In contemporary societies, refugees increasingly belong to those deemed undesirable, whose dehumanisation and disenfranchisement appear legitimate within political discourses that foreground deterrence. Against this backdrop, my activist, performative, and participatory research with refugees addresses how intersubjective articulation, recognition, and understanding can be conceptualised and enacted under conditions marked by structural violence and epistemic injustice (Brunner 2020). This endeavour is crucial, as the articulation of suffering often unfolds beyond therapeutic spaces, which remain insufficient or inaccessible, and beyond asylum hearings, which grant recognition only within narrowly defined legal frameworks.

Following suggestions from my research partners, we refrain from relying solely on interviews and instead engage in multimodal and artistic modes of articulation. Through drawing, collective music-making, and performative readings based on literary testimonies of former prison inmates, we explore the possibilities and limits of creating spaces of articulation and resistance vis-à-vis ‘total institutions’ (Goffman 1973), autocratic regimes in Iran and Syria, and experiences of racism in Germany. My research partners provide crucial insights into life under authoritarian rule—what suffering they endured, what forms of resistance they developed, and what sustains them in exile.

By theorising articulation (Jung 2009) as an intersubjective, multimodal, and multimedial process, my research conceptualises “spaces of articulation” as dynamic, relational encounters where suffering and resistance can be negotiated. Such theorising asks how articulation can be understood not merely as an act of verbal expression, but as a situated practice of knowledge production that challenges dominant narratives and opens transformative horizons for translocal solidarity and learning.