Submitted Paper

Progress in Human Geography

1–15
Migrant solidarities ª The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:

and the politics of place sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0309132519876324
journals.sagepub.com/home/phg

Harald Bauder
Ryerson University, Canada

Abstract
International migration and refugee scholars have made extensive use of the concept of solidarity in light of
the recent arrival of migrants and refugees in Europe and elsewhere. They observe multi-dimensional soli-
darity practices and interpret solidarity from a variety of disciplinary and conceptual angles with different
philosophical underpinnings. In this review article, I assume a geographical perspective to argue for a Marxian-
Hegelian understanding of solidarity as a process of subject formation. I illustrate how solidarity relates to a
politics of place that shapes migrant struggles in urban contexts and that promise to facilitate Indigenous
reconciliation and decolonization in settler societies.

Keywords
international migration, politics of place, refugees, solidarity, subject identity

I Introduction (Torpey, 1999). To fully grasp the transforma-

The concept of solidarity has occupied a promi-
nent position in research on international migra-
tion and refugees. It has been linked to a variety
of contexts and themes, such as migrant acti-
vism (Martı́nez López, 2017; Stierl, 2016),
migrants and labour organizing (Basok and
López-Sala, 2016), migrant settlement net-
works and institutions (Ross, 2019) and migrant
families (Juozeliunienë, 2013). Generally, the
concept has positive connotations, referring to
people coming together to solve problems and
overcome barriers. However, the ontological
underpinnings of the concept are not always
clear in the international migration and refugee
literature, and aspects of its geographical
dimension often remain underdeveloped.
International migrants and refugees destabi-
lize the ‘Westphalian’ political order that has
divided the earth’s surface into territorial states,
and populations into citizens and non-citizens
tive political potential of solidarity with and
among international migrants and refugees
requires a geographical perspective. When peo-
ple migrate or flee war or other circumstances,
they connect places, and their arrival causes
people in different circumstances to interact
with each other. The importance of international
migration and flight in fostering solidarity has
not been lost on scholarship (Kelliher, 2018). A
particular avenue of solidarity research has
focused on the politics of place (Featherstone,
2012). I build on this and other scholarship that
has illustrated the politicizing and inventive
character of solidarity, and the transformative
capacity of place-based politics in urban (e.g.
Corresponding author:
Harald Bauder, Ryerson University, 350 Victoria St.,
Toronto, Ontario M5B 2K3, Canada.
Email: hbauder@ryerson.ca
2 Progress in Human Geography XX(X)
Vasudevan, 2015) and settler-colonial contexts
(e.g. Coulthard, 2014). This distinction between
migrant solidarities in urban and settler-colonial
contexts illustrates how corresponding place-
based politics can assume different characteris-
tics, while challenging and seeking to transform
existing political configurations.
As populist voices increasingly reinforce citi-
zenship and status boundaries and construe
international migrants and refugees as undeser-
ving free-loaders and threats to national identity
and security, practices of solidarity with inter-
national migrants and refugees have also been
constructed as an assault on the established
political order. Today, many governments and
some civil society actors actively suppress sol-
idarity practices through a range of activities,
including the criminalization of humanitarian
assistance, threats to prosecute people defend-
ing migrant rights and protesting their deporta-
tions, and the detention of migrants and
refugees to isolate them from the general popu-
lation (Agustı́n and Jørgensen, 2019; Fekete,
2009, 2018; Gill, 2018; Tazzioli, 2018). This
situation speaks to the capacity of politicization
and transformation that is unlocked through the
place-based politics of international migrant
and refugee solidarity.
In the next section, I develop a conceptual
framework, emphasizing a dialectical process
related to solidarity that guides my argument
and that broadly follows Featherstone’s
(2012: 5) definition of ‘solidarity as a relation
forged through political struggle which seeks to
challenge forms of oppression’. Then, I briefly
elaborate on the diversity of interpretations of
solidarity and their ontological assumptions that
appear in the literature on international migra-
tion and refugees. Thereafter, I discuss the geo-
graphical perspective of place and elaborate on
place-based politics emerging in the context of
international migrant and refugee solidarity. I
then extend this argument to an urban context
of international migrant and refugee solidarity
and a settler-colonial context related to
Indigenous views of land. I conclude with a
summary and a discussion of the implications
of my argument.
II Solidarity and subject formation
This paper follows a Marxian-Hegelian dialec-
tical framework. This framework builds on
Hegel’s two-step dialectical process of negation
and sublation (i.e. the negation of the negation)
according to which contradiction is followed by
a solution mediating between opposing situa-
tions or perspectives. Marx and Engels adopted
the idea of dialectical progression from Hegel
but replaced Hegel’s idealist approach with a
materialist approach that ascends from ‘earth
to heaven’ rather than from ‘heaven to earth’
(Marx and Engels, 1953: 22, my translation).
According to this materialist dialectic – which
I call Marxian-Hegelian dialectic and which
encompasses various strands of the Marxian tra-
dition – social and political practice generates
social and political subjectivities.
Solidarity is a key ingredient in this practice
of subject formation. To Marx, Engels and their
followers in the labour movement of the 19th
and 20th centuries solidarity between workers
facilitated the formation of a working-class sub-
ject. Following a Marxian-Hegelian dialectic,
the working class already existed in itself, i.e.
as a social fact in the form of exploited factory
workers, but for this class to become a political
force required that it existed for itself, i.e. as a
political subject by acquiring a working-class
identity. Since Marx’s and Engels’ lifetimes and
the proletarian uprising against exploitation in
the factories of the 19th and early 20th centu-
ries, capitalism and class struggles have trans-
formed (Harvey, 2005, 2012). Today, activists
and scholars recognize that the ‘precariat’
(Standing, 2011) lacks a unifying identity
but embodies multiple dimensions related
to categories such as race, ethnicity, gender,
sexuality, ability, citizenship and legal status.
Bauder
Correspondingly, the character of solidarity
practices has changed.
Solidarity has not only been a practice linked
to class conflict but also to anti-colonial strug-
gle (Kelliher, 2018). Also following a dialecti-
cal framework, Fanon (2008 [1952]: 201)
wrote: ‘Every time a man has brought victory
to the dignity of the spirit, every time a man has
said no to an attempt to enslave his fellow man, I
have felt a sense of solidarity with this act.’
Solidarity is a critical moment in the struggle
for liberation from colonial oppression.
