The Spatiality of Migration Politics and Solidarity: From Urban to Rural Dimensions

Abstract

Migrant solidarity is a transformative process that unfolds on a temporal scale and gains distinctive characteristics in diverse spatial contexts. It is therefore inherently political and challenges not only institutional set-ups on multiple levels, but also social relations between migrants and citizens. Particularly when we take into account the literature on neoliberal governmentality or post-social states, whereby it is argued that the states adopt a strategic absence to some extent and/or in some areas of migration governance, and leave the gap to be filled by local governments and other local actors including CSOs, businesses, citizens, and migrants themselves, investigating solidarity becomes even more crucial. Being rooted in these local practices, solidarity challenges and is simultaneously challenged by the gaps caused by the neoliberal impulses. Accordingly, ‘the local’ emerges not only as a fundamental unit of analysis, but also as a distinctive component of migration politics and solidarity. Acknowledging that spatiality conditions both institutional and narrative frames for solidarity practices to develop, we can argue that both urban landscapes and rural areas offer their combinations of political institutions and discourses, solidarity infrastructures, and sociabilities that transverse them. Furthermore, urban and rural settings are not homogeneous, with different city districts or parts of the countryside featuring distinct solidarity spaces and political processes. Thus, this panel delves into the topic of the spatial settings of solidarity and how they shape migration politics. Considering the broadness of the term migration politics, the panel welcomes contributions that look at both policy change and the political participation of migrants. Therefore, the panel will bring together research that focuses on the institutional world of politics and on politics as a participatory and migrants’ empowering process. The cross-cutting theme of the panel is spatiality - how the urban and rural landscapes condition solidarity practices and migration politics. Acknowledging that solidarity practices do not happen in a vacuum but are in the interplay with political institutions and social networks and that solidarity with migrants can (re)shape new participatory spaces, we believe that exchanging empirical and conceptual knowledge on these topics will highlight the complexity of migration politics in different spatial settings. We welcome both theoretical papers and empirical contributions, single case studies and comparative research projects, works based on interdisciplinary perspectives, as well as a variety of methodological approaches. Papers that connect migration and urban/ rural studies are particularly appreciated.

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