Lewicki, Aleksandra (2018) Race, Islamophobia and the politics of citizenship in post-unification Germany. Patterns of Prejudice, 52 (5). pp. 496-512. ISSN 0031-322X

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Abstract

In the immediate aftermath of German reunification, as in the wake of the recent humanitarian crisis, Germany experienced notable ‘peaks’ of racist agitation and violence. In the 1990s, as today, the post-Communist eastern regions of Germany tend to be perceived as the hub of such racism. In this article, Lewicki revisits both ‘peaks’ via an examination of numerical evidence for verbal and physical racist violence in the former East and West of Germany. Rather than conceiving of racism as ‘cyclical’ or a specific legacy of the Communist dictatorship, her analysis suggests that political projects in Germany’s past and present have retained distinct structural incarnations of race. Far-right activists could thus successfully channel animosities resulting from the terms of unification into nationalist and racist resentment: momentarily more so in the East, but increasingly also in the West. The politics of citizenship, Lewicki argues, has provided a key means of perpetuating, reaffirming and cementing racialized hierarchies in the two post-war German states, but also in reunified Germany.

Item Type:	Article
Schools and Departments:	School of Law, Politics and Sociology > Sociology
Subjects:	H Social Sciences H Social Sciences > HM Sociology > HM0621 Culture H Social Sciences > HM Sociology > HM0706 Social structure H Social Sciences > HM Sociology > HM0711 Groups and organisations H Social Sciences > HM Sociology > HM0826 Social institutions H Social Sciences > HM Sociology > HM0831 Social change H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races
Depositing User:	Aleksandra Lewicki
Date Deposited:	25 Oct 2018 15:01
Last Modified:	10 Dec 2018 15:00
URI:	http://srodev.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/79692

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