One perspective following the Marxian-
Hegelian framework is that solidarity as a social
practice bonds people in similar circumstances,
creating a homogeneous subject, such as the
working class. Another perspective proposes
that solidarity involves the initial differentiation
between the self and the other (Kelz, 2015); but
solidarity then creates bonds between people
who recognize their social, political, economic
or cultural differences. Solidarity can thus con-
nect people who seemingly have little in com-
mon: exploited workers and affluent consumers,
people who are racialized and who are not, non-
status people and formal citizens, migrant set-
tlers and Indigenous populations and so on. The
relationships between people expressing soli-
darity do not need to be symmetrical. In fact,
solidarity often bridges social, political and eco-
nomic hierarchies. Solidarity is ‘constructing
relations between places, activist, diverse social
groups. This can involve the cementation of
existing identities and power relations. It can,
however, as frequently be about the active cre-
ation of new ways of relating’ (Featherstone,
2012: 5). In this way, solidarity can ‘produce
new configurations of political relations, politi-
cal subjectivities, and spaces’ (Agustı́n and Jør-
gensen, 2016: 17); it can be ‘a world-making
process’ (Featherstone, 2012: 18).
What matters in this process of world-making
is that various actors share a political stage (But-
ler, 2012; Johnson, 2012). If the aim of solidar-
ity is not to create a one-dimensional
3
homogeneous subject identity, then it may be
to create bonds that enable those who experi-
ence oppression, marginalization and exploita-
tion to speak, act and belong. Assuming a
Gramscian perspective – which in my view fol-
lows the Marxian-Hegelian framework – Agus-
tı́n and Jørgensen (2016: 11) suggest that the
question related to alliances of solidarity ‘is not
an identitarian one but rather it is about how
different political actors converge in ongoing
social struggles in order to undo the political
closure’ while preserving the plurality among
these actors. The dialectical process generates
a common political subject, albeit nor repre-
sented by a homogenous community.
Solidarity is a never-finished practice that
prevents political closure and preserves plural-
ity, while acknowledging the complex, frag-
mented and multifaceted relations between
people and groups in different circumstances.
Fanon (2008 [1952]) alludes to this openness
when he refuses ‘to consider reality as definite’
(p. 201) and offers his solidarity only ‘provided
I can go one step further’ (p. 204). In a similar
vein, Featherstone (2012: 246) remarks that
thinking solidarities in relational terms allows an
engagement with the diverse relations and con-
nections shaped through solidarities. This asserts
a radical openness regarding the terms on which
solidarities are shaped. They are unfinished and in
process. This is important as it allows solidarities
and the political communities they build to be
articulated in different ways. This openness
asserts that there are to be no guarantees about
the end point to which solidarities work. Rather,
it suggests that different political futures and rela-
tions can be produced through solidaristic
practices.
Acknowledging that there is no conceivable
‘end point’ puts to rest any desire to pursue a
concrete blueprint for a utopian world (Bauder,
2017). While solidarity aims to transform
social, political and economic relations, it
rejects political closure.
4 Progress in Human Geography XX(X)
At the core of my argument is that solidarity
is a transformative practice. Following Feather-
stone (2012) and others (e.g. Agustı́n and Jør-
gensen, 2016, 2019), I understand solidarity not
only as a relational but also a productive and
inventive practice. In this way, solidarity pre-
sents new possibilities of politicization, and
with it the formation of novel subject identities.
Before I provide concrete examples of how this
transformative practice unfolds, I briefly review
the treatment of solidarity in the international
migration and refugee literature and discuss the
geographical dimensions of solidarity.
III Solidarity in migration research
Although solidarity is ‘a central practice of the
political left’ (Featherstone, 2012: 5), the left
has no monopoly on the concept of solidarity.
Rather, diverse interpretations of solidarity with
different ontological underpinnings and cover-
ing a wide political spectrum exist in the field of
migration and refugee studies. I acknowledge
that focusing on this field may reify the very
categories ‘international migrant’ and ‘refugee’,
which this article seeks to critique. In addition,
this field encompasses multiple disciplines with
distinct perspectives and paradigms. This multi-
disciplinarity affirms the multi-dimensionality
of the solidarity concept (Agustı́n and Jørgen-
sen, 2019; Bayertz, 1999; Gaztambide-Fernán-
dez, 2012; Katz et al., 2015; Oosterlynck et al.,
2016). In this section I briefly review various
ontological underpinnings of the concept of sol-
idarity in a diverse field; a more thorough and
contextualized analysis is available elsewhere
(Bauder and Juffs, 2019).
While parts of the political left of the 19th
and early 20th centuries had an internationalist
outlook, working-class politics and solidarity
with racialized others was also ‘ideologically
located on the terrain of the nation’ (Virdee,
2014: 5). A pre-modern – or Counter-
Enlightenment (Kapeller and Wolkenstein,
2013) – interpretation of solidarity focuses on
loyalty based on reciprocity and trust. Migration
research published in diverse interdisciplinary
and disciplinary journals, ranging from history
to sociology, has observed this type of solidarity
within faith-based communities (Janssen, 2017;
Yoon, 2013), diasporas (Sheffer, 2002) and
families (McGovern and Devine, 2016; Juoze-
liunienë, 2013). When this bond of solidarity is
associated with an imagined national commu-
nity (Anderson, 1983), it can imply the rejection
rather than inclusion of international migrants
and refugees who may not represent a nation’s
ethnic and religious imagination. In my argu-
ment, I reject this interpretation of solidarity
focused on loyalty or the national frame.
The national frame is also affirmed by an
interpretation of solidarity that follows a mod-
ern, Hobbesian line of thought (Hobbes, 1904
[1651], 1949 [1642]), proposing that people act
in solidarity out of self-interest when they
voluntarily submit to the laws of the state
(Kapeller and Wolkenstein, 2013). In this con-
text, politics-based research shows that solidar-
ity towards refugees can reflect self-interest in
integrating refugees in the welfare state that
supports all members of society (Boräng,
2015) and ties solidarity to the national scale
in support of national diversity and pluralism
(Vasilev, 2015). At the scale of the European
Union, a considerable amount of international
migration and refugee research, including from
legal and historical perspectives, frames solidar-
ity as burden-sharing among the member states
in respect to international migrant and refugee
intake (e.g. Ventrella, 2015; Siebold, 2017).
This research suggests that burden-sharing lies
at the heart of the European idea and therefore is
in the self-interest of each member state. Polit-
ical rhetoric among European leaders often fol-
lows this interpretation of solidarity (Greenhill,
2016).
Other interpretations of solidarity in the
international migration and refugee literature
are less focused on the national scale but high-
light bonds of empathy and common humanity.
Bauder
Corresponding research, offering interdisciplin-
ary and disciplinary perspectives from anthro-
pology, ethnography, geography and sociology,
emphasizes compassion towards migrants and
refugees in need of humanitarian assistance
(Musarò and Parmiggiani, 2017) and the exten-
sion of hospitality towards strangers and guests
(Johnson, 2015; Papataxiarchis, 2016; Chou-
liaraki, 2017; Trubeta, 2015). Related research
grounds solidarity towards international
migrants and refugees ‘in human dignity and
equality’ (Kerwin, 2016: 91). Research pub-
lished in interdisciplinary and ethnography and
psychology journals shows that solidarity advo-
cates stress a common humanity to mitigate
between categories such as citizen, migrant and
refugees (Kallius et al., 2016: 27) that nation-
states and their policies impose (Bado, 2016;
Mahendran, 2017; Hollenbach, 2016). Advo-
cates of more radical no-border politics, too,
sometimes apply this interpretation and associ-
ate solidarity with ‘relationships based on pre-
sumed equality’ and reciprocity among people
helping each other in the face of oppression
(King, 2016: 52).
