Prof. Dr. Serhat Karakayali
Vita
Serhat Karakayalı received his PhD from Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and wrote his dissertation on the genealogy of illegal migration in Germany. At the same time, he co-designed and implemented the TRANSIT Migration project at the Institute for European Ethnology (Frankfurt). In this interdisciplinary research group, the concept of migration regime was linked back to empirical research, resulting in methods such as "ethnographic regime analysis", mediation tools and also a new network for critical migration research. In the meantime, he was, among other things, head of a project on anti-Semitism in the immigration society in Berlin and curator of an exhibition on modern architecture in the colonial context of North Africa.
From 2009, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of General Sociology at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. From 2014, he was involved as a post-doc in the establishment of the newly founded Berlin Institute for Empirical Integration and Migration Research. His research focused on voluntary engagement with refugees, cosmopolitan concepts of solidarity, and civil society as a site of political socialization in the migration society.
In 2016, he led the first representative survey to determine the proportion of members with a migration background in a large civil society organization – the metalworker’s union IG Metall, with over 2 million members. Following the findings of this project, he conducted a study on the motives and trajectories of migrant involvement in workplace co-determination, which was funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation. In the BMBF-funded collaborative project entitled "ZoMiDi," he worked with colleagues from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and the Max Planck Institute in Göttingen to examine how various civil society organizations deal with migration-related diversity in their structures. At BIM, he also led the Einstein Research Group on "Migration and Diaspora" and established the MERGE network.
From 2020, he was head of the "Migration" department at the German Center for Integration and Migration Research, a research institution funded by the German government, where he conducted research on migration in and from the Middle East as well as a series of public events, including on the crisis of refugee protection in Europe. The DeZIM Institute is also home to the Racism Monitor, commissioned by the German government, where Prof. Karakayali continues to be responsible for networking with international research and theoretical foundations. Since July 2021, he has been Professor of Migration and Mobility Studies at the School of Cultural Studies at Leuphana University.
Publications
Books and anthologies
- Organisationaler Wandel durch Migration?: Zur Diversität in der Zivilgesellschaft
Serhat Karakayali (Editor) , Hella von Unger (Editor) , Helen Baykara-Krumme (Editor) , Karen Schönwälder (Editor) , 2022 Bielefeld , 268 p.Research output: Books and anthologies › Collected editions and anthologies › Research
Journal contributions
- The Flüchtlingskrise in Germany: Crisis of the Refugees, by the Refugees, for the Refugees
Serhat Karakayali (Author) , 01.06.2018 , in: Sociology, 52, 3 , p. 606-611 , 6 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Scientific review articles › Research
- Volunteers: From solidarity to integration
Serhat Karakayali (Author) , 01.04.2018 , in: South Atlantic Quarterly, 117, 2 , p. 313-331 , 19 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Journal articles › Research › peer-review
- Borders
Serhat Karakayali (Author) , 01.01.2018 , in: Krisis, 2/2018 , p. 23-25 , 3 p.Research output: Journal contributions › Other (editorial matter etc.) › Research
Contributions to collected editions/anthologies
- Solidarität in postmigrantischen Allianzen:: Die Suche nach dem Common Ground jenseits individueller Erfahrungskontexte
Serhat Karakayali (Author) , Katarina Stepjandic (Author) , 01.01.2019 Frankfurt am Main , p. 237-252 , 16 p.Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Research
- Emergent infrastructures: Solidarity, spontaneity and encounter at Istanbul's Gezi Park uprising
Serhat Karakayali (Author) , Özge Yaka (Author) , 29.03.2017 , p. 53-69 , 17 p.Research output: Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Contributions to collected editions/anthologies › Research › peer-review
Activities
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Rassismus oder Rassismen
Serhat Karakayali (Speaker) , Manuela Bojadzijev (Speaker)
Activity: Guest lectures › Research
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Institutional dynamics of affecting and being affected: The emotionalization of injustice and the threat of withdrawing the organizational identification
Serhat Karakayali (Speaker) , Yvonne Albrecht (Speaker)
Activity: Conference Presentations › Research
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Rassismuskritik nach Hanau
Serhat Karakayali (Speaker) , Vanessa Thompson (Speaker)
Activity: talk or presentation in privat or public events › Research
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Affekte der Migration - Habitus als verkörperlichte Urteilskraft
Serhat Karakayali (Speaker)
Activity: Guest lectures › Research
Courses
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Inhalt und Konzept: Das Modul geht der Frage nach, inwieweit akademische Texte, Lektüren und Wissensformen nicht nur Erkenntnisinstrumente sind, sondern sich auch in Handlungsformen im kulturellen Feld übersetzen lassen. Zunächst gilt es, die gesellschaftspolitische Relevanz von Texten herauszustellen und zu diskutieren, ob Deutungsangebote allein schon intervenierendes Potential haben. Was bedeutet konzeptionelles Denken und Handeln im Rahmen von Institutionen, welche Herausforderungen und Konflikte sind damit verbunden? In der Vorlesung werden diese Fragen im Gespräch mit Gästen aus unterschiedlichen Praxisfeldern (Museen, NGOs, Theatern, Literaturinstitutionen, Medienanstalten, Ministerien etc.) verhandelt.
