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Paper short abstract

Drawing on ethnography at the Western Balkan-EU border, I discuss border solidarity forged at the moment of engagement across difference. I argue for “solidarity because of everything”—utilizing asymmetries and contradictions to form a reflexive solidarity without romanticizing difference.

Paper long abstract

The everyday materiality of a violent borderzone at the fringes of EUrope constitutes a “contact zone” (Pratt 1992) between different subjectivities, positionalities, and biographies that would not encounter and co-exist otherwise. This is a relational space where different care practices (e.g., humanitarian and solidarity actors) are formed and negotiated daily. These practices are much more salient here since they are organized directly against visible violence and neglect. Care appears as the antidote to violence until it is not; specifically when violence permeates practices of care, since it fails to process the difference that comes with the sociality of the borderzone. Interaction within humanitarianism can become an “incomplete encounter” that fails to touch the biographies, either by flattening the situatedness of human experience or de-historicizing difference.

Based on my ethnographic research at the so-called Western Balkan-EU border between 2022 and 2025, during which I was positioned at the very cracks of different care practices alongside five different humanitarian groups, I discuss border solidarity through an ethnography of border encounter(s). I frame this as a counter-practice that is forged precisely at the moment of engagement across difference, contingent upon remaining open to the contradictions the encountered brings. I ask whether we can even speak of border solidarity prior to difference and contradiction? Therefore, I argue not only for a “solidarity despite everything” for the sake of political responsibility, but also for a “solidarity because of everything”—utilizing the asymmetries, contradictions, and cleavages through which we can form a reflexive solidarity without romanticizing difference.