The point of this brief review of the interna-
tional migration and refugee literature is to
illustrate that a range of interpretations of soli-
darity co-exists with a Marxian-Hegelian
inspired interpretation of solidarity, which is the
main focus of this article. This interpretation,
too, can be associated with diverse and multi-
disciplinary research discussing, for example,
the solidarity among migrants and between
migrants, refugees and non-migrants in Europe
(Martı́nez López, 2017; Piacentini, 2015) or
practices of labour organizing involving
migrants (Foster, 2016; Christopoulou and
Leontsini, 2017; Tapia, 2017). This interpreta-
tion often challenges the very categories of
international migrant, refugee and citizen that
the Westphalian territorial order has created and
imposed, and that research following other
interpretations sometimes reifies uncritically.
Below, I explore the Marxian-Hegelian
5
interpretation of solidarity further, focusing on
the geographical character of international
migrant and refugee solidarities as a practice
of world-making that challenges the established
political order.
IV Space, place, migration
Solidarity is obviously not restricted to the
national scale. Marx, Engels and the labour
movement saw it as a practice that enables the
working class to engage the hegemonic nation-
state at the global scale. Their famous call at the
end of the Communist Manifesto for the prole-
tariat of the world to unite (Marx and Engels,
1972 [1848]) expresses that international soli-
darity is a vehicle to overcome national divi-
sions among the proletariat, engage global
capitalism and end class exploitation.
From a related historical perspective, Feath-
erstone (2012) discusses the cotton blockade to
illustrate how practices of solidarity have
bridged distance and connected seemingly dis-
connected places. In 1862, Frederick Douglass
appealed to cotton-factory workers in North
West England to support the Northern states in
the American Civil War. Douglass linked slav-
ery in the American South, where cotton was
produced, with the struggle of workers in
England’s North West, where cotton was pro-
cessed. The workers in Manchester responded
affirmatively and contested the slavery in the
American South. While they cited the ‘common
brotherhood of mankind’ and ‘inalienable right
of every human being’ (Featherstone, 2012: 2),
they also recognized their interdependencies
shaped by intertwined economic and geopoliti-
cal relations. In this way, solidarity practices
refuse ‘to stay neatly contained within a
nation-state’ (Featherstone, 2012: 5) and con-
nect places with different social, economic, cul-
tural and political attributes (Massey, 2005).
Global economic practices that exploit dif-
ferences in national and regional wage and
labour standards have created an ‘international
6 Progress in Human Geography XX(X)
segmentation of labor’ (Bauder, 2006) that dis-
proportionately disadvantages racialized work-
ers in the Global South (Van Parijs, 1992). The
functional but unequal relationship between the
economies of the Global South and North are
the foundation of solidarity networks and pro-
grams, such as fair-trade initiatives between
producers in the Global South and consumers
in the North (Raynolds, 2000; Raynolds and
Bennett, 2015). The notion of ‘solidarity econ-
omy’ recognizes the functional relationships
and interdependencies of economic and politi-
cal practices in different places and at different
scales (Allard et al., 2008; Kawano, 2018). The
unequal relationships between places, however,
also raise questions about asymmetrical power
relations within solidarity initiatives and
economies.
Migration often plays a central role in the
formation of solidarity between places. In a
review of the historical literature of solidarity,
Kelliher (2018) observes that ‘questions of
mobility have been crucial in thinking about the
formation of diverse solidarities across geogra-
phical and social boundaries’ (p. 2). Mobile
groups of workers and travelers connected the
struggles that occurred in different places, thus
contributing to the formation of solidarity in the
contexts of labour organizing and anti-colonial
resistance. Regarding the latter, Shilliam (2015)
illustrates how the encounter between a touring
Black theatre group and RasTafari band from
the UK, and Mãori and Pasifika communities
in Aotearoa offers possibilities of place-based
‘anti-colonial solidarities’ (p. 11) arising from
experiences with different forms of colonialism.
Rygiel (2011) shows how contemporary bor-
der camps, where migrants are detained,
become ‘spaces of solidarity’ (p. 14) where
rights are claimed and the national frame of
belonging is fundamentally challenged (Ataç
et al., 2017). Physical contact with international
migrants may not be necessary for the emer-
gence of solidarity as a practice of ‘political
subjectivisation’ that follows the dialectical
‘logic of the other’ (Stierl, 2016: 186). Drawing
on Butler (2003, 2004) and Rancière (1992),
Stierl examines ‘grief-activism’ related to
migrant deaths in the Mediterranean Sea.
Although the European activists have not met
the migrants who perished, their solidarity
relates to the rejection of the European border
regime and critical reflection on their own iden-
tity as Europeans (Stierl, 2016). ‘Migratory sol-
idarity’ also exists between migrants and
activists who have no or only brief virtual or
digital contact, for example through Watch the
Med Alarm Phone, a phone line staffed by
volunteers to rescue boatpeople in distress
(Stierl, 2018).
In other contexts, however, physical presence
and proximity are crucial conditions for politi-
cal action and subject formation (Butler, 2012;
Isin, 2002). International migration, in particu-
lar, generates forms of solidarity that arise when
people who were geographically separated from
each other by national borders now encounter
and interact with each other in particular loca-
tions where ‘activists root themselves in place’
(Kelliher, 2018: 3). International migration does
not mean that the international segmentation of
labour ceases to exist; workers from the Global
South often continue to experience the devalua-
tion of their labour and humanity in the Global
North, reproducing the international segmenta-
tion of labour at national and local scales (Bau-
der, 2006). The resulting social injustice and
inequality within countries and places has facili-
tated solidarity among labour, anti-racism and
social justice advocates. For example, tempo-
rary foreign worker programs in countries of the
Global North (Castles and Ozkul, 2014) create
docile and disciplined labour by denying work-
ers access to permanent residency and citizen-
ship, to which trade unions and labour activists
are responding by advocating on behalf of the
participating workers. Their strategies range
from mitigating the impacts of unfair labour
practices to challenging the structural
Bauder
inequalities embedded in these labour-
migration schemes (Basok and López-Sala,
2016).
Solidarity thus arises when migration brings
people and different geographical contexts in
relation with each other locally. Oosterlynck
and colleagues (2016: 773) conclude:
innovative forms of solidarity are not primarily
nurtured in the spatio-temporal register of the ter-
ritorialized nation state, but . . . the growing ethnic
cultural diversity of the population makes it nec-
essary to look for innovative forms of solidarity
elsewhere, namely in the here and now of actual
practices in particular places.
