Postmigrant Counterpublics: Racialized Leisure and Sexual Dissidence in Urban Europe (Culture and Social Practice)

Can we move beyond the politics of community when it comes to understanding minoritized life in postmigrant, sexually diverse societies marked by racism? In a set of interconnected essays, Kira Kosnick explores the conflicting dynamics of community and subcultural socialities in racialized and sexually dissident urban contexts in Germany. Drawing on many years of ethnographic fieldwork, she examines how dominant framings of community turn into a burden of representation for minoritized groups. Against such framings, urban nightlife and queer, postmigrant club scenes are shown to work as counterpublics that offer spaces for dissident articulations of sexuality and postmigrant identities.

Kira Kosnick ist Professorin für Vergleichende Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie und Direktorin des Forschungszentrums »B/Orders in Motion« an der Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder). Sie promovierte in Kulturanthropologie an der New School for Social Research in New York und arbeitete seitdem in Großbritannien und Deutschland. Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Migration, Rassismus und Border Studies sowie Gender und Sexualität mit besonderem Interesse an intersektionalen Perspektiven und Ansätzen.