60781dab-1457-4af9-be16-b15448110e14

Kiwan, Nadia

2026-06-03T09:47:17Z

2026-06-03T09:47:17Z

2026-03-13

Against the backdrop of the contemporary period, which is increasingly defined by exclusionary conceptions of the nation and citizenship, this article (re-)examines the concept of political community through the prism of music and migration. By considering how post-migrant musicians in postcolonial societies such as France throw into sharp relief the contemporary dynamics of far-right populism, racism, and exclusionary statecraft, this article offers a critical reflection on what alternatives to hostile national political communities might entail and how they might come about. Given the growth of migration-related anxiety in contemporary Europe, I claim that migration studies research must not only concern itself with the genealogical study of key political concepts that frame our public institutions and cultural worlds. Rather, I argue that it should also entail a process of re-imagining what those key political concepts and institutions could become in the future. This article therefore explores not only what a post-national political community might look like, but what it might sound like. I consider how post-migrant creative practices and music, in particular, can make the limitations of political concepts such as the nation and national political community more visible and more audible. I argue that the Paris Olympic Games of 2024 offers a valuable case-study as these became the locus of a series of polarized public debates about how to represent the French nation, due to the controversy that erupted around the commissioning of a French-Malian musician, Aya Nakamura, to perform at the Opening Ceremony.

Submitted by Christian Keitel (keitel@mdw.ac.at) on 2026-06-03T09:47:17Z workflow start=Step: checkcorrectionstep - action:noUserSelectionAction No. of bitstreams: 1 mm.2026.42.pdf: 537984 bytes, checksum: fb1c8e47587faa29d9945d350124f7b5 (MD5)

Made available in DSpace on 2026-06-03T09:47:17Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 mm.2026.42.pdf: 537984 bytes, checksum: fb1c8e47587faa29d9945d350124f7b5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2026-03-13

https://doi.org/10.52413/mm.2026.42

https://dspace.mdw.ac.at/handle/123456789/27403

en

2791-4569

Music & Minorities (M&M)

CC-BY-NC-4.0

Aya Nakamura

Paris Olympic Games

migration

music

political community

Rethinking Political Community in Contemporary France

Music, Migration, and the Paris Olympics

text::journal::journal article::research article

mdwPress

Kiwan, Nadia

Publication

2026-06-03T09:47:17.465Z

false

no

Vienna

Special Collection "Music, Migration, and Belonging in 21st-Century Europe"

5