The solidarities that emerge from migration
give rise to ‘place-based politics’ (Featherstone,
2012: 7). On the one hand, these politics relate
to the local presence of international migrants
and refugees. On the other hand, they capture
the relations between places and scales, includ-
ing transnational and global connections (Oast-
erlynck et al., 2017), establishing what Massey
(2009: 413) calls politics of ‘place beyond
place’. In the following sections, I discuss such
place-based politics of solidarity in the contexts
of urban migrant solidarities and the relation-
ship to land and belonging.
V Urban migrant solidarities
Urban research has emphasized the importance
of place-based relations as a catalyst for solidar-
ity among international migrants and refugees,
and between international migrants and refu-
gees and non-migrants. In Canada, Latin Amer-
ica and Europe, solidarity movements and
campaigns support international migrants and
refugees without or with precarious national sta-
tus who inhabit urban municipalities (Bauder
and Gonzales, 2018). In cities such as Barce-
lona, Spain, or Toronto, Canada, they have been
able to mobilize institutional support from city
administrations and councils, NGOs and civic-
society organizations (Agustı́n and Jørgensen,
7
2019; Bauder, 2017). In the UK context, Darling
(2017: 191) speaks of a ‘politics of urban pres-
ence’ in the city that ‘shape solidarities centred
on the city as a stage of political and social
connections, rather than as a site for the
“policing of forced migration”’.
These urban solidarity movements and cam-
paigns are not uncontested. Some scholars are
critical of them due to the asymmetrical power
relations between international migrants, refu-
gees and non-migrants, and the associated capa-
cities to shape solidarity agendas and politics, or
due to the patriarchal and charitable character of
migrant-solidarity networks. In fact, practices
of hospitality often reify the politically-
constructed categories of migrant, refugee or
citizen (Bagelman, 2016; Houston and Morse,
2017). Other scholars, however, emphasize the
autonomous influences within these movements
and the way in which allies ‘define themsel-
ves . . . in solidarity with, and not leaders of, this
movement’ (Nyers, 2010: 134).
A prominent example of urban migrant soli-
darity is the sanctuary city movement. This
movement and its campaigns focus on provid-
ing access to policing, health, education, hous-
ing, recreation and other municipal services to
precarious international migrants and refugees
(Bauder and Gonzales, 2018). In the USA, sanc-
tuary cities also protect international migrants
and refugees from national immigration-
enforcement authorities. Sanctuary cities ‘draw
inspiration from a vibrant history of reciprocal
relations’ (Walia, 2014) between citizens,
established communities and politically,
socially and economically marginalized newco-
mers. In a UK context of cities of sanctuary,
Squire (2011) speaks of ‘mobile solidarities’
that are constituted by interaction and ‘partici-
pation through presence’ when international
migrants and refugees as well as established
inhabitants share urban space. This sharing of
urban space has motivated a deliberate shift of
political struggle to the urban scale. In Zurich,
Switzerland, for example, activists strategically
8 Progress in Human Geography XX(X)
mobilized the concept of ‘urban citizenship’ to
foster the legal, political and social participation
of all inhabitants (Krenn and Morawek, 2017).
This politics of place does not treat the city as
isolated container but connected to national and
European migration regimes, and to global geo-
politics and capitalism.
The shift to the urban scale permits reframing
political subjectivities towards local member-
ship. In the UK, the urban solidarity between
international migrants, refugees and formal cit-
izens has permitted migrants and refugees to
locally ‘enact themselves as political subjects
in their own right’ (Squire and Bagelman,
2012, 147), something they could not have
accomplished on their own. In this way, solidar-
ity is a productive and inventive practice, and
politicizes urban belonging. Solidarity also
modifies the imagination of the city as a space
of co-habitation (Darling, 2010; Nail et al.,
2010). Activist Syed Hussan remarks that the
Sanctuary/Solidarity City campaign in Toronto
offers an opportunity ‘to change the imagina-
tion’ of society and ‘create a different political
culture and give rise to a new way of thinking’
(Nail et al., 2010). This particular campaign
works not only towards concrete objectives to
improve migrants’ material lives but also strives
towards radically re-envisioning the urban com-
munity as a common political subject to which
all inhabitants belong, independent of the status
categories imposed by nation-states (Bauder,
2017).
Another example of urban migrant solidarity
is City Plaza, a formerly abandoned hotel in
Athens, Greece, that is now a ‘squat’, offering
a ‘solidarity space’ for migrants and refugees
(Raimondi, 2019: 195). City Plaza is situated
in an urban context that has been ‘an amalgam
of moving populations’ for decades (Agustı́n
and Jørgensen, 2019: 61). Squire (2018) draws
on Butler (2004) to theorize solidarity at City
Plaza as ‘an on-going project [that] facilitates
appreciation of how diverse “precarious lives”
can come together in terms that challenge
processes of governing which produce people
as disposable and as vulnerable’ (p. 112). City
Plaza brings together international migrants,
refugees and activists – some of whom are
‘international activists’ (Raimondi, 2019:
204) – in a shared urban space where solidarity
is practised as place-based politics of the every-
day. Agustı́n and Jørgensen (2019: 49–72) use
City Plaza as an example of anti-authoritarian
cooperation they call ‘autonomous solidarity’.
They see City Plaza as a site of resistance
against migrant oppression emanating from the
European border regime, national approaches
towards international migration and refugees,
and local anti-migrant initiatives. Furthermore,
they stress that the autonomous solidarity of
City Plaza ‘is generative of the shared identity
“co-habitant” [and . . . ] produces new config-
urations of political relations and political sub-
jectivities’ (Agustı́n and Jørgensen, 2019: 65).
This generative and productive character of sol-
idarity is reminiscent of a Marxian-Hegelian
view of solidarity as a practice of subject for-
mation. Although the solidarity between non-
local European volunteers and international
migrants and refugees from the Global South
harbours the potential of reproducing prevailing
neo-colonial and paternalistic relations
(ReflActionist Collective, 2016), solidarity
between these groups can also generate a new
political community that transcends these
relations.
VI Land and politics of place
In the context of migrant-solidarity movements
in Europe, Walters (2006: 30) suggests that no-
border camps cultivate a ‘milieu of solidarity
and self-identity’ that transcends the categories
of citizen, foreigner and migrant imposed by the
nation-state. The no-border camp
is not just demanding freedom of movement, but
is in some small way enhancing it. The modern
state defines territory by striating and monopoliz-
ing space. Rather like camping in a wilderness
Bauder
area, border camping seems to imply a different
relationship to the land. (Walters, 2006: 32–3)
This focus on ‘land’ implies the rejection of
contemporary political organization in mutually
exclusive nation-state territories.
