Love as Practice of Solidarity

Of Peripheral Bodies, Embodied Justice and Associated Labor

  • Danijela Majstorović University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22029/oc.2020.1178
Keywords: migrants, periphery, solidarity, affect, discourse, associated labor

Abstract

The essay is a feminist auto-ethnographic exercise in which I reflect upon my activist and academic life in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and migrant life in Germany as situated knowledges (Haraway 1988), aiming to provide a basis for solidarity among various, power-differentiated communities. BiH has become Europe’s “dumping ground” for non-European migrants but also a “waiting room” for its own citizens who are leaving as workforce to the EU. I juxtapose social protests and the post-2015 migrations from the Western Balkans to Germany — by which I was affected and now direct my research — with the Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian migrations to the EU via BiH analyzing exclusion across the board — from racial profiling in the US to the EU securitization practice of pushbacks, and Bosnian authorities’ racism towards “migrants” as well as clientelism towards its own population leading to their migration.

Author Biography

Danijela Majstorović, University of Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Danijela Majstorović is Professor of Linguistics and Cultural Studies at the University of Banja Luka’s English department teaching Discourse Analysis and Cultural Studies. Currently, she is a Humboldt Experienced Research Fellow studying discourses and affects of social protests and third wave migrations in post-2015 Western Balkans at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. She is the author of Diskursi periferije (Biblioteka XX vek, Belgrade) and Diskurs, moć i međunarodna zajednica (Filozofski fakultet u Banjoj Luci, 2007), one of the founders of the Banja Luka Social Center (BASOC) and the program directress of the feminist festival BLASFEM in Banja Luka.

Issue
No 9 (2020): Love
Section
_Essays