Panel 12: Mobility in a Post-Bandung World: from Anticolonial Solidarity to Postcolonial Exchanges (EN)

Chair: Daniela Spina (CHAM-NOVA FCSH), Elisa Scaraggi (IHC-NOVA FCSH) & Noemi Alfieri (CHAM-NOVA FCSH)

15 April, 5:10 pm | Room A002

What is Home? Migration and Coping Strategies in Birgit Weyhe's Graphic Novel Madgermanes

Kata Murányi (Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Pécs)

Examining the aesthetic and political dimensions of the city through the medium of comics raises a number of questions: from the relationship to street art to the identity-forming power of urban space and popular culture. Birgit Weyhe's graphic novel Madgermanes (2016) deals with a specific historical situation: following the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the GDR, facing a labor shortage, invited guest workers from socialist countries such as Vietnam, Cuba, and Angola. After 1979, more than 16,000 workers arrived from Mozambique over a decade. The graphic novel shows the difficulties of the integration of three fictional characters, their experiences of searching for a home, and how they coped with culture shock. Weyhe's work largely presents the complexity of migration situations through the urban and popular culture of the 1980s, thus enabling its connection to the Afropolitan literary canon. The presentation focuses on how the comic book depicts representations of migration, locality, everyday life, and urban space in the context of interculturality and media culture experiences.

Keywords: GDR; Mozambique; colonization; graphic novel; migration

Bandung in Paris: Afro-Asian Solidarities and the Diasporic Geographies of PAI (Parti Africain de l’Indépendance), 1957-1964

Federico Ferretti (Studiorum Università di Bologna)

Extending works in transnational geographies of decolonisation and global history, this paper analyses the Parisian activities of PAI (Parti Africain de l’Indépendance) until 1964. Founded in 1957, PAI was one of the most radical (explicitly socialist) groups fighting for the independence of AOF and AEF colonies, which often took the form of transnational and diasporic federations. In France, the African student union FEANF (Fédération des Etudiants d’Afrique Noire en France) organised thousands of students and progressed toward increasing political radicalisation following key events that the protagonists identify with the French defeat of Dien Bien Phu (1954), the beginning of the Algerian War (1954) and the Bandung Conference (1955). In association with FEANF and other radical African groups such as Cameroon UPC (clandestine since 1955), PAI opposed both the “balkanisation” of former colonial territories across colonial boundaries, and neo-colonialism understood as the persistence of capitalist relations of production led by the “North”. For these reasons, PAI was outlawed in newly “independent” Senegal, where most of its activists lived, in 1960. Based on preliminary work in Parisian archives, on available public recollections of the protagonists and on PAI periodical press, this paper also avails of French police sources. Although highly biased by their own nature, police surveillance records allow appreciating the mobility of people and ideas in diasporic contexts, as well as transnational networks and alliances such as the ‘Anticolonial committees’ that gathered dozens of African, Asian and metropolitan groups in France between the 1940s and the 1960s, being likewise watched by colonial authorities. On these grounds, this paper argues for divorcing anticolonialism from nationalism, with which it is commonly associated, as well as from the various particularisms that hindered decolonial projects, such as ethnic and religious hatred, often fostered by the (neo)colonisers, including Cold War actors. Early opposition to “balkanisation” confirms how the colonial model of the nation-state, together with various exclusionary models of “community”, were and still are instrumental to perpetuate coloniality, in the “Souths” and beyond.

Keywords: diaspora; transnationalism; anti-colonialism; internationalism; solidarity

“Clear ideas, iron will” - UGEAN and the Making of Transnational Anti-Colonial Student Networks

João Pedro Santos (IHC-NOVA FCSH/IN2PAST) & Inês Ponte (ICS, Universidade de Lisboa)

Founded in 1961, the União Geral de Estudantes da África Negra (UGEAN) sought, according to its founder and leading activist José Carlos Horta, to carry forward and consolidate the subversive work initiated by the Casa dos Estudantes do Império (1944–1965) beyond the Portuguese metropole. This objective materialised in the endeavour to build a transnational student network committed to resisting Portuguese colonialism, while simultaneously asserting its autonomy vis-à-vis national liberation movements and their external sponsors. Although short-lived (1961–1966), UGEAN became an important site of political convergence and activist formation, where several African nationalist militants were politically formed. Drawing on the personal archive of José Carlos Horta—currently being catalogued at the Social History Archive of the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon—and engaging with recent transnational approaches to nationalist movements (Katsakioris 2021; Telepneva 2022), this paper examines UGEAN’s internal organisation and strategies of militant networking. Particular attention is devoted to its transnational objectives, especially its relations with student organisations at the national level, such as the União Nacional dos Estudantes de Moçambique (UNEMO) and the União Nacional dos Estudantes Angolanos (UNEA). In doing so, we aim to contribute to a deeper understanding of the transnational dynamics that underpinned the struggle for liberation.

Keywords: UGEAN; students; transnationalism; African nationalism; liberation struggles

Letters Across Empires: Kenyan Youth, Educational Aspiration, and Global Circuits of Opportunity

Timothy Nicholson (Farmingdale State College)

During the late 1950s and early 1960s, African youths—particularly students—transformed both their immediate environments and the broader world of the British Empire. Although they occupied a relatively privileged position in their homelands, many were denied access to advanced education, prompting them to build transnational networks in pursuit of academic opportunities across India, the United States, and the United Kingdom. This paper focuses on the letters written by Kenyan students to figures like Tom Mboya and foreign universities, examining them as a rich archive of "textualized mobility." These letters reveal how African youths mobilized personal narratives, nationalist ideals, and global aspirations at a time when Cold War dynamics and Bandung-era solidarities were reshaping access to education abroad. While British colonial and educational authorities sought to regulate student mobility, they ultimately could only monitor the increasingly global connections being forged. East African youths—frequently dismissed by officials as inconvenient, radical, or overly demanding—nonetheless developed influential networks through persistent letter-writing campaigns. These communications not only linked them to educational officials in multiple countries but also helped spread awareness of new opportunities throughout East Africa. The students' letters often blended personal appeals with developmentalist rhetoric, pledging to "serve my beloved country" or "help the sick" to align their aspirations with both national rebuilding efforts and international donor expectations. Some invoked promises attributed to Mboya or cited disruptions like detention during the Mau Mau Rebellion to lend their appeals greater urgency and legitimacy. These letters emerge not as mere requests but as performative texts—tools for forging solidarity, asserting agency, and entering postcolonial and Cold War circuits of opportunity. By situating these documents within a framework ecology of magazines, scholarships, and institutional exchanges, this paper interrogates whether student appeals simply replicated colonial hierarchies or constituted genuinely new modes of transnational engagement. In doing so, it contributes to a re-examination of the late colonial and early postcolonial period, offering fresh insights into how African youths navigated—and reshaped—global paradigms of authority and mobility.

Keywords: transnational mobility; students; education; letters