An African Diaspora in the Making: Race, Belonging and Lived Experience in Czechia

This book addresses the timely research field of Afropean identity politics and provides a first account of the lived experience of Afroczechs and Africans in Czechia. Against the background of country-specific evasive politics on race and a discourse of colonial exceptionalism, the book explains particularities of racial formations. While critical race theory serves as an analytical tool, the book shows that there are also limits to its applicability in the Czech context. Ethnographic data focusing on racialisation and racism as fundamentally shared experiences which unite Africans and Afroczechs demonstrate that there is a momentum in which young and primarily female Afroczech activists are currently creating a diasporic space which forges a racially just and black Czech society. The book yields new insights into the specific conditions which concretise how race, hegemonic whiteness, and essentialist cultural identity ideologies co-construct each other and translate into context specific racial identity politics.