Asian Voices Europe is a young nonprofit that facilitates dialogue on racial discrimination against Asians in Europe.

Step 1. Document

Through surveys and digital ethnography, we aim to understand, document, and analyse the state of anti-Asian racism, focusing on Western and Central Europe, where our members are currently based.

  • Our first survey was an anonymised ad-hoc Google Doc which archived 298 racist incidents between February and April 2020. The data comes from both a self-reported Google Forms survey and our team’s scraping of incidents shared on social media (Expat groups on Facebook in the Netherlands and Germany).

    To our knowledge, this is the first survey to structurally archive anti-Asian hate in Europe.

  • Our second survey was led by a team of PhD researchers in Germany and the Netherlands, and reviewed by Dr. Anno Dederichs, Dr. Kien Nghi Ha, Tae Jun Kim, and Dr. Simeng Wang.

    The survey received approx. 1,000 responses from across Western Europe, and investigates how intersectional identities of Asian diasporas experience racism.

Step 2. Find legal remedies

By cooperating with legal firms and law schools, we aim to understand the available legal remedies to the different types of racialised discrimination Asian diasporas in Europe face, and to make those solutions available to the public via freely available documentation (in lay terms, not legalese!) and workshops.

  • With Van Benthem & Keulen and the University of Amsterdam’s Fair Work & Equality Law Clinic, we investigated how racism and discrimination are defined in Dutch and European law.

    Take a look at our findings from the Dutch legal study with VBK. Our report from the UvA’s law clinic is being edited for public access.

  • We are in talks with a law firm on conducting a similar study in the context of German law.

Step 3. Lobby for change

With our evidence- and data-based surveys and legal remedies, we lobby for solutions to address the loopholes on anti-racist legislation and policy at the EU- and member state levels.

  • 💪 As the only Asian member of the European Commission’s Permanent anti-racism Civil Society Organisations Forum (‘the Forum’), we are consulted on the EU’s 2020-2025 Anti-racism action plan.

  • 2023: Thanks to our lobbying, anti-Asian racism is recognised and included in the EU’s Plan as a standalone category! Previously, anti-Asian hate crimes were classified into ‘general discrimination & xenophobia’. We hope to see this categorisation at member state levels for effective data collection by government agencies.

  • volkskrant-march-2020

    De Volkskrant (March 2020)

  • Framer Framed (June 2020)

  • Marie Claire Korea (April 2020)

  • Arminius Rotterdam (Dec 2020)

  • Hyunjung at the European Commission (November 2023)

  • Discriminatie.nl (May 2020)

Find Asian Voices Europe on:

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LinkedIn

We are a registered charity in the Netherlands and currently looking for funding to support our lobbying and surveying projects! Get in touch with us at:

asianvoiceseurope@gmail.com