In an era of renewed geopolitical tensions and widening inequalities, Western European countries will continue to be home to significant communities from Eastern Europe. Developments such as migrant labor conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic and the displacement of Ukrainians following Russia’s full-scale invasion will sharpen debates around long-standing east–west asymmetries and their legal and political consequences.
Yet one key question will remain underexplored: how will people moving between—or from—Eastern to Western Europe engage politically? Focusing on Britain and Germany as major destinations of east–west migration, this pilot project will examine how political mobilizations take shape across borders, and how subjectivities and solidarities will emerge from these experiences—linking past trajectories with future aspirations.
Funded by a British Academy seed corn grant as part of the Knowledge Frontiers Programme, the workshop ‘Invisible Grammars of Resistance? Political Subjectivities after East-West Migration’ will bring together scholars from diverse disciplines. In an open and informal setting, participants will exchange conceptual and methodological approaches, share insights from the field, and identify persistent gaps in current research—laying the groundwork for a deeper understanding of transnational political engagement in Europe.
Dr. Piotr Goldstein‘s contribution with the paper ‘Resistance, Enacting Citizenship and Other (Invisible) Activisms’ challenges conventional understandings of migrant and ethnic minority activism, which are usually framed around involvement in minority-specific or identity-based organizations. Instead, it focuses on forms of engagement where migrants and minorities participate in broader, non-minority causes—activism that often goes unnoticed because it does not explicitly foreground identity.
Drawing on six years of visual ethnography across the UK, Germany, Poland, and Serbia, the study highlights how such “invisible” activism operates in everyday contexts—from community initiatives to grassroots movements—where participants’ backgrounds are present but not central. Through these examples, the paper argues that migrants and minorities enact citizenship through these forms of engagement, contributing to wider society while subtly reshaping belonging and participation.
Ultimately, it explores why migrants engage beyond their own communities, how this affects their social positioning, and what these practices reveal about minority–majority relations and opportunities for political participation across different contexts.