Contribution short abstract:

This study explores grassroots solidarity practices along the Balkan routes, focusing on their role in supporting migrants and challenging EU migration policies. Based on engaged ethnographic research, it examines the practical and relational dynamics that foster inclusive alternative

Contribution long abstract:

This contribution examines grassroots solidarity initiatives along the Balkan routes, focusing on their dual role in providing essential support to migrants while challenging exclusionary EU migration policies. Based on ethnographic research in Greece, Bulgaria, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, it explores "debordering" practices (Ambrosini, 2021) employed by grassroots organizations, groups and collectives. These include mutual aid and care, such as distributing food, offering medical and legal assistance, providing recreational activities, and activating aid networks. Though not always overtly confrontational, these initiatives resist exclusionary policies and challenge repressive border regimes.

Drawing on theories of commoning as cooperative practices, the study shows how solidarity efforts manifest commoning through collective acts of providing basic necessities, medical aid, and safe spaces. These practices contest state-imposed divisions by embodying shared responsibility and reciprocity that transcends borders. The study highlights the relational dynamics behind these efforts, arguing that alliances fostered in these contexts are crucial for building alternative forms of recognition and inclusion.

By examining processes of sharing, exchanging, and commoning between solidarians and people on the move, the study reveals how grassroots initiatives experiment with commons-based approaches to life sustenance and mutual aid, thereby forging new political capacities. These initiatives create spaces that reimagine solidarity and care, embodying what Berlant (2016) describes as the commons' "generative capacity beyond brokenness." They offer ways to navigate and transform contexts of institutional abandonment and systemic exclusion. In doing so, they provide pathways to rethink solidarity, belonging, and life sustenance in the face of systemic border violence.