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Drzewiecka_2023_Ethnic and Racial Studies_Techniques to be respected
Journal article

“Techniques to be respected as a human being!”
: moving beyond the binary of strategies and tactics

  • Sereke, Wegahta B. ORCID Istituto di comunicazione e politiche pubbliche (ICPP), Facoltà di comunicazione, cultura e società, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
  • Drzewiecka, Jolanta A. ORCID Istituto di comunicazione e politiche pubbliche (ICPP), Facoltà di comunicazione, cultura e società, Università della Svizzera italiana, Svizzera
  • 2023
Published in:
  • Ethnic and racial studies. - 2023, vol. 47, no. 10, p. 2266–2287
Integration
Refugees
Migration
Agency
Resistance
Tactics and strategies
English Migrants’ actions of embedding in new ethnonational contexts have been interpreted as de Certeau’s “tactics of the weak” forging new lives according to their own visions of integration in the territory of the powerful. While the concept of tactics offers a useful tool for understanding migrants as agentic, applications of tactics and strategies as a binary of contrary forms of power simplify our conceptions of how the marginalized navigate everyday life. We argue that understanding actions as tactical and/or strategic should be based in de Certeau’s original distinction between lieu propre and espace, and not subjectivity. Based on our analysis of modes of action by Eritrean refugees in Switzerland, we show that they use both tactical and strategic forms of power, sometimes simultaneously and deploy power by proxy. We argue that it is more productive to see strategies and tactics as forming a continuum of modes of action.
Collections
Language
  • English
Classification
Politics
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://n2t.net/ark:/12658/srd1330071
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