, like when she’d come by to visit. And then talking about the infrastructure in air travel in Iran as the topic well, I started talking about the Persian rugs (he laughs). I said that by using Persian rugs instead of buses, the CO₂ content in the air could be improved, and there’d be fewer traffic jams and all the rest. So then I ended up called into the director’s office (he laughs). But it was worth it. After that no one wanted to hear anything about Iran (he laughs).

Davud was constantly being called upon, addressed to say something about Iran, the country where his parents were born and grew up. The fact that he himself was born in Innsbruck and feels in multiple ways that he belongs there, was not an associated topic ever broached. He was perceived and addressed as a “representative” of a generalized and constructed “Persian culture” by teachers in different subject areas. After he had gone along with that game for what seemed to him a “100th time”, he’d had enough. And he shrewdly invented a clichéd story – something that his teachers actually indeed wished to hear from him. He was sanctioned immediately in response, but his ironizing of hegemonic demands to provide a narrative fulfilled the goal he had in mind: these modes of addressing him stopped.

Third, in their confrontations with forms of racism in the postmigrant society, the young persons have learned abilities for analysing in a manner critical of racism and sensitive to discrimination. Davud developed a certain intuitive “feel” for the reproduction of inequality already when at school. He reflects on the differences in educational possibilities and educational success according to vocational background and educational biography of his family:

But, you know, that’s also because the parents of the other kids have often made the posters or read and then checked the homework assignments. In my case, not […] Ok, with my sisters, maybe now and then they did, but that’s never the same […] Actually, I mean, I find that unfair. Because some kids have so much support, and others don’t. But in the grades given, you know, it also never says: “Nina gets an A because she got a lot of extra help.” An A’s an A […] But that’s already unfair, isn’t it?

Davud deepens his analysis by going on to point out that along aide the differing life chances for education, racial stereotyping also plays a significant role, for example, when it comes to options for a job:

Well, I mean, we’re here after all in arch-Catholic, conservative Tyrol […] and somehow I sure think that right up to today there are some kind of images around about who should do what jobs. […] How can I explain what I mean? Like, well, you just have to look around […] People who look like you and me stand there working in H&Ms, in McDonalds and now and then, […] like if things go really well, maybe somewhere behind a reception desk. But it’s still not so normal yet, I mean, that we’re lawyers and tax consultants, jobs like that.

The young people see themselves as experts on their own praxis in life, which is permeated by racist and ethnicizing situations. However, they reject a “victim identity” (Mira) and view the everyday forms of racism they experience as unjust. Mina is frequently addressed simultaneously in ways marked by racism, sexism and homophobia, because she is read as a female, a migrant from Iran and positions herself as a queer woman. Likewise, as a result of this experience, Mina is actively involved with LGBTQI movements and also in the context of anti-racist demonstrations, and thinks of these as interconnected. Even if Mina speaks of painful experiences, her knowledge about intersectional power relations helps her in dealing with experiences of racism:

But that was somehow totally irrelevant for me, see, because they didn’t know me, they didn’t know who I am, and weren’t familiar at all with my story. All they know is my name, how old I am and how I look […].

Proceeding from their experiences and those of their friends, they develop a sensitive feel for the veiled and implicit discriminations. Equipped with this critical knowledge about racism, that they deepen in part by reading relevant studies, they are as a result capable of acts of civil courage and self-defense.

Fourth, as a building block, along with their everyday experiences with racism, these young people have also had everyday experiences with conviviality. Sina describes this simultaneity in a particularly striking manner, when she tells about an experience she had in the framework of an excursion with her school classmates:

We all went horse-back riding, and so me too, like that wasn’t any problem. But there simply was one problem, it was so windy, see. And I was constantly afraid I’d lose my headscarf. […] And so I was constantly tucking it in tighter, but, well, there was no possibility. […] yeah, and so, then I just said I wanted to get down and stop. And my gym teacher who I had then, like he didn’t understand that at all. I mean, in general he wasn’t such a nice guy. But he couldn’t understand that even less. And wanted to force me to continue on. And then he said: otherwise I wouldn’t get any grade (she laughs). It was actually so ridiculous.

