Solidarity relationships in the No Borders Movement in Europe

Abstract

This thesis investigates solidarity relationships in the No Borders movement in Europe and how relationships between very diverse and unequal activists are being built. It asks about activists’ reasons for involvement, their strategies to build egalitarian cooperation, and the wanted and unwanted effects this endeavour has. These are crucial research insights for veryone who is interested in social inequality and diversity, especially in social movements. It can be difficult to create social ties between diverse people and hard to create a movement’s community whose members should share interests and support each other to bring about social change. Most social movements bring together heterogeneous people, but the No Borders movement is exceptionally diverse in its groups’ internal composition, with key inequalities revolving around legal status and citizenship. Refugee_migrants and western citizens engage together in protest and direct social actions and struggle for freedom of movement and access to rights, and against deportations. They embrace prefigurative transborder practices to cooperate in an egalitarian way and transcend interpersonal barriers that divide them. No Borders’ solidarity relationships were researched in Europe, where a transnational network of grassroot action exists since the 1990s. With the refugee crisis after 2015, No Borders’ mobilisations multiplied. By following and contrasting activist hubs in Germany and Greece, significant activist networks could be investigated while taking into account EU policies that inform the relationships between diverse activists. A qualitative research project was conducted for which most data was collected between 2015 and 2018 and analysed via Situational Analysis. Resulting from the project, the thesis provides a conceptual description of No Borders as a movement, its practices, and ideological background. It develops the framework of transborder activism that gives a lens through which to view the interpersonal and organizational levels of activism. The analysis finds that No Borders opens activist spaces with diverse actors in which it is possible to get to know each other. Because differences and inequalities are made visible and can be discussed, activists negotiate their differences discoursively and practically to meet each other on common ground. Still, as practices are pragmatically situated in-between different forms of support – the charity of humanitarian aid, nation-state solidarities of welfare, and the radically egalitarian approach to solidarity of No Borders – activists navigate constant contextual ambiguity and flexibility, which is a strength of No Borders strategies but also makes the engagement exhausting. Three stressors were identified which can potentially lead to activist burnout: inadequate expectations, a split between life-worlds, and interpersonally not living up to egalitarian ideals (prefigurative betrayal). Specific community activities and subcultural codes can also separate people by drawing new lines of exclusion. Still, people engage in these specifically mixed egalitarian structures or alliances as the threshold to enter is low, and people can experience engagement in empowering and hopeful ways. The solidarity relationships in No Borders are best understood as solidarity among equals ‘in the making’, thus staying processual. This dissertation opens up new avenues to study mental health, diversity, and inequality in social movements.