Description
This study looks at how humour is used to perform, (re)define, and negotiate identities in the context of migration. It examines how satirical articulations offer a critical angle for engaging with the relationship between identities and governmental practices. While previous research ha shown how practices of laughing may both challenge and reproduce hierarchical structure through the perpetuation and normalisation of racist humour, these dynamic processes remain under-explored in the area of migrant comedy. Drawing on Wedderburn’s (2021) framework of humour’s multifaceted capacities, this study explores how Muslim communities in European host countries perform satire. With a focus on the post-2015 German context, it examines Datteltäter’s work and their use of humour to challenge the impunity of microaggressions. The study seeks to investigate how the group’s satirically performed subversion of everyday experiences of "migratised humour" reflects the biopolitical governance of identities. In so doing, it critically engages with the proposed approach and interpretations of their experiences of migration and the constructions of identities which challenges the universality of naturalised structures of acceptability and renegotiates the link between humour and Germanness. Thus, this work contributes to discussions on identities and biopolitics by providing further insights into the link between state control, practices of migratisation, and the decolonisation of humour.
