Paper Short Abstract:

This paper describes collaborations, co-productions, lived experiences and relationships of care between the proposing author, people on the move and migrant activists, to illustrate how practices of Public Anthropology centered in solidarity can both 'be useful' and claim for migrant justice.

Paper Abstract:

European host societies have been increasingly hostile to people on the move. Borders have been enforcing exploitive and abusive relationships with nation-states and national economies through dehumanising people racialised as migrants. European migration policies have been contributing to a hierarchy of deservingness between peoples, dividing those deemed as worthy of belonging from those regarded as dangerous or criminal. This paper explores how engaged collaborations and co-productions, inspired by Public Anthropology can attempt to challenge the border regime. Based in relationships of care and solidarity, established in the last eight years between the author (a community psychologist and anthropologist), people on the move in Europe and activists involved in informal networks of solidarity with people racialised as migrants, I present examples of practices that helped to resituate knowledge, accompany the resistance of people on the move, and resignify care as a central value to Public Anthropology. Contrasting intersectional intersubjectivities around migration status, social class and gender, I highlight the importance of becoming a critical and engaged ally, to co-produce new knowledge and offer something perceived as "useful" by research collaborators. Reflecting on the ethical tensions of these engaged endeavors, I explore possibilities of transformation of fieldwork experiences into practices of witnessing and denouncing border injustices. Building on Public Anthropology and Community Psychology scholarship, I argue that practices of solidarity, grounded in relationships of care, can strengthen the resistance of people on the move and help to resituate knowledge on mobilities, placing it on the other side of the borders.