Sina is put under pressure by her teacher with the threat of consequences if she does not continue on in an activity that for her is not possible without huge difficulties. Sina’s teacher implies by his racist action that Sina can be a full-fledged participant in athletics instruction only without her hijab scarf, and otherwise won’t get a grade. The sexist-racially loaded discourse about the “headscarf” is one of the currently dominant forms of racist articulation in Austria and Europe; along with discriminations in state law, it also leads to everyday attacks against women who are wearing a hijab (cf. Dokustelle Islamfeindlichkeit & antimuslimischer Rassismus 2019). But Sina did not have to endure this experience of racism alone and was supported by her fellow classmates.

Yeah, and anyhow the whole class were pissed off. I think I was the most relaxed, laid-back of all the pupils (laughter), that still surprises me even now, but somehow, I simply knew that my friends would settle the matter alright. And that’s exactly what turned out after all. Everyone defended me, and against that he had no chance. Like, I mean, he didn’t want to have the whole class against him […].

Sina’s classmates, male and female, succeeded in solidarity together to contend with and dissolve a discriminating situation within an authoritarian setting (teacher–pupil relationship). Sina’s trust in her classmates helped to make the situation for her less painful (“I think I was the most relaxed, laid-back”) than she thought (“that still surprises me even now”).

Along with these rehearsed practices of sticking together in solidarity, the young persons also tell repeatedly about spontaneous experiences of conviviality, as in an example narrated by Azra:

Ultimately, I only made it inside by connections. Because, I mean, my dad, step-dad, he works as a mechanic. And one of his customers was a teacher in some general secondary school […] now not exactly my favorite school, but better than nothing. And OK […] like anyhow, he arranged to get me a time for an appointment. Like a personal interview. And he also stayed the whole time during the interview right in the room. And he also vouched for me, so to speak. But actually, I don’t really know why, ‘cause, I mean, we hardly knew the guy. He simply felt a need to help me out, something like that.

In earlier interview sequences Azra said that because of her proficiency in German, which according to her elementary school was insufficient, she was sent to a special school. She was the best pupil there by far and thought that nowadays it’s probably no longer possible to be sent so simply to a special needs school. The solidaric and convivial practice of the teacher who “vouched” for her was very important for Azra’s educational biography and at the same time came about totally by chance.

Fifth, with their experiences of racism, the young persons discover the city as a locale of multiplicity. Each generation after migration is a point of departure for urban life in general – city is migration (Yildiz 2013). That is also true and especially the case for the present postmigrant generation today:

And above all it was like that in the city […] the elementary school was located a bit outside of town. That’s why there were so many conversations and discussions there about me. The “foreign kid” (laughter). I mean, in the city that sure is different. There you don’t stand out. Like everybody comes from somewhere there. People are more open. […] So, I mean, it didn’t really interest anyone.

The city, the district there, the local neighbourhood are important places and spaces of belonging. Here the young persons experience in turn both elements of exclusion, racist abuse, as well as convivial encounters, friendships, options for education and work. They live in these “super-diverse” (Vertovec 2007) contexts and actively participate in co-shaping their cities, town districts and local neighbourhoods.

Mira reports on one hand about racist incidents:

One time, me and my brother were outside and had a snowball fight and we built a snowman. A child wanted absolutely to play with us, and so then we all played together. But the following day this kid was no longer allowed to go outside and come over to join us to play, and just sat at the window watching. The child was forbidden, so to say, by the parents to play with us again. But then you notice that there’s this attitude and view people have, marked by racism, likewise even in the neighborhood.

But on the other hand, Mira’s neighbourhood is also a place where modes of overcoming socially constructed difference prove successful:

However, earlier on there were also positive things happening at times. One example would be that another neighbor often invited my brother and me over to his place, and we’d spend hours there. I also have very nice neighbors at the moment.

The experience of racism makes clear that the dividing lines of racism are continually being drawn and of course also run through residential areas. Knowledge about the injustice and the pain and suffering caused – not just for the marginalized girl Mira but also for the child who had to sit at the window and watch instead of joining others outside to play – functions to guide and shape a conscious confrontation with the value of a convivial neighbourhood. This is a praxis of competence in good neighbourly relations that partially shifts the racist boundaries that can spring from that.

In conclusion: the postmigrant situation as an empowerment strategy

However, in order to render convivial everyday practices visible as such, necessary is a postmigrant attitude in thought that focuses on lived multiplicity and allows for conscious differential insights beyond conventional national polarization, yet without ignoring racist structures. We have been able to show that a constitutive portion of these current structures comprise dominant discourses on migration and integration. Within this discursive formation, the stereotypical figure of the “migrant” takes on the function of the “Other”. As Gilroy has noted, it is the central figure with which racism in the post-colonial landscape continues to be manifested: “The figure of the immigrant is part of the very intellectual mechanism that holds us […] hostage.” (Gilroy 2004, 165).

