2019 Book SolidarityAndTheRefugeeCrisisI

SOLIDARITY
AND THE
‘REFUGEE CRISIS’
IN EUROPE
Óscar García Agustín

Martin Bak Jørgensen
Solidarity and the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe
Óscar García Agustín · Martin Bak Jørgensen
Solidarity and the

‘Refugee Crisis’
in Europe
Óscar García Agustín Martin Bak Jørgensen
Department of Culture and Global Department of Culture and Global
Studies Studies
Aalborg University Aalborg University
Aalborg, Denmark Aalborg, Denmark
ISBN 978-3-319-91847-1 ISBN 978-3-319-91848-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8
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Acknowledgements
We were thinking and writing about solidarity forms between migrants

and civil society when the Refugees Welcome movement surprised the
whole of Europe (and its political leaders!) in 2015 by strengthening the
relations between refugees and local communities. We want to first and
foremost dedicate this book to all the people who contribute to receive
and welcome refugees and, of course, to all the refugees that put their
life at risk on their journey to Europe. They are the people who shape
the Europe we believe in, and this book would not have been possible
without them.
We would like to thank all of the people who shared their experi-
ences and opinions with us: in Aalborg, members of Venligboerne,
in Athens, Vasilis Galis, Kostas Floros and Vasilikis Makrygianni; in
Barcelona, Ignasi Calbó, Gloria Rendón, Laia Creus, Mar Sabé and Bue
Rübner Hansen; in Toronto, Harald Bauder, and Ryerson Centre for
Immigration and Settlement (RCIS). We also thank Liv Rolf Mertz for
the very competent language revision.
At Palgrave Macmillan, we are grateful to the Pivot Series Editors and,
particularly, to Katelyn Zingg for her support and collaboration.
Last but not least thanks are due to our families for their constant
support and understanding during the writing process.
v
Contents
1 From Refugee Crisis to a Crisis of Solidarity? 1
2 Conceptualizing Solidarity. An Analytical Framework 23
3 Autonomous Solidarity: Hotel City Plaza 49
4 Civic Solidarity: Venligboerne 73
5 Institutional Solidarity: Barcelona as Refuge City 97
6 Solidarity as Political Action. Crime or Alternative? 119
Index 131
vii
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Solidarity. An analytical framework 26

Fig. 3.1 Map of Athens 59
ix
CHAPTER 1
From Refugee Crisis to a Crisis

of Solidarity?
Abstract  This chapter describes the background of the refugee crisis

and the responses by the international community in terms of refugee
management. It looks at the national attempts to manage refugee flows
and the inclusion of refugees into the European nation-states. It outlines
the general discursive presentation of the refugee issue and uses this as a
departure point to initially describe the responses from civil society actors
to deal with the crisis and provide alternative models for engaging with
the refugee issue. Our argument is that although these responses are
diverse and have different aims, they also share some common features as
they may be regarded as emerging solidarities based on diverse alliances.
We reflect on the role and potential of such alliances and solidarities for
developing alternatives to the current management of the refugee crisis
on local, national, and transnational levels.
Keywords  Border spectacle · Civil society · Contentious politics

Refugee crisis · Crisis of solidarity
‘We are facing the biggest refugee and displacement crisis of our time.
Above all, this is not just a crisis of numbers; it is also a crisis of solidarity.
[…] We must respond to a monumental crisis with monumental solidar-
ity’ (UN 2016). These words were spoken by UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon in April 2016 at a conference in Washington, DC addressing
© The Author(s) 2019 1

Ó. G. Agustín and M. B. Jørgensen,
Solidarity and the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8_1
2 Ó. G. AGUSTÍN AND M. B. JØRGENSEN
the forced displacement of millions of people taking place at the time.

The notion ‘refugee crisis’ has become the dominating term within
Europe for describing the current situation of a large inflow of refugees,
migrants, and displaced persons entering Europe through regular and
irregular channels. Although it makes little sense denying the fact that a
large number of people do seek to enter the Europe one way or another
due to political instability, lack of protection and security in their home
countries, and on a more general level due to global inequality, the term
‘crisis’ itself does not explain the situation in itself. How can we then
explain the so-called refugee crisis? Is it really a new thing? When did it
start? Is there only one crisis? What will come out of the alleged crisis?
By now we have seen a growing academic literature engaging with
the idea of the crisis (Bauder 2016; Bendixsen 2016; Casas-Cortes et al.
2015; Castelli Gattinara 2017; Dahlstedt and Neergaard 2016; De
Genova 2016; De Genova et al. 2016; Duarte et al. 2016; Rajaram 2015;
Triandafyllidou 2017). Part of this literature is critical toward the notion
of the ‘refugee crisis’ (like most of the authors listed here). Other studies
reproduce or find themselves close to the political framings of the crisis
and the background for this. Many scholars, commentators, and activists
now deliberately use the notion of refugee crisis in scare quotes (‘…’),
like we have done ourselves. Although it emphasizes that there is more
to the story, this trick does not get us far in understanding the political
aspects of the crisis and the kind of transformations that may follow in
its paths. In this book, Solidarity and the ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe, we
focus particularly on the aspect of solidarity. As we will explain and unfold
in this and the next chapters, we regard solidarity as generative and
inventive (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016a; Featherstone 2012). As David
Featherstone writes: ‘They [solidarities] produce new ways of configuring
political relations and space’ (2012: 6). Moreover, solidarities challenge
the methodological nationalism which underpins both the framing of the
refugee crisis and especially the handling of the crisis. Solidarities, in their
different forms and practices, afford a lens for understanding how the cri-
sis also presents a moment for rupture and for creating new imaginaries
and for testing new alternatives for more inclusive societies. This book
offers a conceptual framework on solidarity which we apply to a num-
ber of cases on different scales to exemplify how these forms of solidarity
are being shaped as a response to the refugee crisis and to how govern-
ments have tried to manage this crisis. The solidarity movement, such
as the Refugees Welcome movement, has been very visible and active in
1 FROM REFUGEE CRISIS TO A CRISIS OF SOLIDARITY? 3
especially European countries, but besides some articles there is so far

not many attempts to capture the overall role of this type of activism or
to analyze the potential such engagement may hold for alternative ways
of managing the refugee crisis. In this book, we argue that the state—
in the form of national governments and the European Union—has not
been able to present any viable or sustainable solutions to the crisis. We
therefore have to look elsewhere for alternatives.
This introductory chapter describes the background of the refugee
crisis and the responses by the international community in terms of ref-
ugee management. It looks at the national attempts to manage refugee
flows and the inclusion of refugees into the European nation-states. It
outlines the general discursive presentation of the refugee issue and uses
this as a departure point to initially describe the responses from civil
society actors to deal with the crisis and provide alternative models for
engaging with the refugee issue. Our argument is that although these
responses are diverse and have different aims, they also share some com-
mon features as they may be regarded as emerging solidarities based on
diverse alliances. We reflect on the role and potential of such alliances
and solidarities for developing alternatives to the current management of
the refugee crisis on local, national, and transnational levels.
What Kind of Crisis?

Few scholars would dispute that Europe is in crisis. However, there is
less consensus on what kind of crisis Europe is in and how it could and
should be framed (Dahlstedt and Neergaard 2016). We now see a prolif-
eration of interchangeable discourses, framings, and narratives. Each of
these carries with them particular connotations and prognostic and diag-
nostic framings. While the notion ‘refugee crisis’ perhaps has been the
dominant framing, we also find the use of ‘migrant crisis’ (aptly expand-
ing the crisis to not only deal with the refugee situation but migration
to Europe in general). We sometimes find the notion of ‘humanitar-
ian crisis’ which contrary to focusing on the human consequences also
emphasizes victimization and creates distinctions between wanted and
unwanted migrants and ultimately is linked to a ‘crisis of the asylum
system’ and/or a ‘crisis of the European border’ and border control
(Casas-Cortes et al. 2015: 7–14). Pointing to the collapse of the border
regime turns the crisis into a ‘crisis of the EU’, of ‘the Schengen zone’
and in the end a ‘crisis of the political idea of Europe’. These alternating
framings of the crisis are also linked to other grander crisis narratives.
Hence, the refugee crisis is connected to notions of ‘the economic cri-
sis’, ‘the financial crisis’, ‘the debt crisis’, the ‘banking crisis’, ‘the hous-
ing crisis’, etc. This links the refugee crisis to the neoliberal articulations
of necessary austerity interventions. Greece, for instance, is singled out
as being unable to cope with the inflow of refugees due to a histori-
cal lack of financial responsibleness and is threatened with further eco-
nomic sanctions if it does not handle the refugee issue (Castelli Gattinara
2017). The conflation of austerity policies with those of refugee pro-
tection strengthens distinctions of ‘genuine’ refugees and economic
migrants only in it for the money; wanted and unwanted migrants; and
basically who is deserving and who is not. The latest development is
perhaps the development toward a ‘security crisis’ following the tragic
events in Paris and Brussels where refugees on a general level were
turned into potential terrorists overnight, despite the fact that the per-
petrators and organizers of these attacks had all been residing in Europe
for years. This culturalization of the crisis has foregrounded ‘Muslim
extremism’ and the idea of terrorists ‘hiding’ among the refugees seek-
ing protection in Europe. The narrative of ‘strangeness’, ontological
difference, and ‘un-Europeanness’ of the refugees was further strength-
ened after the incident in Cologne on New Year’s Eve 2015/2016 when
a group of primarily North-African (Moroccan and Tunisian) migrants
were accused of sexually molesting partygoers celebrating the night in
public places. This evoked the idea of a ‘moral crisis’. Writing in early
2018, it is probably safe to say that we may still come to see new fram-
ings of the crisis.
On a European level, the inability to solve the crisis/crises and come
up with viable and sustainable solutions has turned it into a crisis of
legitimacy, rendering the EU project of peace, prosperity, and integra-
tion one that is far from reality. The crisis as a representation underpins
Prem Kumar Rajaram’s understanding of the refugee crisis. ‘The refu-
gee crisis in Europe is fabricated’ (2015), he writes. As we do here, he
describes the crisis as a particular framing. One which designates inward
working; establishing a dominant regulating norm—an idea of the refu-
gee—to be compared and contrasted, and one which has outward aims, a
framing which reduces the complexities of the situation to an ‘abstracted
understanding’ allowing policy-makers and commentators to treat it as
an exceptional condition.
Whose Crisis?
As Nicholas de Genova suggests, it may be necessary to stop and ask
‘whose crisis?’ we are talking about and what the purpose is of a par-
ticular framing (2016: 4). Using the term ‘crisis’ itself has deliberate
implications. Describing something as a crisis underlines the alleged
exceptionality of the event/situation/condition. It is described both as
something not ‘normal’, something out of the ‘ordinary’, and as some-
thing which signals emergency. Emergency legitimizes governmental
and EU measures aimed at enhancing and expanding border control,
enforcement and policing and new measures such as externalization, out-
sourcing, and marketization of border control (Collyer and King 2016;
De Genova 2016; Gammeltoft-Hansen and Nyberg Sørensen 2013;
Jørgensen 2012). In the case of the financial crisis, it legitimizes the
TINA rationale (‘there is no alternative’) and call for austerity policies.
Crises thus open up for the deployment of authoritarian measures and
interventions not limited by democratic concerns. Giorgio Agamben
writes about this ‘state of exception’ already in 2013:
The concept ‘crisis’ has indeed become a motto of modern politics, and for
a long time it has been part of normality in any segment of social life. […]
‘Crisis’ in ancient medicine meant a judgement, when the doctor noted at
the decisive moment whether the sick person would survive or die. The
present understanding of crisis, on the other hand, refers to an endur-
ing state. So this uncertainty is extended into the future, indefinitely. It is
exactly the same with the theological sense; the Last Judgement was insep-
arable from the end of time. Today, however, judgement is divorced from
the idea of resolution and repeatedly postponed. So the prospect of a deci-
sion is ever less, and an endless process of decision never concludes. Today
crisis has become an instrument of rule. It serves to legitimize political and
economic decisions that in fact dispossess citizens and deprive them of any
possibility of decision. (Agamben 2013)1
Crisis in this way is embedded in an authoritarian ‘politics of fear’

becoming the new normal across political division lines (Wodak 2015).
Politics of fear is fueled by another politics—that of numbers. As De
Genova and colleagues write, ‘[a]longside this proliferation of images
and discourse, an incessant circulation of numbers thus plays a crucial
role in the production of a ‘crisis’ of migration and borders’ (De Genova
2016: 22). This is not surprising, of course, as numbers play an immense
role in immigration policy-making. Numbers are also tools in produc-

ing this crisis through the politics of counting and what De Genova has
called ‘the spectacle of statistics’ (ibid.). Despite most people not neces-
sarily being knowledgeable about what counts as ‘high’ and ‘low’ num-
bers, or whether a certain number is unprecedented or how a specific
number is produced and by whom, numbers nevertheless inform most
of the representations of the crisis and establish the sense of emergency.
This becomes important when we try to understand why the perception
of crisis (and the outbreak of moral panic) gains strength. As for instance
Ferruh Yilmaz shows, Denmark experienced large inflows of refugees
in 1992–1993 without it being perceived as a crisis, whereas the much
smaller influx of refugees in the early 1980s oppositely was perceived as
a crisis and led to moral panic (2016: 63–7). Comparing with the situa-
tion in 2015–2016, the numbers in these last years are actually not much
bigger2—despite the common perception. Hence, it is not a matter of
the number of immigrants as such which is decisive but how the num-
ber is framed and problematized. This example is by no means unique
in Europe (see Lucassen 2017). The total number of refugees entering
Europe has grown, but that does not explain the European actions and
‘moral panic’.
Obviously, and that should be emphasized, we can speak of numbers,
stocks, and flows when outlining and analyzing the situation over the
last years. However, those quantities are meaningless without a proper
understanding of the numbers, scope, and scale of the situation.
What Happened and What Was Done?

Domino Effects Across Europe
When did this crisis begin? The growth in migration flows across the
Mediterranean has been going on for much longer than the ‘long sum-
mer of migration’ in 2015 which now is used as an epitome of the crisis.
As Pietro Castelli Gattinara states, there is nothing in this situation which
has not already been predicted by migration experts for decades (2017:
318). Population growth, economic inequalities, low income, struc-
tural unemployment, and protracted conflicts in some parts of the world
all have spurred the growth of migration flows. As Castelli Gattinara
further states, governments in Europe nevertheless were completely
unprepared to deal with the political and humanitarian consequences of
increasing immigration, and their incapability thus helped pave the way
for the framing of the refugee crisis. However, at least since the 1990s
the illegalization of Mediterranean migration has made that space one of
the most lethal zones of the world—in terms of irregular border cross-
ing—and has claimed scores of lives (Bojadžijev and Mezzadra 2015).
Intensification has started an institutional cat-and-mouse game between
the migrants and the maritime border regime symbolized by the Frontex
agency. The illegalization of the migrants and their insistence on crossing
have turned the Mediterranean into a maritime graveyard. Yet, very little
was done to stop this development, and the European approach can with
Achille Mbembe’s words be characterized as a form of ‘necropolitics’
(2003). The concept implies more than a right to kill, as it also involves
the right to expose other people to death. Although grim, it describes
the Mediterranean reality well.
Looking back at the last years, we have seen waves of refugees enter-
ing Europe in a constant flow but also triggered by specific geopolitical
events. The Arab spring caused an increased flow of immigration where
particularly the route between Libya and the Italian island of Lampedusa
became a main hub. One consequence of the NATO-led military inter-
vention in Libya to help remove power from Gaddafi in 2011 was that
thousands of migrant laborers from elsewhere in Africa had to flee to
Italy to find protection. The year 2011 set a record of over 58,000 peo-
ple reaching Europe via the Mediterranean, marking a sevenfold increase
in the figures for 2010 (Attinà 2017). The following years showed an
increase in illegal crossings into Italy and Malta, which between 2012
and 2013 were fourfold, and several migrant ship disasters were reported
by the mass media (Castelli Gattinara 2017). Still, there was no domi-
nant framing of a refugee crisis although some regulatory interventions
were introduced as means against the situation, such as the French deci-
sion to temporarily reimpose border controls with Italy in 2011.
In 2013, two major shipwrecks on October 3 and 11, 2013, caus-
ing the death of over 400 people, made the Italian authorities act and
appeal to humanitarian principles and disengage from the ordinary man-
agement of irregular migration by launching the rescue-at-sea program
Mare Nostrum (ibid.). The program was also a call for European soli-
darity as Italy at the time received a large share of the irregular migrants
coming to Europe. As Ferrucio Pastore rightly claims (2017: 31), Mare
Nostrum was a ‘technical success but a political failure’, as the program
was criticized not only internally in Italy but also by European coun-
tries that saw the program as indirectly encouraging and even facilitating
migration. Hence, when Italy during the fall of 2014 sought EU solidar-
ity to cover the costs of Mare Nostrum (which amounted to 11 million
euros per month), EU decided to downsize and transform the operation
into a European operation named Triton (L’Association Européenne
pour la défense des Droits de l’Homme 2017; Triandafyllidou 2017).
The downscaling of the search-and-rescue program is an example of nec-
ropolitics in the Mediterranean. Operation Triton’s work (managed by
Frontex Plus) with the Italian coast guard focused much more on border
protection than on search-and-rescue missions. It was criticized for lead-
ing to more fatalities by experts and NGOs as well as the former Italian
Minister of Integration Cecile Kynege (Agnew 2015). Triton not only
had the effect of (re)aligning Italy’s asylum approach with EU policies;
it also led to a negotiation of solidarity between the member states that
recognized the necessity of welcoming asylum seekers and those that in
Castelli Gattinara’s words ‘stressed its practical unfeasibility and popular
undesirability’ (2017: 321). The policy responses, policing, and narra-
tives set the rationale for what De Genova has termed ‘the border spec-
tacle’ (2013). The border spectacle sets a scene of ‘ostensible exclusion’,
in which the ‘purported naturalness’ and necessity of exclusion may be
demonstrated and legitimized—a spectacle which reifies migrant illegal-
ity and which extends the border regime far beyond the external bor-
ders. The actions taken by governments and on EU level all feed into
this spectacle.
What made politicians, policy-makers, and to some degree academics
start the crisis in 2015, then, as inflow of migrants has been going on
for years with grave humanitarian consequences? Manuela Bojadžijev and
Sandro Mezzadra claim that the ‘geography of the current crisis is signif-
icantly different’ (2015) from the years before. Media and politicians had
become used to hotspots such as Lampedusa which did not get a lot of
attention. However, three events in 2015 inaugurate what has since been
described as the refugee crisis. The first happened on April 19, 2015,
when a ship transporting over 800 migrants and refugees capsized en
route from Tripoli to Italy and all but 27 persons drowned or went miss-
ing (Bonomolo 2015). It is believed to be the single-deadliest incident
on the Mediterranean. It spurred a lot of debate and calls for action and
called attention to the numerous vessels in bad shape which were seeking
to transport migrants across the sea in insecure weather conditions, lack-
ing technical equipment, security facilities, etc. The second incident was
the images of the drowned Syrian child Alan Kurdi whose body washed
ashore on September 3 near Bodrum in Turkey after a failed attempt

to reach the Greek island of Kos together with his family. That image
changed the understanding of what was happening, and as Bojadžijev
and Mezzadra write, it is impossible to underestimate the effect of the
circulation of that photo (2015). Although anti-immigrant cynical voices
tried to put blame on the father and family, asking ‘what kind of father
would make such a hazardous journey with a small child’, the domi-
nant response was an appeal for compassion and for solidarity with the
asylum seekers crossing the waters. The third event which gave way to
the narrative of the refugee crisis happened the day after September 4.
Thousands of migrants and refugees had been encamped at the Budapest
Keleti railway station, and Hungarian police had started denying them
access to the trains and were beginning to reroute them toward deten-
tion camps outside the city (De Genova 2016). More than a thousand
migrants and refugees then self-mobilized and started chanting ‘free-
dom!’ and soon took to the road, heading toward Vienna in what was
soon called ‘the March of Hope’. The Hungarian authorities capitulated
and with opportunistic motivations assisted the marchers toward Austria
and Germany who then declared their borders to be open. The event
points to two outcomes at the same time. Because of a de facto failure
of the Dublin procedure, the EU system could not handle the situation.
The 2015 ‘long summer of migration’ marked a clash between the prin-
ciples of Schengen—implying that asylum seekers could move to their
preferred destinations after entering the EU—and those of Dublin II
procedures (Bauböck 2017). At the same time, the marchers called for
exactly European solidarity, symbolized by a man carrying the flag of the
European Union at the fore of the march, and it spurred the develop-
ment of a multitude of solidarity networks—or made the already existing
ones visible—across Europe.
Fixing the beginning of the refugee crisis at 2015 is wrong for dif-
ferent reasons. As mentioned, the movement from the Global South
to North has been going on for decades. Secondly, the framing of the
refugee crisis as a European crisis is likewise wrong. Most refugees do
not go to Europe. A small country like Lebanon with six million inhab-
itants according to UNHCR hosted close to one million Syrian refugees
at the end of 2017 (UNHCR 2017). In comparison, we can point to
Denmark, mentioned previously, with a comparable population of 5.7
million inhabitants that in 2016 had received 27,000 spontaneous asy-
lum seekers. Turkey hosted almost 3.5 million Syrian refugees (ibid.).
Eurostat counts the number of Syrian asylum seekers to the 28 EU

member states to fewer than 700,000 in 2015 and 2016 (Eurostats
2018). Although these numbers may not be accurate, it is safe to say that
Turkey alone hosted more Syrian refugees than all the European coun-
tries taken together. Yet, it is Europe that is framed as facing the refugee
crisis.
Acknowledging the longer historical and colonial trajectories is one
point. Another is to acknowledge that the crisis may be depicted as
starting at different times in different places. The crisis narrative is not
only situated fluidly in time but also spatially constructed. For instance,
for South Eastern and Central Eastern European countries, a trigger-
ing event was the closure of the Hungarian border on September 15,
2015. In Italy, the shipwreck outside Sicily on April 19, 2015, was a trig-
gering event. In Greece, a critical event was the closure of the Balkan
route on February 18, 2016, and the debate over excluding Greece from
Schengen (all these examples are given by Triandafyllidou 2017: 1). In
a Nordic context, the march of hundreds of refugees on the highways
walking toward Sweden prompted a sense of emergency. Nevertheless,
the accumulation of images, actions, and events combined with the fact
that thousands of immigrants and refugees did enter Europe in larger
numbers than the years before making it relevant to define this year as
crucial to our understanding of the crisis regardless of the conceptu-
alization we choose to use. More than one million people crossed the
Mediterranean to Europe in search of protection and a better life. The
year 2015 marked the sharpest rise in sea arrivals to the EU with a four-
fold increase from 2014 (Crawley et al. 2016). A total of 3785 migrants
and refugees were estimated to have died in the Mediterranean in 2015
compared to 3283 in 2014 (IOM 2018). Deaths continue to be a real-
ity after 2015 as IOM estimates that 5143 died at sea in 2016, 3119
in 2017, and in the first two weeks of 2018 already 194 people are
recorded to have died at sea (ibid.). These are just the numbers we know.
How did the EU and the member states respond to the crisis? In
May 2015, the European Commission launched the European Agenda
on Migration (EC 2015). Although it was launched as a new approach,
it has strong continuity with the former approaches (see Guiraudon
2017; Jeandesboz and Pallister-Wilkins 2016; Jørgensen 2010). At the
top of the agenda is fighting human ‘trafficking’. The new EU agenda
on migration is structured along four pillars: reducing the incentives
for irregular migration; border management—saving lives and securing
external borders; emphasizing Europe’s duty to protect implemented

through a strong common asylum policy; and introducing a new policy
on legal migration (EC 2015; see also Carrera et al. 2015). However,
it has been noted that the new agenda reproduces the policies that
have proven to create, rather than reduce, risky migration strategies for
those in need of protection (Noll 2015). The agenda features criminal-
ized migration, increased border controls, and externalized migration
management outside of the European territory (as for instance with
the agreements with Libya and Turkey). There is little focus on how
to increase internal and external solidarity and little if any serious effort
to steer EU immigration and asylum policies in a less securitized direc-
tion (Castelli Gattinara 2017). Moreover, in 2015, the EU launched a
refugee relocation scheme aiming at relocating 160,000 refugees who
had arrived in Italy and Greece to other member states. The scheme
was a failure on all accounts, and it was terminated in September 2017
(according to the plan). However, in September 2017, only 27,695 ref-
ugees had been relocated, and some EU members, notably Hungary and
Poland, had refused to take part even though participation was supposed
to be mandatory (Barigazi 2017; Bauböck 2017). As Bernd Kasparek has
noted, ‘emergency management’ stands out as a real unifying thread run-
ning through European interventions and measures in face of the crisis
of the border regime (Kasparek 2016).
Looking at the level of the national member states, we can identify
different tendencies. ‘We will only save Schengen by applying Schengen’,
said Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU Commissioner for Migration, Home
Affairs and Citizenship in February 2016 (EC 2016), and 14 days pre-
viously Avramopoulos had said that ‘[a]ll Member States have to play
the game and show more solidarity’ (speaking points from the meeting
with the LIBE Committee, 14/1/2016; online Avramopoulos 2016).
The call for solidarity was followed by some states—but not for long. As
mentioned, Germany and Austria did open their borders. Likewise did
Sweden for a long time receive and welcome a large share of the newly
arrived refugees. Chancellor Merkel’s famous remark on August 31,
2015: ‘Wir haben so vieles geschafft – wir schaffen das’ (we have managed
so many things—we can do this) (Merkel 2015; also Delcker 2016) came
to represent both the optimism and the pessimism of the European states
and illustrates the growing polarization taking place at the time. The
truth is that the initial moment of ‘opening’ was immediately followed
by multiple ‘closures’, including border controls, tightening of asylum
law, and deterrence policies. The immigrant-skeptical Alternative für

Deutschland (AfD) got more than 13% of the votes in the 2017 general
election. Authorities have released numbers showing that hundreds of
asylum seekers and refugees were injured in more than 3500 attacks on
them and their shelters in 2016 (Cullen and Cullinane 2017). Germany
is just one example of the internal polarization that can be found all over
Europe. What happened across Europe was a ‘race to the bottom’ in
terms of developing deterrence policies to prevent refugees from enter-
ing their particular country. The refugee crisis caused a ‘domino effect’
when the migrant/refugee flows advanced from the southern and south-
east part of Europe toward Central and Northern Europe. Within a very
short time, most of the EU member states claimed that they were unable
to cope with the situation and they found themselves in states of emer-
gency which called for—but also allowed for—exceptional measures, in
reality breaching the principles of the Schengen agreement. Free mobil-
ity was de facto canceled. Tensions arose around specific internal borders
such as the French–Italian one, the German–Austrian, the Slovenian–
Austrian, the German–Danish, and the Danish–Swedish borders, and
border controls were re-installed. Some EU member states were already
constructing fences (e.g., Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, Slovenia). Some
countries uploaded videos displaying the harshness of their treatment of
incoming refugees and suggested that the refugees looked elsewhere.3
Seen from an EU perspective, the worst aspect was that the EU had
lost its legitimacy and was met by a lack of trust in combination with
a reluctance of governments to cooperate with one another. Although
there clearly was and is a need for an efficient common European asy-
lum system and mechanisms for fair burden-sharing—basically what
Avramopoulos pleaded for—there is no solidarity and collaboration
between the member states to trust the EU to be able to develop this.
Has the EU then responded to ‘the monumental crisis with monumen-
tal solidarity’, to paraphrase the speech by UN Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon? The answer is obviously no. Europe is facing a crisis. A crisis
which can be characterized by different terms: a ‘crisis of democracy’, a
‘crisis of protection’, and ultimately a ‘crisis of solidarity’ within the EU.
The Refugee Crisis and New Solidarities

