Transgressive Solidarity: From Europe’s Cities to the Mediterranean Sea

DeBono, Daniela; Mainwaring, Cetta

doi:10.33134/njmr.360

Cited by 9 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Indeed, this movement mixes logics of humanitarianism and solidarity: it combines concrete daily actions of support to refugees with a direct or indirect opposition to state anti-immigrant policies and discourses. Th ese forms of engagement-defi ned by Vandevoordt (2019) as "subversive humanitarianism" and by DeBono and Mainwaring (2020) as "transgressive solidarity"-represent a concrete "alternative to formal humanitarian aid" (Sandri 2018: 65), in particular because they are based on solidarities that challenge the distance between volunteers and refugees (Rozakou 2012 Stavinoha andRamakrishnan 2020). Th ey emerge through the concrete practices of pro-refugee volunteers (Sandri 2018), the features of the spaces and places in which they act (DeBono and Mainwaring 2020), and their relations with power holders in the context of criminalization of human-itarian action (Della Porta and Steinhilper 2020;Tazzioli 2018).…”

Section: Humanitarian Borders and Encounters Within The "Refugee Crisis"mentioning

confidence: 99%

From Vulnerability to Trust

Monforte

Maestri

2022

Migration and Society

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This article examines the complex and ambivalent nature of the encounters between British volunteers and refugees within the 2015 Refugees Welcome movement. The 72 interviews we conducted with volunteers active in different charities and informal networks reveal the significance of the logic of trust in these encounters. We show that although participants often base their engagement on claims that disrupt dominant narratives about border controls, they also tend to endorse and reproduce bordering processes based on the perceived trustworthiness of refugees and, sometimes, exclude some groups from their support. Taking insights from the literature on encounters and critical humanitarianism, our article highlights from a theoretical and empirical perspective how “ordinary participants” in the refugee support sector can subvert humanitarian borders, but also participate in the construction of new types of borders based on domopolitics. More generally, the article aims to highlight civil society’s voluntary participation in the governance of migration.

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Section: Humanitarian Borders and Encounters Within The "Refugee Crisis"mentioning

confidence: 99%

From Vulnerability to Trust

Monforte

Maestri

2022

Migration and Society

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“…Although NGOs challenge state characterizations of the sea as mare nullius and mare nostrum, their solidarity work is circumscribed by the space they operate within, the power dynamics that dominate that space, and their reliance on donations. Despite their efforts to resist the pitfalls of humanitarianism and their commitment to what Dadusc and Mudu (2020) call 'autonomous migrant solidarity', they also risk reproducing colonial, racialized tropes of the saviour and the saved, as well as the sea as humanitarian zone and European space for intervention (DeBono & Mainwaring, 2020;Pallister-Wilkins, 2017;Van Reekum, 2016). In these humanitarian narratives, the figure of the refugee, with her associated human rights, slides from view as the saving of bodies from the sea takes centre stage.…”

Section: Criminalizing Solidarity At Seamentioning

confidence: 99%

Criminalizing solidarity: Search and rescue in a neo-colonial sea

Mainwaring

DeBono

2021

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rescued over 110,000 people in the Central Mediterranean Sea between 2015 and 2017. From 2017, EU member states and agencies increasingly criminalized these organizations, accusing them of ‘colluding with smugglers’ and acting as a pull factor. In this climate, as Italy, Malta and the EU increased cooperation with Libya to stop people from taking to the seas, many suspended their operations. This article explores the search and rescue efforts of NGOs in the Central Mediterranean Sea between 2014 and 2018. We examine the criminalization of this NGO activity and argue that it is made possible through an oscillating neo-colonial imagination of the sea as mare nostrum and mare nullius, our sea and nobody’s sea, respectively. We build on the work of other scholars who have pointed to the activation of the Mediterranean as ‘empty’ in response to migration flows, erasing the historical connections of colonialism, empire, trade, and exchange in the Mediterranean as well as the contemporary legal geographies that govern the space. Here, we go further to develop the idea of a neo-colonial sea, which is alternately imagined as empty and ‘European’. We explore how NGOs disrupt these depictions, as well as the disappearing figures of the migrant and refugee amidst the contestations between NGOs and states.

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“…or in the context of solidarity initiatives(DeBono & Mainwaring, 2020). Research shows that local actors in human rights, sanctuary and solidarity cities commonly encounter the criticism that local governments' rhetorical commitments to protect and fulfil human rights are worlds apart from the everyday realities encountered by forced migrants.…”

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confidence: 99%

Unmoored, not Adrift

Miellet¹

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This dissertation explores the interplay between the politics of human rights and forced migration in several Dutch and German municipalities. It sought to answer the question of why and how municipal actors engage with human rights in the context of forced migration, and through which encounters and spaces human rights-based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants develop. To guide my inquiry into this twofold question, five sub-questions on themes running through the chapters of this dissertation were formulated. These five questions focus on municipal actors’ (1) motives for engaging with human rights, (2) their understandings of human rights, (3) their frames and strategies to legitimate municipal approaches in this area, (4) the spaces and encounters through which human-rights based responses develop (5) and the spaces through which their limits manifest. First of all, my PhD research shows that even in relatively hospitable environments, where international legal norms and principles are widely endorsed, municipal actors carefully weigh different strategies and navigate dilemmas when invoking human rights. They use human rights as a source of inspiration for local human-rights based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants and as a source of legitimation to justify local divergence from national policies. Secondly, I highlight how municipal actors have different understandings of the local relevance of human rights and responsibilities regarding forced migration. By focusing on institutional, rather than everyday settings, I tried to bring into focus how local engagements with human rights may centre on contesting understandings of human rights responsibilities and duty bearers, as opposed to rights holders and norm addressees (forced migrants). In the last two chapters of this thesis, I zoom in on how different (normative) understandings of arrival shape local efforts to develop rights-based approaches to the reception and inclusion of forced migrants. Third, this thesis points to different strategies to legitimate municipal involvement, and argues it is important to differentiate between discursive, discreet and discretionary strategies and to consider the implications of their application in different settings. Fourth, the thesis offers a spatially aware examination of the politics of human rights and forced migration, by examining how institutional settings and public spaces in cities, towns and rural municipalities, are more than simply a stage for encounters between forced migrants and municipal actors, because the functions, design and artefacts of these spaces also mould the local politics of human rights and forced migration. Fifth, this investigation brings into focus how municipal actors and other actors negotiate the limits of rights-based approaches to forced migration and zooms in on airports and asylum seeker centres as sites where the limits of municipal mandates and rights-based approaches are negotiated. To conclude, this thesis argues that exploring these five dimensions is essential to understanding the complexities of local human-rights based responses to forced migration and to developing a broad understanding of the local interplay between the politics of human rights and forced migration in these different German and Dutch localities.

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Transgressive Solidarity: From Europe’s Cities to the Mediterranean Sea

Cited by 9 publications

References 39 publications

From Vulnerability to Trust

From Vulnerability to Trust

Criminalizing solidarity: Search and rescue in a neo-colonial sea

Unmoored, not Adrift

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