We were also able to show that the practices and discourses that young persons develop are resistant and counter-hegemonial strategies, which they have also gained from a confrontation with their positioning as “in-between”. Postmigrant forms of articulation as an empowering practice facilitates assuming a subject position from which one can intervene as a speaker in the dominant discourse (cf. Mouffe 2013). We believe that these interventions are more than mere “tools”, as they were termed by Back and Sinha. They can also be seen as building blocks of a counter-hegemonial ethics. This ethics can be read as a contribution to a European self-decolonization, and society should learn from this postmigrant perspective.

By way of conclusion, it should be stressed: the postmigrant perspective and its realities as a contrapuntal reading of historical and current world relations in Edward Said’s classic sense (1993) leads to a “[…] constitutive critical interruption into that whole grand historiographical narrative” (Hall 1996, 250) and to a “radical revision of the social temporality” (Bhabha 2004, 246), a rupture that in the sense of Rancière produces dissent, upsets hegemonic order and critically interrogates the rehearsed and well-practiced modes of evidence (Rancière 2018, 47). Through this rupture with the dominant order, marginalized forms of knowledge, matters repressed and excluded come into critical sight. In this sense, the postmigrant way of subjectification can be understood as a possibility for action in order to confront and grapple with discriminatory and racist social structures and to position oneself in this dynamic confrontation. As the biographical examples show, subjects are not only subjugated, passive actors. Rather they also shape themselves in powerful spaces, generating in this way options for resistant actions, and thus for contributing constitutively to living together in society.

In this context, it is important to keep the following in mind: on one hand, we should make sure that we do not generalize about conceiving the succeeding generation as resistant subjects, thus romanticizing them. To what extent individuals find pathways and detours, despite adverse circumstances – in order to position themselves adequately and to lead a life that is to an extent independent – always also depends on the individual resources and networks that they can make use of. On the other hand, it is important to take seriously the complex social structures in which resistance is articulated. The question arises as to how subjects develop emancipatory practices despite the racism and discriminations they are subject to, how they establish an “ethics of conviviality” that is of central importance for living together in society.

To liberate established migration research from its special role and to establish it as a critical social analysis means that migration not only becomes an object for study but appears as a perspective of analysis in order to read and contextualize anew processes of social transformation and global and local power relations. This approach in thought has both theoretical and practical consequences. We see a counter-hegemonic and resistant production of knowledge as highly meaningful for interaction – politically, pedagogically and in the schools. Convivial culture – which the young persons we have interviewed practice under precarious and discriminatory conditions of living – should specifically become the basis for further interventions. Otherwise, the well-established patterns of interpretation and images will continue to be further reproduced in an unreflected manner. As Fernando Coronil has pointed out, the contrapuntal perspective could perhaps contribute to the development of a decentered “transcultural anthropology”, “which avoids transforming difference into alterity” (2002, 209).

Acknowledgements

Translated from the German by William Templer. The interviews were conducted by Yesim Sahan and Eva Larcher.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The concept first appeared in 1995 in a research paper by Baumann and Sunier (1995).

2 For a current overview of the research in the German-speaking area, see Langenkamp and Linten (2019).

3 In 2019, there were ca. 2.07 million individuals with a migration background living in Austria, thus 23.7% of the total population. In Tyrol the percentage is around 17% (Statistik Austria 2020).

4 This article by Stuart Hall in German, widely cited in the German-speaking areas, is based on a lecture he delivered in Hamburg on May 17, 1989, which was then published that same year in the journal Argument (Hall 1989).

5 The interviews were conducted by Yesim Sahan and Eva Larcher at the Department of Educational Science, Innsbruck University, in the framework of a research workshop and have been separately evaluated by the authors of this article.

6 Innsbruck is the state capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol. The city is located close to the border with Germany and Italy and is a small city, with a population of some 130,000 residents. The city is marked by the normality and promotion of touristic mobility, and the problematization and sanctioning of migrant mobility. One aim of the present research is also to make migration history and migration narratives in Tyrol more visible. Above all in the 1960s and 1970s, Austria – and thus Innsbruck as well – experienced larger-scale movements of migrants through the recruitment of labor migrants from Turkey and the former Yugoslavia and during the Yugoslav war at the beginning of the 1990s, when many war refugees came to Innsbruck.