Research interests
Migration, diaspora and transnationalism, kinship and care, childhood and youth, humanitarianism and solidarity
Research areas
Atlantic rim (Caribbean, Brazil, West Africa)
Politics of Good Parenting. Normativities, Distinctions, Interventions
International Workshop May 19–20, 2022. JGU Mainz
Organizers: Heike Drotbohm, Konstanze N’Guessan, Franziska Fay
Department of Anthropology and African Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
Migration and Im/Mobility in the Global South during a Global Pandemic (DFG network)
together with Antje Missbach, Universität Bielefeld.
Subproject B04 of the Collaborative Research Centre 1482 Studies in Human Categorization funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) ...
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.
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.
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]
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]
Drotbohm, Heike 2020: Care and reunification in a Cape Verdean family: Changing articulations of family and legal ties. Ethnography, Vol. 21 (1): 48-70. [open access] (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1466138118774071)
Heike Drotbohm and Ines Hasselberg eds.: Deportation, Anxiety, Justice: New ethnographic perspectives. London: Routledge, 2017.
Erdmute Alber and Heike Drotbohm eds.: Anthropological Perspectives on Care: Work, Kinship, and the Life-Course. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015
Boris Nieswand und Heike Drotbohm Hrsg.: Kultur, Gesellschaft, Migration. Die reflexive Wende in der Migrationsforschung. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2014
Heike Drotbohm und Ingrid Kummels Hrsg.: Themenheft: Afroatlantische Allianzen / Thematic Issue: Afro-Atlantic Alliances. Zeitschrift für Ethnologie Bd. 136/ 2. Berlin: Reimer, 2011.
Heike Drotbohm: Geister in der Diaspora. Haitianische Diskurse über Geschlechter, Jugend und Macht in Montreal, Kanada. Marburg: Curupira, 2005.