B04Sorting with Care

Human Differentiation in Contact Zones of Support

This project focuses on politically heterogeneous collectives that refer to human differentiation in their everyday practices of solidarity and redistribution to negotiate issues of social justice.

The two sub-studies of the project have been conducted in urban centres in Portugal and Brazil since 2022, with two researching doctoral students, Elena Hernández and Elena Reichl, integrating their participant observations into different ‘contact zones of support’. While taking part, for instance, in Christian soup kitchens, the activist struggles against gentrification, or the occupation of land by social movements, they investigate which kinds of human differentiation appear in the everyday practices of these collectives, and in what form and intensity for understanding how these processes of differentiation contribute to the perspectives and practices of the actors involved.

The project title ‘Sorting with Care: Human Differentiation in Contact Zones of Support’ refers to different dimensions of care: While these collectives intend to take care of people categorized as ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘vulnerable’, distinguishing and classifying terms and practices are perceived as politically sensitive within these contact zones, and therefore require ‘careful’ handling. In addition, categorical differences can be negated or blurred internally, while at the same time the external boundaries, e.g., towards collectives perceived as ‘different’ or ‘hostile’, can be fixed.

How do we work? To capture both the consolidation and sedimentation and the ambiguities, negations, and subversions of human differentiation, we concentrate on several levels of action: First, on the respective contemporary-historical formation of need-related categories, including in interaction with postcolonial social policies and bureaucratic classifications. Second, on the (self-)classification of those providing support, possibly through the differentiation from other groups, and in interaction with political trends and current crisis discourses. Third, on the foreign classification of the recipients of support, for example in everyday interactions in which the right to care is perceived and classified not only on the grounds of an intersectional interplay of income, citizenship, racialisation, housing type, family constellation, gender, dimensions of im/mobility, or physical skills, but also based on performative and affective markers such as conformism, vulnerability, willingness to perform, or gratitude.