Coloniality and Greenlandic Belonging: Psychological Distress, Indigeneity and the Afterlife of Danish Colonialism

Coloniality, Indigeneity And Belonging In Turbulent Times

This session explores how coloniality continues to shape questions of indigeneity, race, ethnicity, nationalism, psychological distress and belonging in contemporary societies. While formal colonial rule may have ended in many contexts, colonial power relations often persist through language hierarchies, institutional practices, economic dependency, knowledge production, social classification and dominant ideas of modernity and development.

The session invites papers that examine how colonial histories are lived, negotiated and contested in everyday life, institutions, subjectivity and collective struggles for recognition. Particular attention is given to how indigenous and racialized groups experience belonging, exclusion, shame, silence, loss and resistance within national and transnational contexts.

Contributions may address themes such as postcolonial and decolonial theory, indigenous self-understanding, racism and nationalism, language and identity, mental health and colonial trauma, migration, institutional encounters, social inequality, and struggles over representation and recognition. The session is especially interested in papers that connect structural analyses of coloniality with lived experiences of marginalization, dignity and belonging.

By bringing together sociological, postcolonial and decolonial perspectives, the session aims to discuss how global sociology can understand colonial afterlives not only as political and economic structures, but also as embodied, emotional and relational experiences. In line with the Congress theme, the session asks how sociology can respond to turbulent times by taking seriously the ongoing effects of coloniality and the possibilities of decolonial re-existence.