While the above quote is taken from a Eur-
opean context, the relationship to the land has
been especially important in the context of
settler-colonialism and solidarity between new-
comers and Indigenous peoples in settler soci-
eties. Settler-colonialism refers to the territorial
displacement of Indigenous peoples by a popu-
lation of migrant-settlers. This process has
involved land appropriation and often cultural
and physical genocide. While some scholarship
suggests that ongoing migration to settler coun-
tries is always a colonizing practice (Lawrence
and Dua, 2005), Sharma and Wright (2008–9:
121) have challenged ‘the conflation between
processes of migration and those of colonial-
ism’, and they argue that decolonialization can-
not be achieved in the context of a nation-state
framework. Rather, decolonialization entails
the rejection not of international migration but
of nationalism and territorial state sovereignty:
‘A fundamental problem of nationalisms of all
stripes is what is done to those imagined as the
nation’s Others’ (Sharma and Wright 2008–9:
130, emphasis in original). The nation-state’s
selective migration policies and the state-
organized commodification and exploitation of
land-based resources are central mechanisms of
ongoing colonialism. In this context, a core
argument is that solidarity between Indigenous
peoples and migrants focused on sharing and
taking care of the land can be a decolonizing
practice.
Land has been critically important to Indi-
genous politics and is intimately linked to
knowledge and material and spiritual relation-
ships (Clement, 2017). In the context of ‘turtle
island’ – what settlers call North America –
Coulthard draws on the work of Deloria
(2001) to explain that land is ‘an ontological
9
framework for understanding relationships.
Seen in this light, it is a profound misunder-
standing to think of land or place as simply
some material object of profound importance
to Indigenous cultures (although it is this too)’
(Coulthard, 2014: 60–1, emphasis in original).
Rather, land connects people with each other as
well as with animals, plants, water, soil and the
spiritual world. Coulthard links this role of land
to a politics of place that follows a Marxian-
Hegelian dialectic. Decolonialization, for
Coulthard, is
informed by what the land as system of reciprocal
relations and obligations can teach us about liv-
ing our lives in relation to one another and the
natural world in nondominating and nonexploita-
tive terms . . . I call this place-based foundations
of Indigenous decolonial thought and practice
grounded normativity, by which I mean the mod-
alities of Indigenous land-connected practices and
longstanding experiential knowledge that inform
and structure our ethical engagements with the
world and our relationships with human and non-
human others over time. (Coulthard, 2014: 13,
emphasis in original)
Practices of solidarity affirm this land-based
politics of place. Vancouver-based activist
Harjap Grewal, who is critical of territorial sta-
tehood and the way in which territorial nation-
states control cross-border migration and access
to citizenship, affirms the respect for ‘Indigen-
ous traditions and shared responsibility for the
land’ (Walia, 2013: 240). Migrant solidarity, in
this context, entails ‘the fight against coloniza-
tion’ (Walia, 2012). Walia (2012) also assumes
this anti-nationalism and anti-capitalism per-
spective when she reports that in the Canadian
province of British Columbia newcomers have
participated in Indigenous protests and block-
ades while Indigenous peoples have offered
support and protection to international migrants
facing deportation. She recalls how Tyendinaga
Mohawk activist Shawn Brant stood in solidar-
ity with non-status Algerians, challenging ‘the
10
Canadian state’s authority to execute deporta-
tions’ on Indigenous land (Walia, 2013: 135).
Activists in the United States make similar
connections between racialized and illegalized
migrants and Indigenous peoples. Paik (2017)
describes how sanctuary-city supporters pro-
testing deportations and migrant detentions, and
activists against anti-Muslim and anti-Arab
racism, stand in solidarity with Indigenous
groups ‘who declared that there would be “no
ban on stolen land”’ (Paik, 2017: 18). By chal-
lenging the territorial sovereignty of the USA,
Indigenous groups and their accomplices reject
the US government’s authority over interna-
tional migration and community membership.
In the context of the oppression of Indigen-
ous peoples in Canada, Bassel (2017) explores a
similar connection to land and solidarities
among migrant-rights activists affiliated with
groups such as No One is Illegal. She suggests
that listening is a form of solidarity. Listening
provides the basis for unlearning and rebuilding
relationships that embrace both free migration
and Indigenous self-determination. Listening as
solidarity ‘requires recasting meaning, to hear
Indigenous struggles on their own terms and to
reimagine migrant justice as a result’ (Bassel,
2017: 85). Central to these politics of listening is
to ‘recast the meaning of land . . . as a system of
relationships for Indigenous peoples and stew-
ardship rather then [sic] ownership’ (Bassel,
2017: 77–8). Bassel’s idea of listening ‘to create
a common “us”’ (Bassel, 2017: 8) based on
sharing the land transcends categories of
migrant and citizen, and colonial notions of
Indigeneity. To me, this idea is a productive and
politicizing practice resonating with a Marxian-
Hegelian dialectic of subject formation.
A corresponding ‘politics of place’ focused
on land entails ‘the possibilities of dreaming a
collective future based on new principles, radi-
cally different from the ones established by set-
tler colonialism’ (Arat-Koç, 2014). This politics
of place rejects territorial settler-colonial
nationalism (Chatterjee, 2018) and requires ‘a
Progress in Human Geography XX(X)
dramatic reimagining of relationships with land,
people and the state’ (Syed Hussan quoted in
Walia, 2012). The relationships with the land
are not envisioned as a return to Indigenous
society as it existed before European contact.
For example, an ‘expansionist Indigenous
vision’ (Ravindran 2019: 956), as expressed
by urban Indigenous groups in Bolivia, encom-
passes and transcends current settler-society,
while creating a new decolonized subject
through an open process of continuous negotia-
tion and re-imagination.
VII Conclusion
Above, I assumed a geographical perspective to
examine how the scholarly literature treats the
concept of ‘solidarity’ in relation to interna-
tional migration and refugees. This review
showed that various interpretations of solidarity
with different ontological underpinnings are cir-
culating in the international migration and refu-
gee literature. It also revealed how migration
can serve as a catalyst for solidarity (Kelliher,
2018): migration brings spatially-disconnected
people and places in contact with each other.
While physical interaction may not be required
for solidarity to emerge (Stierl, 2016), migration
leads to connections and encounters that often
trigger solidarity. As the examples of urban
migrant solidarities and the place-based politics
of land illustrate, solidarity is closely connected
to a politics of place that, on the one hand,
focuses on local belonging; on the other hand,
it is relational, connecting places at national
and transnational scales. With its transforma-
tive and productive nature, solidarity has a
‘place-making character’ (Oosterlynck et al.,
2017: 10).
My interpretation of solidarity related to
international migration and refugees followed
a Marxian-Hegelian dialectic of subject forma-
tion, which informs contemporary perspectives
of solidarity that draw, for example, on Grams-
cian and other Marxian-inspired theorizations
Bauder
of solidarity (Agustı́n and Jørenson, 2016, 2019;
Featherstone, 2012; Oosterlynck et al., 2017).
