How and why decolonial activists mobilize or challenge the victim status: The case of Belgium's Afro‐descendants

Abstract

The aim of the present article was to investigate how and why Afro‐descendant decolonial activists in Belgium morally typecast their group when discussing their struggle to challenge the status quo. Ten Afro‐descendant activists from different associations or movements active in Brussels were interviewed, and the interviews were examined through a thematic content analysis using the following themes and sub‐themes: moral typecasting (positive agent, positive patient, negative patient, and negative agent), the period of time (pre‐colonial, colonial, and present times in Belgium), and perceived strategy. Overall, our analysis revealed that the interviewees referred to multiple moral statuses. The association of sub‐themes allowed to investigate how and why the moral statuses were mobilized. We thus concluded that moral statuses were used in reference to both past and present times and that their mobilization was recognized as being strategic to challenge the status quo. The results were interpreted in light of decolonial actions and minorities' strategies to challenge the ingroup situation and to motivate its members.

An Unfinished Chapter: The Impact of Belgians’ Social Representations of Colonialism on their Present-Day Attitudes Towards Congolese People Living in Belgium

“…Finally, similar studies should be carried out in other national contexts to check for the generalizability of the phenomenon beyond the Belgian context. Conversely, future studies could investigate how formerly colonized people's (living in formerly colonized countries or in formerly colonizing ones) collective memories of colonialism also impacts how they perceive the former colonizers and thus obtain a more global perspective on the phenomenon (see Figueiredo et al, 2018;Lastrego, et al, 2023).…”