In recent years, the successful anti-migrant mobilization of populist radical right parties and movements in Germany has stimulated the anti-racist struggle. This article investigates the anti-racism of grassroots organizations that contest border regimes in Berlin. While grassroots anti-racism also intends to combat the ideology of populist radical right parties, it contributes distinctively to the debates on racism, colonialism and border regimes. Specifically, grassroots antiracism sheds light on the mechanisms through which border regimes oppress and racialize migrants. Crucially, by acknowledging the imbrication between historical racial inequalities and border regimes, grassroots organizations weave an anti-racist struggle against border regimes that is emancipatory for racialized migrants. I contend that grassroots anti-racism contributes to tackling the pervasive historical amnesia (Hall, S. 2000. "Conclusion: The Multicultural Question." In Un/settled Multiculturalisms: Diasporas, Entanglements, 'Transruptions', edited by B. Hesse. Zed Books) regarding colonialism and the role of racism in the construction of the German nation.

Migrant activists with precarious legal status mobilize against border regimes in Berlin under the label of 'refugees'. They engage in a classification struggle through which they disrupt the legal notion of refugee by reappropriating an externally assigned category. Their struggle is crucial because legal status categories produce an exclusionary system in which only some migrants can obtain residence rights as well as other rights. I contend that migrants, in the context of their mobilization, collectively interpret their structural position vis-a-vis border regimes, characterized by oppression and exclusion. This collective interpretation is associated with the emergence of a refugee* collective identity that disrupts the legal notion of refugee. I argue that migrants mobilize under the label of 'refugee' not only for strategic reasons but also because of their shared beliefs regarding the unfairness of the asylum system. The refugee* collective identity not only disrupts exclusionary legal status categories but also interrupts some of the divisions among migrants that border regimes produce. This article contributes to showing that while migrant activism takes place in a political field that is not chosen by migrants, it has an impact on the regulatory framework that characterizes that political field. Moreover, my findings emphasize the importance of the connections between structural forms of oppression, including regulatory frameworks and classificatory systems, and collective identity processes emerging in the mobilization of subaltern groups.

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The activists opposing border regimes in Berlin still vividly remember the migrant protest camp on Oranienplatz (O-Platz), a square in the neighborhood of Kreuzberg, a decade after its establishment in 2012. For them, the protest camp is the ideal type of mobilization against border regimes; the opportunity for racialized migrants to engage in politics and formulate grievances based on their own experiences of border regimes. O-Platz is remembered as a visible migrant grassroots protest in the backdrop of a history of invisibility of migrant struggles in Germany. In contrast, activists frame their mobilization after O-Platz as invisible and fragmented, despite the emergence of new networks and alliances, which, however, are not led by migrant activists. Collective memory bridges different movement phases and emphasizes the importance of visibility achieved by collective action centered around the experiences of subaltern groups, specifically racialized migrants with precarious legal status. I argue that memory work is crucial for countering the invisibility and erasure of grassroots migrant struggles in Germany. Memory work has an aspirational function as it transforms characteristics of past mobilization into aspirations for the present, especially in a phase where new

Human rights often fall short of challenging oppression because they are enmeshed with conservative institutions, such as the law and the state. Despite these shortcomings, grassroots organisations contesting border regimes in Berlin often make use of human rights in their everyday mobilisation. They engage in autonomous forms of mobilisation outside the state and construct non-legal notions of human rights that are emancipatory for racialised migrants. However, these same organisations also address demands to state authorities by using legal notions of human rights. In this article, I draw on the framework focusing on abolition and non-reformist reforms, which have been developed by activists and scholars in their resistance to policing and the Prison-Industrial Complex. I innovatively extend its use to propose a nuanced understanding of grassroots approaches to human rights. Specifically, I argue that these approaches entail the concurrent pursuit of short-term reformist reforms and border abolition.