Solidarity, in this context, is a productive and
inventive practice that generates novel possibi-
lities of politicization and provides opportuni-
ties to rethink ways of belonging. Contemporary
territorial nation-states categorize migrants
based on the circumstances under which they
cross national borders, and then frame belong-
ing by stipulating who can stay and become a
citizen and who remains excluded from the
polity (Sharma, 2006). Urban migrant solidari-
ties and Indigenous perspectives of land chal-
lenge these frames: urban migrant solidarities
envision the city as a place of co-belonging and
construct corresponding political subjectivities
independent of the status categories imposed by
the nation-state. Similarly, the solidarity in set-
tler states between Indigenous peoples and ille-
galized migrants and refugees reconnects
aspects of the colonial experience – e.g. Indi-
genous genocide, land appropriation and exclu-
sion with migration induced by colonial and
capitalist displacement and environmental
destruction – that settler politics and discourse
has separated from each other into distinct cate-
gories and disconnected narratives (Bauder,
2011). This solidarity refocuses belonging away
from the nation-state towards the ‘land’. Land,
in this context, frames a place-based politics
that defines relationships between humans and
the physical and spiritual worlds, and articulates
obligations towards the (human and non-
human) occupants of this land. It transcends the
‘Westphalian’ territorial logic, and with it the
concepts of citizen, international migrant and
refugee.
Assuming a settler perspective, Bassel
(2017) suggested that solidarity related to such
place-based politics of land consists of ‘listen-
ing’ to Indigenous voices, rather than following
the colonial practice of speaking to and acting
on Indigenous peoples. This suggestion reso-
nates with an open dialectic of solidarity that
rejects political closure and a pre-conceived
11
utopian endpoint as the aim of solidarity action
(Agustı́n and Jørgensen, 2016; Featherstone,
2012). The person who listens and refrains from
speaking or acting does not impose their own
language and ontologies upon others. To me,
this open dialectic of solidarity aligns with the
work of critical theorists, such as Theodore
Adorno (1966), who argue against defining con-
crete alternatives because any attempt to do so
would necessarily reproduce the language, con-
cepts and ontologies that such an attempt would
need to employ. Above, I refrained from
attempting to define concrete subject figures
in relation to urban solidarity initiatives or
Indigenous-migrant solidarities to acknowledge
the continuous unfolding of this dialectic.
An open dialectic implies that belonging to
the city or sharing the land are not the endpoints
of solidarity-propelled processes of subject for-
mation. Rather, an open dialectic entails possi-
bilities of politics that define ‘new ways of
generating political community and different
ways of shaping relations between places’
(Featherstone, 2012: 7). Even the concept of
solidarity must not be taken for granted and
requires ‘decolonizing’ (Gaztambide-Fernán-
dez, 2012: 46) to prevent Western and colonial
ideas of solidarity to reify and reproduce settler
colonialism (Snelgrove et al., 2014). Migration
will continue to be a catalyst to these emerging
politics of solidarity.
Acknowledgements
I thank three anonymous reviewers and the journal’s
editors, as well as Leah Bassel, Sedef Arat-Koç and
Martin Bak Jørgensen for discussions and inspira-
tion. Sharyne Williams and Lorelle Juffs provided
research assistance funded by Ryerson’s Yeates
School of Graduate Studies.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of inter-
est with respect to the research, authorship, and/or
publication of this article.
12
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following
financial support for the research, authorship, and/
or publication of this article: Research assistance was
funded by the Yeates School of Graduate Studies,
Ryerson University.
ORCID iD
Harald Bauder https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7249-
8325
References
Adorno TW (1966) Negative Dialektik. Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp Verlag.
Agustı́n ÓG and Jørgensen MB (2016) Solidarity without
borders: Gramscian perspectives on migration and civil
society alliances. In: Agustı́n ÓG and Jørenson MB,
Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives
on Migration and Civil Society Alliances. London:
Pluto Press, 3–19.
Agustı́n ÓG and Jørgensen MB (2019) Solidarity and the
‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe. Cham, Switzerland: Pal-
grave Pivot.
Allard J, Davidson C and Matthaei J (eds) (2008) Solidar-
ity Economy: Building Alternatives for People and Pla-
net. Chicago: ChangeMaker Publications.
Anderson B (1983) Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Arat-Koç S (2014) An anti-colonial politics of place. In:
Stanley A, Arat-Koç S, Bertram LK and King H (eds)
Intervention: Addressing the Indigenous-Immigration
‘Parallax Gap’. Antipode Foundation. Available at:
https://antipodefoundation.org/2014/06/18/addressing-
the-indigenous-immigration-parallax-gap/ (accessed
19 September 2018).
Ataç I, Rygiel K and Stierl M (eds) (2017) The Contentious
Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity
Movements. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bado AB (2016) Assessing advocacies for forcibly dis-
placed people: A comprehensive approach. Journal of
International Migration & Integration 17: 593–603.
Bagelman J (2016) Sanctuary City: A Suspended State.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Basok T and López-Sala A (2016) Right and restrictions:
Temporary agricultural migrants and trade unions’ acti-
vism in Canada and Spain. International Migration and
Integration 17(4): 1271–1287.
Progress in Human Geography XX(X)
Bassel L (2017) The Politics of Listening: Possibilities and
Challenges of Democratic Life. London: Palgrave.
Bauder H (2006) Labor Movement: How Migration Reg-
ulates Labor Markets. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Bauder H (2011) Closing the immigration-Aboriginal par-
allax gap. Geoforum 42: 517–519.
Bauder H (2017) Migration Borders Freedom. London:
Routledge.
Bauder H and Gonzales D (2018) Municipal responses to
‘illegality’: Urban sanctuary across national contexts.
Social Inclusion 6(1): 124–134.
Bauder H and Juffs L (2019) ‘Solidarity’ in the migration
and refugee literature: Analysis of a concept. Journal of
Ethnic and Migration Studies. DOI: 10.1080/
1369183X.2019.1627862.
Bayertz K (1999) Four uses of solidarity. In: Bayertz K (ed.)
Solidarity. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 3–28.
Boräng F (2015) Large-scale solidarity? Effects of
welfare state institutions on the admission of forced
migrants. European Journal of Political Research 54:
216–231.
Butler J (2003) Violence, mourning, politics. Studies in
Gender and Sexuality 4(1): 9–37.
Butler J (2004) Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning
and Violence. London: Verso.
Butler J (2012) Bodies in alliance and the politics of the
street. In: McLagan M and McKee Y (eds) Sensible
Politics: The Visual Culture of Nongovernmental Acti-
vism. New York: Zone Books, 117–137.
Castles S and Ozkul D (2014) Circular migration: Triple
win, or a new label for temporary migration? In: Bat-
tistella G (ed.) Global and Asian Perspectives on Inter-
national Migration. London: Springer, 27–49.
Chatterjee S (2018) Immigration, anti-racism, and Indi-
genous self-determination: Towards a comprehen-
sive analysis of the contemporary settler colonial.
