Society and space

The echoes of the mass sexual assaults during the New Year’s Eve Celebrations in Cologne and other German cities continue to reverberate through international public, political and academic debates. In Germany, they represented a testing ground for the country’s refugee politics and ‘Willkommenskultur’, the much promoted welcoming attitude to refugees. For many Germans who swayed between skepticism about the chancellor’s ‘we can do it’ mentality and empathy with people fleeing war and inhuman conditions, the assaults tended to tip the balance towards outright rejection. For others, however, it became an incentive to step up and become more active in addressing both refugee issues and sexism—not refugee sexism, but sexism in general. Campaigns such as ‘ausnahmslos’ or an impassioned video by the Berlin based ‘satire califate’ Datteltäter attracted not only thousands of viewers and signatories but led to further public debate about the incidents’ implications.

The aim of the forum is to explore the meaning of the Cologne sexual assaults in relation to the diversity of topics that resonate with them: issues of patriarchy, racism, economic and geopolitical hierarchies, policing of borders and sexuality, and nationalism.

Continue reading the Introduction by Angela Last here

Forum Contributions

Policing the Norm by Jessica Lehman and Bruce Braun

Colonial Myths, Border Technologies by Kathryn Medien

‘Welcome Culture’ Has Ended in Europe by Caroline Nagel [to be posted July 5]

Persevering in the new European climate of hate by Kathrin Hörschelmann [to be posted July 5]

Necessary Pause and Axiomatic Slippages by Jason Lim [to be posted July 5]

Race, Sex, and the Other by Amade M’charek [to be posted July 12]