POLITICS (2017-2022) aims to broaden the existing knowledge and bring innovation to the debate on anti-racism in European and Latin American contexts. This research project analyses how racism – understood as a historically rooted system of oppression – is being challenged by institutions and grassroots movements. POLITICS is funded by the European Research Council (ERC), coordinated by Silvia Rodríguez Maeso, and hosted by the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra.

POLITICS analyses how power relations shape anti-racism at a global, national and local level, and processes of dialogue and conflict between grassroots organisations and institutions in diverse contexts. The project has two main research areas: a) knowledge production about ‘race’ and (anti)racism in the spheres of (inter)national government policy, state universities and social movements; b) processes of denunciation and collective mobilisation against institutional racism related to police violence and media representations. Fieldwork and case studies will be conducted in the following contexts: the United Nations; the Organisation of American States; the European Union; state institutions, state universities and grassroots movements located in Brazil, Spain, Peru and Portugal.

CHALLENGES
 

• To rethink the grammar of comparison that has privleged evaluative approaches to existing ‘degrees of racism’ in different national contexts, in order to focus on the relationality between different processes of domination and geopolitical contexts.
• To problematise the implications of different approaches to anti-racism adopted by regional/state institutions and grassroots movements.
• To encourage interdisciplinary perspectives on the analysis of institutional racism, connecting the three research streams: (i) public policies and (inter)national contexts; (ii) academic cultures and public universities, and (iii) police violence, media and public denunciation.