Transformative Strategies of Mutual Aid in the Covid- 19 Pandemic

Almost one year after the outbreak of the pandemic, the interest in its consequences on social movements and collective action has grown significantly. A yet limited, but nevertheless growing, body of research and literature is paying increasing attention to different reactions of social movements to the pandemic. While the focus lies on challenges and changes of protest repertoires, Solidarity Initiatives form a fixed part of the list of re-emerging forms of collective action and organisation in the pandemic. Yet, research focused on responses to the pandemic by Solidarity Initiatives is still a task to be fulfilled. This paper aims to fill this gap and to contribute to a better understanding of reactions of Solidarity Initiatives to the pandemic by analysing how the context of the pandemic and mutualist strategies interrelate. In particular, I analyse how activists perceived the emergency caused by the pandemic and how it correlates with the activists’ narratives on choices and practices of mutualist repertoires. The paper combines the literature on strategy and tactics with the literature on solidarity structures, direct social action and mutualism in the social movement studies and connects it to an ongoing empirical case study. This paper explores the strategic and tactical reactions of mutualistic activists in response to the pandemic, using an in-depth single case study of the Voluntary Brigades of Milan. The Voluntary Brigades are a heterogeneous solidarity network, created in the epicentre of the pandemic outbreak in Europe. Meanwhile Lombardy, including the city of Milan, was also one of the first regions to face lockdown restrictions in Italy. This network consists in a coalition of left-wing activists, newly joint volunteers and the NGO Emergency. It is still active to date, working in different neighbourhoods, in charge of a range of topics including food distribution, mental health and free testing / vaccination. The specific pandemic and development of containment measures, the particular coalition, the time span of its existence and the broad range of mutualistic repertoires make it an extraordinary case for analysing current strategic implementations of mutualism in constant changing context of the pandemic. In order to do so, the analysis is based on semi-structured Interviews with different groups of activists within the network and social media content (sources: Telegram, Facebook). The data collection started in autumn 2020 and is planned to be ongoing until summer 2021. It spans over three different time frames, partly following a reconstructive design: The first time frame covers the outbreak of the pandemic and the first lockdown in spring 2020, the second is the second wave and second lockdown in late autumn 2020 and winter 2021, the third time frame is defined by the expected initial effects of a broader vaccination coverage in late spring and early summer 2021. The analysis scrutinises that the critical and dynamic context matters significantly for the Voluntary Brigades and their action repertoires but is far from being an automatic reaction to it but, importantly, influenced by strategic interpretations and tactical decisions.