So why focus on solidarity when everything points to the opposite? This
is the basic inquiry of this book—which solidarities emerge as a response
to and consequence of the refugee crisis? We may indeed have to look
beyond or below the nation-state to understand how such solidarities

are generated and how they may be able to transform and invent social
norms, political subjectivities, and even institutional frameworks. The
‘problem’ with the dominant representation of the crisis—and especially
so when embedded in policy frameworks—is that this narrative carries
with it a methodological nationalism. Rajaram rightly notes that this
‘narrative of crisis mobilizes specific types of intervention’ as the ‘reading
of a crisis at a state’s border sets up a politics of state-led intervention
centered on border control’ (2015). Rajaram continues by arguing that:
A central consequence of this has been a ready willingness of European cit-

izens to subcontract their right to decide on moral and ethical behavior to
the state. This in turn legitimizes to a great extent a vertical, state-centered
politics of intervention toward this mobile population at Europe’s doors.
The narrative of crisis and the consignment of migrants and refugees to
states of exception depoliticizes their situation. (ibid.)
This is a crucial argument. He argues that these vertical state-centered

strategies with depoliticized narratives of crisis coupled with similarly
depoliticized strategies of management and control conceal what is
happening. In short, we should not expect change to come from the
nation-state level. As the discussion of the crisis so far has shown, this
state-centered approach is mainly inward-looking and stops short of
international solidarity. It is this exact problem we try to tackle in this
book by theorizing and giving empirical examples of how solidarities can
challenge this deadlock and provide new imaginaries and alternatives on
different scales.
In our previous work, we theorized on the notion of ‘dissent’
(Jørgensen and Agustín 2015). Our understanding of dissent here
referred to ‘social and political questioning (not just to mere critique
or a need for palliative reforms), to undoing consensus and rendering
excluded actors and struggles visible’ (ibid.: 14). Politics of dissent in our
understanding assumes the relevance of experiences opposed to the dom-
inant order so as to render new actors, struggles, and ways of organiza-
tion visible. Drawing on John Holloway, Chantal Mouffe, and Jacques
Rancière, we argued that politics of dissent challenges post-politics and
re-politicizes the social order by rearticulating disputes and conflicts. We
were particularly interested in what we termed ‘moments of dissent’,
defined as moments which constitute a public situation of the confluence
of multiple singularities and movements and open up the possibility of
articulation of a better connection between the existing struggles (ibid.:

18). In this book, we return to some of these ideas and ask if the refu-
gee crisis presents such a moment? In a later book, Solidarities without
Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration & Civil Society Alliances
from 2016 (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016a), we continued this type of
critical inquiry into social and political transformations and asked how
the emerging solidarities between civil society and refugees could be
explained. Again, we considered the power of the political moment but
also argued that the mobilizations and emerging solidarities could not
be reduced to the political moment. We argued that it is necessary to
consider all those alliances and shaping of spaces of resistance which have
enhanced a different way of understanding migration politics, produced
within the civil society sphere (ibid.). We ended that book by pointing to
different processes which show the complexity of the situation—the ‘ref-
ugee crisis’—and how there is a need for articulating emerging solidar-
ities in order to offer a genuine alternative, namely social solidarity and
institutional solidarity (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016b).
In this book, we re-engage these ideas and investigate how horizon-
tal modes of politics point to the possibility of developing new relations
and solidarities which can provide practical alternatives to the inertia
of the nation-state(s). Like De Genova et al., we seize the ‘crisis’ as an
opportunity for rethinking and reinventing what solidarities can do. We
do not focus on anti-solidarities and reactionary and right-winged pop
ulist governments (e.g., in Hungary and Poland), political parties (see for
instance Cinpoes and Norocel, forthcoming/2019), and movements (e.g.,
Pegida; see Bauder 2016) which present the other side of the coin. We are
not blind to the polarization within the European countries or the growth
of the phenomenon (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016b; Ataç et al. 2016), but
we focus on the progressive role of solidarities in coping with the crisis
and in presenting alternative ways of managing it.
Structure of the Book

The rest of the book is structured around a theoretical framework
applied to the analysis of three cases (Hotel City Plaza, Venligboerne,
and Barcelona as Refuge City). The cases are summarized and compared
in the concluding remarks.
In Chapter 2, ‘Conceptualizing solidarity: An analytical framework’,

we present our conceptualization of solidarity which emerges from the
‘refugee crisis’ and reflects different ways of practicing, organizing, and
articulating solidarity. After reviewing critically how solidarity has been
(mis)used by nation-states and the European Union, our proposal draws
mainly on initiatives by civil society. We conceptualize solidarity as rela-
tional and spatial. Solidarity practices enhance relations between differ-
ent actors and generate political subjectivities and collective identities. At
the same time, they are opposed to what is perceived as unjust politics,
meaning that they are contentious insomuch as they reject those politics.
Solidarity is besides produced in and produces spaces. Through spatial
practices, alliances are built and imaginaries invented, and multi-scalar
relations can be developed by connecting different spaces. Likewise, we
introduce a typology of three types of solidarity (autonomous solidarity,
civic solidarity, and institutional solidarity) which reflects these dynamics
of solidarity as well as the degree of institutionalization.
Chapter 3, ‘Autonomous solidarity: Hotel City Plaza’, introduces the
first case which we analyze as an example of autonomous solidarity on a
local scale. The City Plaza is a self-organized housing project for home-
less refugees in the center of Athens which currently accommodates 400
people. City Plaza Refugee Accommodation Center developed as a con-
crete practical response to the conditions of asylum seekers in Greece and
the lack of responsibility by the Greek state and the international com-
munity in April 2016. The occupation of the hotel is not seen as the only
solution to the refugee crisis but as a micro-example on how solidarity
work can provide alternatives and a ‘utopia’ on how the crisis could be
dealt with. The City Plaza Hotel case is an example of how a local initi-
ative, a single building, can articulate the crisis, i.e., failed management,
and present a new imaginary and a practical alternative.
In Chapter 4, ‘Civic solidarity: Venligboerne’, civic solidarity is illus-
trated by the case of the Danish network Venligboerne (‘friendly neigh-
bors’). It offers an example of a ‘national’ solidarity movement/Refugees
Welcome movement operating on both national and local levels. The
movement insists on a humanitarian approach different from the exclu-
sivist and restrictionist approach taken by the state. The movement also
articulates the commonalities between people, refugees, and Danes alike.
The engagement of Venligboerne is not transformative of the state’s
legal framework but can rather be seen as a necessary supplement or

alternative social framework based on collaboration with the authori-
ties, e.g., reception and asylum centers, municipalities, day centers, and
schools as well as a diverse range of voluntary activities. We also discuss
how civil society becomes part of the refugee crisis in daily acts of soli-
darity constituting a form of civic solidarity.
The third analysis is made in Chapter 5, ‘Institutional solidarity:
Barcelona as Refuge City’, where Barcelona is considered a case for
institutional solidarity. Due to the lack of will from the Spanish gov-
ernment to receive refugees, Barcelona sets up the ‘Barcelona Refuge
City Plan’ to prepare the city to take in refugees. This plan creates an
innovative framework to foster institutional solidarity in which the City
Council maintains a contentious relation with the government and tries
to cooperate with social entities and organizations. The main goal of the
plan is to channel urban solidarity and foster the cooperation with civil
society and the participation of migrants and refugees. The plan also
represents the adaptation to the sense of emergency in 2015 and to the
existing realities of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees in the city.
To overcome the restrictions of the government, Barcelona establishes
a Spanish Refuge Cities network and develops, together with other
European cities, the initiative ‘Solidarity cities’. The underlying idea
is to develop a new multilevel governance where the cities take more
responsibility.
We conclude the book with Chapter 6, ‘Solidarity as political
action. Crime or alternative?’, where we reflect upon the implications
of solidarity as political action. Our argument is that solidarity can be
unfolded as a crime or as an alternative. In the first case, authorities
react against acts of solidarity. In the second case, we argue that civil
society tries to overcome the constraints of authorities and through
infrastructures of dissent develop social and political alternatives
and radical imaginaries. On the basis of a theoretical framework out-
lining solidarity as relational (constituting/constituted by relations
and contestation) and spatial (constituting/constituted by space and
scale), we conclude on how the three forms of solidarity analyzed in
this book (autonomous solidarity—Hotel City Plaza; civic solidarity—
Venligboerne; institutional solidarity—Barcelona as Refuge City) offer
responses to the ‘refugee crisis’.
Notes
1. This quotation was pointed out to us by Casas-Cortes et al. 2015.
2. In 1992–1993, more than 28,000 spontaneous asylum seekers arrived in
Denmark of which most ended up actually getting asylum. In 2015–2016,
around 27,000 spontaneous asylum seekers entered Denmark of which
some 15,000 were offered asylum.
3. A particularly crude example can be found from this Hungarian municipal-
ity, even showing alternate routes on a map: ‘Message to illegal immigrants
from Hungary’, HVIM1920, published September 16, 2015; accessed
April 29, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgJRjy2Xc0c&fea-
ture=youtu.be.
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CHAPTER 2
Conceptualizing Solidarity. An Analytical

Framework
Abstract  This chapter introduces a conceptualization of solidarity which

emerges from the ‘refugee crisis’ and reflects different ways of practicing,
organizing, and articulating solidarity. In opposition to the solidary claims
made by states (corresponding mainly to their national interests) and by
the European Union, a perspective rooted in civil society is assumed here.
Solidarity has mainly two dimensions: relational and spatial. Solidarity
enhances relations between different actors and generates political subjec-
tivities and collective identities. At the same time, it is opposed to what
is perceived as unjust politics, meaning that it is also contentious inso-
much as it rejects those politics. Solidarity is besides produced in and pro-
duces spaces. Through spatial practices, alliances are built and imaginaries
invented and multi-scalar relations can be developed by connecting dif-
ferent spaces. We present a typology of three types of solidarity (autono-
mous solidarity, civic solidarity, and institutional solidarity) which reflects
these dynamics of solidarity as well as the degree of institutionalization.
Keywords  ‘refugee crisis’ · Institutionalization · Commoning

Scales · Autonomous solidarity · Civic solidarity · Institutional
solidarity

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8_2
Does the crisis provoke solidarity? Or put in other terms, does the ‘refugee
crisis’ lead to the ‘crisis of solidarity’? Solidarity can easily be conceived as a
response to the crisis, but we should be aware of its uses and implications.
Surely, solidarity emerges as one of the responses to the crisis, and solidar-
ity can likewise be in crisis. But we need to have a clear conceptualization
of what solidarity is and what it is not, at least if solidarity is to be taken
seriously with a view to shaping and fostering political and social change.
The radical right-wing organization ‘Hogar Social Madrid’, inspired
by the Italian ‘Casa Pound’, has claimed to practice solidarity against
the impoverishment of the population after the economic crisis. In the
Madrilian neighborhood of Tetuán, ‘Hogar Social Madrid’ distributed
free food only to Spanish citizens. They also placed a banner with the
motto ‘Spaniards Welcome’ at the top of the ‘Refugees Welcome’ ban-
ner placed by the municipality. Sometime before, they protested on the
streets and yelled ‘Refugees, no; Spaniards, yes’. They even protested
against the multinational Starbucks for hiring refugees. They printed
stickers copying the logo of Starbucks but renaming it as ‘Starburka ref-
ugees’ and added the sentence: ‘Here refugees are being hired whilst
you are unemployed’ (in Desalambre 2017). Solidarity, as understood by
Hogar Social, is applicable only to one group and against another, but,
above all, it is applied to a preexisting and fixed identity which is rein-
forced by their solidarity in-group actions.
The EU advanced the use of solidarity as a way of demanding ‘respon-
sibility’ of the member states. Vis-à-vis the countries which contested
the EU policy of refugee quotas and their refusal to relocate asylum
seekers, solidarity acquires, in the words of Dimitris Avramopoulos, the
European Migration Commissioner, the meaning of a ‘rights and obli-
gations’ exchange: ‘It is time to be united and show full solidarity. The
door remains, it is still open, and we should convince all member states
to fulfil their commitments’ (in Stone 2017). European Commission
President Jean-Claude Juncker was even more straightforward in a letter
to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán where Juncker reminds Orbán
that ‘Hungary receives EU subsidies amounting to more than 3 percent
of its GDP each year’. ‘Solidarity is not an à-la-carte dish’, he adds, but
rather ‘a two-way street. There are times in which member states may
expect to receive support, and times in which they, in turn, should stand
ready to contribute’ (in Heath 2017). Solidarity (or the lack thereof) ends
up being an exchange of numbers, whether those numbers are persons
or grants. Solidarity between states within the EU framework becomes
blurred and is instead replaced by national or particular interests.
2 CONCEPTUALIZING SOLIDARITY. AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK 25
The activist and freelance journalist Marienna Pope-Weidemann wrote

in a column opinion about her experience as a volunteer in Greece. She
tells us another story, different from the one that is usually told, and the
one that is shown in mainstream media. Thousands of volunteers from
all nations, ages, and cultures went to the borderlands to do what pol-
iticians and aid agencies did not. Being in Camp Moria was for Pope-
Weidemann part of a collective learning process and when she was forced
to return to the UK, she tried to continue to find ways of supporting
refugees. However, she experienced the apathy and discrimination at
home, the abstraction about migration in the mass media, which con-
trasted with her lived experienced in Greece. Political change is thus also
needed at home. Solidarity consists in connecting ‘here’ and ‘there’:
‘Work that builds practical solidarity infrastructure and political resistance
which work together, from the heartlands to the borderlands, outlines
the way forward’ (Pope-Weidemann 2016). It is about supporting refu-
gees abroad and also about including migrants and asylum seekers as part
of the local communities.
Solidarity practices can, in all, connect different places or geographies
and enable relations which go beyond national borders but without
having anything to do with nation-states’ own interests. In few words,
solidarity, as we conceive it, must expand the sense of community (and
not restrict it to the preexisting ‘chosen’ ones), move beyond borders
(but without reproducing the logics of national borders), and be pro-
duced from below (from the realities which do not correspond with
the numbers presented by politicians or the abstraction represented by
mainstream media).
Although the concept of solidarity is being used increasingly in rela-
tion to the ‘refugee crisis’, it is seldom defined what it is and how it
works. Solidarity is overloaded and in that sense is a ‘floating signifier’,
i.e., a signifier that is open to continual contestation. Basically, it can
mean what the dominant antagonist wants it to mean in the particular
situation. Just like the crisis itself, solidarity is also a representation. In
our understanding, solidarity is a relational practice, and in opposition
to reductionisms or strategic emptiness, solidarity is contentious; emerges
strongly in moments or conjunctures; is generative of political subjectivities
and collective identities; entails alliance building among diverse actors; is
inventive of new imaginaries; is situated in space and time and organized
in multi-scalar relations; and it is linked in different ways to institutions.
We summarize these characteristics by arguing that solidarity is relational
and spatial (Fig. 2.1). As a relational phenomenon, collective identities
RELATIONS SPACE
Which kind of social relations, Where is solidarity produced (from
collective identities, political institutional to appropriated and
subjectivities? everyday spaces)?
Relational SOLIDARITY Spatial
SCALE
CONTENTION
Which scales are connected (local,
Whom or what is solidarity
national, trans-local or
opposed to?
international)?
Fig. 2.1 Solidarity. An analytical framework
and political subjectivities emerge from solidarity practices, and conten-

tion is also a consequence of the politics that solidarity movements reject.
As a spatial ditto, solidarities are shaped and shape spaces in which social
relations are produced, and they can upscale and connect different spaces
and geographies through trans-local networks and imaginaries. In this
chapter, we outline these aspects and develop a framework for analyzing
solidarity and the ‘refugee crisis’.
Solidarity as Contentious
Different forms of solidarity have been put forth within the EU
framework. The EU refugee relocation scheme from 2015 to 2017,
for instance, is an attempt to institutionalize solidarity between EU
member states. This understanding of solidarity draws on an idea of
political solidarity as new intergovernmental settings or laws that
should distribute the fair share of refugees among EU member states
(Wallaschek 2017). This type of political ‘solidarity’ in theory strength-
ens the bonds between the EU member states and secures a ‘fair’ dis-
tribution of refugees among the member states based on principles of
solidarity. It designates an internal solidarity between member states
which at the same time is exclusive of the refugees who have no voice
in this framing. Solidarity in this sense becomes exclusionary instead
of inclusionary and progressive. It is grounded in nation-state bor-

ders (restricting any type of transnational solidarity), and the resulting
agency is limited to governments (leaving no room for civil society).
In practice, the redistribution scheme was also a failure as discussed in
Chapter 1.
The principle of solidarity was contested by several member states.
In the UK, David Cameron resisted the redistributing scheme and quo-
tas as he argued it would encourage people to come to Europe. ‘We’re
saying we will play our part in resettling those people who need reset-
tling, but we’ll take you from refugee camps rather than encourage
people to make this dangerous, potentially lethal journey’ (Cameron in
The Telegraph, September 4, 2015; here taken from Koca 2016: 98). In
Denmark, the Social Democrats in February 2018 took a similar posi-
tion. In their position paper ‘An immigration policy uniting Denmark’
(En udlændingepolitik der samler Danmark), they launch their own ver-
sion of what the party believes to be a ‘necessary’, ‘humane’, ‘realistic’,
and ‘solidary’ foreigners’ policy (Socialdemokratiet 2018). The proposal
suggests to stop the possibility of applying for asylum in Denmark and
only accept asylum seekers who have applied in special centers set up
in Northern Africa and elsewhere outside the EU. This is followed up
by a fixed number of people who can be allowed in, which—including
family reunification—would be ‘closer to 1,000 than 10,000’ people,
as a spokesperson from the party stated (Redder 2018). Leader of the
party Mette Frederiksen claims that ‘the situation is that more refugees
have arrived in Europe than we can cope with. But the majority of the
world’s refugees we do not help at all’ (Cordsen 2018). Like the British
example, this shows an inward-looking understanding of solidarity
which in practical terms is exclusive toward refugees. Instead of showing
solidarity with refugees, the claim for solidarity is used to justify security
measures at the national and European borders. As Stefan Wallaschek
points out, Poland is another good example of this rationale of secu-
ritization (2017). Former Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz stated at
the EU summit in Brussels: ‘Our solidarity primarily rests upon strongly
supporting Frontex. We will send our border police officers’ (quoted
from Wallaschek, ibid.). Poland and Hungary have stretched the con-
cept of solidarity further by calling for ‘flexible solidarity’ mechanisms
within the EU (Ardittis 2016).
We use these examples to problematize any taken-for-granted notions

of solidarity which have been used in relation to the ‘refugee crisis’.
Solidarity has been used as an attempt to force an (inexistent) political
common goal and cover up the internal disagreements which impede
it. Solidarity is besides reduced to a strategic calculation of rights and
obligations or, in economic terms, debt and benefits. Solidarity consists
in calculating the number of refugees each country has the obligation
to take. This conception responds to the negotiation of national inter-
ests and the appropriation of solidarity agency by the states. Solidarity
is contained within the terrain of governments’ politics, which hinders
the creative potential of solidarity to imagine other social and political
alternatives.
This constitution of solidarity from above is contested by other soli-
dary practices. Apart from the state-centric solidarity, we think that other
forms of solidarity can lead to exclusion or elimination of any political
value, i.e., attempts to define solidarity in cultural terms as a specific set
of values, or in social terms by framing the Refugees Welcome movement
as assistance or even as charity. In our reading, solidarity is contentious
at least at two levels: First, it shapes new forms of politics and political
subjectification (Featherstone and Karaliotas 2018) which contest exist-
ing modes of exclusion and invisibilization; and second, it struggles
with other meanings of solidarity which are hierarchical or exclusionary
(both in the ways in which they are forged and in the consequences of
the resulting identities). Thus, solidarity is itself a battlefield concerning
which type of solidarity should prevail and how, constituting the possi-
bility of articulating and imagining alternatives. The question that fol-
lows is thus how do these solidarities emerge and, particularly, how is the
‘refugee crisis’ connected with the refugee solidarity movement?
Crisis as a Moment of Change

As we have written elsewhere, we can identify turning points during the
long summer of migration which also point toward the articulation and
practices of developing inclusive political communities (Agustín and
Jørgensen 2016a). September 12, 2015, marks one such important day
for an emerging solidarity movement. In more than 85 cities in 30 coun-
tries across Europe, hundreds of thousands of protesters marched under
banners of ‘Refugees Welcome’ and ‘Europe Says Welcome’. Citizens par-
ticipated in marches, demonstrations, and other events during the day of
action. The message was very clear: Refugees are welcome here. In differ-
ent countries, initiatives have sprung up developing new forms of every-
day politics and acts of solidarity. The examples are many ranging from the
Austrian lorry drivers who joined a campaign to pick up refugees stranded
in Budapest to locally organized mobilizations which provided support
for arriving refugees, donating food, water, clothes, and other supplies to
those in need. Across Europe (as well as outside of Europe), we see ‘ref-
ugee crisis’ being met with the emergence of a ‘welcoming culture’ (e.g.,
Ataç 2016; Danielzik et al. 2016; Hamann and Karakayali 2016; Hann
2015; Koca 2016; Zamponi 2018). These solidarity mobilizations have
continued after 2015. In Germany, we can find several surveys, indicating
that between 10 and 20% of Germany’s adult population have joined sol-
idarity/Refugees Welcome initiatives and projects aimed to help refugees
since August 2015 (Ahrens 2015; Bertelsmann-Stiftung 2017; Hamann
and Karakayali 2016; SI EKD 2016).
Donatella Della Porta (2018) points out that the humanitarian cri-
sis in 2016 intensified the perception that the institutional framework,
at all its levels, was incapable of addressing the situation of emergency.
Della Porta adds that ‘political opportunities are, therefore, to be located
within a critical juncture that challenged existing institutions’ (Della
Porta 2018: 6). The emergence of a ‘welcoming culture’ can be seen in
light of the political opportunities opened up by the crisis and the inca-
pacity of both member states and the EU to offer a coherent and satis-
factory solution. Stuart Hall comments, in a conversation with Doreen
Massey, that crises are moments of potential change, but without a given
resolution. A conjuncture implies transitions between political moments
and can be defined, according to Hall, as ‘a period during which the
different social, political, economic and ideological contradictions that
are at work in society come together to give it a specific and distinctive
shape’ (Hall and Massey 2010: 57).
Solidarity, in the conjuncture of the economic crisis and the ‘refugee
crisis’, can contribute to developing the political opportunities available
into alternatives. Based on Massey’s idea of articulating conjunctures
in distinctive and productive ways, David Featherstone and Lazaros
Karaliotas (2018) highlight the importance of acknowledging the log-
ics of the crisis as well as their effects on different groups to ‘envision
articulations of solidarities/alternatives across differences in the context
of the European crisis’ (Featherstone and Karaliotas 2018: 294). The
challenges brought in within this conjuncture are enormous: From the
return of nationalism and xenophobia to the division and fragmentation

of precarious classes. However, the articulation of an alternative (or bet-
ter yet, alternatives in plural) is already present in many of the organ-
izations and movements that, from self-organization to the renewal of
institutions, are giving shape to their diverse responses.
Generation of New Collective Identities

Solidarities produce new ways of configuring political relations and spaces.
Ruptures and moments can facilitate new mobilizations. As just dis-
cussed, the ‘refugee crisis’ has strengthened the refugee solidarity move-
ment. It is important to emphasize that, although solidarity may connect
to experiences and practices of the past. Theodoros Karyotis, for instance,
shows how the current movement of people in solidarity in Greece has
links back to the December 2008 urban struggles that emerged after the
police killed a teenager and sparked a revolt (2017). He claims that the
organizing processes which took place then led to the birth of thousands
of collectives, self-managed squats, and social centers and politicized a
whole new generation schooled in horizontalism, solidarity, and direct
action tactics. The same organizing processes, tools, tactics, and prac-
tices are being used today in the refugee solidarity movement. However,
as Featherstone claims, ‘solidarities, then, are not just part of the binding
together of the pre-existing communities. They can be much more active
in shaping political contestation than this suggests’ (2012: 7).
Solidarities are central to the formation of transformative political sub-
jectivities. Practices of solidarity can include the ones excluded in existing
polities, or they may enact new alternatives by generating entirely new
subject identities (Bauder 2016a: 258). Some movements or platforms,
such as the Transnational Social Strike (TSS), attempt to articulate the
different existing struggles by identifying their commonalities. They hold
austerity and neoliberal politics responsible for the increasing process of
precarization which is affecting many social groups. Therefore, a new
political subjectification emerges to contest the new form of domination
through precarization and borders (the model which has been adapted
by the EU). Far from being aggregations of local struggles or move-
ments, the goal is rather to shape a common subjectivity. Besides, the
TSS proposes that a new subject must emerge starting from the migrants
and refugees who are exposed to vulnerability and violence to a higher
degree but at the same time incarnate the injustice and arbitrariness of
the labor and border systems. Migrants make the rejection of neoliber-
alism visible and open up the possibility of shaping a new subjectivity,
that of those suffering from increasing precariousness. As is clear in this
case, solidarity goes beyond the empathetic view and contributes to shap-
ing a common struggle with the goal of overcoming labor and border
divisions.
Although crises make the contradictions of the time visible and facil-
itate the shaping of alternatives, mobilizations are not only moments of
articulation and production of solidarities. Austerity politics or the EU’s
regime on refugees is also being questioned by the movements that
‘open up new pathways into alternatives to the neoliberal one and pro-
cesses of reconfiguration of bottom-up emancipatory agency and grass-
roots creativity’ (Arampatzi 2018: 54). The spaces of solidarity, both in
mobilizations and everyday practices, transform the preexisting solidarity
and create the possibility of forging new social alliances. One dynamic of
collective identity-making happens, indeed, through alliance building.
Building Social Alliances

Alliance building is a crucial aspect of solidarity. Alliances have a role in
shaping ‘impossible activism’, as Peter Nyers (2003) has termed it, i.e.,
migrants as non-citizens have no right to a speaking position, but they
claim it nevertheless and create this position for themselves. Alliance
building helps establish that position and makes migrants’ claims-making
visible and legitimate. Although there are commonalities, we should not
generalize how such alliances emerge and develop, however, but situate
each in its particular context.
Class alliances are necessary to fight the hegemonic system, and they
imply an understanding of how inequalities affect different classes and the
responsibility of the ruling classes therein. The heterogeneity of political
actors can only converge in a complex social composition if they manage
to identify the diverse oppressive effects of the dominant order. This plu-
rality generates a relation of solidarity that benefits all parties as the pos-
sibility of challenging the system is enhanced. Thus, solidarity becomes
essential in promoting social change from civil society (Agustín and
Jørgensen 2016a). Solidarity cannot precede political actors, nor can polit-
ical actors impose their identities or interests upon others. The only way to
ensure that solidarity is going to be in the ‘interest’ of all involved actors is
that their positions are mutually constitutive (Featherstone 2012).
Over the last years, we have seen several different alliances emerge as a
response to a concrete situation or conflict. In Istanbul, for instance, the
2013 so-called Gezi Park protests at Taksim Square were carried out by a
very heterogeneous alliance. A Turkish macroeconomic model based on
urban growth and development implemented through internationaliza-
tion and neoliberalization; standardization of public spaces; privatization;
gentrification; and evictions led to intense urban protests against an urban
regeneration project affecting these two public spaces. The protests united
very different actors such as white-collar professionals, trade unions, polit-
ical parties, urban social movements, grassroots groups, football club sup-
porters, and cultural, religious, and artistic organizations with claims of
diversity, public space ownership, self-government, and anti-capitalist ideas
(Şenses and Özcan 2016). Another example is the Canadian No One is
Illegal (NOII) movement. It was established as a response to the illegaliza-
tion of migrants, but the solidarity work taking place also expresses solidar-
ity with other groups and individuals suffering from structural oppression
(Bauder 2016b). The alliance is constituted by labor unions, social justice
groups, refugee justice groups, poverty advocates, indigenous groups, and
other groups working against ethnic, racial, sexual, etc., repression (ibid.).
The group works on different scales. For instance, it not only tries to pre-
vent deportation of individual migrants but also partakes in the solidarity
city (Toronto) group which helped develop the institutional framework for
Toronto as a sanctuary city (Bauder 2017a).
Oppositely, we should also be careful of not making generalizations
and ‘over-sell’ the composition and power of alliances. Taking, for
instance, the recent (late 2017/early 2018) anti-government protests in
Iran, there is a tendency to see this by default as an alliance between the
working class and ethnic minorities (as, for instance, done by Mohseni
2018). However, a more careful reading shows that the various ethnic
minorities were not active in the protests. There have been few if any
protests among the Baluchis, Arabs, and Turkmenians and only a few
among the Azerians (the largest non-Persian group in Iran), and in
Kurdistan, there has been a division between urban industrial workers
and the precarious labor force in the rural parts (Hawramy 2018). As
a scholar of contemporary Iranian politics asks—why did these ethnic
minorities not take part in the protests?1
NOII differs from the examples from both Istanbul and Tehran. The
border spectacle creating the illegalization of migrants (in Canada and
elsewhere) here becomes the bridge around which ‘people on either sides
of the borders, non-citizen migrants along with citizens, come together
in solidarity and support for migrants’ rights’—what Kim Rygiel terms

