A special issue edited by Tina Magazzini, Amandine Dezille and Thomas Lacroix

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Migration scholars have shown a growing interest in the concept of solidarity, especially in reference to ‘migrant solidarity’ as opposed to ‘national solidarity’ (della Porta & Steinhilper 2021). Since 2015, movements of solidarities towards refugees have mushroomed, ranging from isolated initiatives of informal collectives to transnational social movements spanning continents. In Western countries, they may appear as assemblages of multifarious actors : municipalities (Caponio, Scholten & Zapata-Barrero, 2018; Lacroix & Desille, 2018), grassroots collectives of inhabitants, and wider transnational organizations such as church networks, pro-migrant associations or citizen’s movement mediated by social media, etc. Almost a decade after the 2015 migration governance crisis, this collection interrogates the sustainability of solidarity movement, while European and US populist governments consolidate, and the world is recovering from the effects of the Covid-19 sanitary crisis. And yet these solidarity movements seem to be here to stay, even if they are taking new form with each refugee wave. Solidarity may take new forms : in 2021, in response to fear mongering voices against “the Afghan wave”, city mayors all over the world take a stand in favour of the welcoming of the Afghan people and future refugees. More recently the Russian-Ukrainian war that broke out iin February 2022, and has led to the displacement of millions of Ukrainian internally and across Europe, has been met with unprecedented mobilisations involving new actors.

By bringing together cases from European and non European settings, we seek to embrace the worldwide extension of this phenomenon. However, how can we account for the spatial and social diversity of these movements ? To what extent do they differ from or connect with historical pro-migrant organisations? How does it affect the way we comprehend the very notion of solidarity and its relations with political activism?

This collection of articles stems from an exchange which started in 2020 at the IPSA annual conference among early-career and senior researchers based in North America, Asia, the Middle East and Europe on issues related to international migrations, subnational politics and network of solidarities. It aims to explore the role of actors of solidarities providing support to asylum seekers and refugees, undocumented migrants, persons who are crossing borders or who are already settled in places. In doing so, it examines the role that ethnicity, religion and migrant or other identity markers play in the politics of solidarity. Secondly, it explores the multiscalar dimension of these movements, both in its transnational and localized dimensions. It examines the circulation of people, strategies and skills across the borders and their adaptation to the specificities of local realities. Thirdly, this variety of case studies enables comparative and relational perspectives in diverse settings in Europe, but also Lebanon, Hong Kong and the United States.

A specific attention is paid to our own positionality as researchers in a field where the limits between committed and distanced research is often blurred.

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Photo copyright: Juarez, Mex, 12-30-2024. Photo by David Peinado Romero for Shutterstock