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Thursday 13 April 2023 11.00 - 13.00
X-6 ETH08 Racism and Anti-racism in the 1980s across Europe
Västra Hamngatan 25 AK2 136 (Z)
Network: Ethnicity and Migration Chair: Linda Reeder
Organizer: Nikolaos Papadogiannis Discussants: -
Jodi Burkett : Opposition to ‘Full-cost’ Fees for Overseas Students: Racist Imagery for Anti-racist Ends?
For overseas students coming to study in Britain, the 1980s started on a very inauspicious note. The new Thatcher government had announced in November 1979 that starting the next academic year, 1980-81, overseas students would be charged the ‘full cost’ of their education. While fees for overseas, and ‘home’, students ... (Show more)
For overseas students coming to study in Britain, the 1980s started on a very inauspicious note. The new Thatcher government had announced in November 1979 that starting the next academic year, 1980-81, overseas students would be charged the ‘full cost’ of their education. While fees for overseas, and ‘home’, students had been steadily increasing since they had been ‘differentiated’ in 1967, this was to be a substantial increase that many perceived as unfair. Such a perception emerged as students coming to Britain from members of the European Economic Community were to be charged fees at the ‘home’ rate. Therefore, as Conservative MP Teddy Taylor pointed out, they would be “charging a student from British Guyana £6,000 a year to become a doctor whereas if he comes from French Guyana, he must pay only £400 a year”. (Hansard, Column 779, 25 January 1983).
The discussions around the introduction, and implementation, of ‘full-cost’ fees for overseas students in Britain, highlight a range of issues: these include the perceptions of Britain’s international position, the nature and role of international students, international solidarity among students, and Britain’s responsibility to provide humanitarian relief or ‘aid’ to former colonies. This paper will explore how both ‘home’ and overseas students responded to this policy. In particular, it will examine the campaign by the National Union of Students, which used photographs of starving children in Africa, images which later in the decade became an important staple of charity appeals, to oppose fees for overseas students. It argues that while there were significant areas of continuity within student activity in opposition to new fees, the use of such visual imagery indicated a significant change in how students sought to access popular support and sympathy for their cause. (Show less)

Katerina Mildnerova : Social Engineering Educational Programme with Namibian children in Czechoslovakia
The paper deals with a historical case of the politically induced flight of Namibian child war refugees to Czechoslovakia in the 1980s and a state-sponsored social engineering educational programme aimed at turning politically indoctrinated children into the elite of the future Namibian nation. The main effort of communist leaders, both ... (Show more)
The paper deals with a historical case of the politically induced flight of Namibian child war refugees to Czechoslovakia in the 1980s and a state-sponsored social engineering educational programme aimed at turning politically indoctrinated children into the elite of the future Namibian nation. The main effort of communist leaders, both Czech and Namibian, was to raise children into obedient soldiers, ardent communists and firmly convinced patriots. The SWAPO, a liberation movement fighting for the independence of Namibia from South African apartheid domination, was well aware that to build a new Namibian nation and govern an independent state; it would be necessary to create not only an elite composed of patriotic Ovambo (majority ethnic group in Namibia) but also of politically indoctrinated, related, and therefore easily manipulated leaders of minority ethnic groups. The children of different ethnic backgrounds thus became a tabula rasa to write upon about a new political culture. The paper focuses on the political ideology of SWAPO and the Czechoslovak Communist Party that has been instilled in the children on the one hand and the process of biological-racist othering experienced by the children themselves on the other. The paper draws from the long-term research combining biographical, ethnographic and historical design, and it employs the concept of othering (Jensen 2011, Staszak 2009). Othering is conceived as a process of power negotiation between those who are being “othered” and those who perform this “othering”, a process which finally leads to social marginalisation and exclusion of the Other. This process involves discursive practices of attaching negative stereotypes. (Show less)

Nikolaos Papadogiannis : Sex Worker Activists, AIDS and Anti-racism in Berlin, 1980s and Early 1990s
Initial public discussions about AIDS in the Federal Republic of Germany stigmatised the so-called “risk groups”, including sex workers, non-white migrants, and gay cismen. My paper explores the attitudes of the West German sex workers’ rights movement towards such AIDS-related stigma. It focuses on Hydra e.V., based in Berlin, which ... (Show more)
Initial public discussions about AIDS in the Federal Republic of Germany stigmatised the so-called “risk groups”, including sex workers, non-white migrants, and gay cismen. My paper explores the attitudes of the West German sex workers’ rights movement towards such AIDS-related stigma. It focuses on Hydra e.V., based in Berlin, which played a key role in networking sex worker activists at the national and European levels. My talk studies the era between the early-to-mid 1980s, when public discussions about AIDS emerged in the Federal Republic of Germany, to the early 1990s. In the latter period, public debates around AIDS growingly shifted their focus from “risk groups” to “risk practices” that an individual, regardless of their social background, could pursue. My main argument is Hydra contributed to this shift by fighting against AIDS-related stigma against migrant sex workers in Berlin in two ways: through the support it offered to the latter in the AIDS-Advice Centre that it ran in Berlin and through campaigns that it launched in support of the rights of migrant sex workers, especially from Central Eastern Europe, Turkey and Thailand. Hydra aimed to develop intersectional solidarity among sex workers regardless of their “race” and gender identity in those campaigns. My talk contributes to research on transnational anti-racist activism in this period, which largely focuses on transatlantic flows between the UK and the USA. Moreover, it helps enrich the history of sex work activism in the Federal Republic of Germany, which has downplayed its engagement with migrant individuals and groups. The presentation is based on the magazine of Hydra, its pamphlets and correspondence with other groups and oral testimonies of its members. (Show less)

Antonino Scalia : Students from Abroad, Political Alliances and Institutional Racism in Italy (1967-1992)
This paper analyses the continuities and changes in anti-racist activism in Italy. It investigates why several former students from abroad got positions of leadership within the first wave of pro-migrant and antiracist mobilizations in Italy between 1987 and 1992. In particular, the paper studies the link between two processes: the ... (Show more)
This paper analyses the continuities and changes in anti-racist activism in Italy. It investigates why several former students from abroad got positions of leadership within the first wave of pro-migrant and antiracist mobilizations in Italy between 1987 and 1992. In particular, the paper studies the link between two processes: the ‘foreign’ students’ fight for the right to live and study in Italy from the late 1960s onwards; and the emergence of a large anti-racist movement between the late 1980s and the early 1990s. This research makes two main claims. First, former ‘foreign’ students’ significance in the 1980s movement was grounded on their strong links to non-‘foreign’-born Italian activists. The latter included the progressive Catholic world and the leftist organizations in solidarity for causes such as the Palestinian national liberation struggle and opposition to the authoritarian Shah’s regime in Iran until the revolution of 1979. These connections fostered the creation of some of the first migrant organizations, such as the Coordination Committee for Foreign Workers and Students, born in Turin in 1981. Second, the Italian governments from the 1970s implemented coherent policies aiming to curb ‘foreign’ students -despite their little numbers- that contrasted with their fragmentary approach to migration issues in general. The discourses associated with these policies racialised ‘foreign’ students by labelling them as potential terrorists and criminals and less academically proficient than their academic peers. The opposition of students from abroad to institutionalised racism framed the trajectories of key anti-racist campaigners. In this vein, the paper highlights Youssef Salman, who was involved in the Italian chapter of the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS) from the early 1970s and became the coordinator of the Federation of Foreign Organizations and Communities in Italy (FOCSI) in 1987. (Show less)



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