‘bordering solidarity’ (Rygiel et al. 2015: 1). This particular type of soli-
darity and alliance building has been characteristic of the response to the
refugee crisis. It develops both at the geographical borders as migrant
solidarity networks seeking to assist people on each side of the border
and in the transnational solidarity network built up by activists in one
country and connected with like-minded groups across Europe. We see,
for instance, groups in different European cities organizing fund-raisers
and soli-parties to support (financially and morally) the Hotel City Plaza
in Athens.2 Alliances have been decisive for shaping the outcome of the
solidarity formation and practices as well as in shaping shared political
subjectivities. These alliances are not necessarily identical but must be sit-
uated and analyzed in their particular space, scale, and political context.
Featherstone (2012) has argued that solidarity as practice means that it
is not only a matter of well-defined identities and ideas, but also an active
process in which different political struggles are connected.
Finally, we will also stress that alliances are not per se progressive or
empowering for migrant solidarity. They can indeed have detrimental
effects as well. Drawing again on our previous work on solidarity, alli-
ances, and civil society (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016a), we argue that we
also find the emergence of ‘misplaced’ alliances. In such, diverse groups
also unite but instead of constructing solidarity with other groups in sim-
ilar states of precariousness, for example, migrant workers, the working
class is attracted to the neofascist discourse promising solutions to unem-
ployment, social dumping, and so on by claiming that it is the migrants
who are to blame for all things bad (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016b).
Misplaced alliances hinder the recognition of a subaltern, albeit heter-
ogeneous, class and set the agenda for homogeneity as the main goal,
ignoring the consequences of neoliberal globalization and the capitalist
system. We see specific social actors such as trade unions as representa
tives of the working class, prioritizing misplaced alliances that are pre-
judicial to immigrants’ rights in their attempts to secure the national
working class by national protectionism. A related example is that of
Hogar Social, which we presented above. In this case, the response to
the crisis is grounded in the sense that the impoverishment provoked by
the crisis leads to an alliance where the idea of the precarious class is sub-
ordinated to the national identity. Therefore, and due to the predom-
inance of nationality as the main principle of solidarity, class alliance is
limited to one national group and is exclusionary in relation to migrants,
despite the fact that all suffer from the consequences of austerity policies.
Alternatives—Commoning and Imaginaries
Another crucial point we want to emphasize when seeking to understand
solidarity is that it is inventive of new alternatives and imaginaries. It is
easy to find pessimistic interpretations of the dynamics and outcome of
crises. David Harvey argues that ‘crises are essential to the reproduc-
tion of capitalism. It is in the course of crises that the instabilities of
capitalism are confronted, reshaped and re-engineered to create a new
version of what capitalism is about’ (Harvey 2014: ix). The ‘refugee cri-
sis’ is without doubt entangled with the political economy of neoliberal
globalization. Thus, the ‘refugee crisis’ is not just about human flows,
humanitarian concerns, and securitization but likewise part of a global
economy where the migrant precariat is very functional in producing
cheap exploitable labor. However, as we have seen in terms of responses
to the financial crisis (to put it in short), we also see how a crisis can
actually spur the development of new relations and solutions.
Massimo de Angelis brings in the notion of commons in relation to
the crisis, since the economic crisis ‘is a capitalist crisis of social stabil-
ity, not a simple recession’. He goes on to suggest that capital faces an
‘impasse’ that consists of the devastation of systems of social reproduc-
tion, and as a response to this, he suggests the commons as a system
that could ‘create a social basis for alternative ways of articulating social
production, independent from capital and its prerogatives’ (de Angelis
2012). The commons, or commoning spaces, go beyond defining collec-
tive practices and define likewise ‘forms of social relations through which
collective subjects of commoning are being shaped’ (Stavrides 2016: 49).
In other words, commoning activates processes of identity-opening, or
as we referenced, the shaping of new political subjectivities. Thus, new-
comers, as pointed out by Stavrides, transform community not because
they have to become integrated but because they are also co-producers
of the common world. This perspective, where solidarity is based on the
Rancerian notion of equality, values the creative dimension of solidarity
placed both in the already-existing members of the community and the
newcomers (such as refugees). All the subjects involved are producers of
the commons and, at the same time, expand the sense of community.
However, by acknowledging that solidarities are ‘inventive’, that they
produce new configurations of political relations, political subjectivi-
ties, and spaces, we also include the imaginations and practices they may
produce. Solidarity is not a given. This position opens up the possibility
for reading the diversity of struggles and for analyzing the formation of
alliances in civil society as constitutive, productive and basically as politics

(Agustín and Jørgensen 2016a). In that sense, our understanding of sol-
idarities comes close to Isin’s understanding of ‘acts of citizenship’. He
defines these as ‘those acts that transform forms (orientations, strategies,
technologies) and modes (citizens, strangers, outsiders, aliens) of being
political by bringing into being new actors as activist citizens (that is,
claimants of rights) through creating or transforming sites and stretching
scales’ (Isin 2009: 383).
As mentioned above, solidarity is contentious and as such a counter-
hegemonic social and political mode of action which can unify diverse
actors to come together to challenge authorities ‘in order to promote
and enact alternative imaginaries’ (as Leitner et al. describe contentions
politics 2008: 157). The potential and ability to not only envision but
also enact alternative imaginaries are another important aspect of sol-
idarity and one which is decisive for analyzing how solidarity responds
to the ‘refugee crisis’. Hotel City Plaza, Venligboerne, and Barcelona as
Refuge City are all examples of how alternative imaginations are enacted.
Understanding radical alternatives has been a theme in urban studies
for a long time (for instance, Lefebvre, Marcuse, Purcell, and others).
Especially, the city has been perceived as an open space of imagination:
what Harvey has called ‘spaces of hope’ (2000). The imaginaries cre-
ated through acts of solidarity go beyond the scale of the city, however.
Following Max Haiven and Alex Khasnabish’s program for studying
social movements in the age of austerity, we see radical imagination as
the ability to imagine the world, life, and social institutions not as they
are but as they might otherwise be (2014). They argue that ‘[t]he radical
imagination is not just about dreaming of different futures. It’s about
bringing those possibilities back from the future to work on the present,
to inspire action and new forms of solidarity today’ (ibid.: 3). We see the
solidarity groups, movement, and networks developing as a response to
the ‘refugee crisis’ to hold the same role and ability.
Space and Multi-Scale
As we have already argued, solidarities are spatially produced. Athina
Arampatzi actually refers to ‘urban solidarity spaces’ as ‘the spatial prac-
tices of solidarity and struggle that unfold at the territorial, social and
economy levels, and aims to further understandings of how people and
communities contest crises’ (2017: 2156). Furthermore, solidarities
respond to geographies of resistance, implying that alliances and practices

of solidarity are constituted at different scales, ranging from the local to
the global. Following Antonio Gramsci, Bob Jessop (2007) argues that
the analysis of social forces and their alliances must be spatialized. In
practice, this requires acknowledging and emphasizing interconnection
between all scales: local, regional, national, international, and transna-
tional. Scale is an important aspect of understanding solidarity. Moreover,
it is connected to the (possible) institutionalizations and materiality of
solidarity. Focusing on scale makes it possible to understand why spe-
cific actors and alliances create the responses they do to the ‘refugee cri-
sis’. Scaling theory has been a central focus within urban studies (Bauder
2016b; Brenner 1999). Margit Fauser, investigating the nexus between
urban studies and border studies, argues that re-territorialization and
rescaling are constitutive elements in globalization. She argues that ‘the
urban scale [is] not simply seen as nested, subordinated, and bounded
within the national but rather as contested, constructed, and dynamically
changing, including its relationship to the national scale’ and furthermore
contends that ‘[u]rban border spaces are thus one element in the re-
scalarization of border and power’ (2017: 2). This is worth emphasizing as
it informs us that scale cannot simply be analytically translated with ‘level’.
Featherstone uses the term ‘nationed geographies of crisis’ to ‘suggest
ways in which the nation is reasserted as the primary locus through which
grievances are articulated and envisioned’ (Featherstone 2015: 21). Such
an articulation usually generates exclusionary articulations of the nation,
as it happens when misplaced alliances are the basis for supposed alter-
natives to neoliberalism. In this regard, trans-local solidarity networks,
connecting local and international geographies, involve encounters tran-
scending national borders (Agustín 2017) and are essential to re-drawing
progressive cartographies ‘and relate to diverse internationalist trajectories
and connections’ (Featherstone and Karaliotas 2018: 299).
Furthermore, focusing on scales entails that we investigate how social
relations are forged between actors and authorities in different govern-
ance structures which can be in conflict with the state level and become
an alternative to the ‘nationed geographies’. Taking the notion of sanctu-
ary cities as an example, we can here see a rescaling of the border toward
the urban (or local) scale, involving local authorities and non-state actors
in urban space. Sanctuary cities resist and oppose the more restrictive
forces on the national or supranational scale that work against unauthor-
ized migrants and refugees through illegalization (Fauser 2017; Ridgley
2008). Harald Bauder furthermore argues that ‘sanctuary cities resemble
a strategy of scale-switching’, ‘they undermine (but do not transform) fed-

eral immigration laws and policies by enacting contradictory municipal
laws and policies’, and create a ‘de facto regularization program from the
ground up’ (2017a: 261). They switch from the national to the urban scale
by recognizing migrants through their domicile, their urban p resence,
rather than excluding them based on their national status (as ‘illegal’).
Bauder in another article contends that ‘[t]he city, not the national, is the
scale that defines community’ (Bauder 2017b). We can identify this prac-
tice not only in sanctuary cities in North America but also in the devel-
opment of solidarity cities or Refuge Cities in Europe. At other times,
though, we see community defined at other scales as, for instance, with
the Welcoming Refugee movements finding a space between established
civil society and authorities on both local and national scales. Formations
of alliances are situated in history and space and must be analyzed with
respect to the multi-scalar forms of organizing. The 2011 protests across
Europe appropriated space through encampments in order to give visibil-
ity to alternative ways of conceiving and practicing democracy (Agustín
and Jørgensen 2016a). We see the same happening today with the soli-
darity responses to the ‘refugee crisis’. Rescaling a conflict thus is a tactical
maneuver for the actors involved.
Solidarity and Institutions
There are several ways of defining institutions, although we perceive
that, at least in the literature on social movements and solidarity, there
is a tendency to contrast institutions to mobilization. As a consequence,
other interpretations of the shaping and role of ‘institutions’ put them
aside and exclude progressive conceptualizations of institutions (Agustín
2015; Figart 2017) where the institutional is rooted in social practices.
Michael Hardt, in a discussion with John Holloway (2012), claims that
the concern for institutions originates in the need for organizations.
Spontaneity, as in revolts or moments of mobilization, is an initial start-
ing point, but it is not enough. Alan Sears even introduces the term
‘infrastructure of dissent’, quite close to our understanding of connect-
ing solidarity and institutions, to refer to ‘the range of formal and infor-
mal organizations through which we develop our capacities to analyze
(mapping the system), communicate (through official and alternative
media channels), and take strategic action in real solidarity’ (Sears 2011).
There is, in any case, a need to be organized and gain continuity which is
achieved through the creation and renewal of institutions.
Solidarity movements can maintain a contentious or consensual

approach to institutions, but the main point here is that ‘renouncing
the creation or renewal of institutions would reduce the impact of dis-
sent and the possibility of social change in which the voices of excluded
groups are taken into account’ (Jørgensen and Agustín 2015: 16). Nor
does reducing all institutions to state institutions help to account for the
role that solidarity movements can play in giving stability and continuity
to social struggles and achieving different degrees of institutionalization.
Despite the strength of the hegemonic discourse on the ‘refugee crisis’,
responding to economic and political interests, we do not think that the
institutional impact (from changes at the local level to the inventions of
new institutions) of such strong solidarity counter-hegemonic move-
ments can be ignored. Therefore, our conception of institutions applies
both to existing institutions (with their history and constraints; but also
the potentials offered by the conjuncture) and the shaping of new ones
(grounded in social and everyday practices). In this sense, institutions
entail a dual dimension: They ‘are produced to constitute processes of
recognition and collective acceptance, but also processes of creating social
meaning in which those institutions make sense and can be accepted as
having done so’ (Agustín 2015: 9–10). Besides acknowledging existing
norms and rules, institutions connect with a symbolic dimension con-
sisting in creating alternative imaginaries. As referred to above, solidarity
and the articulation of geographies of resistance are essential to imagining
an alternative world and generating social relations and practices which
become strongly organized and, consequently, institutional.
A dynamic approach to institutions, open to civil society, can be seen,
for instance, in the role played by public libraries or even the creation of
‘libraries of the common’. Libraries can be considered ‘a safe space where
everyone has access to knowledge and information, regardless of their
ethnic origin’ (Princh 2017). The public libraries in many European
countries offer themselves to contribute to expanding the ‘welcoming
culture’. Cologne Public Library creates, for instance, the Sprachraum
(a language space) as an initiative of the director, Hanne Vogt, to set up
a space exclusively for refugees. The space is managed by volunteers who
contribute to making it a social and educational space. Significantly, Vogt
conceives the library as ‘a space that belongs to the public’ (in Davies
2017), which implies a contestation of other uses of the ‘public’. The
‘public’ in this sense must respond to the needs of asylum seekers and
refugees which expand the role of library not only as institution but also
a function which the public must fulfill.
Another interesting example is ECHO (Education.Community.Hope.

Opportunity) Refugee Library which is self-defined as a mobile library
and an educational hub for asylum seekers and refugees in Greece. The
aim of ECHO is ‘to provide a quiet space, amid the upheaval and uncer-
tainty, where people could use their time rather than just fill it’ (Sheather
2017). After starting a library in a camp in Northern Greece, they found
out that camps can easily close and communities have to be moved.
Thus, they decided to launch the ‘mobile’ library in 2016 to adapt to
this unstable and changing institutional context. The stay in camps can-
not be disembedded from education and labor, since the asylum seek-
ers, from children to adults, lose a valuable period of their life to get
education or be prepared for the labor market. The group of ECHO
volunteers offer books and online resources to ‘foster education and
community-led initiatives within refugee camps in Greece’ (ECHO for
Refugees 2017). This grassroots initiative is important to communing
the camps and promoting practices which redefine community and its
relations in a restrictive space.
Institutions can be connected with solidarity in progressive ways by
putting the emphasis on the continuity and stability which social prac-
tices acquire. We assume this position to show the intersections in what
is usually attributed to the social and the institutional. It does not mean,
of course, that institutions cannot appropriate solidarity and eliminate
the potential and creativity of new social relations. That was actually our
idea by highlighting how member states and the EU are using solidarity
in an ‘institutional sense’ which needs to be contested.
Solidarity and the Crisis: Three Types of Solidarity

At this point, we want to introduce our categorization of types of soli-
darity which emerge from the ‘refugee crisis’ and reflect different ways of
practicing, organizing, and articulating solidarity. Through this typology,
we show how the ‘crisis of solidarity’ was rather a crisis of states or, in
other terms, of institutionalized solidarity (i.e., the incapability of exist-
ing institutions to develop or support forms of solidarity). We do not see
these categories as fixed or completely coherent. They are fluent and can
be open to changes and even contradictions. In any case, they must not be
seen as idealized forms of solidarity but rather as rooted in practices and
the conjuncture provoked by the economic and ‘refugee’ crises. Taking
a spatial approach, we consider the spaces of solidarity and the result-
ing ways of organizing, the (re)shaping of communities, relating to the
state (and other institutions), and the kind of alternatives they produce.
Consequently, there are three types of solidarity: autonomous solidarity,
civic solidarity, and institutional solidarity. The three manifestations of
solidarity reflect the main features of solidarity we have introduced in this
chapter. We agree with the point made by Pierpaolo Mudu and Sutapa
Chattopadhyay: ‘Class contestation is happening through the rebuilding
of solidarity networks that do not present welfare from below but poten-
tial alternative social patterns’ (Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017: 286). We
believe that this formulation can be applied to multiple forms of solidarity
and not only to ‘radical social movements’. Indeed, the generation of new
identities, the changing interpersonal (or intercultural) relations, or the
notion of housing as commons also point to other alternatives which do
not belong exclusively to the welfare policies tradition.
Autonomous solidarity implies relations and practices that are pro-
duced in self-organized (mainly urban) spaces. This kind of solidarity
is based in forms of horizontal participation such as direct democracy
and assemblies to invigorate the equality among their members. The
cooperation with the state and its ‘securitized humanism’ (Mudu and
Chattopadhyay 2017) is rejected, as well as the idea of supporting ‘any-
one in need’ upheld by NGOs and other civil society actors (Dicker
2017). It is important to notice that the solidarity between refugees and
nationals is spatially produced against such a dichotomy. The principle
of equality, which underlies the horizontal and participatory approach
to democracy of this form of solidarity, aims to undo dichotomous cate-
gorizations and to define their members by doing, like in the idea of
‘activist citizens’. The focus on self-organization moves beyond specific
moments of mobilization and develops other forms of institutions which
can be understood as the ‘infrastructures of dissent’ through which sol-
idarity materializes. Therefore, when we say that they reject institutions,
we refer to established institutions, since there is a need for alternative
institutions or ‘social institutions’, so to say. The autonomous solidar-
ity responds to what David Graeber (2004) calls the ‘theory of exodus’
as the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state
through Paolo Virno’s notion of ‘engaged withdrawal’. It means that
instead of taking or challenging power, new forms of communities are
created as a strategy to slip away from power. Although autonomous
solidarity is produced locally in the urban spaces, it can also ‘scale up’
(Kurasawa 2014) by connecting different anti-governmental modes of
transnational politics.
Civic solidarity indicates ways of organizing produced as civil society

initiatives to include refugees. It counts a vast number of manifestations
and actors, such as NGOs, local communities, and individuals. It is prac-
ticed by civil society that is not part of the state, but the degree of conten-
tion varies depending on the claims and strategies of each organization.
Civic solidarity is ‘the sphere of fellow feeling, the we-ness that makes
society into society, and even less about the processes that fragment it’
(Alexander 2006: 53). It is, at least in the way we use it, wider than the
state as vehicle of protection of its citizens (Scholz 2008: 27), but it is
receptive to the idea that the vulnerabilities, which prevent people from
participating on equal terms, must be eliminated. Thus, the practices
of civic solidarity combine the expansion of rights with the shaping of
we-ness or sustaining ‘collaborative relations within and between differ-
ent social groups, inasmuch as it [civic solidarity] represents individuals’
interests’’ (Sammut 2011: 416).
The ‘refugee crisis’ has multiplied forms of civic solidarity since the
states have not been capable of managing the crisis and offer refugees
and asylum seekers means to become part of the communities. Together
with the attempt to expand rights, we must not ignore that, due to the
generative character of solidarity, the we-ness also becomes reshaped and
expanded. In opposition to movements for fragmentation, i.e., exclusion
of refugees, as those that are aimed exclusively towards nationals, civic
solidarity also contributes to forging new alliances and collective identi-
ties in different kinds of spaces, from community kitchens to those who
provide legal assistance. This opposition to state practices does not imply,
as mentioned before, that civic solidarity is ‘against the state’ since there
are different kinds of positions on it, from critical to trying to gain influ-
ence in policy-making. Different scales are combined from local commu-
nities to national (to have more visibility and influence) and transnational
(to achieve global awareness and exchange practices).
Institutional solidarity represents the formalization in different degrees
of solidarity, which connects the civil society arena with the one of
policy-making. Institutional solidarity is usually related to how ‘mem-

bers contribute both because they are obliged to do so according to
institutional arrangement and because they expect to get something back
if they are in a situation of need’ (Fenger and van Paridon 2012: 51).
This conception of institutional solidarity as rights and obligations or
as systems based on anonymous or contractual forms of solidarity (Arts
et al. 2001: 476) tends to refer specifically to the welfare state as a form
of mechanical solidarity. However, we prefer to use the term ‘institu-

tionalized solidarity’ and maintain an open definition of ‘institutional’ in
which social relations and institutional norms can converge.
Since institutional solidarity is produced by formalization of solidarity
relations, it means that there is a constant tension between the poten-
tial political action of solidarity and its regularization by the institu-
tion. As Kristin E. Heyer mentions in relation to migrants and refugees,
‘[i]nstitutional solidarity demands the development of structures that
offer marginalized persons a genuine voice in the decisions and poli-
cies that impact their lives’ (Heyer 2017: 33). The key to characteriz-
ing institutional solidarity (in opposition to institutionalized solidarity)
is the capacity of enabling (infra)structures to materialize solidarity and
maintain (and foster) the connections with civil society and migrants and
refugee organizations. For this reason, it is logical that institutional soli-
darity, as in the case of the ‘sanctuary cities’, happens at the local (urban)
scale where the relations (and also the tensions) between institutions
and civil society are closer. The relation with the state (and its form of
institutionalized solidarity) is often conflictual since the aims and realities
dealt with are different. This situation of conflict between the local and
the national scales explains how the international scale is promoted to
find transnational alternatives that go beyond the opposition and restric-
tions shown by nation-states.
The three forms of solidarity (autonomous, civic, and institutional)
offer different ways of relating to the ‘refugee crisis’ and of generating
alternatives. But all of them share the common interest in changing the
established and exclusionary institutions and policies. The strength of
solidarity is, as we believe, its capacity to develop a diversity of responses
which appeal to different degrees of commitment and action to foster
social and political change.
Notes
1. These examples were brought forth by the Danish scholar Rasmus
Christian Elling who also asked this question as part of a warning against
oversimplifying the dynamics of the Iranian protests. Communication on
Facebook.
2. See a long list on the open Facebook page of Refugee Accommodation
and Solidarity Space City Plaza.
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CHAPTER 3
Autonomous Solidarity: Hotel City Plaza
Abstract  The City Plaza is a self-organized housing project for homeless

refugees in the center of Athens which currently accommodates 400
people. City Plaza Refugee Accommodation Center evolved as a concrete
practical response to the conditions of asylum seekers in Greece and the
lack of responsibility by both the Greek state and the international com-
munity in April 2016. In our framework, City Plaza Hotel is an example
of autonomous solidarity at local scale. The occupation of the hotel is not
seen as the only solution to the ‘refugee crisis’ but as a micro-example
of how solidarity work can provide alternatives and a ‘utopia’ on how
the crisis could be dealt with. The City Plaza Hotel case is an example of
how a local initiative, a single building, can articulate the crisis, i.e., failed
management, and present a new imaginary and a practical alternative.
Keywords  Autonomous solidarity · Refugee squats · Horizontalism

Border regimes · Activism
‘We live and struggle together, solidarity will win!’ is Hotel City Plaza’s
motto and on a banner hanging in front of the Hotel, the words read:
‘People are dying in the camps. Open Borders. Open Buildings’. In this
chapter, we look at how the ‘enacted utopia’ of a single building—the City
Plaza Hotel in Athens organized and run by people in solidarity—becomes
a concrete response to the ‘refugee crisis’. From an autonomous position

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8_3
at the neighborhood scale, the occupation and daily management of City

Plaza are a response not only to a housing problem or spatial problem
but an example of how a radical imaginary is enacted in practice and
embedded in multi-scalar geographies of resistance. The occupation is a
reaction to failures of the local and national governments to deal with
the crisis as well as a resistance to the inhumane, repressive policies of the
EU border regime.
Autonomy, Borders, and Solidarity

Two concepts are important here to understand the importance of
Hotel City Plaza as an example of autonomous solidarity. First, we need
to continue the discussion of borders we started in Chapter 1. Put sim-
ply, the premise we work from is that borders are not fixed. Étienne
Balibar claims that borders no longer exist at the edge of territory but
‘have been transported into the middle of political space’ (Balibar 2004:
109). We see this happening all across Europe. When refugees are stuck
on the Greek islands or come to Victoria Square in Athens to get infor-
mation and protection, the borders move along. They are not trapped
outside the borders but inside of them. Borders in the same way are con-
tested not (only) from the outside during the actual crossing (or denial
in doing so) but also in daily practices of surviving and normalizing life
without status and papers. This understanding has led to different criti-
cal approaches. One being the approach of critical border studies which
draws on the same approach as Balibar exemplifies (e.g., Casas-Cortes
et al. 2015a, b; De Genova 2013, 2017; De Genova et al. 2016; Parker
and Vaughan-Williams 2009; Salter 2012). Sandro Mezzadra and Brett
Neilson (2013) go on to demonstrate how the proliferation, mobility,
and deep metamorphosis of borders are key features of ‘actually exist-
ing’ processes of globalization. Their book titled Border as Method builds
on the ‘Autonomy of Migration’ (AoM) approach, a second critical
approach to borders (e.g., Bojadžijev and Karakayali 2010; De Genova
2013, 2017; Hess 2010; Mezzadra and Neilson 2013; Papadopoulos
and Tsianos 2013; Squire 2011).1 Mezzadra and Neilson draw on AoM
ideas ‘to frame the border epistemologically and methodologically in
order to develop a conjunctural analysis of current capitalist configura-
tions’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015a: 897). This links the reading of bor-
ders to multi-scalar processes of political geography (ibid.; see also
Clough 2013). The AoM approach makes some crucial assumptions for
analyzing occupations such as City Plaza. First of all, in the definition
3 AUTONOMOUS SOLIDARITY: HOTEL CITY PLAZA 51
of Maribel Casas-Cortes, Sebastian Cobarrubias, and John Pickles, the

approach ‘seeks to reinterpret the effects of seeing regular, irregular,
transit and other forms of migration as constitutive factors of border pol-
icies, architectures, and practices’ (Casas-Cortes et al. 2015a: 897). Put
in simpler terms, the approach makes mobility and migration the starting
point of analyses and conceptualizes migrants as having agency. In this
way, borders follow migration and not the other way around by consti-
tuting collective action that challenges institutional power to reshape the
border regime (Mezzadra 2011). Migration is akin to a social movement.
In the words of Angela Mitropoulos, the ‘concept of autonomy was a
way of thinking of the act of migration itself as a political act’ (2010).
What is important from these approaches for our analysis is that they
allow us to understand how the occupation of Hotel City Plaza challenges
dominant framings of the ‘refugee crisis’. They reject a humanitarian fram-
ing ultimately leading to victimization of the refugees and a securitization
framing ultimately leading to criminalization of the refugees. Reading
Hotel City Plaza in an AoM perspective moves the gaze from protection
to autonomy and communing urban, social, and political spaces.
Autonomy can also be defined in different ways, e.g., as a process of
labor self-valorization, negation of state power (Böhm et al. 2010), or
as a ‘struggle for negation – the ability to say “no” to existing forms of
power and domination’ (Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017: 8)—what we
have previously termed dissent (Holloway 2010; Jørgensen and Agustín
2015). Autonomy is related to series of interventions ‘allowing the dis-
tanced person to problematize who and where they can be and how
they can be political subjects’ (Mudu and Chattopadhyay, ibid.). The
autonomous position we identify in Hotel City Plaza in our reading is
an example of autonomous solidarity. It is important to emphasize that
autonomy and solidarity in this reading are not opposites. Autonomy
here relates directly to institutionalization and is not a question of indi-
vidualizing resistance but describes a relation to the particular state, what
we in Chapter 2 refer to as ‘against the state’.2 Best illustrated by a state-
ment from one of the other refugee squats in Athens, Notara 26 squatted
since autumn 2015 and housing < 250 refugees: ‘Notara 26 […] operates
on the basis of anti-authoritarian autonomy, and refuses any co-opera-
tion with NGOs. […] “This project doesn’t stand for philanthropy, by
the state nor private, but rather for a self-organized solidarity project,
wherein locals and refugees-immigrants decide together”’ (Squat.net
2016). Autonomous solidarity produces infrastructures of dissent in the
form of alternative and social institutions.
Hence, autonomy is productive and transformative of social rela-

tions. The anti-authoritarianism naturally implied by the autonomous
position rejects the project of the left. The aim is not taking over the
state through resistance. This idea is based on a concept of sovereignty
embedded in relations of dominance and control whose fundamental aim
is to replace the oppressors by taking over power—it is an intellectual
political framing Richard Day has termed ‘the hegemony of hegemony’
(Day 2005). The aim of the autonomous solidarity position outlined
here is radical change by acting non-hegemonically rather than coun-
ter-hegemonically. Day’s argument is part of a larger argument against
the writings and potentiality of the Italian political thinker Antonio
Gramsci (1891–1937) whom he claims ‘is dead’ because he does not
capture the demands of the latest social movements (Day’s own term
for new social movements). We have previously argued against this and
claimed that Gramsci’s work on alliances and solidarities is indeed very
much alive in the dynamics of subaltern political activism and the gen-
erative character of political struggle (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016;
Featherstone 2013). However, what holds true here is that the aim of
the occupation of Hotel City Plaza is not an attempt to take over power
at central level but to illustrate how alternatives can be found, taken, and
enacted outside the institutional realm of the state. It illustrates how an
occupation can display ‘world-making potentialities’ (Vasudevan 2015)
‘in which the ongoing interactions of participants continually produce
sentiments, ideas, values and practices that manifest and encourage new
modes of being’ (Gould 2009: 178). In a public letter published January
23, 2018, the organizing group of City Plaza states:
We would like to point out once more that we are not claiming ownership
of the building, we are simply using it. Refugee Accommodation Space City
Plaza is a workshop of solidarity and resistance. All of us who are taking part
in it have the power and determination to guard it against the threats of the
state and the shadow state. We will continue to fight against the anti-refu-
gee policies of the Greek government and the EU, against the EU-Turkey
deal and against racism and xenophobia. (Refugee Accommodation and
Solidarity Space City Plaza 2018)
The occupation of Hotel City Plaza is the practice of a contentious and

spatialized politics that shapes and organizes political action. Solidarity
at this scale, thus, is a process of generating autonomy and a unified
common group in conflict with the institutional realm.
Migration, Squatting, and the Crisis

