Migration, solidarity and the limits of Europe
Migration, solidarity and the limits of Europe
The editors of a recent special edition of Citizenship Studies draw attention to the proliferation of grassroots migration political movements as a feature of migration politics today: ‘Over the past decade, we have witnessed an upsurge of political mobilisation by refugees, irregularised migrants, and migrant solidarity activists in the countries of the European Union, at its external borders … and in other parts of the world …’ (Ataç et al, 2016: 527–528). In this essay we propose to examine aspects of this movement from the angle of one of its key political concepts: solidarity. The idea of solidarity offers a promising entry point for a critical analysis of the limits of EUrope precisely because it is hotly contested, both as a political value and a practice.
From grassroots activists to EU officials, actors on many sides of Europe’s migration struggles act in the name of solidarity. But what do they mean by solidarity and how does it bring the question of limits into focus?
In this paper we examine the increasing criminalisation by states and the EU of citizen networks that have mobilised across Europe for supporting migrants in transit. Through these transnational solidarity practices a sort of infrastructure of migrant support has been built. The paper focuses on ‘crimes of solidarity’ that have taken place in France and in Italy and argues that the criminalisation of individuals which build solidarity connections across borders paradoxically constitutes a radical challenge to Europe’s principles of citizens’ solidarity across borders. The infrastructure of migrant support enacts a form of Europeanisation of citizens’ practices that states and local authorities try instead to undermine. The paper moves on by focusing on the ambivalences of the expression ‘smuggling activities’, which is increasingly being used to name individuals who help migrants to cross or to stay without making any economic profit from that. The essay considers the frictions between local, national and European authorities in tolerating or criminalising citizens that act in solidarity with the migrants, bringing humanitarian help and building material channels for safe passages. The final part of the paper reads the moment of crimes of solidarity in terms of a genealogy of European borders. It argues that one consequence of the criminalisation of solidarity is that new hybrid forums concerning migration, citizenship and borders questions are emerging. These arise, for example, when citizens are prosecuted for acts of assistance. Their trials have potential to become public scenes and spaces of counter-politics where it is not only the citizen but Europe that is in the dock. While some have argued that criminalisation and humanitarianism closes down the politics of European borders, we argue that it may allow for unexpected political opportunities.
Tazzioli, M. and Walters, W. (2019) Migration, solidarity and the limits of Europe, Global Discourse, vol 9, no 1, 175-90, DOI: 10.1332/204378918X15453934506030
