The Temporalities of Refugee Activism: Mutating Meanings and Visibility While Remembering Resistance and Claiming Place at Oranienplatz

This article traces the ways in which a refugee resistance movement reclaimed space, place and time in 2021 and 2022 since it first began its’ protests in 2012 in Berlin. Much scholarship on refugee resistance has focused on episodic moments of refugee protests and membership in the polity and have not recognized the relationship between temporalities and visibility. This study demonstrates how the protests regained visibility as the activists protested using older strategies and commemorated a 10-year anniversary of the movement while aligning with current campaigns. Data is drawn through ‘intimate ethnography’ and participation in various actions at Oranienplatz, a square in the neighborhood of Kreuzburg in Berlin for 15 months.