Seen in the framework of urban politics, squatters and social centers
have been a main protester against repressive state-capitalist trends
of social exclusion across Europe over the past decades (Mudu and
Chattopadhyay 2017). Both in the case of Athens and elsewhere, this
phenomenon precedes the ‘refugee crisis’. Squatting ‘focuses action in
a way that is prefigurative of another mode of organizing society and
challenging a paramount institution of capitalist society; private prop-
erty’ (Mayer 2013: 2). However, the literature which combines stud-
ies on occupation and squatting with studies on migration is fairly
limited. A recent book, Migration, Squatting and Radical Autonomy
(edited by Mudu and Chattopadhyay 2017), makes an inquiry into
this nexus and offers both a theoretical framework and several short
empirical examples of such practices. While this book—and the authors
contributing to this in general—takes a critical perspective and departs
from an AoM approach, the literature on squatting has had difficulties
in placing the migrant within squatting practices. Such squatting prac-
tices have been reduced to be based on necessities (rather than being
part of urban politics against gentrification and urban renewal projects)
and thus have been characterized as being more social acts than polit-
ical ones (see discussion in Martínez López 2017). We disagree with
this assumption. Migrant-based squatting, as we see with Hotel City
Plaza and other migrant squats in Athens, cannot be reduced to simply
social needs. It is a practice embedded in multi-scalar geographies of
resistance and is by definition political. Jacques Rancière writes: ‘Politics
exists when the natural order of domination is interrupted by the
institution of a part of those who have no part’ (1999: 11). This is what
we see happening here. Although there is a strong connection between
housing, capitalism, and refugee crisis, it is not a practice primarily tar-
geting processes of gentrification but one targeting borders and repres-
sive anti-immigration policies. The thousands of refugees trapped in
Greece after the EU–Turkey deal and the closure of the Balkan corri-
dor live a life where they can only wait for decisions regarding family
reunification to other EU countries—something that is becoming more
and more difficult to obtain as several member states have tightened the
rules. Occupations like City Plaza offer normality, a life, and become a
response to the EU policies. Mezzadra comments on such occupations
and contends that
[t]hey politicize a specific border that is becoming more and more impor-
tant in migratory experiences – the temporal border, the temporality
of waiting, of living suspended in holding camps, “hotspots”, and other
structures – and they transform it into a chance for a new democratic
invention and imagination. (2016)
Squatting becomes a practice for autonomy, for common spaces, and

shows a movement from demands, protests, and opposition to sociali-
zation and education. An example outside Greece is the migrant-led
Wij Zijn Hier (We are here) movement in Amsterdam. Originating as a
movement seeking living space for migrants trapped in the asylum sys-
tem and living excluded, marginalized, and precarious lives, it started
squatting vacant buildings in 2011/2012.3 The movement has not only
had short-term goals but also developed long-term goals in alliance
with solidarity groups which go beyond ‘assistential solidarity’ (Dadusc
2017). Emphasizing the name ‘we are here’, the movement has devel-
oped initiatives aiming, for instance, at education, such as the ‘We Are
Here Academy’ which is an educational initiative offering university-level
courses for undocumented individuals. The academy writes:
We Are Here Academy is not a charity; it is a protest initiative designed to

point out the deficits of the current system, while at the same time pro-
viding refugees in limbo the opportunity to emancipate. It gives voice to
people who have been silenced. (We Are Here Academy, n.d.)
These actions go beyond housing issues and show how radical imagina-
tions and practices ‘encourage new modes of being’ (cf. Gould).
Let us move from the more abstract discussion on migration, squat-
ting, autonomy, and solidarity to the concrete example of Greece,
Athens, and Hotel City Plaza in the context of the ‘refugee crisis’. The
crisis here is situated at different scales with different dynamics and
implications.
Greece—The Political Economy of Crises

In order to understand how the ‘refugee crisis’ is situated in and
impacting Greece, we need to understand the political economy of

Greece on a broader level. Greece in many ways epitomized the finan-
cial crisis and the EU responses to deal with this. The harsh economic
measures imposed by all the three Greek Memoranda (Memoranda

of Understanding, MoU, in 2010, 2012, and 2015), forced by the
Troika, and despite huge protests by civil society affected a large share of
Greece’s inhabitants. The ruling SYRIZA party came to power to resist
these austerity measures but was forced to accept them and has likewise
introduced new measures by own will. The crisis effect does not seem to
decelerate as the latest data from Eurostat on Greece show that 35.6%
of the population (that is 3.8 million people) faced the risk of poverty
or social exclusion in 2016, compared with 28.1% in 20084 (Jørgensen
and Makrygianni, forthcoming/2019). In terms of poverty, 21.2% of
the population are in poverty, 22.4% in extreme poverty, while 17.2%
of the population live in a family facing the risk of unemployment.
Since the financial crisis, approximately 30% of Athens’ housing stock
have lain empty and between 20 and 50% of its stores have been closed
(Theodoruo 2016). Research on the social effects of the ‘Greek Crisis’
stresses the multiple levels of the effect that create a crisis palimpsest of
engraved violence in the society (ibid.). Costis Hatzimihalis (2014)
describes thoroughly a process of accumulation by dispossession that has
been taking place in the Greek territory since the beginning of the cri-
sis. This involves, among other things, housing evictions, rising sexism,
socio-spatial segregation, and racist violence.
Within this turbulent situation, about 62,000 newcomers reside in
the Greek territory. Up until the EU–Turkey agreement, Greece had
become a notorious transit space for migrants/refugees heading toward
the wealthy European north. Of them, the vast majority is piled up in
camps while a small percentage is hosted in other institutional structures
(NGO and UNHCR apartments and guesthouses) and in self-organized
spaces. Geographically, there is a big concentration in the northern part
of the country where the majority of military camps are situated and in
the insular borderline area. Moreover, a large share of the newcomers
resides in the wider Athenian urban area.
The EU–Turkey Statement was made March 18, 2016, and stip-
ulates the framework for the agreement. It contains several points, but
the first three state: (1) All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey
to the Greek islands as of March 20, 2016, will be returned to Turkey;
(2) For every Syrian being returned to Turkey from the Greek islands,
another Syrian will be resettled to the EU; (3) Turkey will take any nec-
essary measures to prevent new sea or land routes for irregular migra-
tion opening from Turkey to the EU (European Parliament 2018). With
the agreement, Turkey became a ‘safe third country’, implying that ref-
ugees coming from Turkey can be returned there. With the agreement
followed 3 billion euros in financial aid to Turkey. Although the EU
Commission a year after the deal was struck claimed the statement to
be a success and among other things has managed to reduce the num-
ber of irregular entries by 97% and ‘916 irregular migrants have been
returned from Greece to Turkey’ (EC 2017: 2), it is difficult to identify
it as such. Of the assumed 62,000 refugees trapped in Greece, fewer than
9000 have been resettled in the re-allocation program. From the Turkish
side, the deal is not perceived to be effective either (Crabapple 2017).
The refugees staying in Greece are now trapped as the Balkan corridor
closed, making it impossible to follow the former routes North. People
are waiting for resettlement or decisions of family reunification to other
family members having received asylum in, for instance, Germany. Many
have not had their fingerprints taken and live precarious lives in Greece
not even recognized as asylum seekers. When SYRIZA ran for power,
it promised to close the notorious detention centers, but has instead of
doing so opened new ones re-termed ‘pre-departure camps’.
Although the financial crisis and austerity economy may have limited
the room for policy maneuvers, lack of funding is not the only expla-
nation. As News Deeply has shown, the ‘refugee crisis’ has brought in
652 million euros in aid between 2015 and 2017 (Howden and Fotiadis
2017). Their reports show that incompetence and waste characterize
the efforts from both NGOs and Greece’s government; seven out of ten
euros were misspent (ibid.).
This situation led to protests and ‘impossible activism’ from migrants
who at that time lacked a strong political representation by which to
be backed up and to use in order to make themselves heard and seen.
However, the ‘refugee crisis’ did not constitute a moment for mobiliz-
ing a solidarity movement from scratch in Greece the same way it did in
Denmark to some degree (as we will show in Chapter 4). With the cri-
sis in 2008, the seeking of alternatives became urgent, but the solidarity
movement/network—‘people in solidarity’—goes further back. The soli-
darity movement was already there and had been for a long time. One of
the supporting networks was DIKTIO (Network for Social and Political
Rights) who acted in solidarity with the asylum seekers’ cause. Likewise
is the City Plaza the result of a common mind-set based on self-organ-
izing and solidarity developed over more than 20 years and experiences
by DIKTIO as we will discuss shortly. The network is part of the far-left

scene in Greece and has proposed and enacted forms of social organiza-
tion based on autonomy, self-organizing processes, and horizontalist col-
laborations and forms of participation (Scampoli and Cardinali 2017a).
Since the beginning of the crisis, the Network has been working on the
islands against the creation of hot spots and against the implementation
of the European deportation system, as well as taking a stand beside
the refugees in protesting against the disastrous living conditions exist-
ing in the refugee camps. The long summer of migration and the thou-
sands of refugees stuck on or passing through the islands and Athens did
expand, consolidate, and strengthen the solidarity movement even more.
Likewise did the crisis pull in new actors from both Greece and abroad
as well as expanded the transnational links to solidarity movements else-
where (Scampoli and Cardinali 2017b).
Athens
The history of both receiving newcomers and struggling for rights is
almost a century old. The recent history also has connections to actions
of the past. One example was the occupation of ‘The Refugees’—a series
of three-story buildings originally built in the 1930s to house the Greek
refugees of 1922. The buildings were an issue of debate for a long time as
the government then wanted to remove them as part of an urban renewal
plan. The buildings were occupied first by homeless unemployed people
and since 2003 by +400 migrants of different nationalities (Turkey, Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Syria) (Makrygianni 2017). Likewise, the Athenian city
center has a long tradition of insurrections and uprisings against capi-
talism’s enclosures and state violence that includes university and public
building occupations, occupied social centers and numerous manifesta-
tions in public space (Jørgensen and Makrygianni, forthcoming/2019).
The most famous example is perhaps the Exarcheia n eighborhood,
claimed by the anarchist movement as a liberated space from and reviled
as a ghetto of civic lawlessness by those in power. The rise against the
Memoranda and austerity measures made Athens a battle terrain (spread
from the Syntagma square to the Acropolis hill) where the everyday life
was constantly interrupted by numerous strikes and manifestations that
created a prominent space of fight (Azzellini and Sitrin 2014; Dalakoglou
and Vradis 2011; Makrygiani and Tsavdaroglou 2011).
Migrants have over a long period been part of the urban composition
of Athens and redefined how the city develops. Especially so in the trian-
gle of the Victoria Square, Pedion tou Areos Park, and Exarcheia neigh-
borhood where also Hotel City Plaza is located. These spaces have been
through various alterations during the last years. They have been char-
acterized as ghettos, mainly because of the strong presence of migrants
and people with a leftist or anti-authoritarian political identity. The wider
area of Victoria Square was largely abandoned by its former inhabitants
in favor of the suburbs during the 1980s and early 1990s, and several
newcomers have settled there ever since (Jørgensen and Makrygianni,
forthcoming/2019). Victoria Square has been a main hub for migrant
networks, as many migrants’ shops and cafés are located here. During the
long summer of migration in 2015, the image of the square changed as
it turned from a public space to a settlement of migrant people who had
just arrived in the city. The solidarity movement set up soup kitchens and
initiated various actions to support the refugees staying there. The refu-
gees themselves initiated different protests and hunger strikes. The police
evacuated the square in March 2016, but the square after that contin-
ues to serve as a main hub and meeting place. Close to the square is the
Pedion tou Areos Park. Like Victoria Square, Pedion tou Areos has been
a reference point for the newcomer migrants the last decades and one
of the main places they used to settle as soon as they arrived in Athens.
It also became a place of settlement during the summer of 2015 with
hundreds of newcomers staying in the park. It was similarly evacuated by
the police, and the biggest share of the migrants was relocated in a refu-
gee camp in a desolate area, ‘Elaionas’ near the city center (ibid.). Still,
the settlement at the park left its legacy as the solidarity structures that
were organized in the park occupied a building in the Exarcheia neigh-
borhood in order to have a more permanent place of struggle (Fig. 3.1).
The occupation of vacant buildings has been and still is a defin-
ing aspect of the migrant struggles in Athens. Since 2015, thousands
of refugees and migrants remain in buildings occupied by solidarity
groups. The Mayor of Athens Giorgos Kaminis estimated in mid-2017
that between 2500–3000 refugees and migrants were housed in squats
(Georgiopoulou 2017). At the moment, there are at least ten refugee
squats in function as well as self-organized social centers. The refugee
squats emerged in Exarcheia for a reason. Anarchist and far-left networks
built on autonomy and horizontalism have been substituting for the
State since the economic crisis. These networks responded to the crisis
Fig. 3.1 Map of Athens
and the new situation and right away integrated the issue of refugees in
the broader solidarity movement (Bachellerie and Clair 2017). Squatted
spaces frequently derive from solidarity and resistance relations. Since the
dominant state policies on migration are based in relations of control,
fear, and power, squatting comes as a response to spaces of exclusion
like detention camps (Makrygianni 2017). It also refers to the re-appro-
priation of several aspects of everyday life, like the social or the politi-
cal relations. Moreover, squatted spaces also serve as spaces of encounter
and political engagement. The squats, unlike humanitarian camps, offer
comfortable and familiar spaces, which can be appropriated/reclaimed,
and a central location in the city, making access to services easier. The
squats are often located close to anarchist squats and social centers that
also protect the refugee squats against fascist and right-wing militant
mobilizations. The buildings include vacant hotels, schools, part of the
polytechnic university, housing blocks, and even a hospital.5 Their tac-
tics differ and few of them have chosen as offensive and visible a strat-
egy as Hotel City Plaza has done. They have their own assemblies and
coordination organized by refugees and the solidarity movement. Some
of them (City Plaza, Notara 26, Oniro, Spyrou Trikoupi, Arahovis, 5th
School, Jasmin School and Acarchon 22) are also horizontally linked in
the Coordination of Refugee Squats.
In the first half of 2017, the local government started evicting some
squats and planned or threatened to evict more—one of these City
Plaza. One of the evicted buildings was a Hellenic Red Cross build-
ing, called the Hospital squat. The Red Cross had filed a lawsuit,
demanding the Syrian refugees’ eviction and claiming it would lease the
abandoned building to the International Organization for Migration
(IOM), to be used as a center for unaccompanied minors (Crabapple
2017). IOM and the Hellenic Red Cross have each received over 30
million US dollars to care for refugees in Greece (Crabapple 2017).
For the solidarity movement in Athens, it demonstrates the necessity
of autonomy and being free of any formal ties to state and NGOs. The
Mayor of Athens defended the evictions and stated: ‘Hosting refu-
gees should be undertaken exclusively by public services and author-
ized organizations, in order to truly protect refugees and their rights’
(to Ekathimerini, March 13, here quoted from Crabapple 2017).
For the people in solidarity, the solidarity movement, and the refugee
squats, this is not a solution. The state and the NGOs as they see it
have failed the obligations, and alternative solutions and modes of liv-
ing must be found and developed outside of and with no relations to
the state. Again, Rancière’s understanding of politics illustrates what is
at stake here. The procedures and systems of legitimization by which
the societal contract is achieved are not politics at all, but the end of
it. What happens is a disciplining exercise for the purpose of governing
bodies—what he calls policing (1999). When the state tries to make
the refugees ‘part’ of the state-controlled asylum regime, it spells the
end of politics. The moments, interruptions, ruptures and acts of resist-
ance and solidarity taking place here with the refugee squats, on the
other hand—for Rancière—is politics. The Coordination of Refugee
Squats, June 23, made a call for action after the evictions: ‘As long as
they try to evict the squats, as long as they build camps and detention
centers, as long as there are borders - we will also be there to fight back
and fight for a better world!’ and ‘We will show them again what we
already proved, we live together, we struggle and we resist together –
to defend the dignity of each individual, to defend our principles of
solidarity’ (2017).6 The Refugee Accommodation Space City Plaza of
course also was part of the campaign and released a statement express-
ing how squats like itself and others based on solidarity works present
an enacted radical alternative:
Over the past 14 months, City Plaza, along with all the other refugee
housing squats, is a “crack” in the public space where the repressive and
racist discourse against refugees is constantly reiterated. City Plaza has not
only proven that refugees and locals can live together in harmony and with
dignity. It also signifies, along with other similar initiatives, that there is a
Europe that is different to the Europe of the Eurogroup and Frontex. A
Europe of solidarity, struggle, humanity. And it is precisely this that is a
nuisance to those in power.7
Athens is an amalgam of moving populations that basically formed the

contemporary urban terrain over the last hundred years, and that ten-
dency continues today (Jørgensen and Makrygianni, forthcoming/2019).
These places—the parks, the squares, the squats, the social centers—
illustrate what Nicos Trimikliniotis, Dimitris Parsanoglou, and Vassilis S.
Tsianos term ‘mobile commons’ (2016: 1039):
The mobile commons as such exist only to the extent that they are com-
monly produced by all the people in motion who are the only ones who
can expand its content and meanings. This content is neither private, nor
public, neither state owned, nor part of civil society discourse in the tradi-
tional sense of the terms; rather, the mobile commons exist to the extent
that people use the trails, tracks or rights and continue to generate new
ones as they are on the move.
Or as already quoted above from the The Refugee Accommodation

Space City Plaza regarding the occupation of the hotel; ‘we are not
claiming ownership of the building, we are simply using it’.
The Utopia of a Single Building—Hotel City Plaza

Hotel City Plaza—as we have just discussed in the previous section—is
it not the only refugee squat in Athens, neither will we characterize it
as more important or valuable than other refugee squats. However, it
is the most visible and most debated of the current squats and the one
which has come to symbolize an example of how solidarity work can pro-
vide alternatives and an ‘utopia’ to how the crisis could be dealt with. As
we claimed in Chapter 1, the Hotel City Plaza epitomizes how a single
building can articulate the crisis, the failed management, and present a
new imaginary and practical alternative. City Plaza presents an illustrative
example of autonomous solidarity.
The Refugee Accommodation Space City Plaza, Hotel City Plaza was
occupied on the morning of April 22, 2016—the same month that the
EU made a deal with Turkey. The Solidarity Initiative to Economic and
Political Refugees (including DIKTIO) the same day made a statement on
the reason for taking over the City Plaza. The fact that Europe and Greece
had been unable to respond to the issues emerging from the largest refu-
gee wave in their territory had led to two responses. One being securiti-
zation and militarization of the borders: ‘fences and walls have been built;
Frontex and NATO have been invited in order to ‘protect’ the borders;
deportations and brutal oppression of refugees’. The second one being
the ‘huge wave of solidarity in Greece, as well as in Europe’ (Solidarity
Initiative for Economic and Political Refugees 2016). In a statement from
June 13 City Plaza furthermore states that the occupation is:
an answer from the social movements to the entrapment of tens of thou-

sands of refugees in the Greek mainland, the mass detention of refugees in
the border regions and the disastrous living conditions for homeless refu-
gees in the cities and the huge, state-run camps. (Refugee Accommodation
and Solidarity Space City Plaza 2016a)
Today, writing in March 2018, more than one and a half years later,
City Plaza boasts a clinic, a cafeteria, language classes (Greek, English,
German), a café, wood-processing and metal workshops, a computer
classroom, a kindergarten, a hairdresser, a dentist’s office, a pharmacy, a
library, and hobby circles. Families having arrived from several different
nationalities (including Afghans, Kurds, Syrians, Palestinians, Iranians,
Iraqis, Pakistanis) live in private rooms. Some have jobs. Their children
attend Greek schools. 400 people, among them 185 children, live in the
7-floor building, but since the initiative began around 1700 people have
been living here for shorter or longer periods. Besides this around 100
people in solidarity—the ‘solidarians’ (locals, activists, and volunteers)
live together with the refugees, hence the motto: ‘We live together, we
work together, we struggle together’. City Plaza is based on principles
of self-organization and autonomy and depends entirely on the polit-
ical support and practical solidarity from within Greece and abroad
(Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space City Plaza 2016a). City
Plaza without irony has made an online support campaign describing the
hotel: ‘No pool, no minibar, no room service, and nonetheless: The Best
Hotel in Europe’.8 Over the barely two years the initiative has existed,
385,000 warm meals have been served by the kitchen group, 35,000
hours have been spent on security posts at the entrance and balconies
of the hotel, there have been 13,560 hours of shifts at the reception,
and 18 tons of heating oil has been used in the boilers and radiators
(Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space City Plaza 2017). City
Plaza depends solely on solidarity support and has not received any fund-
ing from NGOs or the state. The place exists only through the solidarity
work put into keeping it going.
The hotel has been closed since 2010. Its owner Aliki Papachela has
taken an ambiguous public position both claiming to be in support of
the refugees and at the same time attempting to get the refugees evicted
and even suing the Greek Chief of Police for ‘dereliction of duty’ for not
having evicted the squatters.9 However, the company which had man-
aged the hotel at the same time owes wages to the former employees of
the Hotel who were never paid when the hotel shut down. These work-
ers at first wanted to sell off furniture and equipment to secure some of
their wages as it had been adjudicated as belonging to them—something
the owner tried to block—but instead support the ongoing initiative by
letting the occupants use whatever is in the hotel. The solidarity from the
hotel workers not just is anecdotal but also tells us something about the
alliance behind this initiative.
When the Solidarity Initiative to Economic and Political Refugees
announced the occupation and called for solidarity, it also included these
and other precarious workers. When the City Plaza a month later (May
23, 2016) had its first open assembly, a large and diverse group partic-
ipated. The call was both for strengthening support for the Space, as
well as for the broader organization of the refugee struggle. The large-
scale participation was a result of the great mobilization of the solidar-
ity movement during the past year, participation from groups, unions,
initiatives, as well as from individual solidarians.10 The broad basis of the
solidarity underpinning City Plaza is also what makes it so strong.
City Plaza sees itself as part of a multitude of different solidarity prac-

tices and struggles that emerged since last year, which constitute a specific
demand to the Greek state, against the detention of refugees in despicable
detention centers as well as against their isolation in monstrous camps; for
the decent housing of refugees in the cities, ensuring their access to health
care, education and all social services. On the other side City Plaza sees
itself as part of the European and international solidarity movement which
challenges the militarization of borders and the externalization of asylum

policies and which claims the freedom of movement and the right to stay.
(Refugee Accommodation and Solidarity Space City Plaza 2016a)
The political-administrative assembly also agreed on the common

ground of the initiative:
We are convinced that the balance of power can be shifted in concrete

practices rather than through general humanitarian appeals. In these
practices the renewed version of the mantra of T.I.N.A. (There is no
Alternative) of repressive migration policies can be disputed and space can
be gained against the far-right. City Plaza made itself a place of solidarity
and resistance in a neighborhood that is claimed since years by the extreme
right and the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party. (ibid.)
The assembly statements show how City Plaza is situated in differ-

ent geographies of resistance at the same time. City Plaza is a reaction
against and alternative to exclusionary mechanisms on different scales:
the EU border regime in the broadest sense; the EU–Turkey agreement;
the Greek government; the neighborhood right-winged groups; and
Golden Dawn party through reclaiming of the Exarcheia neighborhood.
All these geographies are present at once. The occupation can be seen as
a concrete action toward the claim of social and political rights for ref-
ugees and migrants, as well as an act of resistance against the migration
policies imposed by the EU during the crisis.
Common is the keyword here. City Plaza emphasizes again and again
how this is only made possible through common struggles. The radical
imaginary underlying this idea is that another world is possible if realized
in solidarity from below through the infrastructures of dissent developed
through the struggle. This is repeated by both refugees and solidarians.11
It is also the basis of the organization of City Plaza. It is self-managed
through series of weekly meetings based on the notion of shared coex-
istence and work in which everyone can participate and bring forward
ideas and issues (Scampoli and Cardinali 2017a). There are a few rules
which must be respected, and everyone is expected to participate actively
to his/her abilities.12 The co-working, actively participating, has at the
same time been one of the challenges. The inhabitants of City Plaza do
not necessarily come with a natural inclination toward or understanding

of solidarity work. Many have never participated in or had experiences
with this kind of autonomous self-organized practices. As stated by an
activist living at City Plaza: ‘The City Plaza project is not humanitarian;
it is foremost a political one. Solidarity and self-organization are the pil-
lars of the hotel’ (Chrysanthos 2017). He goes on to say: ‘From the first
day when 150 refugees arrived we tried to explain to them: this is not a
camp’ and:
We are not the UNHCR. We are not the government. This is illegal, this
is a squat. So we must stay low, we must struggle, we must fight. But
mostly, we must do these things together. ‘‘Together’’ – we translated this
word in all the languages. Otherwise the project is condemned to falling
apart. (ibid.)
The paradoxical message is that ‘the best hotel in Europe’ is not a hotel.
This is not an easy idea to enact but the one City Plaza strives to get out.
It is spelled out in a leaflet produced by City Plaza:
It is through fighting for practical demands and through common strug-

gles, not through general humanitarian declarations, that societal con-
figurations change, that dominant authoritarian policies change, that the
action Space of the far right becomes limited, and that a common front
against racism is constituted. (‘What is City Plaza’, n.d.)
This line of reasoning responds to the claim of Mudu and

Chattopadhyay referred to in Chapter 2: ‘Class contestation is h appening
through the rebuilding of solidarity networks that do not present welfare
from below but potential alternative social patterns’ (2017: 286). Henri
Lefebvre used the notion ‘inhabitants’ to overcome citizen/non-citi-
zen divides. City Plaza uses the notion ‘co-habitants’ emphasizing even
more than ‘inhabitant’ the collective solidarity creating this position.
Solidarity is generative of the shared identity ‘co-habitant’. It is inventive
of new alternatives and imaginaries and produces the new configurations
of political relations, political subjectivities, and spaces which constitute
City Plaza and the daily practices which keep it in existence.
Not the Solution But an Example of an Enacted

