Paper short abstract:

This paper explores negotiations within the dynamics between activism and governance in the context of Chinas rural-urban migration. The ethnographic case study of a migrant NGO shows the outcomes of the appropriation of grassroots solidarity network by the urban policy of differential inclusion.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, the circumstances of activism and social movements in China have changed radically. Particularly in the area of labor and migrant activism, research faces challenges on the theoretical and methodological level. During the intensified process of Chinas urbanization, the quest for the “right to the city” of rural migrant workers intersects with their individual dreams and hopes for the future. Meanwhile, the entanglement between governmentality and activism in the NGO area attracts increasing scholar attention.

Based on my ethnographic case study of a migrant self-organization in Hangzhou between 2014 and 2017, this paper draws focus on its volunteer program and explores the negotiating process within the dynamics between migrant activism and urban governance. My analysis focuses on the paradigm shift of volunteering from activistic self-help to individualistic self-development in the organizational context, which was embedded in the shifting logic of mobilization during the transformation of the previous solidarity-based grassroots network into a volunteer network instrumentalized by the state-led “community volunteerism”. Moreover, my investigation reveals that their attempt to produce positive self-representation of migrant volunteers as “new urban citizens” caused rather unexpected outcomes: not only was their representation appropriated by the uncritical academic knowledge production, but also the logic of exclusion within the migrant group was reinforced. These results emphasize the importance of more sophisticated approaches of anthropology to the transformative rolls of activisms and movements in the contemporary societies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how asylum-related activist movements in Berlin engaged in prefigurative politics of commoning before, during, and after the 2015 European Long Summer of Migration to resist social and political exclusion imposed by the German asylum system.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I am concerned with prefigurative politics of "commoning" that are emerging as a reaction to the political and social exclusion of asylum-seekers in Germany. I focus on the notion of "commons" as imagined and practiced by local "anti-deportation" and "no-camp" activists. Local citizen activists build relationships of solidarity with asylum-seekers with the vision of a possible future in which the German asylum system is abolished, and with it the corresponding migration regime that deprives asylum-seekers of most citizenship rights and obliges them to remain in refugee facilities. However, between activists' far-reaching demands for equal rights for all asylum-seekers and solidarity-based care work to improve the immediate precarious situation of asylum-seekers, the activists' prefigurative forms of engagement are full of hope for social change, but also full of complexities that have led to frustration. Based on my fieldwork in Berlin with asylum-related activist movements since 2014, I highlight the heterogeneous practices of commoning carried out by local activists and asylum-seekers that challenge the German asylum regime, particularly the obligation for asylum-seekers to stay in refugee facilities. I also show how these practices are embedded in the longer history of refugee social movements in Germany that, among other demands, seek the closure of mass refugee shelters in order to achieve equal housing rights for non-citizens. I conclude by showing how my examples of asylum-related activism can contribute to broader discussions of "commons" as a means of resisting the alienating effects of contemporary life characterized by nationalism and capitalism.

Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how different urban social movements responded to the effects of pandemia in Valencia (Spain). They were former actions for previous goals, but pandemia also forced them to introduce new practices. They did diffeently according to the kind of movement and the neighbourhood context.

Paper long abstract:

COVID-19 pandemia underlines social structural trends. Gentrification and urban precarization are heads and tails of some of these trends in urban contexts. By one side, tourism became one of the main means for gentrification. Central areas of Spanish cities are a privileged locus of the process. By other side, urban precarization is reflected on insecurities and social exclusion. Low-income subjects are object of social policies, social research, and social activists. In Spanish cities, peripheral areas are the most important urban sites of this process.

Urban social movements have been trying to face both gentrification and precarization effects during years. Pandemia gived them an occasion to deepen in their work and to reinforce their goals. Contacts were limited and dependence situations were produced. Maintain informal economy activities was difficult in precarity situation and the bureaucratization process was multiplied all around. Pandemia produced two effects on the uses of urban public spaces. First, sharpened social control and, second, bars and restaurants occupied more areas. Urban social movements looked for forms of commonality to face these effects and introduced some changes in their ways of organization. The main goal of this contribution is to show those plural responses to COVID-19 and changes of organization for different urban social movements in Valencia (Spain). The empirical basis of this reflection will be a study funded by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans that implied the study of different websites and social network accounts of social urban movements and four interviews to leaders of different kind of organisations.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the ambigious role of acts of solidarity in the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts and its transformative potential. Here, acts function both as a valve of catharsis for the participants themselves and overcome hegemonic discursive elements of the conflict.

Paper long abstract:

In each violent political conflict, a plethora of activities of solidarity and cooperation exist across “enemy” lines, tough they remain often overseen and have been rarely conceptualized adequately. Through two interconnected cases, different functions of acts are explored. The first case relates to the Israeli-Palestinian divide between the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) and what has been labeled as ‘proper’ Israel within the ‘Green Line’. The second case addresses episodes at the ‘internal frontier’ in the Israeli Negev desert where Arab-Palestinian Bedouin citizens and Jewish-Israeli citizens organized a so-called ‘peace march’ inspired by the methods of Mahatma Gandhi.

These cases show how writings on ruler-ruled relations in general and on Israeli-Palestinian relations in particular, can benefit from this detailed ethnographic perspective that moves beyond the obvious. In this specific case, pro-Bedouin activists’ reluctance to engage with what they perceive as the powerful and depraved “other”, in a certain sense, reinforces their own subalternity. In other words, the more indigenous and Pro-Bedouin activists invest in creating an essentialized image of the Neo-Zionist movement as a clear-cut enemy the more its power grows over its opponents, allowing to shape their agendas. In the cases explored here, acts function primarily as a valve of catharsis for the participants themselves, both overcoming and reproducing hegemonic discursive elements of the conflict. Paradoxically, acts of solidarity are often crucial in creating public knowledge about the conflict in more sectarian terms.