Ep 31: Break isolation. With Rex Osa & Aino Korvensyrjä (English).

In this episode, we talk with Rex Osa and Aino Korvensyrjä about what it means to be in solidarity with people who self-organize against encampment, isolation, and deportation. In doing so, they take us to the struggles that took place in southern Germany’s large asylum and deportation camps in 2017 and 2018—struggles that continued in the following years. Self-organizing, as Rex explains, is the ability of people who are affected by structural violence to organize themselves and to be part of the decision-making process in struggles for their dignity and liberation. What does practical solidarity with people facing state violence require? How do you organize together with the people most affected in a way that centers their dignity? And what is the importance of archiving our struggles from below? While we interview Aino and Rex, many people were—and still are—part of the organizing they speak of. We’d like to shout out everyone who fought in the camps, starting with the people living in Bamberg, Donauwörth, Deggendorf, and Ellwangen who resisted their isolation and deportation. We also want to acknowledge the groups and individuals who supported them, including Aktion Bleiberecht, the Bavarian Refugee Council, Justizwatch, the Campaign for the Victims of Racist Police Violence, International Women Space, and all of the lawyers who stand in solidarity with people in struggle. We also want to thank Afrique-Europe-Interact, migration-control.info, and the Initiative in Remembrance of Oury Jalloh for documenting and challenging Euro-African deportation cooperation, border externalization, and racist police brutality and criminalization in Germany. Finally, a special shout-out as well to The VOICE Refugee Forum and the Caravan for the Rights of Refugees and Migrants, two self-organized groups that have been important in developing the methods of organizing and the anticolonial critiques discussed in the episode. The audio clips we play can be found on www.cultureofdeportation.org, a collective that Aino and Rex founded, initially together with Claudio Feliziani. The interview we play with Yusupha Jarboh was shot by Kin Chui together with Rex in The Gambia and Sierra Leone. If you would like to support people after they’ve been deported, consider supporting the Safe House for Deported Persons in Lagos, which Rex is involved with: https://refugees4refugees.org/en/2025/11/28/return-reintegration-illusion-of-an-eu-moral-for-solidarity/ For an overview of Aino’s research, visit: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Aino-Korvensyrjae

There are no comments yet.

Please log in to write the first comment.