Creating Europe from the Margins

Mobilities and Racism in Postcolonial Europe

Kristín Loftsdóttir, Brigitte Hipfl, Sandra Ponzanesi, Kristín Loftsdóttir, Brigitte Hipfl, Sandra Ponzanesi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032209791
• eBook ISBN: 9781000955200
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Colonialism & Post-Colonialism
• Index: Social Sciences

This edited volume explores the idea of Europe through a focus on its margins. The chapters in the volume inquire critically into the relations and tensions inherent in divisions between the Global North and the Global South as well as internal regional differentiation within Europe itself. In doing so, the volume stresses the need to consider Europe from critical interdisciplinary perspectives, highlighting historical and contemporary issues of racism and colonialism.

While recent discussions of migration into 'Fortress Europe' seem to assume that Europe has clearly demarcated geographic, political and cultural boundaries, this book argues that the reality is more complex. The book explores margins conceptually and positions margins and centres as open to negotiation and contestation and characterized by ambiguity. As such, margins can be contextualized in relation to hierarchies within Europe, with different processes involved in creating boundaries and borders between different kinds of Europes and Europeans. Deploying case studies from different places, such as Iceland, Italy, Poland, Spain, Turkey, the UK, Romania, Cyprus, Greece, Sicily, European colonies in the Caribbean and the former Yugoslavia, the contributors analyse how different geopolitical hierarchies intersect with racialized subject positions of diverse people living in Europe, while also exploring issues of gender, class, sexuality, religion and nationality. Some chapters draw attention to the fortification of Europe's 'borderland, ' while others focus on internal hierarchies within Europe, critiquing the meaning of spatial boundaries in an increasingly digitalized Europe. In doing so, the chapters interrogate the hierarchies at play in the processes of being and becoming 'European' and the ongoing impacts of race and colonialism.

This timely and thought-provoking collection will be of considerable significance to those in the humanities and social sciences with an interest in Europe.

Chapter 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Creating Europe from the Margins: Introduction
• 2 Articulating Europe from the Sephardic Margin: Restoring Citizenship for Expulsed Jews, and Not Muslims, in Spain?
• 3 Racist and Imperial Genealogies in LGBT-free Zones and Struggles over Europe in Poland
• 4 ‘From Nowhere to Nowhere’ – Mapping Trajectories of Belonging within the Post-Yugoslav Field
• 5 A Crossroads of the World on the Margins of Europe: Migration and Sicilian Liminality
• 6 Digital Media and Migration: Reflections from the Southern Margins of Europe
• 7 Gay Bod: Civic and LGBTQ+ Pride after Brexit in a City on the Margins of the UK and Europe
• 8 Marginalized Bodies in Caribbean Europe: Between Vital Inequalities and Health (Im)mobilities
• 9 Marketing Marginality: Creating Iceland as a White Privileged Destination
• 10 Making Europe from Below: Intra EU-Migration and Mobilities Connecting the Margins
• 11 When the Margins Enter the Centre: The Documentary Along the Borders of Turkey and Its YouTube Comments as Conflicting Constructions of Europeanity
• 12 Beating the Border: Playing with Migrant Experiences and Borderveillant Spectatorship in Channel 4’s Smuggled (2019)
• Index