Special Issues by Gladys Akom Ankobrey
Open Cultural Studies, 2019
This Special Issue of Open Cultural Studies 3(1) explores spaces where identifications with the A... more This Special Issue of Open Cultural Studies 3(1) explores spaces where identifications with the African diaspora become articulated, (re)negotiated and, as demonstrated by many articles in this issue, established as a field of the collective agency with transformative power in European societies. The Special Issue includes 15 articles by authors Paul Gilroy, Pamela Ohene-Nyako, Gladys Akom Ankobrey, Serena Scrabello & Marleen de Witte, Giuseppe Grimaldi, Julia Borst & Danae Gallo Gonzalez, Mitchell Esajas & Jéssica de Abreu, Mischa Twitchin, Heather Shirey, Jamele Watkins, Livia Jiménez Sedano, Alice Aterianus-Owanga, Antti-Ville Kärjä and Jasmine Linnea Kelekay.
The articles discuss the ways in which African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed not only by individuals' engagements in Africa and its global diaspora but also through the collective agency, aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism. Together, the articles make visible the diversity of African and black diasporic spaces in Europe.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Papers by Gladys Akom Ankobrey
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Global Networks
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
(Re)Mapping Migration and Education
Existing methodologies for researching the lives of young people affected by migration have thus ... more Existing methodologies for researching the lives of young people affected by migration have thus far oversimplified their physical mobility by focusing solely on their first international migration or that of their parents. However, previous research shows that migrant youth are mobile and that mobility plays an important role in their lives. This chapter presents mobility trajectory mapping as a methodological tool to record and study these varied mobility trajectories of migrant background youth. Mapping trajectories allows researchers to employ a youth-centric and transnational lens by involving young people in the co-creation of knowledge about their experiences of moving between places, and by learning about the meanings they attribute to these experiences. This chapter presents our experiences in developing and implementing this method with 183 Ghanaian-background young people in Ghana, Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands as part of the multi-sited, interdisciplinary research project "Mobility Trajectories of Young Lives (MO-TRAYL)." By discussing methodological advantages of mobility trajectory mapping and presenting analytical insights into the nature of transnational youth mobility that it facilitates, we show that mobility trajectory mapping offers an alternative way to research migrant-background youth with potentially deep repercussions for how we understand their transnational lives.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
African Diaspora
This article analyses the ways in which young people with a migration background develop their ow... more This article analyses the ways in which young people with a migration background develop their own transnational engagement with their or their parents’ country of origin. Drawing on 17-months of multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands and Ghana, we add to the emerging literature on ‘return’ mobilities by analysing young people of Ghanaian background, irrespective of whether they or their parents migrated, and by looking at an under-researched form of mobility that they engage in: that of attending funerals in Ghana. Funerals occupy a central role in Ghanaian society, and thus allow young people to gain knowledge about cultural practices, both by observing and embodying them, and develop their relationships with people in Ghana. Rather than reproducing their parents’ transnational attachments, young people recreate these according to their own needs, which involves dealing with tensions. Peer relationships—which have largely gone unnoticed in transnational migration st...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Open Cultural Studies
It has been several years since the term “Afropolitanism” was coined and instigated an intense de... more It has been several years since the term “Afropolitanism” was coined and instigated an intense debate in both the offline and online world. Although Afropolitanism is celebrated for highlighting positive depictions of Africa, it has also been criticised for its supposedly exclusive and elitist focus. Several scholars have distinguished Afropolitanism from Pan-Africanism by framing it as the latter’s apolitical younger version. Following the discussion around these perceived differences, this paper investigates how Afropolitanism negotiates the African diaspora discourse in relation to Pan-Africanism. Thus far, the study of Afropolitanism has remained mostly limited to the field of literary and cultural studies. In order to move the discussion on this term further, this paper explores the lived experiences of twelve black Londoners with Afropolitanism and Pan-Africanism. By using the notion of “performance,” I show that Afropolitanism and Pan-Africanism are constructed and deconstruc...
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Uploads
Special Issues by Gladys Akom Ankobrey
The articles discuss the ways in which African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed not only by individuals' engagements in Africa and its global diaspora but also through the collective agency, aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism. Together, the articles make visible the diversity of African and black diasporic spaces in Europe.
Papers by Gladys Akom Ankobrey
The articles discuss the ways in which African diaspora communities and cultures in Europe are constructed not only by individuals' engagements in Africa and its global diaspora but also through the collective agency, aiming at promoting change in European societies shadowed by the normative whiteness, nationalist discourses and policies, human rights violations and overt racism. Together, the articles make visible the diversity of African and black diasporic spaces in Europe.