The emergence of municipal migration work in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s (usually based in social welfare offices) was also accompanied by the establishment of the new "cultural diversity work" as a cultural policy aimed at immigrants. The newly established foreigners' offices initiated numerous so-called inter- or multicultural events. As part of the official local migration policy, the events were intended to increase the participation of the immigrant population in the social life of the cities.

With folklore performances and food offerings from the countries of origin, a mode of hegemonic attribution of immigrants living in Germany as being “from somewhere else” was established and perpetuated. The idea of an “encounter” between cultures and nations framed as “a means of international understanding” created a foundation for cultural activities that represent diversity. Many of these events still take place today.

In order to understand and challenge today's racialization in art and culture, it is necessary to investigate deeper into the formation of cultural institutions and institutionalized narratives about migration. Integration policy is one of these narratives. Based on a qualitative research study in southern Germany, this paper will reflect on how the institutionalized culture of encounter became not only the dominant way of culturally representing migration in Germany but also continues to constitute the diversity narratives in cultural institutions and elsewhere today.

Recent years have seen an increase in cultural initiatives whose aim is to critically engage with the question of ethnic diversity and improve the position of migrants and ethnic minorities in society. Festivals occupy a particularly prominent role among such events and have long been used to bring attention to the presence of minority groups in ethnically diverse cities. However, while such festivals are often praised for their ability to increase the voice and visibility of the marginalized, they are also criticized for their inability to move beyond stereotypical portrayal of ethnic groups and overall commodification of ethnic cultures. I argue, that in order to overcome the dichotomy of this debate and critically assess the festivals’ role in advancing ethnic minorities’ claims for belonging, we need to pay attention to the civic action performed by their organizers. More specifically, we need to understand how specific visions of societal improvement shared by festival organizers impact their use of festivals as tools of civic action in advancing minorities’ claims for belonging. Drawing on the case studies of two festivals taking place in Central Europe—the Bratislava-based festival [fjúžn] and the Vienna-based festival Wienwoche—I show how different styles of festival organizers result in distinct uses of festivals as tools of awareness raising ([fjúžn]) and minority empowerment
(Wienwoche).

The ambivalence of migrants’ public visibility has been much discussed in the academic literature. It is that the construction of migration as a ‘social threat’ through public discourses renders migrants hyper-visible as objects of the public gaze while making them invisible as subjects, i.e., human beings with their own individualities. However, the Russian context has its own peculiarities in relation to the public (in)visibility of migrants. Given the fact that the Russian state carries out a rather idiosyncratic version of diversity management called nationalities policy through an extensive system of cultural institutions, the stereotyping of migrants’ images is itself ambivalent. Members of Central Asian organizations who engage in the activities of those institutions find themselves caught between two oversimplified representations. On the one hand, they remain hostages of negative stereotypes imposed by mainstream media and political rhetoric. On the other hand, the institutions of Russia’s nationalities policy encourage them to try on the Soviet-style masks of innocent folklore characters, supposed to personify their countries of origin.

Based on field research conducted from 2019-2021 in four major Russian cities, this paper will focus on how various members of Central Asian organizations in Russia manage to maneuver between the two designated stereotypical public images. The author’s key theoretical intuition is that the agency of the participants in these organizations manifests primarily in the ability to convert public visibility gained in the field of Russia’s nationalities policy into various entrepreneurial endeavors.