EUROCENTRISM

Eurocentrism can be understood as a crosscutting, yet invisible paradigm that organizes society, social relations and perceptions of the world on an everyday basis. Its strength and reproductive power lies in its normative and performative force.

Europe is set as the point of measurement for moral, political, economic, educational and juridical development globally and omits that European wealth and the expansion of capitalism is built on colonialism, the enslavement, exploitation and genocide of populations, the expansion of the plantation economy and the establishment of settler-colonial societies.

It is set as a norm through iterative practices of overvisibilizing and invisibilizing and operates on the basis of the racialization and production of social hierarchies that permeate HEI.

The relevance of including Eurocentrism in the toolkit emerged from two group dialogues with Migra*BPoC students, PhDs and postdocs in Giessen, Germany. Participants shared negative experiences around being “othered” or having difficulties with institutions and bureaucracy while studying and working in HEI.

Eurocentrism in HEI operates through three main dynamics: first, they articulated mechanisms that othered them as Migra*BPOC on the interpersonal, group, and institutional level.

Secondly, their accounts reflected how they were disciplined and repressed by authorities in regard to their language skills, their academic faculties, and by reminding them of the established rules and customs in place. In this sense, ethnocentric mechanisms shaped the potential of success or failure in HEI.

And thirdly, silent dynamics, such as unquestioned double standards regarding name pronunciation or the provision of bureaucratic processes solely in German, reinforce a nexus between education and whiteness.

JLU and an.gekommen e.V. organized two participatory and interactive place-based workshops in January and February 2020, engaging with local pathways to education. The participants were Migra*/BPOC students (B.A. and M.A.), doctoral students and post-docs, as well as persons in the process of applying for asylum and international exchange students.

The first workshop was held on January 30th, under the title How do you feel about your academic experience in Germany?”. Here, the group was invited to make a collage with the question “How do I feel about my university/my academic experience in Germany?”. The second workshop, on February 27th, aimed at fostering empowering dynamics that deindividualize discrimination experiences and rather identify possibilities for institutional change. This workshop had the title “What gives you energy?”

Both workshops addressed two dimensions: first, creating awareness (concientizar) about the interplay of everyday individual experiences of discrimination; second, sharing strategies of self- and collective care as well as support structures of empowerment, on the other.

After each of the workshops, a smaller group met in order to reflect on the main observations, analysis and assumptions made in the workshop. A mind-map connecting the different examples was elaborated and final theoretical elaborations were made.

The relevance of including Eurocentrism in the toolkit emerged from two group dialogues with Migra*/BPoC students, PhDs and postdocs in Giessen, Germany. In both workshops, participants quickly started recounting specific stories of their studying experiences in Germany as well as everyday experiences.

Although all of the participants had different biographies and migration histories, they could relate to and often share the stories told by others in the groups, and connect these stories to their own lives. They also identified and explained the differences in experiencing discriminatory behavior due to ascribed group memberships e.g. along with gender and religion.

After these workshops, a smaller group (Migra*/BPOC students and doctoral students) worked with the material and shared their impressions and reflections, and identified three central dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in HEI along Eurocentrism in Giessen, Germany: 1), everyday practices of othering, often build on racist imaginaries. 2), ethnocentric mechanisms shaping the potential of success or failure in HEI. 3), HEI reproduce silently a nexus between education and whiteness. This mind-map was then again discussed in the smaller group and embedded in a theoretical framework.

In one of the workshops, one participant had chosen a broken heart in her collage to depict situations of disadvantage and racism she had experienced at the university. Through that symbol, she described the pain that she feels when she is being gazed at and objectified in seminars due to her headscarf. She voiced the feeling that she was being portrayed as ‘the person who had to go through all of it’, referring to the gendered violence others believe she must have suffered as a Muslim woman.

The participants also felt that white students were reacting differently towards the racialized body when the discussion about discrimination turned towards experiences made in Germany.

Situating Migra*/BPoC academics outside Europe/Eurocentric order includes not only their de-individualization, but also turns them into an object of study in HEI: They are being depersonalized, objectified and gazed at in seminars, either as geographical outsiders (from a foreign country), or as ontological outsiders (subalterns who come from a milieu in Germany, that is culturally outside ‘real Germany’.