In diesem Seminar liegt der Schwerpunkt auf zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen und institutionellen Schnittstellen: Migrant*innenselbstorganisationen, Diversitäts- und Gleichstellungsarbeit sowie – als Grenzfall zwischen Bewegung, Stadtpolitik und Kulturproduktion – Orte sozialer Bewegungen. Leitend ist dabei weniger eine Bestandsaufnahme („was machen diese Akteure?“), sondern die Frage, welche organisatorischen und institutionellen Logiken, welche Kategorien und welche Formen von Wissensarbeit (Regelwissen, Know-how, implizites Wissen, wissenschaftliches Wissen) in diesen Feldern praktisch wirksam werden. Im Seminar wird also nicht nur über „Engagement“ oder „Intervention“ gesprochen, sondern darüber, wie Handlungsfähigkeit unter den Bedingungen von Zuständigkeiten, Ressourcen, rechtlichen Rahmen, statistischen Kategorien und Öffentlichkeiten überhaupt hergestellt wird – und wo sie konflikthaft wird.
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Während die Vorlesung von Gästen bestritten werden wird, dienen die begleitenden, unterschiedlichen Schwerpunkten gewidmeten Seminare der Diskussion von Texten sowie der Aufarbeitung der Exkursionen.
Das Seminar mit dem Schwerpunkt Museen schließt eine verpflichtende Exkursion nach Berlin ein (nähere Angaben dazu finden Sie auf der Seite des Seminars).
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In contemporary migration-related protests in the United States, this performative, world-making dimension of protest becomes especially visible. These are not only mobilizations against a particular policy, a governmental overreach, or an injustice suffered by a defined group. They often contest something more fundamental: the state’s claim to decide—now and for the future—who may count as “the people.” In that sense, migration protests frequently operate as collective liminal situations, in which membership, belonging, and political voice are suspended, tested, and reassembled in public. They bring to the foreground the question of the demos: who can claim it, on what grounds, through which forms of appearance, and with what consequences.
Across the term, we analyze how actions stage credibility, solidarity, and antagonism; how they address specific audiences and attempt to constitute them; how digital and offline infrastructures interlock (or not); how policing and administrative institutions shape the logic of protest. Cases from ongoing U.S. migration struggles serve as shared material for in-class analytic exercises and written work.
The course is organized in thematic blocks. Working with concrete cases and examples, we examine: bodies assembling, choreographies of protest; networks of care and protection; infrastructures; the semantic work of naming and framing; the construction of publics and counterpublics; the production of evidence, juridical and criminal-justice formats. Each block combines case materials (images, stories, video, organizational artifacts) with one or two core texts.
Regarding the submissions due for the seminar:
Part I:
For each session upload two questions concerning the session's topic and literature. The questions are to be uploaded at least one day in advance. After the session, submit a response paper explaining to what extent your questions were answered in the session.
Part II:
A 5-page essay on one of four topics/questions. Topics/questions will be set by the instructor.
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Against these common misreadings, Marx’s project is not primarily to describe markets, nor to offer a moral denunciation of ‘the economy.’ It is an analysis of the social forms through which modern societies organize and the mechanisms that make these mechanisms invisible. Rather than treating value, money, capital etc as features of an external sphere called ‘the economy,’ governed by timeless laws”, Marx treats them as products of social relations. He criticizes political economy as a form of knowledge. What economists (and everyday common sense) take to be objective and self-evident objects—money, capital, markets— according to him appear to us as relations between things, exerting objective constraints. The twist is that this appearance is not simply a cognitive error or an illusion that disappears once corrected. It is socially real, reproduced in practice, and therefore persistent.
Reading Marx’s Capital is an introduction to a theory of social forms: how labour becomes abstract and objective; how relations between people take the form of relations between things; how categories like “capital” or “profit” become common sense.
The course is a reading seminar. We begin with a small set of short texts on Marx’s notion of critique and his way of defining the object of political economy, and then proceed to a close reading of selected passages from Capital.