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Kimiko Suda: Anti-Asian Racism during the Corona-Pandemic in Germany and beyond

May 18, 2021 | 12:00 PM - 02:00 PM

European racist narratives about Asia, Asian bodies and Asian culture have been published since the 13th century. Although incidents of structural anti-Asian racism can e.g. be found in the context of Germany´s colonial era, the time of National Socialism, the economic reconstruction phase after World War II, and the post reunification period, it has hardly been researched yet as continuous historical and current systemic social and political issue. Against this background, this presentation will combine a short introduction to the history and specific characteristics of anti-Asian racism in Germany with a discussion of first results from the collaborative research project Social Cohesion in Times of Crisis. The Corona-Pandemic and Anti-Asian Racism in Germany (HU Berlin, FU Berlin, DeZIM). Taking data from a community-survey with 700 participants of mainly East Asian and Southeast Asian heritage and diverse examples from a diary-study with 70 participants of the same background, types of discrimination, places of discrimination and coping strategies will be presented.

Kimiko Suda is a sinologist/sociologist whose work focuses on sinophone/Asian-diasporic perspectives on migration and urban social change, questions of representation, power and marginalization as well as empowerment through grassroots organizing. From August to December 2020, she worked as Postdoctoral Researcher with the collaborative project Social Cohesion in Times of Crisis: The Corona Pandemic and Anti-Asian Racism in Germany at Berlin’s Humboldt University. From 2011 to 2014 she was a research associate at the Institute of Sinology/China Studies at Berlin’s Free University. In 2011 and 2012 the research for her dissertation on the subject of highly educated internal migrants and social inequality in Guangzhou was part of the DFG-priority program 1233 Megacities – Megachallenge, Informal Dynamics of Global Change. Kimiko has been a team member of Media Empowerment for German Asians (MEGA, a project of korientation e.V.) since January 2020 and has co-directed (alongside Sun-ju Choi) Berlin’s Asian Film Festival since 2011. From 2008 to 2010, she was a project manager in Beijing with the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation.

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