Space-Body Modulations in the Whirlpool Theory: Radical Reflexivity and the Resistance of Migrant/Racialized Subjects in Reimagining Democracy

Bodies are relational forms that adapt and materialize in accordance with the social demands of the spaces they inhabit. Their relationship with social roles is the origin of constructing/deconstructing an otherness that sediments through daily actions. Paying attention to the practical reflexivity of migrant/racialized bodies (who am I, who are you, who are we, who are you all) in everyday life allows us to see the network of assumptions, expectations, and emotions operating in the Global North, home to the necropolitics that control and destroy othered bodies. This approach also reveals various meaningful practices that recognize these bodies as producers of value and as bearers of agency that challenge their forced situation: outside the dominant society. The Whirlpool Theory offers a conceptualization—based on empirical observations—of the constellations the body forms with habitat, identity, violence, and emotion, which can be traced in both forms of subjugation and silent, invisible, everyday subversion affecting the migrant and racialized subject in industrialized countries of the North.

This paper advances the discussion on Radical Democracy by framing the body's relational dynamics within the 'Whirlpool Theory,' which conceptualizes resistance as an embodied process rooted in spatial and emotional mediations. Using content analysis and grounded theory based on over four years of qualitative data from Colombia, Spain, Egypt, and Sweden, the study reveals how migrant and racialized subjects mobilize a 'Revolutionary Reason.' This transformative drive fuels their participation in social movements, protest, and everyday resistance, challenging hegemonic structures and reimagining democracy through subversive practices. Utilizing qualitative data from over four years of semi-structured interviews, participant observations, and (auto)ethnographies in Colombia, Spain, Egypt, and Sweden, I employed content analysis and grounded theory to reveal over 4,500 labels from NVivo R1 software. Finally, by adapting concepts from fluid dynamics and classical mechanics, I developed a theoretical model.