Alternative
This book investigates how forms of solidarity become responses to
the ‘refugee crisis’. Hotel City Plaza—and refugee squats broadly—is
one such response. The border spectacle and the EU asylum regime
as well as member states’ reluctance toward receiving and accommo-
dating refugees are implemented in detention centers and conditions
seeking to deter refugees from entering at all. City Plaza is a reaction
to this. The Greek scholar Seraphim Seferiades working on conten-
tious politics has estimated that there are more than 11 million unoc-
cupied building across the EU (Strickland 2016). City Plaza shows
how these could be used to provide human and empowering alterna-
tives based on autonomy and self-organization in contrast to the cur-
rent regime. City Plaza shows how ‘the right to have rights’ is enacted
in practice and demonstrates that another life is possible. This is a
message repeated by activists and refugees. 35-year-old Afghan activist
Nasim Lomani, himself a refugee who had arrived in Greece 16 years
earlier from the Solidarity movement, says: ‘City Plaza is not the solu-
tion for the refugee crisis’. ‘But it is a good example of how to do
it better’ (Baker 2016). This is also the message from the organizing
group of City Plaza:
We do not, of course, believe that the problem can only be solved through
squatting, as the provision of shelter is a fundamental obligation of the
state and the local authorities; we do, however, believe that squats can act
not only as a means for claiming rights but also as a factual exercising of
rights precisely by those who are deprived of rights: the illegalized and
excluded economical and political refugees. (Refugee Accommodation and
Solidarity Space City Plaza 2016a)
Another text launched by City Plaza and the solidarity network

Welcome to Europe continues this argument and claims: ‘The squat can-
not be the solution for all of this but a vivid example of how things can
be better if each of us tries. It will not solve the European shame, but it
can be an outcry of solidarity’ and goes on to say that it is not a solution
for the ones remaining outside the walls of ‘Fortress Europe’, the ones
stuck on the islands, in the so-called hot spots—but even for them: ‘City
Plaza is a symbol that it can be possible: Another, a welcoming Europe’
(Welcome to Europe 2016).
Just as we can analyze City Plaza as a multi-scalar resistance aimed at
the extreme-right invasion of Athenian neighborhoods, at the local gov-
ernment, at the Greek state, and at the EU border and asylum regime,
we can also analyze the initiative as expanding the struggle against aus-
terity, exploitation, and racism. This is not only about refugees. City
Plaza is a center of struggle. In the words of Refugee Accommodation
and Solidarity Space City Plaza:
We believe that the struggle for the rights of economic and political refu-
gees is part of the struggle of the wider social movement against austerity,
the memoranda, class and national divisions. We wish for City Plaza to be
a lively hub of activity for this common struggle. Nothing more, nothing
less. (2016b)
Notes
1. The notion itself goes back to the work of the French scholar Yann
Moulier-Boutang on irregular migrants in the 1980s.
2. See statements from some of the refugee squats in Athens here:
‘Greece: Refugee-Squats in Athens’, Squat!net, uploaded June 25,
2015, accessed April 29, 2018, https://en.squat.net/2016/06/25/
greece-refugee-squats-in-athens/.
3. See: ‘We Are Here Is Four, September 4, 2016’, Wij Zijn Hier, uploaded
September 4, 2016, accessed April 29, 2018, http://wijzijnhier.org/
tijdslijn/we-are-here-is-four-September-4th-2016/ and a YouTube
presentation here: ‘Squats for Migrants’, Stimulator, uploaded June
20, 2017, accessed April 29, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=4nBBaB5TLGM.
4. According to Eurostat (2017), the corresponding figure for the EU dropped
in 2016 to 23.4% (that is 117 million people), i.e. below 2008 levels (23.7%).
5. ‘Greece: Refugee-Squats in Athens’, Squat!net, uploaded June 25,
2015, accessed April 29, 2018, https://en.squat.net/2016/06/25/
greece-refugee-squats-in-athens/.
6. ‘Κάτω τα χέρια από τις καταλήψεις / Hands off all the squats’,
Coordination of Refugee Squats, uploaded June 23, 2017, accessed April
29, 2018, https://www.facebook.com/events/629127390617724.
7. ‘Statement of #City Plaza Squat Against the Threat of Eviction’, Enough
Is Enough! It’s Time to Revolt!, uploaded June 10, 2017, accessed April
29, 2018 can be found here: https://enoughisenough14.org/2017/06/
10/%E2%80%8Bstatement-of-cityplaza-squat-against-the-threat-of-
eviction/.
8. ‘No pool, no minibar, no room service, and nonetheless: The Best Hotel
in Europe’, The-best-hotel-in-Europe, uploaded n.d., accessed April 29,
2018, https://best-hotel-in-europe.eu/.
9. Should the police evict the hotel, the lawyer of the workers will inter-
vene in order to auction off the equipment. Open Letter to Ms. Aliki
Papachela, owner of the City Plaza Hotel. April 25, 2017.
10. Among those who spoke during the assembly were: The Popular
Solidarity Society, the Solidarity Pharmacy of Patissia, the Patissia ‘No
Middlemen’ Solidarity Movement, the Kallithea Worker’s Club, the
Radical Left Movement, the Brahami Open Assembly, ANTARSYA, the
Piraeus Middle School Teachers’ Association, The ‘Back Benches’ (Piso
Thrania), the Free Social Space ‘Botanic Garden’, The Migrants’ Sunday
School, the self-managed Social Clinic/Pharmacy of Nea Philadelphia,
Nea Ionia and surrounding areas, the Teachers’ Association ‘Aristotle’,
the Unions, Student Associations and Collectivities Coordination
Group for Refugee/Migrant issues, the Salaried Technicians Union,
the Anti-War internationalist Movement, the Organization of
Communist Internationalists of Greece ‘Spartacus’, the Social Clinic
of Nea Smyrni. ‘The open assembly at City Plaza took place with
large scale participation’. The City Plaza Assembly, uploaded May
27, 2016, accessed April 29, 2018, http://solidarity2refugees.gr/
open-assembly-city-plaza-took-place-large-scale-participation/.
11. As part of another project on communing practices in Athens and
Hamburg, we made interviews with volunteers and refugees. Most of the
interviews were conducted by Vasiliki Makrygianni (see Jørgensen and
Makrygianni, forthcoming/2019 for more on this project).
12. The basic rules of coexistence are few and mandatory: (1) No violence,
no discrimination, no alcohol, and drugs allowed; (2) Things must never
escalate in order to keep the place safe and running smoothly in respect
for everyone; (3) Everyone who’s able to has to take over one shift at
least once a week on a 45-hour weekly schedule.
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CHAPTER 4
Civic Solidarity: Venligboerne
Abstract  This chapter provides an analysis of an example of civic solidarity

by focusing on the Danish network Venligboerne (‘friendly neighbors’).
It offers an example of a ‘national’ solidarity movement/Refugees

Welcome movement operating on both national and local levels. The
movement insists on a humanitarian approach different from the exclu-
sivist and restrictionist approach taken by the state. The movement also
articulates the commonalities between people, refugees, and Danes alike.
The engagement of the movement is not transformative of the state’s
legal framework but can rather be seen as a necessary supplement or
alternative social framework based on collaboration with the authori-

ties, e.g., reception and asylum centers, municipalities, day centers, and
schools as well as a diverse range of voluntary activities. In this chapter,
we discuss how civil society becomes part of the ‘refugee crisis’ in daily
acts of solidarity constituting a form of civic solidarity.
Keywords  Civic solidarity · Solidarity movement · Civil society

Activism · Institutionalization
The ‘refugee crisis’ came to Denmark the first Sunday of September

2015. Before that day the crisis was something taking place on Greek
islands, in Eastern Europe and at German train stations. It had little to do
with Denmark. That perception changed abruptly on September 6, 2015.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8_4
During the following week, 1500 refugees entered the country. Many of
them with no intention of applying for asylum in Denmark as their des
tination was Sweden. This was the triggering event evoking the notion
of ‘refugee crisis’ in Denmark. That Sunday 175 refugees had arrived at
the southern border of Rødby. It was a shock for Danish politicians who
had done a lot to prevent this from happening through deterrence poli-
cies. Paradoxically, the Danish Ministry of Immigration and Integration
had paid for an advert in four Lebanese newspapers running the same
day telling about the conditions in Denmark and restrictions in terms
of family reunification, halving of social benefits, etc. The advert begins:
‘Denmark has decided to tighten the regulations concerning refugees in
a number of areas’ (BBC 2015; Taylor 2015). Although it is q uestionable
whether one single incoming refugee had heard of these restrictions pre-
viously, only half of the refugees entering the country applied for asylum
in Denmark: the rest refused to register with the Danish immigration
officers and police and either stayed put with a wish to go to Sweden or
joined a larger group that started to walk on the E47 highway toward
Sweden. Five hundred refugees crossed the border within 20 hours and
the situation was described as chaotic and out of control (Róin 2016).
The long summer of migration had also come to Denmark. While
the number of asylum applications Denmark received over the course
of 2015 was much lower than that in Sweden,1 the increase in asylum
applications—over 40% higher than the preceding year—was noticeable.
Even more remarkable, however, as already indicated, were the num-
bers of people recorded simply entering the country to continue their
journeys onward to Sweden rather than submitting an asylum claim
in Denmark. During the peak of the crisis in November 2015, Danish
police estimated that between 7500 and 11,000 people were crossing
into Denmark from Germany each week (Jørgensen 2016).2
This spurred a lot of political controversy polarizing society between
those who wanted the social order maintained and police and politicians
to take action, acting negatively and critically toward the refugees, and
those who oppositely engaged in solidarity work. In this chapter, we
are concerned with the latter. We are interested in how the ‘we-ness’
and spontaneous acts of solidarity developed into a more persistent
and long-lasting form of civic solidarity. The visibility of the crisis gen-
erated a myriad of solidarity initiatives and created and reactivated net-
works seeking to help and assist the refugees in both legitimate and illicit
4 CIVIC SOLIDARITY: VENLIGBOERNE 75
ways. Thousands of people became involved in solidarity work within a

very short period. Many people acted in civil disobedience and became
‘humanitarian smugglers’ by offering transportation to refugees want-
ing to go to Sweden. Some groups of refugees sailed over Øresund to
Sweden, whereas others crossed the bridge. Isin has termed those ‘activist
citizens’ (2009). He describes this activism as ‘enacted through struggles
for rights among various groups in their ongoing process of formation
and reformation. Actors, scales and sites of citizenship emerge through
these struggles’ (ibid.: 383). Protests can take many forms, and migrant
struggles in particular have pointed toward what some call ‘a new area of
protests’ (Ataç et al. 2016). The solidarity work taking place when and
after the refugees entered Denmark in larger numbers than previously
in September 2015 can be interpreted in different ways. It may be seen
as spontaneous one-off types of interventions, as a type of ‘everyday-
politics’ (Boyte 2010; Yates 2015) or as ‘contentious politics’ (Ataç et al.
2016; Tarrow and Tilly 2015). Struggles in this sense signify contentious
politics in very different ways. Activism becomes an alternative mode for
challenging societal consensus when the established political channels are
closed (Agustín and Jørgensen 2013; Balibar 2000; Beltrán 2009; Krause
2008), but the particular type of activism is shaped differently accordingly
to the protesters involved, to the claims-making and aims of the move-
ment, and to the relations between civil society and the state. To under-
stand these actions, and what we regard as an example of civic solidarity,
we need to understand the political context they took place within.
The Danish Immigration Regime

The development of the Danish immigration and integration policy
resembles that of other Western European countries. In the late 1960s
and early 1970s, a number of labor migrants arrived in the country to
fill gaps in the labor market. The assumption was that the labor migrants
would leave again one day but, as happened elsewhere, the migrants to
a large degree stayed and made use of the possibilities for family reunifi-
cation. In 1983, Denmark adopted a new Foreigners’ Law which intro-
duced the so-called de facto protection category for refugees, thereby
broadening the basis for asylum, which, at the time, gave Denmark the
status of having one of the most liberal refugee policies in Europe. The
Foreigners’ Law, including access to asylum, was changed again in 2002
when the de facto category was removed and restrictions were intro-
duced in both the immigration and integration policies. The change
came after the change of government in 2001 when the Conservative–
Liberal government took power with the parliamentary support of the
populist right-wing party Danish People’s Party. The Danish immigra-
tion and integration policy framework following since 2001 has been
characterized as restrictive, and, in several ways, has served as an inspi-
ration for “new style integration” which was pursued by other European
countries during the 2000s (Hedetoft 2006; Jønsson and Petersen
2012; Jørgensen 2012; Jørgensen and Thomsen 2018). Diane Sainsbury
depicts the development as a move from “reluctant inclusiveness to
exclusion” (Sainsbury 2012: 228). The main goal of the immigration
and integration policy of the 2000s was to change the composition of
the immigrant population, implying a ‘managed migration’, making it
difficult to obtain family reunification and asylum (as illustrated by abol-
ishing the de facto protection category), but making it less difficult to
enter as a labor migrant and/or as a student, for instance. There has
been and still is an underlying reluctance toward accepting immigrants as
such. Since the 1980s and especially in the 2000s, both access to citizen-
ship and even permanent residency have become more restrictive.
Danish policy-makers and integration actors responded in three
ways to the ‘refugee crisis’: (1) introducing changes to the asylum and
integration policy frameworks with the goal of deterring new arrivals,
(2) developing new initiatives intended to promote faster labor market
integration, and (3) increasing the number of ‘bottom-up’ initiatives by
local and non-governmental actors (Jørgensen 2016). The first of these
responses illustrates how the ‘border spectacle’ (cf. De Genova) is per-
formed at the Danish borders.
The Danish government followed the path set by other European
countries by reintroducing border controls on January 4, 2016, due to
an ‘exceptional’ situation which allowed for suspending the Schengen
Agreement on free mobility. The decision was made the same day as
Sweden announced that it would enforce border control to Denmark.
However, before this six other countries (Austria, Finland, France,
Germany, Malta, and Norway) had already introduced border con-
trols. According to the Danish Prime Minister, 91,000 refugees had
entered Denmark, and 13,000 of those had applied for asylum while
the rest were expected to have entered Norway and Sweden—the sit-
uation was an emergency and called for serious actions, said the Prime
Minister (DR 2016). When most of the incoming refugees were only
passing through Denmark, the situation was perceived less grave, but
with the closure of the borders to the neighboring Nordic countries,
the perception changed. Alongside the physical control at the external
borders—what Grete Brochmann has characterized as ‘external explicit/
direct control policies’ (1999)—we also find more implicit measures
which had the purpose of deterring people from arriving by decreasing
the alleged attractiveness of Denmark as a destination for asylum seek-
ers. The most contentious of these has been the so-called jewelry bill,
adopted in January 2016.3 Earlier in 2015, the government halved the
social benefits that asylum seekers had been entitled to. When introduc-
ing the regulations, Minister of Integration Inger Støjberg stated: ‘We
must tighten up, so we can control the inflow of asylum seekers coming
to Denmark […] This is the first in a line of restrictions which the gov-
ernment will implement to get the foreigner issue under control again’
(Beskæftigelsesministeriet4 2015). It later introduced tent camps for
hosting asylum seekers (despite that there was no lack of vacant build-
ings which could be used). Other measures counted the aforementioned
campaign in Lebanese newspapers. Looking at the situation in the early
days of 2018, we find a mix of external and internal control policies.
The temporary border control has been extended several times with the
approval of the EU due to the alleged ‘state of emergency’. The Ministry
of Foreigners and Integration has since the new government was formed
in June 2015 introduced 71 restrictions in the foreigners’ area (writing
in March 2018). It keeps a tracker on the homepage proudly informing
about the number and content of these changes.5 Of these, 31 restric-
tions relate directly to asylum seekers. Across the political landscape—
with the exception of the most leftist parties, the social liberals, and the
greens—there has been a consensus on the need to limit the number
of refugees applying for asylum. Numerous political actors inside and
outside the government have welcomed the legislative changes with
reference to the ‘state of emergency’ the country is believed to be in
(Jørgensen 2016). Most political parties deemed the new measures to be
fair and appropriate, considering the exceptional circumstances. Basically,
we see the crisis narrative unfold and legitimize exclusivist, restrictive
practices and policies as discussed in Chapter 1.
The political consensus leads to a closure of the established political
channels through which to make rights claims, and for Balibar activism
becomes an alternative for changing the social order (2000). Alongside
similar lines—with a focus on the border spectacle—Nyers and Rygiel

have argued (2012: 3) that border controls can be restrictive but also
‘constitutive of new ways of “being political” (Isin 2002)’. They give rise
to new political subjectivities and ‘may reflect different ways of organiz-
ing political community through a condition of mobility, in which val-
ues of equality, justice and recognition come to be redefined from the
perspective of mobile subjects’ (ibid.: 13). As mentioned in Chapter 2,
Rygiel further argues that borders also ‘paradoxically can act as bridges
or moments around which people on either sides of the borders, non-cit-
izen migrants along with citizens, come together in solidarity and sup-
port for migrants’ rights’ (Rygiel et al. 2015: 1). She uses the notion
‘bordering solidarity’ to capture this process. The question is if this
was and is the case in Denmark? Did the restrictive approach spur new
mobilizations and solidarity networks which could shatter the prevailing
consensus? Conflicts—or social antagonism—are, according to Chantal
Mouffe, the basis of all social relations but may be hidden by consensus.
Shattering consensus and revealing the contingency of the social order
are therefore the key to social change. Mouffe has argued that liberal
democratic principles and institutions should not be taken for granted;
they must be fortified and defended (Mouffe 2000: 4).
Migrants, Civil Society, and Activism

in Denmark Before the ‘Refugee Crisis’
Immigrant organizations are traditionally weak in Danish society and

have made little impact on the political system (Jørgensen 2009). The
same can be said about the few alliances between immigrants and non-mi-
grants which have mobilized during the last four to five decades. They
have not been strong, whether in terms of numbers, resources, or persis-
tence. Only since the late 2000s have we seen strong and not least per-
sistent mobilizations with a potential for social change. There have been
a few examples before these recent years where we can identify various
solidarity networks emerge. One of these was the so-called Mexican case
in 1977 (Toubøl 2016).6 The lack of legal rights for foreigners caused an
uproar and led to one of the first solidarity mobilizations with foreigners
in a migrant justice coalition. The political development in the 1980s led
to different tightenings of the law which again led to new mobilizations.
The perhaps most well known was the ‘the Committee for Clandestine
Refugees’ (Komitéen Flygtninge Under Jorden) established in 1985.
It still exists in 2018 but has since been renamed Refugees Welcome.
Although it is difficult to talk about one movement, we can in the late
1990s and early 2000s see a patchwork of smaller groups and networks
that constitute a refugee solidarity network. The coalition includes both
local bottom-up initiatives around the country and established NGOs like
Amnesty International.
A defining moment for the national solidarity network is the occu-
pation of the Brorson Church in Copenhagen in May 2009. Activists
occupied the church and hid 282 Iraqi refugees who were facing depor-
tation because of a new return agreement between Iraq and the Danish
government. Church Asylum (Kirkeasyl) took place during a time when
many individuals and groups in civil society were dissatisfied with the
prevailing asylum policies and attitude toward immigrants. As Ilker Ataç
has shown happening in Austria with mobilizations supporting ‘refugee
protest camp Vienna’ (2016), the Danish protest movement targeted
restrictive asylum policies and thus created activist citizens (cf. Isin), but
the emancipatory effects of the struggle materialized through the emer-
gence of a solidarity movement. The closure of the established political
opportunity structures made it necessary to transgress the political space
and enlarge the political community. Many supporters did not necessarily
have the requisite will or zest to actively enter and transform traditional
politics (Jørgensen 2013). Church Asylum offered a new political plat-
form which focused on specific topics and had a loose, flexible structure
making it possible to enter the network with different levels of engage-
ment and resources. Church Asylum was constituted by a heterogeneous
alliance consisting of Iraqi refugees, political activists from the left, squat-
ters and ‘black bloc activists’, health personnel (doctors, nurses, and mid-
wives), lawyers, students, interest organizations (like Grandparents for
Asylum), media people, ministers, and others (ibid.). As we have argued
previously (Chapter 2 in this book; Agustín and Jørgensen 2016a), when
understanding such alliances between civil society and immigrants, the
question is not an identitarian or identity-political one. Rather, it is
about understanding how different political actors converge in ongo-
ing social struggles in order to undo the political closure. This particular
alliance consisting of a multitude of actors with very different political
experience and access points gave the network a much larger impact on
the public debate—and arguably long-time political discourse—than
was seen before. Solidarity and acts of solidarity were generative of a
new collective political identity and were inventive of new imaginaries
of an inclusive society. When it comes to the direct goals, the network

failed. All the Iraqi asylum seekers remaining in the church were appre-
hended by the police on August 13, 2009, and later deported to Iraq.
However, in terms of creating a collective identity and creating a per-
sisting political platform based on solidarity, the network was a success.
The solidarity work had goals beyond the fate of the Iraqi refugees in
the church as they aimed at altering the system. It made the conflict
visible and the Iraqi refugees ‘conquered the right to speak’, as Balibar
has put it (2000).
In order to understand how civil society reacted to the current ‘refu-
gee crisis’, it is necessary to also understand the processes and solidarity
mobilizations which went before the crisis to reveal the continuities and
bases of the mobilizations.
The ‘Refugee Crisis’ as a New Moment

As happened elsewhere, the ‘refugee crisis’ spurred strong mobilizations
once it was situated also in a Danish context. Europe’s external bor-
ders had moved to Denmark, so to speak. Before this, Danish individ-
ual solidarity activists had been going especially to Greece to take part in
solidarity work (see Stevens 2016), and some had even established
NGOs and solidarity networks on the Greek islands supporting local net-
works and assisting refugees crossing in from Turkey. Once the inflow of
refugees entering Denmark grew, so did the anger and dissent toward
the state politicians and institutions not giving the refugees the required
and needed support. In the growing solidarity movement, the crisis was
framed not as a ‘refugee crisis’ but as a humanitarian and political crisis
first and foremost. Whereas the state and politicians responded with reg-
ulations, restrictions, and harshness, parts of civil society responded with
support and kindness. As was the case with Church Asylum in 2009,
the network which emerged here had a heterogeneous composition—
in this phase extremely fragmented and not constituted as one network
but more resembling what Greek activists broadly term ‘people in sol-
idarity’. The initial efforts had a supportive and welcoming nature and
mainly took place at the southern borders and train stations in the capital
Copenhagen and Aarhus on the peninsula. As such, it resembled the wel-
coming culture which had emerged in Austria, Germany, Italy, and other
places (cf. Chapter 2; see for instance Ataç 2016; Danielzik et al. 2016;
Hamann and Karakayali 2016; Hann 2015; Koca 2016; Zamponi 2018).
What is important is that the network developed in the absence of

both state and traditional NGOs. ‘Humanitarian smugglers’, doctors,
interpreters, and chefs organized transportation, medical aid, and food
(Róin 2016). One of the people helping out, Imad, said in an interview
to a Danish newspaper that ‘it was primarily the brown [here meaning
immigrants] who helped getting people further. The others [the native
Danes] were good in organizing first aid and permissions. We had hands
on’ (in Róin 2016; our translation). It is true that a larger n umber of
people with migrant background from the capital were among the first
movers who went to the border to assist. They were constantly in the
frontline. Some of them belonged to ‘gangs’ in Copenhagen and were
used to dealing with the police. Skills that came in handy when trying
to divert attention from the stranded refugees and give other solidar-
ians a chance to help them move on. However, in reality hundreds of
people with both migrant and non-migrant background took part in the
‘humanitarian smuggling’. Hundreds of those have since been c onvicted
and fined (Witte 2016). According to the Danish Alien Act section 59,
article 8, it is a legal offense to offer transport to immigrants or assist
them with shelter or food during an illegal stay in Denmark. This is per-
ceived as trafficking and may result in fines or imprisonment for up
to two years. One of the cases which got a lot of attention was the case
against a City Council member in Aarhus from the Red–Green Alliance
who together with another politically organized party member housed
two African men on their way to Norway (Nielsen 2016). The two were
acquitted in August 2016. Another solidarity activist who was active at
the German–Danish border region states: ‘It was a patchwork of peo-
ple. Low and high. Rich and less rich. Brown and white. It was people I
never thought I would see in such a place in such a situation’ (‘Samir’—
in Róin 2016; our translation). What is important to notice here is that
the collective identity which grew out of the shared solidarity opened
up for action repertoires, such as civil disobedience, transporting peo-
ple across borders, which the involved people had never taken part in
before. A 70-year-old grandmother who was among the hundreds of
people being convicted for human smuggling stated to The Washington
Post: ‘I’m proud of what I did and will never regret having done it’ (Witte
2016). A central organizer of the solidarity network working from the
central train station in Copenhagen likewise wrote in a letter also to The
Washington Post: ‘It was a political cause where we felt we for once could
contribute. A cause where we could make a difference. We will never do
something which goes against our conscience – even if the state demands
it’ (Samir in Róin 2016; our translation and our italics). The we here is
important as it illustrates the emerging solidarity across ethnic and social
divisions. As we write in Chapter 2, civic solidarity is the sphere of fellow
feeling, the we-ness that makes society into society (cf. Alexander 2006).
Here, Samir is also speaking as an immigrant coming from the Nørrebro
area of Copenhagen usually ascribed stereotypes of consisting of immi-
grant ghettos with criminals and unemployed residents. It illustrates well
how borders and border controls become bridges for a new inclusive sol-
idarity (cf. Rygiel above). The border spectacle is a space in which soli-
darities are generated, and these solidarities again generate alternatives in
the absence of a (solidary) state. Obviously, the situation not only caused
people to act in solidarity. Rather, it polarized society, and many peo-
ple felt that the state should punish the people acting in civil obedience
(Njiokiktjien 2016). Organizations like the German anti-migrant organ
ization Pegida have never really grown strong in Denmark but at the
same time, the radical right-wing party Danish People’s Party has been
decisive for the development of migration policies since at least 2001.
Outside the formal political channels, we also find people acting against
the refugees and people in solidarity. A very symbolic image of this polar-
ization was the photo of an elderly man—later known as the ‘spitting
man’—standing on a freeway overpass and spitting down on refugees
walking on foot on the freeway toward Sweden (Larsen 2015).
It is in this political landscape and renewed activism beginning
in September 2015, we find Venligboerne. It should be noted that
Venligboerne is just one of the groups in the emerging solidarity move-
ment we see developing during those weeks and months in 2015—
albeit by far the largest one. Other groups include Fair Welcome,
Vinkegruppen, Unlimited voices (previously Hovedbanegaardens frivil-
lige [the volunteers at the central station]). Likewise, established organ-
izations such as Refugees Welcome are part of the movement. The
network dates back longer than 2015, though. The movement was not
originally aimed at doing solidarity work with refugees, but was devel-
oped as an initiative in a social center in Hjørring, Northern Jutland,
by the nurse Merete Bonde Pilgaard (Fenger-Grøndahl 2017). With
the arrival of a large number of refugees, the initiative grew rapidly
when it was introduced as a new approach to meeting refugees. From
here, the initiative spread across Denmark (even outside the country)
and received increasing attention as an alternative approach to meeting
refugees (Jørgensen and Rosengren Olsen, forthcoming/2019). It is

important to emphasize that it is not only an urban movement but also
one that is dispersed across the country and indeed was born in a city
with fewer than 25,000 inhabitants. Hence, it is not to be compared with
urban ‘rights to the city movements’ or urban justice movements (e.g.,
Kings et al. 2016; Schierup et al. 2014) but rather must be seen as part
of the welcoming culture developing all over Europe in response to the
‘refugee crisis’. The ‘refugee crisis’ is without doubt a defining moment
in explaining the strengthening and spread of civic solidarity, but it also
ties up to the previous solidarity networks discussed earlier in this chapter.
Horizontalist Solidarity: Creating Spaces