Social Identities. DOI: 10.1080/13504630.2018.
1473154.
Chouliaraki L (2017) Rethinking media responsibility in
the refugee ‘crisis’: A visual typology of European
news. Media, Culture & Society 39(8): 1162–1177.
Christopoulou N and Leontsini M (2017) Weaving solidar-
ity: Migrant women’s organisations in Athens. Journal
of Intercultural Studies 38(5): 514–529.
Clement V (2017) Beyond the sham of the emancipatory
Enlightenment: Rethinking the relationships of Indi-
genous epistemologies, knowledges, and geography
Bauder
through decolonizing paths. Progress in Human Geo-
graphy 43(2): 276–294.
Coulthard GS (2014) Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the
Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: Univer-
sity of Minnesota Press.
Darling J (2010) A city of sanctuary: The relational re-
imagining of Sheffield’s asylum politics. Transactions
of the Institute of British Geographers NS35: 125–140
Darling J (2017) Forced migration and the city: Irregular-
ity, informality, and the politics of presence. Progress
in Human Geography 41(2): 178–198.
Deloria V Jr (2001) Power and place equal personality. In:
Deloria V Jr and Wildcat D (eds) Power and Place: Indian
Education in America. Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 21–28.
Fanon F (2008 [1952]) Black Skin, While Masks, trans.
Philcox, Richard. New York: Grove Press.
Featherstone D (2012) Solidarity: Hidden Histories and
Geographies of Internationalism. London: Zed Books.
Fekete L (2009) Europe: Crimes of solidarity. Race &
Class 50(4): 83–97.
Fekete L (2018) Migrants, borders and the criminalization
of solidarity in the EU. Race & Class 59(4): 65–85.
Foster J (2016) Solidarity on the TransCanada: The role of
immigrant activism and innovative union tactics in the
2005 Lakeside Packers strike. Labour/Le Travail 78:
197–218.
Gaztambide-Fernández RA (2012) Decolonization and the
pedagogy of solidarity. Decolonization: Indigeneity,
Education and Society 1(1): 41–67.
Gill N (2018) The suppression of welcome. Fennia 196(1):
88–98.
Greenhill KM (2016) Open arms behind barred doors:
Fear, hypocrisy and policy schizophrenia in the Eur-
opean migration crisis. European Law Journal 22(3):
317–332.
Harvey D (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Harvey D (2012) Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City
to the Urban Revolution. London: Verso.
Hobbes T (1949 [1642]) De Cive or the Citizen, ed. Lam-
precht SP. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Hobbes T (1904 [1651]) Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme &
Power of a Common-wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civill,
ed. Waller AR. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hollenbach DSJ (2016) Borders and duties to the dis-
placed: Ethical perspectives on the refugee protection
system. Journal on Migration and Human Security
4(3): 148–165.
13
Houston S and Morse C (2017) The ordinary and extraor-
dinary: Producing migrant inclusion and exclusion in
US sanctuary movement. Studies in Social Justice
11(1): 27–47.
Isin E (2002) Being Political: Genealogies of Citizenship.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Janssen GH (2017) The republic of refugees: Early modern
migrations and the Dutch experience. The Historical
Journal 60(1): 233–252.
Johnson H (2012) Moments of solidarity, migrant activism
and (non)citizens at global borders: Political agency at
Tanzanian refugee camps, Australian detention centres
and European borders. In: Nyers P and Rygiel K (eds)
Citizenship, Migrant Activism and the Politics of Move-
ment. London: Routledge, 109–128.
Johnson L (2015) Material interventions on the US–Mex-
ico border: Investigating a sited politics of migrant sol-
idarity. Antipode 47(5): 1243–1260.
Juozeliunienë I (2013) The development of the outline for
migrant family research: The case of Lithuania. Jour-
nal of Comparative Family Studies 44(6): 749–763.
Kallius A, Monterescu D and Kumar Rajaram P (2016)
Immobilizing mobility: Border ethnography, illiberal
democracy, and the politics of the ‘refugee crisis’ in
Hungary. American Ethnologist 43(1): 25–37.
Kapeller J and Wolkenstein F (2013) The grounds of sol-
idarity: From liberty to loyalty. European Journal of
Social Theory 16(4): 476–491.
Katz R, Lowenstein A, Halperin D and Tur-Sinai A (2015)
Generational solidarity in Europe and Israel. Canadian
Journal on Aging 34(3): 342–355.
Kawano E (2018) Solidarity economy: Building an econ-
omy for people & planet. Available at: https://www.
solidarityeconomy.coop/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/
Kawano-E.-2018_Solidarity-Economy.pdf (accessed
21 May 2019).
Kelliher D (2018) Historicising geographies of solidarity.
Geography Compass. DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12399.
Kelz R (2015) Political theory and migration: Concepts of
non-sovereignty and solidarity. Movements 1(2):
1–18.
Kerwin D (2016) How robust refugee protection policies
can strengthen human and national security. Journal on
Migration and Human Security 4(3): 83–140.
King N (2016) No Borders: The Politics of Immigration
Control and Resistance. London: Zed Books.
Krenn M and Morawek K (eds) (2017) Urbæn Cit’zën
Şhip. Vienna: Verlag für Moderne Kunst.
14
Lawrence B and Dua E (2005) Decolonizing antiracism.
Social Justice 32(4): 120–143.
Mahendran K (2017) Public narratives on human mobility:
Countering technocratic and humanitarian refugee nar-
ratives with a ‘one-world’ solidarity narrative. Journal
of Community & Applied Social Psychology 27(2):
147–157.
Martı́nez López MA (2017) Squatters and migrants in
Madrid: Interactions, contexts and cycles. Urban
Studies 54(11): 2472–2489.
Marx K and Engels F (1953) Die deutsche Ideologie. Ber-
lin: Dietz Verlag.
Marx K and Engels F (1972 [1848]) Werke, Vol. 4 (6th
edn). Berlin/DDR: Dietz Verlag.
Massey D (2005) For Space. London: SAGE.
Massey D (2009) The possibilities of a politics of place
beyond place? Scottish Geographical Journal 125(3–
4): 401–420.
McGovern F and Devine D (2016) The care worlds of
migrant children: Exploring intergenerational
dynamics of love, care and solidarity across home and
school. Childhood 23(1): 37–52.
Musarò P and Parmiggiani P (2017) Beyond black and
white: The role of media in portraying and policing
migration and asylum in Italy. International Review
of Sociology 27(2): 241–260.
Nail T, Kamal F and Hussan S (2010) Building a sanctuary
city: NOII-Toronto on non-status migrant justice orga-
nizing. Upping the Anti, no. 11. Available at: http://
uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/11-noii-sanctuary-
city/ (accessed 9 September 2019).
Nyers P (2010) No one is illegal between city and nation.
Studies in Social Justice 4(2): 127–143.
