16.02.2024

[Blog:] Duisburg Chronicle or How to Feed the Sociological Imagination

Carlos Nazario Mora Duro, Institute for Sociology, University of Tübingen

On Friday, 3rd November we (some members of G-TURN) made a short trip to Duisburg, Germany to visit an exhibition on migration at the Cubus-Kunsthallehe.  We also joined our colleague Polina Manolova for an ethnographic tour in the Marxloh district of Duisburg. As researchers interested in migration, anything related to the phenomenon of mobility is intriguing to us, and this installation and urban itinerary were no exception.

The name of the exhibition was Über/Sehen. Bildregime der Migration (About/Look. Image Regimes of Migration). In German, über and sehen mean about and look, but together, übersehen means to overlook or to ignore something. The title thus plays with the polysemy of migration: looking at migration, the overexposure, and omission of it.

The installation consisted of pictures, explanations, and audiovisual material to reflect on the social production of migration-related images. Who made these illustrations? In what social and political context was this material created, and what was its intentionality? To answer these questions, the museum highlighted issues such as the manipulation of images, the “risk” of victimisation, and the focus on “social and political alternatives.”

The picture of a migrant mother, taken by the photographer Dorothea Lange in 1936, was particularly appealing. Our guide, a young woman from Ukraine who is also an artist in Duisburg, explained the dilemma of this famous image. It became an icon of the Great Depression in the US and was seen as a referent of Dorothea Lange’s work. Less information however has been provided about the identity of the mother and children in the visual material. Did the photographer get permission to take this picture, and what was the story of Florence Thompson, the woman in the photograph who seems to be protecting her children from the camera siege?

Another fascinating instance during the exhibition was a series of images about migration and refugees created by artificial intelligence.

It is amazing the quality of illustrations that AI can produce following the commands and narratives of technology users. One of these images was of a crowded ship in the middle of a raging sea. The dramatic scene of contemporary human mobilities –mainly from the South to the global North, seems to emulate the biblical episode of Noah’s Ark.

The visit concluded with a showing of the documentary Leaving Greece (2013), followed by a discussion with the director Anna Brass. The film follows the story of three young Afghan refugees stranded in Greece, waiting for the chance to achieve the German dream. That is, to be accepted to enter Germany and pursue their goals of work, start a family, or improve their living conditions. The migration issue is not only a political order but a social conflict with human consequences.

The next day, we had the opportunity to be guided through the Marxloh district by Dr Polina Manolova, currently based at the University of Essen-Duisburg. We observed how urban space is a configuration of social tensions and collective organisation, materialised in the public sphere. This observation was reinforced later with her G-TURN lecture “Mobility, labour and biopolitics: Notes from Duisburg’ Urban Zones of Exception”.

Marxloh is generally stigmatised in the media as a no-go area associated with crime and unemployment. Despite the considerable deindustrialisation of the wider region, the neighbourhood is still shaped by the steel industry. Moreover, the locality is characterised by its cultural diversity. Currently, 76% of Marxloh's residents have a migrant background. Mostly, people with Turkish roots, but also populations from Bulgaria, Romania, Syria, and Poland.

The migrant mosaic is reflected in the configuration of the urban social space. Around the Marxloh neighbourhood, one can find businesses run by immigrant entrepreneurs: delicious restaurants, shops selling Turkish and Bulgarian products, and bright and flashy wedding shops.

The religious diversity of the area was evident in the presence of religious centres, such as the Central Mosque in Duisburg, one of the largest in Germany.

Of course, we cannot ignore the marginalisation and resistance that affects multicultural contexts. These social conflicts are bound up with the political and economic context, both nationally and globally.

As we walked through the streets, we came across a group of buildings that had been evacuated by the police, claiming that the structure was dangerous for its occupants. Residents of different nationalities had been evicted in a single day, without being offered a new home or adequate assistance. According to Dr Manolova, these systematic expulsions represent ethnic and spatial cleansing practices carried out by state authorities. Meanwhile, neighbourhood groups and organisations, e.g., Stolipinovo, created by Bulgarian Turkish migrants, have started to organise themselves to resist these displacement practices.

Before departing back to Tübingen on Sunday morning, 5 November, we noted the large letters #DUISBURG IST ECHT (Duisburg is authentic) on the paved plaza before the main station, reflecting efforts to convert the city from its industrial past.

As is common in many cities worldwide, the urban past seems to be giving way to the object of desire for tourism and gentrification. The revitalisation of blighted urban areas aims to attract wealthier visitors, residents, and businesses. However, this process can involve the detriment of the city's historical and cultural identity and the displacement of older residents due to the costs associated with gentrification.

We closed our ethnographic visit with a reading of C. Wright Mills' The Sociological Imagination (1959) on the crowded train on our return journey.

“It is true, as psychoanalysts continually point out, that people do often have 'the increasing sense of being moved by obscure forces within themselves which they are unable to define.' But... 'Man's chief danger' today lies in the unruly forces of contemporary society itself... its pervasive transformations of the very 'nature' of man and the conditions and aims of his life.”

There is no doubt that our sociological imagination has been greatly stimulated by our visit to Duisburg. It has allowed us to perceive the “obscure forces” Mills refers to. Those that go beyond the psyche of individuals and are situated in the complex and interconnected contemporary society.