of Interaction in Lack of Institutional Ones
Today, the movement has spread to most municipalities where the dif-
ferent member groups are connected in a horizontalist structure (cf.
Rajaram in Chapter 1) but most often functions as autonomous units as
there is no central organizing committee beyond a set of shared prin-
ciples. These principles are very simple: be kind in the meeting with
others; be curious when you meet people different from yourself; meet
difference with tolerance (Venligboerne, n.d.). There is no centralized
control or bureaucratized decision-making process and no formalized
divisions of labor, although many of the local groups do establish some
degrees of formalization along these lines. Venligboerne have a number
of shared aims such as: providing legal aid, practical help, medical sup-
port, language training, job-seeking assistance, and everyday donations;
creating broad alliances including both experienced activists and people
new to solidarity work; setting up social centers such as VenligboHus;
making the problems of the asylum process and integration into Danish
society visible; practicing a humanitarian approach different from the
exclusivist and restrictivist approach characterizing the state; articulating
the commonalities between people, refugees, and Danes alike (Jørgensen
and Rosengren Olsen, forthcoming/2019).
In 2018, the different Venligbo chapters count more than 110 local
groups and have more than 150,000 members (Fenger-Grøndahl 2017;
Facebook update by Venligbo activist Mads Nygaard, 2018).7 Some of
the largest chapters are the Copenhagen charter with more than 41,000
members, Aarhus with 10,000, Odense with 4700, and Aalborg with
4000 members. In principle, anyone can establish a Venligbo chapter.
Pilgaard, on the main webpage, only requests that the fundamental prin-
ciples and values of Venligboerne are respected (Venligboerne, n.d.).
The network has gone through some internal discussions regarding what
exactly the shared values are, which we will return to later in this chapter.
The idea has also diffused across the borders, so today there are Venligbo
groups in other European countries, including Germany, Great Britain,
Greece, Italy, France, Norway, Sweden, and Turkey. These are organized
in different ways adapted to local conditions.
Venligboerne fill out many roles in the encounter between civil
society and the immigrants/refugees. The local groups have been

vital to creating a space of inclusion where newcomers are received as
peers. A member with refugee background himself formulates this in
the following way:
When a society opens it’s door it must be ready to coexist with others in
peace and mutual respect. […] That is why the initiative Venligborgerne
[sic] in Denmark is one the best movements we have seen in years, which
contributes to integration, understanding and peace, because the people
themselves are the engine of the movement. (Kayvan, October 28, 2017 in
the Facebook group ‘Venligboerne – København og omegn’)
This touches upon an important aspect also taken up by other mem-

bers—the ability to create a position of belonging to an inclusive com-
munity erasing distinctions between those who have papers and those
who do not. Another member writes: ‘I am not an asylum seeker and
refugee, I am Fawaz, teacher from Syria, who left my country to avoid
being killed’ (our translation). It both describes the political subjec-
tivity of the ‘refugee’ that Fawaz experiences ‘outside’ of the Venligbo
movement and the participant/member subjectivity that he experiences
as part of the movement. Outside of the movement (‘in society’), he is
considered a refugee: he is labeled and often included in sweeping gen-
eralizations about whom or what a refugee is. Refugees are marginalized,
criminalized, and misunderstood, and they are identified on the basis
of this category (‘refugee’). Inside Venligboerne, he becomes a per-
son with a history and unique attributes. He is Fawaz—the person—a
teacher from Syria who was persecuted and who had to flee his persecu-
tors. At the same time, however, he becomes part of a new community
of people who seek to develop a practical alternative through an inclusive
community as a reaction to an exclusivist regime (the example is taken
from Agustín and Jørgensen, forthcoming). The driver for this type of
inclusion is solidarity. Reading Isin’s acts of citizenship into this, i.e.,
‘acts produce actors that do not exist before acts’ (2008: 37), we may
argue that these acts of solidarity—creating inclusion—transgress any
legal and/or formal membership category and create new subjectivities.
They help break down the citizen/non-citizen binaries as Rygiel notes
(Rygiel et al. 2015).
The power of Venligboerne lies firstly in the ability to forge alliances
and secondly in their flexibility and ability to adapt to the policy devel-
opments. When the government has tightened aspects of the Foreigners’
Law, regulations for asylum seekers, and so on, Venligboerne have
responded not only with critique (of the asylum regime) but also with
concrete actions. The government for instance lets the individual appli-
cant pay for family reunification—legal procedures, costs, and flight tick-
ets. These are often minors who have arrived in Denmark on their own.
In practice, it makes it impossible for those granted family reunification
to proceed, seeing that they have no money as refugees receive very lit-
tle money in social benefits. Venligboerne responded by collecting funds
for this purpose. The group ‘Venligboerne indsamler’ (Venligboerne col-
lect) now has more than 3700 members, and through collections, it has
been able to fund several family reunifications so far. Moreover, different
groups have been able to get refugees into employment qualifying them
to stay under one of the specialized schemes for labor migrants.
Civic Solidarity Between Autonomy

and Institutionalization
To understand Venligboerne as an example of civic solidarity, we need

to investigate the relations the movement has to the state and civil soci-
ety. The relationship we see here is one between the state (at either the
national or municipal level) and volunteers. It is not necessarily one
‘against the state’ although parts of the movement do position them-
selves in such a way. Venligboerne can act from below, and the solidarity
work can be situated both as an autonomous position or in collabora-
tion with the individual municipalities. Venligboerne have not been able
to reform formal institutions, but they have set up alternative and social
institutions, e.g., educational offers, job-seeking advocacy, legal help,
a social community such as VenligboHus. This discussion connects to
a larger theoretical and empirical discussion on the role of civil society

and social movements in this phase of neoliberal capitalism. Without
going too far into that discussion, we see that civil society, as such, has
been affected by processes of deregulation, privatization, and market-
ization (Jessop 2002; Kaldor 2003; Tesfahuney and Dahlstedt 2008;
Ålund and Reichel 2007). Mary Kaldor (2003) contends that civil soci-
ety functions, increasingly, as a substitute for the state in a market for
service provision—a multitude of NGOs or INGOs competing for gov-
ernment contracts. The ‘risk’ for social movements, grassroots organiza-
tions, NGOs, etc., is that a cooptation takes place which limits agency
and autonomy. There is nothing in this characteristic which would make
the situation different for a network like Venligboerne when it comes to
the relation to the state. The internal organization of the network, being
horizontalist without any formal leadership, of course makes it differ-
ent in terms of how the municipalities and the network can collaborate.
Looking across the country, we find different kinds of such collabo-
rations. In some cases, the local Venligbo group has become a service
provider, in some cases even funded by the local City Council, with
the formal requirements and expectations following from such a role.
In municipalities like Ballerup, Roskilde, and Aarhus, the City Council
collaborates actively with the local Venligbo charters. In Ballerup, the
municipality offered the group facilities to do their work. In Hjørring,
where Venligboerne springs from originally as already mentioned, the
municipality financially supported the establishment of Café Venligbo,
a café and meeting place. In Aarhus, the municipal coordinator of the
voluntary sector has a role in doing Q&As on the Venligbo Facebook
page for the local chapter (for all see Abrahamsen 2016). In other
municipalities, the local group has no formal space and acts according to
its own ambitions and intentions.
The experiments of civil society coalitions entering formal politics—
as movement parties (Agustín and Jørgensen 2016b)—also received
attention in some of the explicitly politically oriented Venligbo groups
(especially in the Venligbo Copenhagen chapter). The fact that Barcelona
en Comú —a citizen platform—with an agenda based on defending
social justice and community rights as well as migrant justice could
take power at the local elections in May 2015 and form the local gov-
ernment fronted by the charismatic Ada Colau as the new mayor did
not go unnoticed (more on this in Chapter 5). Citizen platforms took
power not only in Barcelona but also in major Spanish cities—including
Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza, La Coruña—where their mayors and coa-

litions are now in government (Caccia 2017). The thought that a rein-
vigorated municipalist movement could prove to be a powerful tool for
building emancipatory alternatives from the bottom up (Baird 2017)
was also interesting to many activists within Venligboerne.8 The agen-
das of such civic platforms go far beyond the more limited aims of
Venligboerne as they are formulated as comprehensive policy agendas for
changing society as such. However, the strong feeling of having mobi-
lized thousands of people in Denmark, not previously engaged in solidar-
ity work and politics, made some activists believe that something similar,
although on a lesser scale, could be possible in Denmark.
This became a hefty topic for discussion in some Venligbo groups.
Some activists—bringing in experiences from Barcelona and elsewhere
and tapping into the growing municipalism—tried to engage also
Venligboerne in a practical discussion of the possibilities for making a
political platform for the local elections taking place in the fall of 2017.
Meetings were organized in Aarhus and Copenhagen (Kommunen til
fælles 2017) inviting groups such as Venligboerne, but also social jus-
tice groups and anti-austerity groups to share experiences and consider
making a joint collation and political platform. Even more these issues
were discussed in the various Facebook groups being the central source
of communication for Venligboerne. Here, the discussions conflated with
the issue of autonomy vs. institutionalization and collaborations with the
state (and constraints and limitations when doing so). In one thread, a
Venligbo activist (TK) sums up the anti-institutional position regard-
ing collaboration with the political system shared by many members of
Venligboerne:
As I see it, there is a deep divide between the system world in the adminis-
trations that can only navigate and control by penalizing or luring money
and goods and then the lived ordinary everyday world. While the adminis-
trations use the very expensive words like citizenship, inclusion, openness,
cooperation, quality of life, etc.
In Venligboerne we do quite the opposite [than collaborate with the
municipality and established NGO services] and are very old-fashioned,
almost communist, in that we work together in working communities,
where everyone is regarded equal. Everybody owns the work, the commu-
nity and the result. And here ordinary friendships form all the time. It’s
just easier to be together and to get to know each other in ‘good times
and bad’ when you work together and when everyone offers what they
can. (TK in thread in closed Facebook group on Venligboerne and civic
platforms, June 2017; our translations)
TK’s position on and space for Venligboerne is one we can recognize

from conversations and meetings with Venligbo activists. The feeling
of we-ness is not an attempt to replace the state and offer welfare from
below but rather to develop potential alternative social patterns. Being
outside the established system helps prevent cooptation and for her
offers an autonomous position. Interestingly, she at the same time artic-
ulates an understanding of commons and practices of commoning which
also is the basis for most of the civic platforms in Spain (en Comú is ‘in
common’ in Spanish). Through the practices of commoning, ‘relation-
ships of mutuality are nurtured with fellow commoners and frameworks
for new ways of organizing society are developed’, writes Craig Fortier
(2017: 60). Solidarity here (for this fraction of Venligboerne) is spatially
produced through a position outside the state. It generates a collective
identity of being equal and acting in solidarity across social, cultural, and
ethnic divisions—this is the basis of the we-ness and of civic solidarity.
It is also inventive of a new imaginary of a shared ‘working community’
independent of the state although on another scale than Hotel City Plaza
which epitomizes the ‘refugee crisis’, border system, and a possible alter-
native. The form of solidarity articulated and practiced by Venligboerne
such as TK is found in many other settings. In the book Unsettling the
Commons a long-time organizer within the Toronto No One is Illegal
(NOII) chapter who has been active in the struggle for making Toronto
a solidarity city reflects on how to create tangible and long-term change
in the context of a (repressive) state:
We can’t just step out of capitalism and colonialization and civilization

– so we create these spaces within. They might be political spaces, they
might be communal spaces, they might be spaces for art or whatever, and
in those spaces we practice. And we often fail, but we keep trying. (Hussan
quoted from Fortier, ibid.: 65)
In many ways, the search for available ‘spaces’ for change is also defining
for understanding these Venligbo fractions’ attempts at creating spaces
of interaction in lack of acceptable institutional ones. The operative term
here is acceptable as no one believes that politicians will make these
changes, which takes us back to the assumption of activism becoming

an alternative mode for challenging societal consensus. ‘We had just had
enough’ is an often-used refrain of Venligboerne: they are fed up with
the foreigner-skeptic rhetoric and political acts of the government and
thus try to develop an alternative.
Polarizations, Fractions and the Issue of Politics

Although the internal dispute perhaps has been blown up to a level
which is not accurate, we can identify two fractions within the move-
ment which challenge the cohesion of the alliance. The troubling ques-
tion somehow relates to the question Hussan from NOII asked himself:
‘How do we create a better society?’ The original founder Pilgaard
responds ‘with kindness, not politics’, whereas prominent activists like
Mads Nygaard (active in both Hjørring and Copenhagen) and Anne Lise
Marstrand (active in Copenhagen, until November 2017 spokesperson
for the Copenhagen charter) respond with activism, engagement, and
politics. Pilgaard said to the daily Jyllands-Posten that ‘Venligboerne do
not act politically and are not put in this world to change the asylum
law’ (in Haislund 2016). Marstrand and Nygaard not surprisingly disa-
gree. Marstrand seeks to upscale the conditions of the individual asylum
seeker to a critique of the Danish asylum regime. In a newspaper article
and later online article for the Net magazine pov., she for instance took
the readers with her to one of the infamous tent camps housing asylum
seekers at the time. ‘I wanted to say: “Come along! See for yourself, lis-
ten for yourself, judge for yourself”. And most importantly, I wanted to
give a voice to some of the people who seldom get a chance to say any-
thing’ (Marstrand 2016). The report which was illegal to make earned
her the praise of many sympathizers but even more hate from people
not supporting Venligboerne, among these the Minister of Integration
Inger Støjberg who ‘shamed’ Marstrand in a public post on her personal
Facebook page giving way to hundreds of hostile comments toward
Marstrand. For Pilgaard and her supporters, this was expected and det-
rimental to the solidarity work. Solidarity in that way is contentious also
within the movement. When a Minister starts attacking the movement, it
legitimizes everyone else’s attacks. A local Nyborg9 City Council chair-
man from the Danish People’s Party suggested in a Facebook update
that members of Venligboerne should have their heads shaved—like the
Danish women who slept with German soldiers during World War II
humiliatingly were shaved as punishment after the war. They were con-
sidered traitors (Nissen 2017). At the same time, the hostility spurred
a new surge of mobilizations and stirred thousands of new members
to join Venligboerne. A journalist from Nyborg stated in an interview:
‘They are ordinary people, with families, jobs and houses. They have just
had enough’ (ibid.).
Overall, the mobilization since September 2015 has been met
by harsh critique from some politicians who believed that civil soci-
ety organizations and NGOs went too far by criticizing the politicians
and the conducted policy. Not only Støjberg but also members of the
Conservative Party such as Naser Khader have criticized what they see
as ‘politicizing’ organizations and implied that civil society should not
interfere in domestic politics. The question whether civil society should
be a political place—a place of critique, contestation, and debate—was
taken up at a workshop in January 2017, gathering both academics and
the organizations constituting the solidarity movement in Denmark
(among these Venligboerne, Refugees Welcome). The answer was
‘yes’: ‘civil society should indeed be a political place, a site of critique
and contestation’ and ‘a critical and political civil society was essen-
tial to a well-functioning democracy’ (report from workshop, Jessen
2017). From our theoretical perspective, it makes no sense to describe
the one approach (Pilgaard’s) as a-political and the other one as political
(Marstrand and Nygaard). Both are in our reading part of a politics of
solidarity, and both are constitutive of civic solidarity.
Notes
1. Denmark received nearly 21,000 applications or 1.5% of the EU total,
while Sweden received approximately 160,000 or 11.7% of all applications
within the European Union.
2.
‘Skønsmæssig vurdering af indrejste udlændinge’, Politi, published (last
updated) June 13, 2016, accessed April 29, 2018, https://www.politi.dk/da/
aktuelt/nyheder/skoensmaessig_vurdering_af_indrejste_udlaendinge.htm.
3. This bill introduced additional limitations on access to permanent resi-
dency, extended waiting periods for family reunification, and legalized the
confiscation of valuables worth more than DKK 10,000 or 1340 euros
from arriving refugees. The regulation stipulates: ‘During the interview,
police must in part determine if the foreigner is wearing any visible valu-
ables and must also examine the clothing the foreigner is wearing without
carrying out a search of their body. With the visitation, there shall be no
undressing or entry into the human body’. The money is to cover the
expenses for housing and provisions. Folketinget, ‘L 87 Forslag til lov om
ændring af udlændingeloven’, 2015.
4. Ministry of Employment.
5. ‘Frontpage’, Udlændinge and Integrationsministeriet, uploaded n.d.,
accessed April 29, 2018, http://uim.dk/.
6. The case in short regards the Mexican citizen Jaime Martinez who on
April 1, 1977, was arrested in Denmark and accused of espionage and ter-
rorism. He was kept in isolation for 141 days and was afterward deported
to Cuba. He was never set before a judge or given a trial in court. There
has never been proof put forth that he was guilty of either planned or
actual terrorism or espionage.
7. An ongoing recent project (CISTAS) has been checking up on the
Facebook groups in terms of engagement, overlap, etc. When removing
people who are members of more than one Facebook group related to
Venligboerne, it comes to a number of 100,000 unique active members of
the different groups. See the Civil Society in the Shadow of the State project
(‘Frontpage,’ CISTAS Københavns Universitet og Copenhagen Business
School, uploaded n.d., accessed April 29, 2018, http://cistas.dk/).
8. See also Issue #6, 2017 of ROAR Magazine—‘Radical Municipalism: The
Future We Deserve’ for a discussion of new municipalism in Europe and
South and North America.
9. Smaller Danish municipality of 16,500 inhabitants.
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CHAPTER 5
Institutional Solidarity: Barcelona

as Refuge City
Abstract  In opposition to the obstacles introduced by the Spanish

overnment to receive refugees, Barcelona sets up the ‘Barcelona Refuge
g
City Plan’ to prepare the city to take in refugees. This plan creates an inno-
vative framework to foster institutional solidarity in which the City Council
maintains a contentious relation with the government and tries to coop-
erate with social entities and organizations. The main goal of the plan is
to channel urban solidarity and foster the cooperation with civil society
and the participation of migrants and refugees. The plan also represents
the adaptation to the sense of emergency in 2015 and to the existing real-
ities of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees in the city. To overcome
the restrictions of the government, Barcelona establishes a Spanish Refuge
Cities network and develops, together with other European cities, the ini-
tiative ‘Solidarity cities’. The underlying idea is to develop a new multilevel
governance where the cities take more responsibility.
Keywords  Institutional solidarity · Urban solidarities

Trans-local relations · Refuge City · Multilevel governance
Due to the restrictive policies for asylum seekers and their management
by most of the European member states, the city becomes ‘a key site
for resolving the politics of closure, and for building an open Europe’
(Mayer 2017: 2). This can be seen in the multiple urban spaces in which

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8_5
solidarity is shaped, from occupied buildings to the public uses of libraries

or the habilitation of areas of encounters, but also in the municipalities and
their attempt to carry on a different kind of politics, often in conflict with
one of the national governments. The potential of the city as the scale for
resistance or alternatives reflects the tensions emerging through the con-
vergence of both kinds of initiatives (urban spaces appropriated by civil
society and municipalities): first, the heterogeneity of civil society alter-
natives and the tendency toward homogenization, characteristic of insti-
tutional processes; second, the aim of civil society solidarity practices to
change the urban spaces (which can be in conflict or not with the muni-
cipality) and the policy aim of the municipality (which can be in conflict
with the state or with civil society, or not). In this dual tension, different
forms of solidarity are at stake from the autonomous to the civic ones (and
their uses of urban spaces) and to the institutional and institutionalized
ones (the latter referring to the state level).
Municipalities, in other words, experience the tension of autono-
mous and civic solidarities, on the one hand, and of the formalized sol-
idarity of the state, on the other. In order to understand institutional
solidarity, it is essential to address this dual tension through a difficult
operation: bringing civil society’s solidarity forms into the policy arena
and challenging the implications of the policies coming from the state.
The notion of ‘sanctuary cities’, ‘in which case local authorities, civic
groups, and activists challenge national immigration laws, policies, and
practices’ (Bauder 2016: 174), captures our understanding of ‘institu-
tional solidarity’, since the basis of solidarity is not limited to the institu-
tional realm as such but expanded to civic groups and activists. Solidarity
cities are forged in cooperation with civil society (without implying that
there is a lack of tensions) and in conflict with the restrictions and legal
obstacles coming from the national scale. As well-formulated by Jean
McDonald, ‘community organizations refuse to enable these govern-
mentalized borders by creating policies, practices and social movements
that ensure services are provided to all residents of the city regardless of
immigration status’ (McDonald 2012: 143). Governmental practices of
borders (McDonald is referring to the borders within the nation-states
which also affect the understanding of citizenship) and social and legal
exclusion are contested through the diverse responses by civil societies
and through the elaboration of local policies by the local governments
(in cooperation with civil society organizations).
5 INSTITUTIONAL SOLIDARITY: BARCELONA AS REFUGE CITY 99
In this regard, Barcelona is an interesting case. Barcelona en Comù

(Barcelona in common) is a citizen platform which won the munici-
pal elections in May 2015 less than one year after it was established.
Combining a strong social justice agenda with citizen participation, the
platform was born against the political and economic establishment. Its
leader, and later Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau summarized the elec-
toral success with the idea of ‘David’s victory over Goliath’ (in Rubio
2015) to illustrate a step forward (in this case, toward institutions)
already present in the ‘Sí, se puede’ (‘Yes, we can’) motto of the social
movements. One year later, in a very different setting, namely the Urban
Age Conference at Venice Biennale 2016, Colau anchored the begin-
ning of her political project in the Spanish 15M and reaffirmed the com-
mitment with the political culture produced by social movements: ‘To
understand the governmental agenda we are applying it is necessary to
go back five years, when citizens occupied the squares and originated the
Indignados movement’ (in Ajuntament de Barcelona 2016).
The elaboration of ‘Barcelona’s Refuge City Plan’ (BRCP), launched
in September 2015, entails a notable progress toward a form of institu-
tional solidarity. Together with other organizations, the City Council
built ‘a citizen space to channel urban solidarity and to set up coordi-
nated ways of participating in its application’ (Barcelona Ciutat Refugi,
n.d.). In the following, we will look at how BRCP has been applied, and
how the tensions between the City Council and civil society (as part of
the institutional solidarity) as well as between the City Council and the
state (a relation characterized by conflict) have developed.
Solidarities at Stake
The ‘refugee crisis’ in 2015 made evident the clash between two dif-
ferent kinds of positions: The Spanish government, on the one side,
decided to apply restrictive politics to refugees and hinder their recep-
tion; civil society, on the other side, mobilized to support refugees and
reclaimed and pressured the government to take a more open road and
to receive more refugees. Against the lack of solidarity from the govern-
ment (dressed up as the defense of national interest and preservation of
borders), the forging of solidarity networks by civil society strongly con-
tested the government position and organized themselves to find alterna-
tive ways to support refugees. In this context, the municipalities appear
as a different channel (institutional and closer to society’s everyday life)

and a different scale (local rather than national). The appearance of an
institutional and local form is not enough to solve the source of the
problem: Although the cities, as space for civil society and local institu-
tions, provide shelter and accommodation for refugees, the state is still
solely responsible for the reception system for asylum seekers.
Spain is one of the countries which have significantly breached the
failed refugee relocation scheme. Despite making a commitment to
receive 17,313 refugees (according to the refugee relocation scheme and
the resettlement scheme), Spain ended up receiving only 1910 (Sánchez
and Sánchez 2017). In the middle of shocking images of people dying in
their attempts to cross the Mediterranean and a myriad of people roam-
ing across Europe in 2015, the Spanish civil society was ready to act, but
Spain offered only 700 reception places, 28 of them in Catalonia. As
a response, Barcelona decided to become a ‘Refuge City’, an initiative
which many municipalities joined immediately, and civil society organ-
izations assessed Barcelona’s proposal as a way to put pressure on the
national government and change its reception policy.
The disparity of positions between the national government and the
local council and civil society was reflected in an exchange of opinions
between Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau and the Spanish President Mariano
Rajoy. We consider this exchange important to understanding how sol
idarity can be formalized in two completely opposed ways. In a letter
to the president, Colau (2015a) offered to cooperate with the state and
accept more refugees. She expressed to be ‘impressed by the enormous
wave of solidarity across the whole country’ in reference to all the people
willing to accommodate refugees in their houses, to donate money and
clothes, or to provide care and psychological support. Colau emphasized
that: ‘We as institutions must rise to the occasion of this wave of solidarity.
It is not about charity. It is an obligation’. The obligation is double: to
comply with the EU policies and to respect human rights. Colau besides
demanded from government financing that less money was spent on
border control and more on humanitarian help. Rajoy was not at all

receptive to this proposal. He only shared the pride in citizens’ solidary
initiatives and committed himself to acting in solidarity too: ‘My govern-
ment is determined to respond with efficiency, generosity and solidarity
to this crisis’ (in Huffington Post 2015). However, Rajoy maintained that
it should be a global solution at the European level and not consist of
‘solution patches’ or ‘short-term measures’.
While Colau combines the local scale with the national and European
ones to find solutions, Rajoy diminishes the function of the local and
presents a national scale devoid of capacity to find solutions. The only
efficient scale would, according to him, be the European scale since the
‘refugee crisis’ is global. This understanding of the responses to the ‘ref
ugee crisis’ shows that there are two types of solidarities at stake: The one
defended by Colau, connecting with civil society solidarity and demands
to accept refugees through opening up means to channel and formalize
solidarity; and that of Rajoy, in which the state takes over the m
anagement
of solidarity, making the acceptance of refugees a matter of negotiation
between member states and the EU. Several factors, such as the lack of
binding agreements, the prioritization of granting refugee status to cer-
tain nationalities exclusively, or the insufficient international cooper-
ation (Sánchez and Sánchez 2017), allowed the Spanish government
to opt for a ‘solidarity à la carte’ due to the absence of a European
‘solidarity by force’. The complaint made by Barcelona City Council to
the European Commission and the claim to get authorization to accept
refugees were in vain. Solidarity would find another way beyond and
within the restrictions imposed by the Spanish government.
When Solidarity Becomes Institutional

