Introduction : Transforming identities in contemporary Europe

Abstract

The nation-state level of formal, parliamentary politics is an increasing polarisation with contradistinctions appearing in the ‘traditional’ Left, Progressive, and Conservative politics. Adherent is an increasing politicisation of gender, race, sexuality, and nation connected to citizenship, resources, and identification. By insisting on making visible the epistemologies of colonial knowledge regimes that operate in neoliberal governance, the contributing authors stress the importance of location, experience, pain, and (story)telling from a position of marginalisation, othering, and exclusion to counter hegemonic and hierarchical structures of differentiation and disenfranchisement. Methodological concerns and struggles over knowledge production and their concurrent inequalities in and beyond the academic terrain and across historical periods have been central to this collaborative project since its inauguration. Situated within a geopolitical crisis that traversed all borders and group domains, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged on top of a longer period of economic austerity, growing inequality, intensifying pressures in academia, as well as the global climate crisis.