Migration and us: Mobility, Refugees and Borders in a Humanities Perspective

OP JAK CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008741.

Working Group: Language, Race and the Lived Experience of Migration

Principal Investigator: Stephanie Rudwick

Team Members: Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Tina Magazzini, Bronislav Ostřanský, Františka Schormová, Amal Hadlulová, Michal Šípoš, Samuel Umoh, Zdeněk Uherek, Jakub Vávrovský, May Tamimova 

The aim of this project is a comprehensive qualitative analysis of linguistic and racial identities and belongings in the Czech Republic in the context of migration. Theoretically, it draws on interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches and focuses on the lived reality of migration in the relatively homogeneous context of the nation-state. Based on ethnographic research, it develops a transnational perspective on the lived experience of otherness (in the broadest sense) through the voices of migrants, refugees and members of the diaspora. Furthermore, it addresses the question of how Czech society ascribes specific linguistic and racial categories, labels and identities to migrants, how this complex discourse co-creates lived experience and how migrants themselves accept, modify or reject these categories. The implications for integration or exclusion and the formation of new forms of ethics and/or (gendered) subjectivities of migrants are explored. It analytically links existing research on (anti)migration discourses in the Czech Republic and seeks to critically challenge nationalist views. Based on the specificities of the region, it theoretically develops an ontological and epistemological study of the relationship between migration, language, and gender, which is complemented by insights into the complex and ambivalent nature of identity politics in the Czech Republic and beyond.