Abstract

Using the economic crisis as a starting point, Messy Europe offers a critical new look at the issues of race, gender, and national understandings of self and other in contemporary Europe. It highlights and challenges historical associations of Europe with whiteness and modern civilization, and asks how these associations are re-envisioned, re-inscribed, or contested in an era characterized by crises of different kinds. This important collection provides a nuanced exploration of how racialized identities in various European regions are played out in the crisis context, and asks what work “crisis talk” does, considering how it motivates public feelings and shapes bodies, boundaries and communities.

“An impressive study on a very timely topic.” · Jeremy MacClancey, Oxford Brookes University

“The contribution to research-based understandings of "crisis talk", "being in a state of crisis", the growing tension between legal and moral obligations, and the intersection of economics and morality is intriguing, critical, urgent, and comes precisely at the right historical conjuncture. The volume is a welcome and thoughtful effort to disentangle what is going on.” · Peter Hervik, Aalborg University

Andrea L. Smith is Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Lafayette College, Pennsylvania. Her interests include postcolonial European social memory, French settler colonialism in Algeria, and race, ethnicity, and place-making. Her publications include the edited volume, Europe’s Invisible Migrants (2003), and the co-authored book, Rebuilding Shattered Worlds: Creating Community by Voicing the Past (2016).

Kristín Loftsdóttir is a Professor at the University of Iceland. She directs the research project “(Icelandic) Identity in Crisis,” and is an organizer of the Project of Excellence “Icelandic mobility and Transnationalism.” Her research interests include postcolonial Europe, gender, migration and racism. She is the co-editor of Crisis in the Nordic Nations and Beyond (2014) with Lars Jensen.

Brigitte Hipfl is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. She works on media and gender, subject formations, the affective labor of media, and postcolonial Europe, and is currently exploring migration in Austrian cinema and TV. Her publications include Teaching "Race" with a Gendered Edge (2012) co-edited with Kristín Loftsdóttir.