Prof. Dr. Heike Drotbohm

Chair of Anthropology "African Diaspora and Transnationalism"

Research interests
Migration, diaspora and transnationalism, kinship and care, childhood and youth, humanitarianism and solidarity

Research areas
Atlantic rim (Caribbean, Brazil, West Africa)

 

 

Portrait

I am a professor of cultural and social anthropology. For many years I have been working on different dimensions of mobility and migration, concentrating on societies in the transatlantic region - especially the Caribbean, the Upper Guinea Coast and Brazil. After studying in Münster and Marburg, I received my doctorate in Marburg with a thesis on the spiritual practices of Haitian migrants in Montréal, Canada. I spent my post-doc phase in Freiburg (Breisgau), where I habilitated with a research on transnational Cape Verdean family relations. The focus here was to what extent normative expectations of the success of family-based migration ideals as well as migration-specific performances of intimate relationships contribute to the formation - maintenance or dissolution - of cross-border family constellations.

In my most recent research project, carried out in the Brazilian metropolis of São Paulo, I examine how newly arrived migrants perceive the city's landscape of care, what kinds of social ties they create therein, what forms of support they receive in humanitarian and in pro-migrant contact zones of care and how this affects their individual subject positions.

Job offer
Call for Papers

The Politics of (Post-)Truth: Knowledge-Making in Fragmented Worlds of Mis/Trust
International Workshop organized by Heike Drotbohm and Olaf Zenker
10.-12.7.2024, Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Mainz University
Call for Papers

Upcoming network meeting in Göttingen
Disentangling the Multiplicity of Crises: Im/mobilities and Uncertainties Beyond Perceptions of Emergency
DFG-funded network: Migration and im/mobilities in the Global South in Pandemic Times
3rd network meeting (MPI-MMG Göttingen)
9-11 November 2023
Organizer: Heike Drotbohm, Mainz University
Venue: Library Hall, MPI-MMG, Hermann-Föge-Weg 11, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Program | Program & Abstracts
An Anthropology of Disappearance

On the Slow Silencing of Absences: Sensing Social Disappearances in Cape Verde. In:
Laura Huttunen & Gerhild Perl (eds.): An Anthropology of Disappearances: Politics, Intimacies and Alternative Ways of Knowing. Oxford, New York:
Berghahn: 2023.

Drotbohm, Heike: “On the Slow Silencing of Absences: Sensing Social Disappearances in Cape Verde” (pp. 52 – 72).

DFG approves a scientific network

Migration and Im/Mobility in the Global South during a Global Pandemic (DFG network)
together with Antje Missbach, Universität Bielefeld.

Providers and recipients of help. Human categorization between solidarity and differentiation in Portugal and Brazil

Subproject B04 of the Collaborative Research Centre 1482 Studies in Human Categorization funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) ...

DFG approves a new research project

The Management of Loss: Politics of Life and Death in Minas Gerais (Brazil)
Whereas ‘crises,’ such as the outbreak of an epi- or pandemic and the ‘catastrophic’ collapse of infrastructures, are usually analyzed separately in anthropology, this project suggests a shift of attention. Instead, it scrutinizes the interrelated ways in which multiple crises shape expectations towards and understandings of governance and (state) care practices, and the consequences these bear for the people affected, by focusing on a specifically local, postcolonial and post-dictatorial context.

New empirical data, new publications!

African trajectories across Central America: Dynamics between displacements, transitory emplacements, and ambivalent migration nodes

This research project aims to gain insight into the emerging trajectories of displaced African migrants who traverse severely challenged Central American countries in an attempt to reach North America. On an empirical level, the project responds to the recent increase of African migrants and refugees in Central America and situates their understudied experiences in a context of globe-spanning yet lopsided migration routes, crises and industries. On a theoretical level, the project builds on and further elaborates critical understandings of the dynamics between migration, displacement and (im)mobilities.

Care Beyond Repair
Drotbohm, Heike 2022: Care Beyond Repair. In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology. New York: Oxford University Press.
"Not a cozy dwelling": Exploring Aspirational Anxieties and the Politics of Displacement in São Paulo's Squats.

Drotbohm. Heike 2021: "Not a cozy dwelling": Exploring Aspirational Anxieties and the Politics of Displacement in São Paulo's Squats. Humanity. An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development. Vol. 12 (3): 354-367.[open access]

A shifting yet grounded transnational social field: Interplays of displacement and emplacement in African migrant trajectories across Central America. Population, Space and Place.

Drotbohm, Heike & Nanneke Winters 2021: A shifting yet grounded transnational social field: Interplays of displacement and emplacement in African migrant trajectories across Central America. Population, Space and Place. Vol. 27 (5). Doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2421. [open access]

Care and reunification in a Cape Verdean family: Changing articulations of family and legal ties
Deportation, Anxiety, Justice: New ethnographic perspectives

Heike Drotbohm and Ines Hasselberg eds.: Deportation, Anxiety, Justice: New ethnographic perspectives. London: Routledge, 2017.

Anthropological Perspectives on Care: Work, Kinship, and the Life-Course

Erdmute Alber and Heike Drotbohm eds.: Anthropological Perspectives on Care: Work, Kinship, and the Life-Course. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Kultur, Gesellschaft, Migration. Die reflexive Wende in der Migrationsforschung

Boris Nieswand und Heike Drotbohm Hrsg.: Kultur, Gesellschaft, Migration. Die reflexive Wende in der Migrationsforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014

Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. Themenheft: Afroatlantische Allianzen

Heike Drotbohm und Ingrid Kummels Hrsg.: Themenheft: Afroatlantische Allianzen / Thematic Issue: Afro-Atlantic Alliances. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie Bd. 136/ 2. Berlin: Reimer, 2011.

Geister in der Diaspora. Haitianische Diskurse über Geschlechter, Jugend und Macht in Montreal, Kanada