Sub-project of Hanover: Negotiation of Belonging and Citizenship in Consideration of Social Categorisations
The construction processes of cultural difference as well as the negotiation of citizenship and belonging in Latin America are the central focus of the sub-projects of Hanover and Cologne in 2014-2016. The analysis of the interdependencies of social categorisations is still a central part. The sub-project Hanover investigates the entanglements of the categories class, age, ethnicity and gender in the context of migration processes and the construction of elites. The central question is how far ethnicity is becoming important for these entanglements at the action level of the actors. Together with the sub-project Cologne, a workshop will be organised on sensitising trainers for an anti-racist and postcolonial perspective on Global Education and Intercultural Coaching.
Moreover, increasing global entanglements make comparative perspectives regarding other regions of the world a further interesting focus of investigation. Existing contacts are used to achieve a more solid cooperation with researchers who work on issues in the context of Africa at the participating Universities of Cologne and Hanover.
In 2010-2014, the focus of research has been ethnicity as a process of categorisation, which refers to cultural or phenotypic characteristics and is to be historically traced. With the concept of belonging, types of social organisation could be included in the analyses that are not based on ethnic characteristics. Within the framework of Hanover's research question, ethnic adscriptions were primarily analysed in their interaction with socio-economic and political changes. In doing so, ethnic collectives were not assumed to be homogeneous. In fact, their internal conflicts and perceived differences, which depend on gender, generation and class relations, build a central focus of the research.