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Heft 2/26 – Migration Issues
Hardly anything has stirred up our societies as much as global migration in recent times. It is not only the growing tendency toward ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism that can be linked to this. Many other developments, by no means for the better, such as the rise of white supremacist thinking or the “racialization” of all others, are also related to it. At the same time, the migratory transformation of society is producing many new inequalities and differences, all of which need to be examined more closely: “good” migrants (those who are like us) versus “bad” migrants (those who will always remain foreign and cannot be integrated); border regimes in which some enjoy the EU-wide ‘right to freedom of movement’ while others have little chance of ever overcoming the barriers erected on the outside; and finally, the radical disparity in the causes of migration (flight from political persecution, climate emergency, economic hopelessness, the general imbalance between the global North and the global South). All these aspects are reflected in current art events and are addressed there in a wide variety of ways. In the issue “Migration Issues,” we want to ask not only how contemporary art can adequately reflect these processes and conditions. Rather, we also want to explore how migration-sensitive artistic practice can generate and promote a different, expanded understanding of these new realities. In other words, how old, entrenched, or newly resurgent binaries such as “us” versus ‘them’ can be effectively undermined. And what new, “post-migrant” horizons might look like that do justice to the irreversible reality of current migration movements in a way that does not gloss over it.
Publication date: June 16, 2026