The launch of the BRCP responds to a situation of emergency in which
the City Council aspires to offer reception and accommodation to refu-
gees in the context of the crisis of management both at the national and
European levels. The idea of the plan is to channel and coordinate the
existing solidarity by civil society and to take advantage of Barcelona’s his-
tory as a ‘solidarity city’, as it happened with the people displaced due
to the wars of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Particularly, the plan
attempted to prepare the city for the first arrival of Syrian refugees. Ada
Colau called to resist the threat, proclaimed by the governments, of a pull
factor (‘efecto llamada’) and proposed instead an empathy factor (‘una
llamada en la empatía) since the people suffering in the images could also
be our sons, sisters or mothers, or even us (Colau 2015b). The strategy
depicted in the plan operates in four areas: reception strategy, care for ref-
ugees already in Barcelona (turning to the already existing Care Service
for Immigrants, Emigrants and Refugees—SAIER), citizen participa-
tion and information, as well as action abroad (by coordinating support
between European cities).
It is interesting to notice that the reception strategy already highlighted

asylum policy as a state responsibility and, consequently, the number of
people arriving to Barcelona depended on the Spanish government. In
view of the government’s policy of relocation, the plan refers to a ‘context
of uncertainty’ and predicts any scenario from a standard number of peo-
ple, according to the European quotas, to a massive number of newcomers.
As mentioned above, the reality is that the government does not respect its
agreements with the EU, and the number of asylum seekers and refugees
was lower than required. One year after the launch of the plan, its aim to
mainly cover Syrian refugees and its sense of emergency were contradicted
by the absence of the expected arrivals. The lack of coupling between the
plan and the ‘real’ necessities shows one of the shortcomings of institu-
tional solidarity (as well as other forms of solidarity). Despite the organi-
zation and coordination established for the reception of dislocated people,
the control of asylum policy and legislation by the government and the
deficient coordination by the EU prevented the desired formalization of
institutional solidarity. In other words, the urban spaces (and institutional
solidarity) open up a new scale to articulate solidarity, but it still happens
under the constraints imposed by other scales, particularly the nation-state.
This change in the initial expectations implied changes to the goals of
the BRCP to adapt to the mutable ‘context of uncertainty’ and to tar-
get the efforts to provide ‘support for refugees reaching Barcelona under
their own steam, not part of European quotas, and initiatives for direct
support for the Mediterranean cities most affected by the humanitarian
crisis’ (Barcelona Ciutat Refugi 2016). The change of strategy consisted
of the strengthening of the Care Service for Immigrants, Emigrants and
Refugees (SAIER), the application of a program for accommodation and
support called ‘Nausica’, more work on awareness and education, tools
for transparent information and continuing international cooperation.
The changes made in the strategy plan reflect besides another kind of
solidarity. Ignasi Calbó, coordinator of the BRCP, explains the new phase
of institutional solidarity:
We have gone from ‘Refugees Welcome’ to managing a whole series of

realities that weren’t the ones that people thought they would be, and the
refugees are not the stereotypical refugees that people thought they would
be receiving. But they are here and we have to attend and we have to
empower them so that they will have their own autonomy and their own
lives. People who do not fit into the media category of what a refugee is
today. (interview, January 23, 2018)
After the first moment of solidarity (‘Refugees Welcome’), a phase of

institutional solidarity shifts its orientation to other existing realities.
This shift entails a change in the imaginary of refugees. The imaginary
was provoked by the Syrian refugee crisis, made even more powerful and
symbolized by the death of the three-year-old Syrian boy Alan Kurdi
who drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. The acknowledgment of new
realities by the City Council demanded a change in the imaginary which
indeed fostered motivations and affect behind the wide wave of solidar-
ity in 2015. Gloria Rendón, coordinator of SAIER and the Nausica pro-
gram, uses these terms to illustrate the change: ‘When the ‘Barcelona,
Refuge City Plan’ was created, the impact in the city was more media
than real […] Now we have a real impact but less media’ (in Barcelona
Ciutat Refugi 2017a). From Rendon and Calbó’s words, it can be
deduced that the media impact in 2015 generated a massive solidarity
movement (of which the BRCP is part) responding to certain imagi-
naries of refugees. The adaptation of the BRCP, although dealing with
existing realities, does not appeal to a solidarity which is easy to mobilize
since it does not match with the expectations of people of what a refu-
gee in need of solidarity is. Furthermore, the idea that there are no ref-
ugees in Barcelona is contested by the people responsible for the BRCP:
First, there are indeed refugees but with a different profile than the one
expected in 2015; second, the lack of media attention is due to the less
striking nature of the new types of refugees and asylum seekers.
Participation becomes essential in order to approach this new form
of institutional solidarity, in which the profile of refugees is more
diverse and responding to different motivations and needs. Rendón (in
Barcelona Ciutat Refugi 2017a) points out that there are 11 types of ref-
ugee profiles in the city to emphasize the difficulty of unifying all the
situations under one sole category as well as the many tasks that the City
Council has to manage since the national government does not cover all
those conditions. As Calbó explains: ‘where the states do not reach, we
are reaching in the cities’ (interview, January 23, 2018). Besides the lack
of initiative by the Spanish government to communicate or to enter into
dialogue with Barcelona City Council, the decisions made by the gov-
ernment affect the policies in the city. For instance, if the state denies
asylum applications (which happens to many nationalities), it provokes
a complicated situation in the municipality if the asylum seekers, instead
of leaving within the established time frame of 15 days, decide to stay.
The consequences of the state decisions are that many asylum seekers are
placed in a condition of irregularity, which leads to increasing precarity.
This problem, which is created by the state decision, must nonetheless be

solved at the city level (in the case of Barcelona through the SAIER and
the Nausica programs, despite their limitations).
The challenge consists in how the contentious solidarity in relation
to the state can contribute to building up new social alliances in urban
space. Pablo Peralta de Andrés, responsible for sensitivity and partici-
pation of the BCRP, defends bringing solidarity into the urban spaces,
especially the neighborhood, to shape social relations within the city:
When we talk about solidarity and refugees, there is a problem in that we

talk in general terms. If we only look at their administrative situation and
their needs, we ignore the particularities: it is not the same to be a man
coming from Venezuela, a woman coming from Pakistan, or a child from
Honduras. So solidarity shouldn’t be with the refugees in general but with
a population that is coming and with a logic of good and new neighbor-
hood. (in Barcelona Ciutat Refugi 2017b)
Peralta de Andrés argues for a contextualized solidarity, in opposition

to a universal one (if this implies an abstract idea of the group of people
that we are solidary with). Solidarity is a spatialized practice which gener-
ates new and inclusive identities. In this case, the neighborhood includes
the newcomers as part of the community since they become part of the
everyday life. Peralta de Andrés shows that when we talk about people as
‘refugees’ in general, ‘we objectify them and we reduce them to an admin-
istrative situation of demanders of international protection when further-
more we oftentimes deny them that’ (in Barcelona Ciutat Refugi 2017b).
The BRCP fosters participation in the neighborhoods by supporting
the work that is already being done by entities and social organizations.
In this regard, the existing solidarity networks are supported and made
visible so people can act and make a difference at the local level. This is
the case of the Refugees Welcome platform that promotes coexistence
through the sharing of housing.
In sum, the idea of setting up Barcelona as a Refuge City (and many
Spanish cities after that) can only be understood as contestation to the
lack of reception of refugees by the government, despite the agreements
with the EU. The formalization of this kind of contentious solidarity
evolved and changed its goal toward receiving and providing services
to refugees and asylum seekers with a profile quite different from the
one expected in 2015. Furthermore, the BRCP aims to coordinate and
cooperate with entities or organizations without the expressed inten-

tion by the City Council to replace them. This point is important, in our
opinion, to the meaning we have attributed to institutional solidarity
here. Thus, we look at how collaboration and relations with civil society
organizations have been applied in the BRCP.
Civil Society: Local and Trans-local Solidarities

Some 160,000 people demonstrated in the streets of Barcelona in
February 2017 to demand a different politics toward refugees. Among
the protesters were both civil society and political actors aiming to shape
together a ‘common bloc and to transform Catalonia into a “welcoming
territory”’ (Safont 2017) so that the Spanish government would take in
more refugees. The rally was preceded by the campaign ‘Our home, your
home’ (launched by Casa nostra, casa vostra), including a video, as call for
the demonstration, that shows anonymous citizens (in opposition to poli-
ticians) who alone were nobody but together were everything. The idea of
being together and the need of strengthening solidarity became visible dur-
ing the protests with banners such as ‘We welcome’ or ‘Enough excuses!
Receive them now’. The former showed the intention of a collective ‘us’
ready to act in solidary ways, whereas the latter was a protest toward pol-
iticians who do not do anything to take in refugees and are relegating the
refugees to a ‘them’ position. A woman held a banner in Catalan which
emphasized the existence of a common we: ‘No one is above another, No
one is illegal’. By claiming that no one is above another a certain principle
of conflict is introduced while maintaining the critique of politicians (or
other actors) who use borders (and withhold common rights) to divide the
we-ness and transform it into opposing ‘we-them’ groups.
‘Casa nostra, casa vostra’ was a campaign organized by a group of
300 individuals. It emerged as a clear example of trans-local solidarity. As
explained by one of the coordinators, Rubén Wagensberg, the initiative
came from a group of Catalan people who met in the refugee camps in
the North of Greece, on the borders with Macedonia. When the refu-
gees were being evicted from the last camps before shutting down the
borders and the Balkan route, spontaneous camps, managed by the inde-
pendent volunteers, were created. The refugees were moved from there
to military camps by the Greek government, and UNHCR and certain
NGOs were the only ones that had access to those camps. This story
shows the contrast between autonomous and institutionalized solidarity
and the conflict experienced by the Catalan volunteers. Wagensberg also

explains how his personal experience in the camps influenced him: ‘the
moment you arrive and talk to one, two, three persons who, looking you
in the eye, explain to you their situation in the last months, you generate
a human empathy which is much stronger than any previous information
that you might have’ (in Colás 2017). Thus, some volunteers decided to
tell people in Catalonia what was going on and connected geographies
of resistance from Greece to Barcelona. The organizers of the campaign
are aware of the limitations of the municipalities to receive refugees and
that is why they claim for more sovereignty to the cities and for fulfilling
the agreements made by the Spanish government. The main discrepancy
with the City Council is that the volunteers do not think that it is an
option to do nothing and hence propose forms of social disobedience if
necessary.
Laia Creus, one of the coordinators of ‘Casa nostra, casa vostra’,
attributes the success of the demonstration and the solidarity con-
cert that was celebrated in Palau Sant Jordi to the previous work of the
organization connecting people from different movements:
There is a network and a structure of entities who work with migration

and at times are challenged in achieving media attention and together they
managed to. But there was already a foundation of very good people from
the movements of reception, of asylum, with a discourse, who for years
have fought for all these issues, from CEAR to Stop Mare Mortum, who
settled the contents and the knowledge and the basis in order for it to be
done well […] You would see how society was ‘boiling’ and expressing the
will to organize and to agree. (Laia Creus, interview, January 23, 2018)
We interpret Creus’ words as an example of how the ‘infrastructures

of dissent’ were developed by connecting the existing capacities and
resources. Through the cooperation of different kinds of entities, organi-
zations, and individuals, the visibility and impact of the actions increased
as well as the possibility of reaching institutions. In this case, the forging
of strong civic solidarity does not enter into contradiction with existing
forms of autonomous solidarity. However, this alliance does not mean
that the organizations participating in the campaign and their own forms
of solidarity are subsumed in the same common form. The temporality
of the demonstration offers an opportunity to get visibility (also media
visibility which, as pointed out, autonomous groups can barely reach),
but it requires previous work of preparation and self-organization that
should not go unnoticed. For instance, ‘Casa nostra, casa vostra’, as

explained by Creus, became an organization which continues its work to
make visible the unjust situation to which refugees are exposed in Greece
and other places, but that wants to work and influence the everyday deci-
sions through reflecting on their consequences.
The mobilization of 2017 showed a vibrant civil society that did not
renounce influencing the restrictive national politics and expressed its
will to receive more refugees. It was also the proof that different types
of solidarity take place in the city. The City Council shifted its politics
from the expectation to take in many Syrian refugees to dealing with the
diversified realities of refugees and asylum seekers in the city. However,
the protest in 2017, emerging from trans-local solidarities, maintained
the focus on the situation of the refugees in Europe and perceived still
that it can be possible to take in more refugees if the government would
respect the European quotas. Civil society scaled up the problem and
the solutions by targeting the national government (as responsible for
asylum policies) and by continuing international solidarity relations in
Greece and claiming for the government to fulfill EU requirements. On
the other hand, the BRCP also scaled up institutionally by networking
with other ‘solidarity cities’.
After the demonstration City Council considered that the civil society
initiative suffered from a lack of continuity, and civil society organizations
were critical due to the lack of political action. Nonetheless, there were
some interesting movements connecting civil society and political initi-
atives. In April 2017, the platform Stop Mare Mortum (SMM) and the
Defence Committee of the Bar Association of Barcelona (Icab) set up a
legal initiative to demand that the government fulfill its agreements with
the EU to take in 19,000 refugees in the course of two years (in Europa
Press 2017). The intention of the initiative is to imply the judicial bodies,
since the EU obligations were not applied in Spain. This legal action is
mainly another means to pressure the government to recognize the posi-
tive reaction seen in the mobilization of March 2017. Due to insufficient
change in the position of the Spanish government, SMM has continued
its solidarity work beyond national borders in Greece. In May 2017, the
City Council took on the responsibility that the national government did
not and signed an agreement with SMM. Funded with 60,000 euros,
its goal is to strengthen legal advice and social support for refugee fam-
ilies living in Greek camps to make reception possible (overcoming the
‘excuses’ of the government). In other words, it is an attempt to make it
easier for refugees and asylum seekers to come to Spain. The project, ini-
tially funded by private contributors in 2016, had already identified 300
people who could be relocated. As an example of institutional solidarity,
this kind of cooperation is based on the services provided by a civil soci-
ety organization and the economic support from the City Council to give
continuity to those services.
A similar situation can be found in the agreement made by the City
Council and the entities Proactiva Open Arms, whose mission is to res-
cue refugees from the sea, and Save the Children. The City Council gave
100,000 euros to each entity and promised to protect them while they
carry out humanitarian missions of rescue at sea. Ada Colau made the
commitment of the City Council clear: ‘If they attack them, they are
attacking the city of Barcelona and the city will do whatever it takes to
defend its work’ (Espanyol 2018). The City Council offers economic
support but also legitimacy to the solidarity organizations working at sea
which often are exposed to accusations of ‘criminalization’ and to obsta-
cles that complicate their work. Due to the constraints at the national
level, solidarity scales up from Barcelona to Greece through the actions
carried out by organizations. When supporting these initiatives, the City
Council follows the means of transnational connections (as a way of insti-
tutional solidarity) which differ from other institutional forms of cooper-
ation like the agreements between cities.
There is, in general, an environment of cooperation between civil
society organizations and the City Council, particularly within the frame-
work of institutional solidarity enhanced by the BRCP. The agreements
to support the actions of organizations or the delegation of functions to
entities favor the institutional cooperation. However, there are also some
tensions. During our interview, Calbó acknowledged that it is difficult
to find a balance between civil society that can be quite demanding as
it must be; the part of the society that opposes an open and progres-
sive migration and refugee policy; and the rest of the political parties.
Although civil society assesses the opportunity to get more influence
through cooperation with the City Council positively, it faces some
dilemmas, particularly in the most activist groups:
As a side effect, internal tensions and disputes have arisen over the move-
ment’s strategic choices (collaborative versus confrontational tones with
institutions), along with criticisms of the Mayor for turning the refu-
gee issue to her advantage without effectively redressing the situation.
(Alcalde and Portos 2018: 162)
The criticisms from some civil society organizations usually point to the
efforts made by the City Council as insufficient. There have also been
tensions in how to solve the situation of the manteros (undocumented
street sellers) whose associations appreciate the initiative by the City
Council but consider that it is going too slowly and that they are still
exposed to police repression. However, two factors promote coopera-
tion: the nature of Barcelona en Comú as a grassroots party in its origins
with the will to change the way of doing politics from institutions; and
the restrictive position adopted by the Spanish government in contrast
to the attitude of other European governments such as the German or
Swedish ones. Thus the conflicts, besides the ones emerging from every-
day dynamics, are held especially against the Spanish government and its
refusal to change its policies and to receive more refugees and asylum
seekers. In any case, mobilizations such as the one in 2017 show how
civil society can push its own agendas and influence public debate (mak-
ing the City Council reconsider its position).
Scaling Up: Solidarity Cities

The mismatch between states (controlling border and asylum politics)
and the cities (as the space of coexistence and shelter) invites the latter
to explore new forms of cooperation beyond the state. When the state is
obstructing reception and the EU is not offering satisfactory solutions,
it is normal that the urban scale emerges as the space to articulate alter-
natives. The city is already a space of everyday practices and of emotion.
Barcelona has participated in four types of networks: between Catalan cit-
ies and municipalities; between Spanish cities; between European cities in
international meetings or statements; and between European cities within
the EU network, as it happens with ‘Solidarity Cities’, which emerged
from Eurocities.
The proposal by Ada Colau to create a Spanish Refuge Cities network
took shape quickly since the Mayor of Madrid, Manuela Carmena, sup-
ported it immediately; 25 cities joined the network. In principle, they
were only cities governed by Podemos (or the citizens’ candidature in
which Podemos was involved) but other cities adhered to it later. The
initial discussions already showed different understandings of how to
channel the spaces of solidarities. While Podemos was in favor of the net-
work and its role to contest the passivity of the government, the Social
Democratic Party (PSOE) opted for collaboration with the government.
Patxi López, the then secretary for Political Action, Citizenship and
Freedoms, confirmed his party’s ‘will to be solidary’ and cooperate with

the government. He emphasized that ‘it is not about competing to see
who is more solidary’, with reference to Podemos, but ‘it is a country
matter’ (in Europa Press 2015). While the Refuge Cities promote a way
of organizing and acting beyond the state, acknowledging that welcom-
ing refugees happens at the urban level, the PSOE representative still pri-
oritizes the state level as the main place to make decisions on reception
of refugees. The position of the government, with the support of PSOE,
does not reflect what the Spaniards’ opinion was at that moment; 9 out
of 10 Spaniards supported that their cities were part of the Refuge Cities
network (Assiego 2015). But their support goes even further to accept-
ing small tax increases (61%), personal donations (71%), and cooperating
as volunteers (71%). The network captured this moment of citizen soli-
darity that required forms of organizing and acting that were absent in
the government’s management of the humanitarian crisis in 2015.
The reluctance of the national government and of other political par-
ties is not the only one to consider. Connecting the emerging forms of
institutional solidarity (and scaling up from municipal to national) entails
different challenges, in the case of Spain expressed through the already
existing network of municipal cooperation: the Spanish Federation of
Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP). FEMP showed its skepticism
toward the Refuge Cities network from the beginning and claimed its
role, as the real interlocutor of the government, to coordinate all muni-
cipalities and achieve agreements ‘based on dialogue and institutional
loyalty’. The president of FEMP, Iñigo de la Serna, was quite clear in his
rejection of an alternative municipal work when he said that ‘it would
be a serious mistake for the efficiency of the means if groups of muni-
cipalities propitiate the disunity of municipalism when our strength is
precisely unity’ (El Faradio 2015). The suggestion of channeling the
Refugees Welcome initiative through FEMP as coordinator and main
interlocutor with the government reinforces institutionalized solidar-
ity and diminishes the possibility of shaping an alternative way of insti-
tutional solidarity. There are two consequences that affect the potential
of institutional solidarity: Some municipalities make it clear that they
want to be ‘Refuge City’ but under the FEMP coordination and not
according to Colau’s initiative; consequently, the political implications
of the Refuge City network are blurred, and the cooperative approach
prevails over the contentious one. Despite these constraints, the Refuge
Cities network established an alternative channel of communication and
exchange between municipalities and did not surrender to the pressure

from the government, as it happened with the signing by 25 cities of
the ‘Barcelona Declaration’, after an encounter organized by the BRCP,
claiming, among other things, the fulfillment of the EU agreements and
more information and funding from the government. The government
did not respond to these demands, and the idea of transferring compe-
tences on refugees and asylum seekers is still far away from materializing.
Since the beginning of the humanitarian crisis, Barcelona, besides
leading the national Refuge Cities network, has demonstrated its inten-
tion to generate forms of trans-local solidarities and international coop-
eration between cities. In September 2015, Ada Colau, together with
Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris, Spyros Galinos, Mayor of Lesbos, and
Giusi Nicolini, Mayor of Lampedusa, wrote an open letter, entitled ‘We,
the Cities of Europe’, where they offer the cities to take in refugees. The
mayors oppose the will of municipalities to the (lack of) will of the states:
‘Our municipal services are already working on refugee reception plans
to ensure food, a roof and dignity for everyone fleeing war and famine.
The only thing missing is the support of states’ (Colau et al. 2015). They
demanded more involvement from EU institutions to take responsibility
and promote international cooperation.
This is not the only occasion on which European cities have voiced
their criticism of the role played by nation-states. In December 2016, the
Vatican hosted a two-day summit, ‘Europe: Refugees are Our Brothers
and Sisters’, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. Over
70 mayors attended to modify the responses offered by Europe to the
humanitarian crisis and to habilitate formal channels of cooperation
between cities. The summit ended with a joint statement calling for a
European network ‘capable of conceiving welcoming cities as shelters,
capable of organizing safe and regular humanitarian corridors within
the European Union, recognized by the international community, and
capable of expressing solidarity’ (Final Statement of European Mayors’
Summit on Europe 2016). The problem with international forums and
initiatives is the lack of continuity and concretization. Ada Colau, in
her speech during the conference, highlighted that there was already an
existing network for cooperation between cities and relocation of refu-
gees (although it comes with the opposition of the Spanish government).
She introduced an example of formalization of cooperation and interna-
tional solidarity by referring to the ‘Solidarity Cities’ initiative which is
inserted into the European Union framework.
Already in the foundation of Eurocities, Barcelona played an impor-

tant role by hosting the conference in 1989. The mayor at the time
was Pasqual Maragall, from the Social Democratic Party, and the aim
was to find a common voice for the cities. Barcelona appeared as ‘a
beacon in urban policies, metropolitan management, and municipal
leadership’ (Payre and Saunier 2008: 71). Eurocities is, mainly, a ‘pres-
sure group that represents the interests of large cities in and around
the European Union’s institutions’ (Payre and Saunier 2008: 72). In
a meeting in Athens, October 2016, Deputy Mayor for Social Rights
Laia Ortiz was elected president of the Eurocities Social Forum. The
‘Solidarity Cities’ network, proposed by Mayor of Athens George
Kaminis, was set up in the same meeting and established a space for
cities to share strategies for integrating and hosting refugees. The
foundation of ‘Solidarity Cities’ opens up a new platform to formal-
ize transnational relations of solidarity between cities but also to work
with the European Commission and member states. Thomas Jezequel,
policy advisor on migration for Eurocities, explains that ‘Solidarity
Cities is open to all European cities wishing to work closely with each
other and committed to solidarity in the field of refugee reception and
integration’ (in Penny 2016).
The four pillars of the ‘Solidarity Cities’ initiative are: (1) information
and knowledge exchange on the refugee situation in cities; (2) advo-
cating for better involvement of and direct funding for cities regard-
ing reception and integration of refugees; (3) city-to-city technical and
financial assistance and capacity building; and (4) pledges by European
cities to receive relocated asylum seekers (Solidarity Cities, n.d.). The
advantages of this network are that it allows for horizontal coopera-
tion between cities; the relationships can be more informal (and polit-
ical) than the formal ones of Eurocities; and the institutional means to
connect the urban with the European scale are developed. One relevant
question to raise is whether an initiative like ‘Solidarity Cities’ would be
comparable to the national refuge network by FEMP, as an example of
institutionalized solidarity which can constrain the possibilities of con-
tentious (or just alternative) politics. Nonetheless, there is one impor-
tant difference: The role of FEMP came into conflict with the more
horizontal network launched by Colau, while ‘Solidarity Cities’ emerged
as a political initiative, promoted by the cities, within an existing insti-

tutional framework with the intention of combining horizontal cooper-
ation and influence on policy-making (from the level of the cities to the
state and European levels).
Ramón Sanahuja (2016), the Director of Immigrant Care and
Reception, assesses the formation of ‘Solidarity Cities’ very positively
since it can contribute to reconsidering the allocation of funding aimed
at the states but not reaching the local level (with the two levels having
different priorities). This change is not only a matter of funding, accord-
ing to Sanahuja, but also of making decisions and setting priorities.
Thus, it would be desirable to include mayors in the process of decision
making. The consequence is that expanding the decision making to new
actors (the municipalities and civil society) would lead to a new model
based on multilevel governance. We can indeed consider that all attempts
to set up national and transnational networks are reflecting this need of
multilevel governance, which can be grounded in the forms of institu-
tional solidarity presented in this chapter.
Urban Solidarities and Multilevel Governance

Since urban solidarities are rarely limited to the local space and con-
nect different geographies of resistance, it is not totally surprising that
‘institutional solidarity’ goes beyond municipality and connects diverse
spaces (regional, national, and international). In other words, the
BRCP (its goals and strategies) transcends the local realities which are
reflected in its formulation since the necessity to scale up is acknow-
l
edged to make efficient policies. Therefore, a consequent political
implication is to integrate the level of cities in the governance of refuge.
In the urban spaces, the needs and the ways of dealing with migration
and cultural diversity entail a logic that is different from the logic of the
state. Thus, besides coordinating these levels, the cities offer an inter-
esting space to reformulate policies on migration and refuge which are
closer to everyday situations and not constrained by national borders
(and the increasing right-wing nationalism and xenophobia). Relating
to Ada Colau’s background as a social activist, Calbó highlighted how
collective subjectivities can be shaped from institutions: ‘She [Colau]
encourages them [the people who are skeptical about migration] not
to see migrants and refugees as competitors for social services, but to
see them as other people who are also poor’ (in Calbó et al. 2016). The
application of a national framework would make such an identification
very difficult since the distinction between nationals and non-nation-
als prevails. However, a common identification as ‘we are poor’ makes
more sense in the urban spaces where there are many factors that define
social relations. Manuela Zechner and Bue Rübner Hansen, reflecting
on the growing role of municipalities in the ‘refugee crisis’, make a
similar reflection:
Drawing on their social, relational, infrastructural and institutional wealth

and diversity, cities can be the starting points not only for an embodied
politics of everyday solidarity, but also for new municipal policies. The
many and ever-changing collective subjects that define our cities go a long
way in signaling what welcoming, openness, solidarity and diversity mean
on the ground. (Zechner and Hansen 2016)
‘The crisis of solidarity’, evidenced during the management of the

‘refugee crisis’, appears to be rather a crisis of the states as the main pro-
viders of solutions and of the EU to establish a (binding) framework for
the member states. After seeing the solidarity shown by citizens and the
willingness of the cities to host refugees and asylum seekers, it is diffi-
cult to understand how all the experiences, practices, and knowledge
generated in and from the cities are not integrated in a model of multi-
level governance. The case of Barcelona is an example of how the cities
become a site for generating alternatives. On the one hand, the elabora-
tion of the BRCP channels civil society solidarity, formulates new poli-
cies for Barcelona city, and connects to other scales; on the other, civil
society continues mobilizing and organizing to collaborate with the City
Council programs but also shows its criticism and disagreements. Finally,
a multilevel governance is only possible if the funds and political respon-
sibilities are also distributed between the different levels. This last aspect
makes it obvious that there are still important obstacles to overcome in
order for institutional solidarity to materialize beyond the city and have
an impact comparable to the determining influence that so far is mainly
possessed by the national governments.
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than-welcome-power-of-cities.
CHAPTER 6
Solidarity as Political Action.

