​​Everyday Political Subjectification and the Rise of Regressive Politics. Downward Mobility, Urbanization and the Production of Space in Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig​

​​​The last fif­teen years have been marked by various crises, which have high­lighted and further sharpen­ed existing social polari­zation. Conflicts arose over the question of how to deal with the finan­cial and eco­nomic crisis following 2007 as well as mass migration in 2015. More recently, the dispute over climate justice as well as over the right handling of the COVID-19 pan­demic was more promi­nent. In Germany, for the first time since 1945, a far-right party, the Alter­native für Deutsch­land (AfD), has been able to establish itself at all political scales. At the same time, the tradi­tional parties SPD and CDU are eroding, and the Green party is experiencing an enormous rise in electoral approval. In political debates, important foundat­ions of social cohesion on which the (West German) post­war republic is built – plurality, the rule of law, and liberal­ism – have been con­tested inten­sively. Analysis of political atti­tudes and the milieus in which the AfD, as well as the deniers of the Corona pan­demic, have their strong­holds demons­trate that the opposing camps seem to view the world through differ­ent lenses, which de­prives political dis­putes of common ground and hardens fronts. 

​The project, which is funded by the DFG from 1 June 2021, aims to better under­stand the under­lining social fault lines. The focus lies on the rise of regres­sive dyna­mics in Germany. Re­gression here is not under­stood solely as the rise of the far-right or pro­tests against pan­demic-related measures. It relates to pro­cesses of singulari­zation and individuali­zation, the ex­pansion of autho­ritarian tendencies and attitu­des, and the enforce­ment of compe­titive logic in society as a whole. These develop­ments, according to a central thesis of the project, erode the basis for forming society as a posi­tive, solidary, and demo­cratic collective and open up spaces for ex­clusive, authori­tarian, and thus regressive collec­tivities. The project focuses on periphera­lized urban areas in Frankfurt/Main and Leipzig. The study aims to empirically illuminate how society is perceived in every­day experien­ces and how certain conflicts appear as relevant challenges; what this has to do with down­ward mobility and the urban produc­tion of space; and how these percep­tions turn into regres­sive collec­tivity and potentially right-wing politics. Therefore, a multi-sited ethno­graphy is carried out. The compa­rative perspec­tive allows to better under­stand similarities and differences.​