Migrant Political Mobilisation and Solidarity Building in the Global South

Abstract

This chapter examines how migrants from the Global South who move within the region organise themselves, the forms of solidarity that they extend to each other, and how these relate to broader working-class formations. While xenophobia and othering are regular features of migrant-local interactions in the migration literature, the extent to which its opposite, solidarity, occurs as a result of the workplace and community activism of migrants has received scant attention. This chapter therefore focuses on how migrants within the Global South organise at the meso-level to defend and access their rights, and the solidarity that they build among themselves as migrants and with social movements, working-class organisations, and other civil society actors. It argues that meso-level organising and the solidarity networks that are formed, provide migrants in the Global South with the space to build solidarity in their own ways and to fight their exploitation and oppression. Using the example of trade unions, the authors urge the need for political mobilisation actions to move away from conceptualisations of migrants as victims but rather as actors, capable of various initiatives and with whom they can build solidarity movements.