ABI Working Paper N° 29: What is the political agency of migrants? Towards a non-Eurocentric framework of understanding
By Franzisca Zanker
This paper develops a relational, non-Eurocentric conceptualisation of political migrant agency. It argues for a balance-of-stories approach to understanding political agency by considering historically contextualised empirical and everyday experiences of the migrant actors. Connecting this to previous scholarship on migrant agency, the paper unpacks what is political and who is the migrant. It argues that migrants act within heterogeneous, intersectional collectives and that the political emerges not only in formal arenas but also in everyday practices that migrants themselves interpret as meaningful for transformative purposes. Political agency is an intersectional experience that should be self-defined according to (aspirational) transformational intent. Drawing on Afrotheoretical perspectives and relational methods, the paper challenges normative assumptions about political subjectivity and contributes conceptual clarity to the undertheorised field of migrant agency beyond the Global North.
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