Oosterlynck S, Loopmans M, Schuermans N, Vandena-
beele J and Zemni S (2016) Putting flesh to the bone:
Looking for solidarity in diversity, here and now.
Ethnic and Racial Studies 39(5): 764–782.
Oosterlynck S, Schuermans N and Loopmans M (2017)
Beyond social capital: Place, diversity and solidarity.
In: Oosterlynck S, Schuermans N and Loopmans M
(eds) Place, Diversity and Solidarity. Abingdon: Rou-
tledge, 1–18.
Paik NA (2017) Abolitionist futures and the US sanctuary
movement. Race & Class 59(2): 3–25.
Papataxiarchis E (2016) Unwrapping solidarity? Society
reborn in austerity. Social Anthropology 24(2): 205–210.
Piacentini T (2015) Missing from the picture? Migrant and
refugee community organizations’ responses to
Progress in Human Geography XX(X)
poverty and destitution in Glasgow. Community Devel-
opment Journal 50(3): 433–447.
Raimondi V (2019) Resisting the camp: Migrants’ squats as
antithetical spaces in Athens’ City Plaza. In: Darling J
and Bauder H (eds) Sanctuary Cities and Urban Strug-
gles: Rescaling Migration, Citizenship, and Rights.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 191–216.
Rancière J (1992) Politics, identification, and subjectiviza-
tion. The Identity in Question 61: 58–64.
Ravindran T (2019) Geographies of Indigenous identity:
Special imaginaries and racialized power struggles in
Bolivia. Antipode 51(3): 949–967.
Raynolds LT (2000) Re-embedding global agriculture:
The international organic and fair trade movement.
Agriculture and Human Values 17(3): 297–309.
Raynolds LT and Bennett EA (2015) Handbook of
Research on Fair Trade. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
ReflActionist Collective (2016) Beyond voluntourism and
holidarity? White German activists on the ‘Balkan-
route’– (self)reflections. Available at: https://reflactio
nistcollective.noblogs.org/post/2016/06/18/beyond-
voluntourism-and-holidarity/ (accessed 9 September
2019).
Ross A (2019) Communal Solidarity: Immigration, Settle-
ment, and Social Welfare in Winnipeg’s Jewish Com-
munity, 1882–1930. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba
Press.
Rygiel K (2011) Bordering solidarities: Migrant activism
and the politics of movement and camps at Calais. Citi-
zenship Studies 15(1): 1–19.
Sharma N (2006) Home Economics: Nationalism and the
Making of ‘Migrant Workers’ in Canada. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Sharma N and Wright C (2008–9) Decolonizing resistance,
challenging colonial states. Social Justice 35(3):
120–138.
Sheffer G (2002) A nation and its diaspora: A re-
examination of Israeli-Jewish diaspora relations. Dia-
spora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 11(3):
331–358.
Shilliam R (2015) The Black Pacific: Anti-Colonial Strug-
gles and Oceanic Connections. London: Bloomsbury
Academic.
Siebold A (2017) Open borders as an act of solidarity
among peoples, between states or with migrants:
Changing applications of solidarity within the Schen-
gen Process. European Review of History 24(6):
991–1006.
Bauder
Snelgrove C, Dhamoon RK and Corntassel J (2014) Unset-
tling settler colonialism: The discourse and politics of
setters, and solidarity with Indigenous nations. Deco-
lonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 3(2):
1–32.
Squire V (2011) From community cohesion to mobile sol-
idarity: The City of Sanctuary network and the Stran-
gers into Citizens campaign. Political Studies 59:
290–307.
Squire V (2018) Mobile solidarities and precariousness at
City Plaza: Beyond Vulnerable and Disposable Lives.
Studies in Social Justice 12(1): 111–132.
Squire V and Bagelman J (2012) Taking not waiting:
Space, temporality and politics in the City of Sanctuary
movement. In: Nyers P and Rygiel K (eds) Citizenship,
Migrant Activism and the Politics of Movement. Lon-
don: Routledge, 146–166.
Standing G (2011) The Precariat: The New Dangerous
Class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Stierl M (2016) Contestation in death: The role of grief in
migration struggles. Citizenship Studies 20(2):
173–191.
Stierl M (2018) Migrant Resistance in Contemporary
Europe. London: Routledge.
Tapia M (2017) Supra-union and intersectional organiz-
ing: An examination of two prominent cases in the
low-wage US restaurant industry. Journal of Industrial
Relations 59(4): 487–509.
Tazzioli M (2018) Crimes of solidarity: Migration and
containment through rescue. Radical Philosophy 2(1).
Available at: https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/com
mentary/crimes-of-solidarity (accessed 8 September
2019).
Torpey J (1999) The Invention of the Passport: Surveil-
lance, Citizenship and the State. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press.
Trubeta S (2015) ‘Rights’ in the grey area: Undocumented
border crossers on Lesvos. Race & Class 56(4): 56–72.
Van Parijs P (1992) Commentary: Citizenship exploita-
tion, unequal exchange and the breakdown of popular
sovereignty. In: Barry B and Goodin R (eds) Free
Movement: Ethical Issues in the Transnational
15
Migration of People and of Money. Hemel Hempstead:
Harvester Wheatsheaf, 155–165.
Vasilev G (2015) Solidarity Across Divides: Promoting
the Moral Point of View. Edinburgh: Edinburg Univer-
sity Press.
Vasudevan A (2015) The autonomous city: Towards a
critical geography of occupation. Progress in Human
Geography 39(3): 335–356.
Ventrella M (2015) Recognising effective legal protection
to people smuggled at sea, by reviewing the EU legal
framework on human trafficking and solidarity
between member states. Social Inclusion 3(1): 76–87.
Virdee S (2014) Racism, Class and the Racialized Out-
sider. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Walia H (2012) Decolonizing together: Moving beyond a
politics of solidarity towards a practice of decoloniza-
tion. Briarpatch, 1 January. Available at: https://briar
patchmagazine.com/articles/view/decolonizing-
together (accessed 19 September 2018).
Walia H (2013) Undoing Border Imperialism. Oakland,
CA: AK Press.
Walia H (2014) Sanctuary city from below: Dismantling
the city of Vancouver. The Mainlander, 2 June. Avail-
able at: http://themainlander.com/2014/06/02/sanctu
ary-city-from-below-dismantling-the-city-of-vancou
ver/ (accessed 9 September 2019).
Walters W (2006) No border: Games with(out) frontiers.
Social Justice 33(1): 21–39.
Yoon S (2013) Mobilizing ethnic resources in the transna-
tional enclave ethnic solidarity as a mechanism for
mobility in the Korean church in Beijing. International
Journal of Sociology 43(3): 29–54.
Author biography
Harald Bauder is the director of the Graduate Pro-
gram in Immigration and Settlement Studies and a
Professor in the Department of Geography and Envi-
ronmental Studies at Ryerson University, Toronto,
Canada. His latest mongraph Migration Borders
Freedom was published by Routledge in 2017.