Review: Lecture Series "In Society" – Participation and Solidarity in the 2022 summer semester

With the series "In Society", the ZFM offers the opportunity to exchange ideas with renowned personalities, discusses with them in the company of an interested public and, last but not least, expresses the scientific interest of the ZFM: Taking an analytical look at society oriented towards flight and migration.

In the 2022 summer semester, the ZFM organized lectures titled "Participation and Solidarity" as part of this series.
Flight and migration movements encounter both defensive attitudes among the population but also solidarity and support. This also becomes evident in wars and humanitarian disasters: They can trigger compassion and a willingness to help, but also debates on reception capacities for people seeking protection and the threat to European borders. Questions of admission, protection, participation and belonging are controversially discussed and negotiated in times of increasing migration and flight movements. Although the current series of talks focused on the current war in Ukraine, it also looked at how memory is shaped in a plural post-migrant society. Together with an interested public and the speakers, the ZFM discussed practices and discourses around participation and solidarity.

On May 12, Hannes Schammann from the University of Hildesheim kicked off our series of talks with his view on the municipal reception of refugees in cities and rural areas. In democratic nation states, opportunities for participation are secured through social, political and civil rights – but at the same time, they can be denied, restricted or tied to conditions. Inequalities that arise as a result go hand in hand with questions of protection, participation and belonging and are constantly negotiated in contested socio-political fields of conflict. With the help of the expertise of Hannes Schammann from the University of Hildesheim, we approached the question of the role of municipalities in this field of conflict. Particularly against the backdrop of current refugee movements from Ukraine, this question is once again becoming increasingly urgent.

On June 9, Karin Scherschel and Tanja Evers (ZFM) continued the series of talks on the topic of participation and solidarity with their lecture. At the beginning, sociological-philosophical perspectives of Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Zygmunt Bauman were in the center in order to show how interpretations and negotiations about who is considered a refugee always emerge and change against the background of the respective historical-cultural context of the refugee movements. However, not only the scientific but also the media discourse negotiates these questions of belonging. Mass media are important actors when it comes to shaping public opinion on the topic of flight. So-called frames (interpretive frameworks) on migration, flight and refugees would show up persistently over time and have a mostly problem-oriented perspective. However, criticism of this should not – as is often the case – remain at content level. With the help of a communication science perspective and analysis of the production level, it could be examined more precisely how the content and thus the knowledge come about. Using current results from their research projects, the speakers illustrated how, for example, certain social events (e.g. "New Year's Eve Cologne") could affect reporting and thus discourse. In view of the current flight movements from Ukraine, a predominantly positive tenor can be found in the reporting. A fact that further marginalizes refugees from other countries of origin not only legally, but also in the media.

On July 12, Tanja Thomas from the University of Tübingen concluded our current series of talks with her illustrative lecture. She presented her joint research project carried out together with Matthias Lorenz and Fabian Virchow, and titled "Doing Memory," in which she first situated her research on "Doing Memory" in the context of preceding studies on the memory of right-wing violence, specifically the racist attack in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992.
In her lecture, Thomas pointed out that memory practices are always conflictual processes and that Doing Memory always requires a radical multiperspectivity that should not only look at practices of remembering but also at forgetting, repressing, and discarding. Theoretically, her work draws on Nancy Fraser and Seyla Benhabib, who point to justice as a concept in accessing and negotiating memory and forgetting. Victims, those affected, and actors in solidarity are concerned with recognition and being heard. Both are prerequisites for social visibility and capacity for action, which in turn depend on the presence or absence of resources.

The lecture series will continue next semester with further exciting guests. We will inform you about dates and speakers here again.