Crime or Alternative?
Abstract  Solidarity is a political action. It is a deliberate form of resistance

against authorities (local, national, and international) and regimes. In the
concluding chapter, we argue that solidarity can be unfolded as a crime
or an alternative. In the first case, authorities react against acts of solidar-
ity. In the second case, we argue that civil society tries to overcome the
constraints of authorities and through infrastructures of dissent develop
social and political alternatives and radical imaginaries. On the basis of a
theoretical framework outlining solidarity as relational (constituting/
constituted by relations and contestation) and spatial (constituting/
constituted by space and scale), we conclude on how the three forms of
solidarity analyzed in this book (autonomous solidarity—Hotel City
Plaza; civic solidarity—Venligboerne; institutional solidarity—Barcelona as
Refuge City) offer responses to the ‘refugee crisis’.
Keywords  Criminalization of solidarity · Refugee crisis · Solidarity

as political action · Contentious politics · Scales · Spatialization of
solidarity
We claim that solidarity is a political action. In this concluding chapter,

we want to elaborate further on this idea. Solidarity can be unfolded as a
crime or an alternative: What changes drastically in these perspectives is
the way in which (and by whom) solidarity is perceived. In the first case,

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8_6
when solidarity is criminalized, authorities react violently to civil society

modes of organizing and consider them a threat to the policies they are
carrying out; in the second case, civil society tries to overcome the short-
comings and constraints of authorities and develop social and political
alternatives grounded in organized solidarity. The mere fact that the ref-
ugee solidarity movement can be accused of being criminal reminds us
how important the scope of solidarity as alternative is.
Solidarity Is not a Crime

In October 2013, more than 300 people died near Lampedusa, Italy, on
their journey from Libya to Europe, where they expected an opportunity
to have a decent life. After this shocking incident, the Italian government
decided to react and set up Mare Nostrum, meaning ‘Our Sea’, ‘a vast
search-and-rescue operation aimed at preventing the deaths of the thou-
sands of migrants who make the journey from Africa to Europe every
year’ (Taylor 2015; cf. Chapter 1). Thanks to the operation, funded
by the European Commission, more than 130,000 people were saved.
However, only one year later, it closed down. According to Minister of
the Interior Angelino Alfano, Mare Nostrum was an emergency opera-
tion. The EU border agency Frontex set up Triton, a new project with
a considerably smaller budget (2.9 million euros a month compared to
Mare Nostrum’s 11 million euros a month). The number of victims who
died in the Mediterranean Sea continued to increase dramatically. While
the EU member states abandoned their responsibilities, civil societies
organized in the seas, in the camps, and in the cities to welcome and
show solidarity with refugees.
The impressive solidarity refugee movement in 2015 made even
clearer the need for handling the humanitarian crisis in a different man-
ner than what the politicians were doing. However, states acted, in
most of the cases, according to their own national interests, and the EU
showed a total lack of coordination and of leadership to manage the
situation. Despite all the mobilizations, solidarity is not becoming eas-
ier to organize and it faces opposition by many states: ‘Two-thirds of
EU member states now apply the law but not the exemption [the 2002
Directive contains a non-binding exemption to ensure that humanitar-
ian activities are considered as facilitation of illegal entry and residence],
paving the way for the widespread criminalisation of refugee solidarity
and activism’ (Hayes and Barat 2017). Since 2015, solidarity has become
6 SOLIDARITY AS POLITICAL ACTION. CRIME OR ALTERNATIVE? 121
exposed to criminalization, and national legislations have repeatedly tried

to dissuade the ones who wanted to help, considering the magnitude of
the humanitarian crisis. The clash provoked between civil society soli-
darity and national legislations makes it evident that the failure of the
so-called refugee crisis is the failure of the states to offer a solidary solu-
tion (despite the multiple intentions expressed by governments and the
EU to make their politics more solidary).
The willingness to help the refugees which many citizens showed,
although they might face fines and other penalties, is the living proof of
the divergent actions emerging from solidarity and repressive actions. As
shown in Chapter 3, in 2015 many Danes disobeyed the law by help-
ing refugees and giving them a ride to Sweden. They were intercepted
by police and accused of ‘human smuggling’ or trafficking. That was the
case of activist Annika Holm Nielsen who risked going to jail for helping
refugees go by boat to Sweden. Finally, she was acquitted, declaring that
the legislation was unjust and civil disobedience was the only way of act-
ing (Schwarz-Nielsen 2016). The well-known writer Lisbeth Zornig and
her husband Mikael Lindholm were each fined (DKK 25,000; approx.
USD 4150), also accused of human smuggling for driving a Syrian family
from Rødbyhavn, in the South of Denmark, to Kastrup, from where they
could get to Sweden. The legal obstacles did not stop many Danes from
taking to the roads, explaining to refugees that they were not police but
rather there to help.
The criminalization of solidarity has continued since then. Although
there are no images any longer of refugees traversing Europe, the sit-
uation at sea remains critical. As mentioned above, the EU is not
responding sufficiently to the situation, since the sense of emergency
has disappeared. But the EU, and particularly Frontex as border agency,
and the national governments are not facilitating the work of NGOs and
other organizations either. ‘Charity boats’ have become crucial in rescue
missions ‘picking up more than a third of all migrants brought ashore
so far this year against less than one percent in 2014, according to the
Italian coastguard’ (Reuters 2017). The Italian government, in collabo-
ration with Libya, imposed a code of conduct, including the possibility
of armed police officers on board, that was not backed by all the res-
cue ships in the Mediterranean. The reasons for imposing this code were
the fear expressed by Italy of these boats facilitating people smuggling
from North Africa and encouraging migrants to make the perilous pas-
sage to Europe (Reuters 2017). Frontex also voiced their concern over
‘charity boats’ interacting with migrant smugglers (Robinson 2016), and

Spanish Minister of the Interior Juan Ignacio Zoido claimed that ‘[w]
e have to make the NGOs aware that they are there to help and not to
favor or foment irregular immigration when that irregular immigration
is resulting in running a risk in the Mediterranean’ (Sánchez 2017). In
March 2018, the Proactiva Open Arms boat was confiscated by Italy and
detained on charges of promoting ‘criminal association and encouraging
illegal immigration by disobeying Libyans by not handing over women
and children’ (Palmer 2018) after saving more than 200 migrants 70
miles off the coast of Libya. A solidarity campaign to support Proactiva
Open Arms was rapidly launched claiming that ‘[i[f saving lives is a
crime, I’m also a criminal’. The Mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, showed
her institutional and legal support of the NGO and denounced that
‘Europe is criminalising people who are risking their lives to save others.
The whole of Europe is being shipwrecked in the Mediterranean with
acts like this’ (in Ajuntament de Barcelona 2018).
We consider it important to emphasize that solidarity, since it is
contentious and implies a political act, faces the risk of suffering from
the repression and coercion of state authorities, although the means
deployed are against international human rights. When solidarity is crimi-
nalized, the contradictions of the existing political and legal systems
become clearly evident, as well as the (unstoppable) impetus of people
organizing to do things differently. Yonous Muhammadi, president of
the Greek Forum of Refugees, which is an international network of com-
munities (from Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, etc.) aiming to build trust
with the newly arrived refugees, explains how crucial the participation of
refugees themselves is and how it is promoted by the Forum. We find
that reflection very important, as we have mostly paid attention to civil
society solidarity, but there are many other forms of solidarity. Besides,
he assesses the value of solidarity:
Yes, the most important help comes from the simple solidarity movements.
It is self-organized people trying to help. That is very important. There is
no other initiative or motive behind this, they just want to help as fellow
human beings. So there is no money, no salary, nothing – just humanity.
Independents are the first people on the scene to rescue and welcome ref-
ugees. UNHCR and other organizations, with all their power, are helping
less than ordinary people in places like the [Greek island of] Lesvos at the
moment. (in Pope-Weidemann and Dathi 2016)
In the words of Muhammadi, we see the different ways of operating by

civil society solidarity and formalized solidarity. The absence of other
motives than helping fellow human beings settles a principle of equality
which is at the heart of our understanding of solidarity as political action.
But we also believe that the organization based on solidarity entails an
alternative (new relations, new imaginaries, new institutions) to the exist-
ing politics of refugees where solidarity has been emptied and replaced
by national interests. Exploring these types of solidarity has been the
main purpose of this book.
Solidarity as Alternative?
Our intention throughout the book and in the analyses of the selected
cases is to prove that solidarity can be the basis for shaping social and
political alternatives. In this regard, we refer to solidarity as political
action since its organization can generate alternatives (different ways of
conceiving social relations within the cities, emerging from a reaction
against an unjust political situation). When choosing the three cases
(Hotel City Plaza, Venligboerne and Barcelona as Refuge City), we were
aware that they were very different ways of organizing solidarity, but all
of them responded to the humanitarian crisis of 2015 and the deficient
and restrictive management of the situation by the national governments.
Indeed, all the forms of solidarity must be understood in the light of the
‘crisis of solidarity’ of the nation-states. But all of them also present dif-
ferent particularities. Our categorization (autonomous solidarity, civic
solidarity, institutional solidarity) is an attempt to capture the dynamics
provoked by these ways of organizing solidarity. We summarize the main
features of the three types of solidarity in Table 6.1, applied to our cases,
in order to compare them and reflect on their main implications as we
have shown in the analytical chapters.
It is important to clarify that we do not look at these solidarity cate-
gories as a linear progression, meaning that autonomous solidarity would
have to evolve into civic solidarity until it would finally become institu-
tional. They are independent categories although they are not closed
and share characteristics with each other. Another clarification concerns
the degree of institutionalization. It would be easy to claim that the only
form of institutional solidarity is the one produced from the institutions,
as the case of Barcelona City Council. We have preferred to expand the
124
Table 6.1 Applied typology of solidarities
Solidarity Relations Spaces Contention Scale
Autonomous solidarity— Left-wing activists, Social center, squat as Rejection of all kinds of Predominantly local
City Plaza Hotel, Greece anarchists and refugees space of enacting alter- institutional cooperation although embedded
(principle: equal inhabit- native radical imaginaries (municipality and the within the imaginary of
ants through living and and social and political state) resistance to national
struggling together) utopias and EU migration and
refugee regime
Civic solidarity— Civil society and refugees Spaces of inclusion and Critical towards institu- Rooted in local spaces
Venligboerne, Denmark (principle: inclusion since encounters as possibility tions (mainly the state) and upscaling by con-
all are human beings) for mutual learning and but internal division necting the different
Ó. G. AGUSTÍN AND M. B. JØRGENSEN
common interests about the degree of groups sharing the same

contention values at the national
scale
Institutional solidarity— City council and social Urban space, institu- Opposition to the state Local in the immediate
Barcelona Refuge City, entities and organizations tional and NGO spaces as main obstacle to application of the Plan
Spain (principle: belonging to to provide services and responding satisfactorily but connected to other
the city) facilitate access to a to the humanitarian crisis Spanish refuge cities at
‘normal’ life the national scale and
to other European cities
through the initiative
‘Solidarity Cities’
meaning of ‘institutionalization’ and highlight the connection between

social practices and institutions. Hotel City Plaza is actually a social insti-
tution. It is forged from the particular infrastructures of dissent we find
in Athens. It is not recognized as an institution within the municipal or
state realm, but it has succeeded in creating its own norms, practices,
imaginaries and, not least, to attribute a solidary function to a ‘hotel’ as
a space of coexistence and resistance. The need for creating new institu-
tions in the case of Hotel City Plaza is due to their rejection of cooper-
ating with any institution or with other NGOs. Venligboerne have also
promoted social institutions, such as the social community VenligboHus,
although the movement has not, in general, acted against the state or
institutions as such. The electoral success of Barcelona en Comú enables
the possibility of reforming the existing institutions (also by creating new
institutions aiming to deal with migration, refugees, and asylum seekers
within those institutions). To emphasize that not all the solidarity forms
produced from institutions are the same, we have decided to distinguish
between institutionalized solidarity and institutional solidarity (where
channels to connect institutions and civil society are still open).
Solidarity is mainly a relation which generates collective identities and
favors alliance building between actors who, in principle, may be very
diverse. Hotel City Plaza is composed by left-wing activists, anarchists,
and refugees. The activists have a clear understanding of the political
dimension of their practices, and this awareness is also applied to how
they perceive their relationship with refugees as equals. There are no dif-
ferences between the residents in the hotel: The sense of community is
produced by living and struggling together. This combination (living
and struggling) enhances the shaping of political subjectivities since they
share the oppression by the local or state authorities and the inequality
of the economic system that is increasing the precarization of life condi-
tions. Since all are inhabitants, there is no need to distinguish between
refugees or non-refugees. They are cohabitants. Venligboerne also strug-
gle with the categories that divide groups and impede mutual under-
standing. Therefore, the movement fosters relations between civil society
and refugees and habilitates spaces of inclusion in which encounters can
happen and the newcomers are received as peers. Participants are made
to feel like any other member of the group (persons just like the oth-
ers), although outside the group they are still categorized as ‘refugees’.
The three principles of Venligboerne (be kind in the encounter with oth-
ers; be curious when you meet people who are different from yourself;
meet difference with tolerance) reflect the acknowledgment of differ-

ences as well as the prevalence of the argument that we are all human
beings. Finally, the case of Barcelona is quite different since the function
of the ‘Barcelona Refuge City Plan’ (BRCP) is to channel the existing
civil society solidarity and to carry out policy changes that contribute to
it. Therefore, the main relations are between the City Council and social
entities and organizations. The City Council has expressed its desire to
cooperate more with migrants and refugees but has also recognized that
it is difficult. The BRCP operates according to the principle that all the
people who live in the city have rights because, regardless of their condi-
tion, they are members of the same community. In the case of undocu-
mented immigrants and refugees, the City Council considers that all of
them have rights since they belong to the city as a common space.
Besides fomenting new ways of configuring political relations, solidar-
ities are produced in and can produce spaces. Hotel City Plaza is a squat,
and this entails an important consequence: It is an illegal space that is
in permanent conflict with local and national authorities. However, sol-
idarity is not only forged in negative (against the government or the
radical right wing), but more importantly it is shaped by the sense of
being together and struggling for another world. Self-organization and
appropriation of the space is related to the notion of the common. On
the one hand, the common is reflecting the way in which the enacted
community cooperates and acts together; and, on the other, it puts the
focus on the constitution of an alternative through common struggles
from below. City Plaza Hotel as space of resistance generates such a con-
vergence between practices and radical imaginaries. Venligboerne do
not create a space in such a strong antagonism with the state (since they
do not squat buildings). However, the movement is aware of the lack
of institutional spaces to promote interaction between refugees and civil
society. Institutions were indeed doing the opposite and setting up inter-
nal borders. Venligboerne thus create spaces of interactions not only in
the cities (like Hotel City Plaza and BRCP, which are definitively exam-
ples of urban solidarities) but also in smaller municipalities. The spaces
of inclusion enable a space of dialogue where the mutual learning and
the identification of common interests become possible. Through inter-
personal spatialized relations, a new definition of community, based on
plurality and tolerance, is shaped in contradiction with the migration and
integration policies of the government. The BRCP is born to build a ‘cit-
izen space’ to channel ‘urban solidarity’ in order to coordinate it insti-
tutionally and foster participation. The City Council takes as its point
of departure that the urban space is already constituted by diverse soli-

darity practices, and that the role of institutions must not be to replace
them but to open up institutional channels to cooperate with them.
Furthermore, the urban space is considered the space for civil society and
local institutions to cooperate to provide shelter and accommodation for
refugees. A wider sense of what ‘institutional’ means is necessary to avoid
the reduction of ‘refugees’ to their administrative condition (requiring
only administrative solutions). The attempt to foster solidarity relations
in the urban spaces (rather than just institutional spaces) recognizes the
importance of spaces such as the neighborhoods and the relations shaped
within them. In opposition to the administrative perception or abstrac-
tion of refugees, spatialized solidarity happens with the people living in
the city as members of the same community. The function of the City
Council is to provide services but also to facilitate the spaces of parti-
cipation where all inhabitants participate in a ‘normal life’ and are not
deprived of their basic rights.
Solidarity as political action contributes to shaping common iden-
tities and political subjectivities, but, no less importantly, it is also
contentious since it is opposed to political actors or politics that are
considered unjust. We have explained how all the solidarity cases ana-
lyzed reacted to the national governments and their management of the
‘refugee crisis’ in 2015. But the cases differ in their degree of conten-
tion and the actors they are opposed to. Hotel City Plaza incarnates
the strongest contentious position. They reject all kinds of institutional
cooperation and the framework of humanitarian work which divides
people into volunteers and victims. Hotel City Plaza is opposed to
the border regime as imposed by the EU and the Greek government
but also to internal borders, as those derived from urban and housing
policies, the responsibility for which is attributed to the local author-
ities. There is no possibility of cooperation with institutional actors,
and the only way of changing the situation is through the articulation
of solidarity movements from below. Venligboerne are an interesting
case since there is no agreement on how contentious the movement
should be. There is clearly contestation against the policies carried out
by the government and, more generally, the negative attitude adopted
by the government toward the integration of refugees and toward the
civic solidarity practiced by civil society. The way in which such con-
testation must be articulated, and to what extent, varies within the
movement. In principle, the movement is not opposed to institutional
cooperation, particularly at the municipal level, but the possibilities
of cooperation with the state are quite narrow due to the disparity of
positions between the government and the movement. However, the
division illustrates the discussion about how far the scope of solidarity
as political action could go, that is, whether it should aim to change
the laws on asylum or not. In both cases, solidarity is political, but the
point is whether the critical position of Venligboerne should be trans-
lated into the institutional or legislative sphere or not. Barcelona City
Council elaborated the BRCP to receive refugees due to the obstacles
introduced by the Spanish government. The main contention is thus
against the Spanish government, which did not inform or communi-
cate with the municipalities and did not fulfill the obligations acquired
through the EU. In particular, the object of disagreement is recep-
tion: The government did not respect the EU quotas, and the cities,
with Barcelona at the lead, claimed that they were already prepared to
receive refugees and address the humanitarian crisis. But the critiques
go beyond that and also point to the asylum procedure and the govern-
mental lack of will to find solutions. The contention against the Spanish
government explains why the City Council appeals to EU institutions
to get support and put pressure on the Spanish government, especially
to implement the quotas or to facilitate a major role for the cities within
the EU framework. The conflict between the government and the cit-
ies, as in the case of Barcelona, is also an opportunity to think about the
need to move to multilevel governance and recognize the role of urban
solidarity to generate alternative (and more spatialized) politics.
The urban and municipal spaces offer a different scale than the one
of the nation-state and of the ‘nationed geographies of the crisis’. In
other words, scales can be connected on the basis of other principles
that do not respond to national identities or interests. Hotel City
Plaza is predominantly rooted in local practices, as processes of gen-
erating autonomy, but it is far from being reduced to the local space.
City Plaza perceives that their struggle is the spatialized contesta-
tion to exclusionary and border politics produced at different scales:
the EU border regime, the EU-Turkey agreement, the national gov-
ernment, and the local radical right-wing movements. In this regard,
City Plaza is a multi-scalar movement of resistance, which shows how
scales of political decisions are connected and have consequences at the
local level. Venligboerne upscaled and changed their scope too. In the
beginning, it was an initiative in a social center in Hjørring, Northern
Jutland, but soon the initiative was reproduced in other municipali-
ties in Denmark and aimed to welcome refugees and expand a culture
of kindness. Local Venligboerne movements were also set up in other
countries. Therefore, Venligboerne move from the local to the national
scales through cooperation and the use of social media. The lack of
agreement on the political position of the group makes it difficult to
be more contentious on other levels. However, it is interesting that the
Copenhagen group, by far the most numerous, is heading the push to
become more political and reject the asylum regime. This reflects how
the cities and urban solidarities are becoming the center of attention
in questioning other scales of governance (the national and European
ones). Finally, Barcelona City Council has been characterized by doing
municipal politics that cannot be restricted to the local arena. As a con-
sequence of the conflict with the national government, the BRCP has
promoted upscaling of solidarity at different levels: regional, national,
and European. The idea of creating Refuge Cities in Spain aimed to
take responsibility for the ‘refugee crisis’ at the city level since the gov-
ernment was only making the arrival of refugees difficult. The initiative
was confronted with skepticism and obstacles by forms of institutional-
ized solidarity (the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces
and the government). The upscaling to the European level, besides
the attempts to appeal to European institutions, was boosted by the
‘Solidarity Cities’ initiative, led by Athens and Amsterdam, as a seri-
ous attempt to strengthen the city level of governance within the EU
framework. The paradox of this kind of trans-local solidarity is that the
Barcelona City Council cooperates more with other cities in Spain and
in Europe than with the Spanish government.
Taking into account the different dimensions and types of solidar-
ity, we believe that there are well-founded reasons to consider solidarity
as a political action which enhances alternatives to existing policies on
refugees and asylum seekers. Our goal with Solidarity and the ‘Refugee
Crisis’ is precisely to show how these alternatives are being produced
although they face the misunderstanding and opposition of many
nation-states.
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europe-offensive-refugee-solidarity.
Palmer, Carlos Garfella. 2018. “Italy Detains Spanish Ship for Rescuing Refugees
in Mediterranean.” March 19. https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/03/19/
inenglish/1521451743_096188.html.
Pope-Weidemann, M., and S. Dathi. 2016. “The Best Help Comes
from Simple, Solidarity Movements.” New Internationalist, April 8.
https://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2016/04/08/inter view-
with-afghan-refugee-organizer-in-greece.
Reuters. 2017. “Aid Groups Snub Italian Code of Conduct on Mediterranean
Rescues.” The Guardian, July 31. https://www.theguardian.com/
world/2017/jul/31/aid-groups-snub-italian-code-conduct-mediterrane-
an-rescues.
Robinson, Duncan. 2016. “EU Border Force Flags Concerns Over Charities’
Interaction with Migrant Smugglers.” Financial Times, December 15.
https://www.ft.com/content/3e6b6450-c1f7–11e6-9bca-2b93a6856354.
Sánchez, Gabriela. 2017. “Las ONG Responden a Zoido: ‘Creen que dejando morir
a miles de refugiados disuadirán a quienes huyen.’” eldiario.es, July 6. https://
www.eldiario.es/desalambre/ONG-envian-barcos-rescate-Mediterraneo_
0_662134076.html.
Schwarz-Nielsen, Peter. 2016. “Annika vil fortsætte kamp mod ‘vanvittig’ fly-
gtningelov efter frifindelse.” Modkraft, October 12. http://modkraft.dk/
artikel/annika-vil-forts-tte-kamp-mod-vanvittig-flygtningelov-efter-frifindelse.
Taylor, Adam. 2015. “Italy Ran an Operation that Saved Thousands of Migrants
from Drowning in the Mediterranean. Why Did It Stop?” The Washington
Post, April 20. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/
wp/2015/04/20/italy-ran-an-operation-that-save-thousands-of-mi-
grants-from-drowning-in-the-mediterranean-why-did-it-stop/?utm_term=.
a96a8ca2fbd7.
Index
A Commons, 34, 40, 88

Activist citizen, 35, 40, 75, 79 mobile, 61
Acts of citizenship, 35, 85 Contentious politics, 66, 75
Alliance building, 25, 31, 33, 125 Criminalization, 51, 108, 121
Autonomy, 51, 53 Crisis, 5, 55
Autonomy of Migration, 50 democratic, 5
economic, 5, 24, 29, 34, 39, 58
migrant, 53
B refugee, 2, 28, 129
Border spectacle, 8, 32, 66, 76, 78, 82 Critical Border Studies, 50
C D
Camps, 9, 27, 39, 49, 54–57, 59, 60, Dissent, 13, 37, 38, 51, 80, 125
62, 63, 77, 89, 105–107, 120 infrastructures of, 16, 40, 51, 64,
Charity boats, 121, 122 106, 125
Civil society, 3, 14–16, 27, 31, 33, 35, politics of, 13
37, 38, 40–42, 55, 61, 75, 78–
80, 84–86, 90, 91, 98–101, 105,
107–109, 113, 114, 120–123, E
125–127 Emergency, 5, 6, 10, 11, 16, 29, 76,
Collective identities, 15, 25, 30, 41, 101, 102, 120, 121
125 state of, 12, 77
Commoning, 34, 88 European Union, 3, 9, 15, 90, 111,
practices of, 30 112
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 131
licence to Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2019
Ó. G. Agustín and M. B. Jørgensen, Solidarity and the ‘Refugee Crisis’
in Europe, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91848-8
132 Index
F S
Frontex, 7, 8, 27, 61, 62, 120, 121 Sanctuary cities, 36, 37, 42, 98
Scale, 6, 15, 16, 33, 35–37, 40,
42, 50, 52, 63, 68, 87, 88, 98,
G 100–102, 109, 112, 113, 128
Geographies of resistance, 36, 38, 50, multi-scalar, 35
53, 64, 106, 113 Solidarians, 62–64, 81
Solidarity
autonomous, 15, 40, 51, 124
H bordering, 14
Horizontalism, 30, 58 civic, 15, 41, 85, 124
contentious, 66, 75
criminalization, 108, 120, 121
I crisis of, 2, 28, 129
Imaginaries, 2, 13, 15, 16, 25, 26, 34, emergent, 12, 15, 24, 26, 28, 39, 79
35, 38, 65, 79, 103, 123, 125, EU, 11, 12, 24, 26, 31, 39, 62, 66,
126 100, 109, 121
Institutionalization, 15, 38, 51, 85, generative, 2, 41, 52, 65, 79
87, 123, 125 institutional, 16, 41, 124
inventive, 2, 34, 79, 88
moment of, 103, 110
M politics of, 5, 75
Migrants’ rights, 33, 78 trans-local, 26, 36, 105, 107, 111,
Multi-level governance, 16, 113, 114, 129
128 work, 2, 9, 15, 25, 32, 33, 60, 61,
Municipalism, 87, 91, 110 63, 65, 74, 75, 80, 82, 83, 85,
87, 89, 107
Solidarity Cities, 16, 37, 98, 107, 109,
R 111–113, 129
Refuge Cities, 16, 37, 109–111, 129 Spaces of interactions, 126
Refugees Welcome, 2, 15, 24, 28, 29, Subjectification, 28, 30
79, 82, 90, 102–104, 110
Resistance, 14, 25, 51, 52, 59, 60, 64,
67, 98, 125, 126, 128 T
geographies of, 36, 38, 50, 64, 128 TINA, 5

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SOLIDARITY

Óscar García Agustín

Solidarity and the

ISBN 978-3-319-91847-1 ISBN 978-3-319-91848-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018943640

Cover illustration: © nemesis2207/Fotolia.co.uk

Printed on acid-free paper

We were thinking and writing about solidarity forms between migrants

1 From Refugee Crisis to a Crisis of Solidarity? 1

2 Conceptualizing Solidarity. An Analytical Framework 23

3 Autonomous Solidarity: Hotel City Plaza 49

4 Civic Solidarity: Venligboerne 73

5 Institutional Solidarity: Barcelona as Refuge City 97

6 Solidarity as Political Action. Crime or Alternative? 119

Fig. 2.1 Solidarity. An analytical framework 26

From Refugee Crisis to a Crisis

Abstract This chapter describes the background of the refugee crisis

Keywords Border spectacle · Civil society · Contentious politics

© The Author(s) 2019 1

the forced displacement of millions of people taking place at the time.

especially European countries, but besides some articles there is so far

What Kind of Crisis?

Crisis in this way is embedded in an authoritarian ‘politics of fear’

role in immigration policy-making. Numbers are also tools in produc-

What Happened and What Was Done?

ashore on September 3 near Bodrum in Turkey after a failed attempt

Eurostat counts the number of Syrian asylum seekers to the 28 EU

external borders; emphasizing Europe’s duty to protect implemented

law, and deterrence policies. The immigrant-skeptical Alternative für

The Refugee Crisis and New Solidarities

beyond or below the nation-state to understand how such solidarities

A central consequence of this has been a ready willingness of European cit-

This is a crucial argument. He argues that these vertical state-­centered

articulation of a better connection between the existing struggles (ibid.:

Structure of the Book

In Chapter 2, ‘Conceptualizing solidarity: An analytical framework’,

legal framework but can rather be seen as a necessary supplement or

Triandafyllidou, Anna. 2017. “A ‘Refugee Crisis’ Unfolding: ‘Real’ Events and

Conceptualizing Solidarity. An Analytical

Abstract This chapter introduces a conceptualization of solidarity which

Keywords ‘refugee crisis’ · Institutionalization · Commoning

© The Author(s) 2019 23

The activist and freelance journalist Marienna Pope-Weidemann wrote

Relational SOLIDARITY Spatial

Fig. 2.1 Solidarity. An analytical framework

and political subjectivities emerge from solidarity practices, and conten-

of inclusionary and progressive. It is grounded in nation-state bor-

We use these examples to problematize any taken-for-granted notions

Crisis as a Moment of Change

return of nationalism and xenophobia to the division and fragmentation

Generation of New Collective Identities

Building Social Alliances

in solidarity and support for migrants’ rights’—what Kim Rygiel terms

alliances in civil society as constitutive, productive and basically as politics

respond to geographies of resistance, implying that alliances and practices

a strategy of scale-switching’, ‘they undermine (but do not transform) fed-

Solidarity movements can maintain a contentious or consensual

Another interesting example is ECHO (Education.Community.Hope.

Solidarity and the Crisis: Three Types of Solidarity

Civic solidarity indicates ways of organizing produced as civil s­ociety

of mechanical solidarity. However, we prefer to use the term ‘institu-

Bertelsmann-Stiftung. 2017. Engagement für Geflüchtete—Eine Sache

Featherstone, D., and Karaliotas, L. 2018. “Challenging the Spatial Politics of

Fig. 2.1 Solidarity. An analytical framework 26

From Refugee Crisis to a Crisis

Abstract  This chapter describes the background of the refugee crisis

Keywords  Border spectacle · Civil society · Contentious politics

What Kind of Crisis?

What Happened and What Was Done?

The Refugee Crisis and New Solidarities

This is a crucial argument. He argues that these vertical state-centered

Structure of the Book

Abstract  This chapter introduces a conceptualization of solidarity which

Keywords  ‘refugee crisis’ · Institutionalization · Commoning

Fig. 2.1 Solidarity. An analytical framework

Crisis as a Moment of Change

Generation of New Collective Identities

Solidarity and the Crisis: Three Types of Solidarity

Civic solidarity indicates ways of organizing produced as civil society

Abstract  The City Plaza is a self-organized housing project for homeless

Keywords  Autonomous solidarity · Refugee squats · Horizontalism

Autonomy, Borders, and Solidarity

Migration, Squatting, and the Crisis

Greece—The Political Economy of Crises

Fig. 3.1 Map of Athens

The Utopia of a Single Building—Hotel City Plaza

Not the Solution But an Example of an Enacted

Abstract  This chapter provides an analysis of an example of civic solidarity

Keywords  Civic solidarity · Solidarity movement · Civil society

Migrants, Civil Society, and Activism

The ‘Refugee Crisis’ as a New Moment

Polarizations, Fractions and the Issue of Politics

Abstract  In opposition to the obstacles introduced by the Spanish

Keywords  Institutional solidarity · Urban solidarities

solidarity is shaped, from occupied buildings to the public uses of libraries