April 27th — Panel debate: 'What if cities governed anti-racism?'

During the last decade, local governments in Europe have increasingly set up anti-discrimination, anti-racism or even decolonization policies. This happened particularly so in the wake of the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) in 2020, which created a pressure for change.

At the same time, the increased success of far-right parties and discourses also created an atmosphere wherein there is a backlash against anti-racist civil society organisations, as experienced through threats and the loss of support for anti-racist organisations and policies in several countries. 

• How do cities navigate between these two opposite pressures for change? 
• What can cities do to foster racial justice? Can they replace or complement European and national anti-racism policies? 
• How can they develop a long-term action plan and what should be in such a plan? 
• How can they develop and evaluate policies with racialized citizens and anti-racist organizations at the table? Have their policies made an impact? 
• How to prevent a backlash and lack of implementation? 

These are all questions that we will tackle during this event! If you want to learn about building an anti-racist city, and how our speakers try to do so in various places in Europe, join us on Thursday 27 April (7 pm).

This panel debate is co-organized by BIRMM, CEDEM (University Liège), CESSMIR (Ghent University), The Network on Migration and Global Mobility  (University Antwerp), Levl and IMISCOE in the framework of the PhD school.