The postmigrant generation between racial discrimination and new orientation: from hegemony to convivial everyday practice

The “postmigrant perspective”, which arose in the German-speaking countries and has been adopted internationally, offers a counter-hegemonic alternative to the everyday racist and ethnicizing discourses on migration. To understand migration as historical normality, to engage in migration research as social analysis and to focus centrally on the perspectives of the postmigrant generation leads to a rupture. This entails a radical interrogation of the binary thinking around migrants and non-migrants, which has significantly shaped not only established migration research but other areas as well. The present article, proceeding from a postmigrant perspective, analyses semi-narrative interviews with adolescents on their experiences of discrimination and racism. We seek to show there that the young people of the postmigrant generation have been impacted by everyday racist and ethnicizing discourses, but have not been subjugated by them. Despite encountering restrictive conditions, they develop empowering convivial everyday practices, from which society ought to learn something.