ISA International Guest Lecture: Heike Drotbohm
This talk explores central dimensions of different forms of asymmetric care that fall between the competences of overlapping civil society organizations. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in São Paulo, Brazil, the perspective traces migrants arriving and integrating across different nodes of reception, including church-based NGOs, humanitarian organizations, and activist housing projects. Overlaps between these different forms of care and control do not arise only when migrants refer to different organizational structures. Instead, numerous formal and organizational similarities complicate a clear separation of these domains of asymmetric care. By concentrating on incidents when the encounters between migrant activists and Brazilian activists are disturbed, this article traces the mutual irritation of differently positioned actors, who calibrate their moral claims and produce new understandings of “worthiness”.
Heike Drotbohm is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. Her research was conducted in transatlantic social fields for exploring the intersection between im/mobility, kinship and care (Haiti, Cape Verde, Portugal, USA). More recently, she followed migrant trajectories across urban and crossborder spaces (in Brazil and Central America) and traced configurations of care, eligibility and control in settings of humanitarianism and pro-migrant solidarity.