SolRoutes at the 2025 IMISCOE Annual Conference, Paris–Aubervilliers

Panel: Deprovincializing the Dominant Gaze on Solidarity: Practices of People on the Move Along the Route to Europe and Beyond.
CHAIRS: Rassa Ghafari (University of Genoa) // Federico Rahola (University of Genoa) DISCUSSANTS : Marco Martiniello (University of Liège)

Solidarity has often been examined through case studies within migratory contexts in the Global North. Mainstream analytical frameworks—such as humanitarianism, political actions, and charity—primarily arise from observations of citizen support in European and North American contexts. Consequently, there has been insufficient attention to forms of mutual aid, self-organization, and informal cooperation among people on the move beyond and within the confines of Europe. Gendered and intersectional approaches in analysing solidarity on the move too, have been largely absent from the field, confined to a relatively narrow niche. While migrants’ agency is frequently acknowledged as circumscribed to specific contexts, recent critical scholarship has highlighted the relational particularities that shape circuits, routes, and subaltern infrastructures, which are material outcomes of distinct forms of agency, cooperation, and solidarity among people on the move (Bonnin, Fravega, and Queirolo Palmas, 2024). Solidarity among people on the move plays a crucial role in shaping routes and trajectories, both in terms of navigating migratory pathways and attempting to find settlement and respite (see e.g. Oubad, 2024a). This session seeks to deprovincialize the dominant narrative surrounding solidarity, shifting focus from centralized actors to the lived realities of various groups: from Malians in the M’bera UNHCR camp in Mauritania, to people on the move in agricultural districts in Morocco, Greece, and Spain; from Iranian and Afghan women along the Balkan routes to North African (un)documented squatters in Brussels, Belgium. By asking what we observe when examining solidarity along migration routes through non-Western subjects, this session unpacks a discussion that conceptualizes solidarity as a fluid, evolving phenomenon—transcending predefined actors and motivations. This perspective invites us to consider complex contexts and practices that exceed binary conceptualizations of ‘humanitarian’ and ‘political’, focusing instead on invisibilized and informal interactions, tactical alliances, subaltern infrastructures, and the cooperation among
people on the move. All contributions originate from the ERC SolRoutes project, which focuses on border abolitionism from a grassroots perspective.

Unsettling Solidarity: Towards a Materialistic Approach to Border Transgression
Federico Rahola (University of Genoa) Goerges Kouagangg (Laboratory of Visual Sociology, University of Genoa)
Is it possible to rethink the idea of solidarity beyond traditional and mainstream frameworks of analysis, between humanitarianism, political action, and charity? Can we deprovincialize a concept which was mainly developed in the Global North and re-imagine it starting from cases and situations in the South, non-Western agencies and worldviews? Can we reinterpret the production of solidarity as a process which is fundamentally enmeshed in the underground informal economy of border transgression? Based on three ethnographic case studies from North Africa, this intervention raisesnew questions about the heuristic dimension of solidarity, fostering our understanding of the relational and political dynamics at work along contemporary illegalized migration routes. More broadly, it will attempt to shed light on the production of solidarity as a fluid situation which is always in the making from a materialistic perspective. This requires us to think about spurious contexts and practices which exceed conceptual binaries such as ‘smugglers’ and ‘facilitators’, ‘profit’ and ‘not-for-profit’, even ‘donor’ and ‘recipient,’ by looking at invisible and informal interactions and relations, tactical alliances, infrastructures, mutual aid and cooperation among people on the move.

Solidarity and the Music of Exploitation. Agricultural Sketches from the Mediterranean
Enrico Fravega (University of Genoa)
This contribution draws on multi-sited ethnographic research fieldwork in migrants’ informal settlements spread across multiple agricultural districts in Morocco, Greece, and Spain, which are also nodes in the broader plane of migration route development. Within this framework, the issue of solidarity along migration routes is explored through the lens of migrants’ musical productions. Along this vein, music production is a crucial vehicle for self-expression. Accordingly, to migrants who are physically and socially displaced and settled in unfamiliar, foreign, and often hostile and exploitative contexts, music is a way to a) express many transformational identity issues, b) affirm specific socially situated points of view, c) a way to negotiate/construct subcultures or countercultures. Countering widespread prejudice that neglects, denies, or removes migrants’ cultural agency, this contribution aims to generate and explore the repertories of cultural and political expression, elaboration, and experimentation that result in migrants’ musical (self)production, and it focuses on the imaginaries, nostalgia, dreams, and practices guiding mobilities towards and across Europe. PAPER #3 TITLE

“They saw that I knew what I was doing”: Solidarity and Self-organization among Women on the Move in the Balkan Route
Rassa Ghaffari (University of Genoa)
This contribution employs a transfeminist and postcolonial methodology to advance a perspective that is often marginalised within the field of migratory studies: the experience of self-organisation and solidarity of women on the move through the so-called Balkan route. Indeed, while the number of women attempting to reach Europe has been on the rise, there has been a paucity of attention paid to the gendered nature of unauthorised migration. When such attention has been paid, it has predominantly focused on the aspects of violence, suffering, and passivity. In contrast to this prevailing trend, this study is interested in the practices and networks related to informal cooperative actions that could fall under the terms ‘migration industry from below’ and ‘interested solidarity’. These practices and networks are underpinning women’s unauthorised movements along the Balkan Route and in Greece specifically, with a focus on Iranian and Afghan unauthorized mobility projects.

Undocumented Squatters Navigating the Politics of Assistance and Solidarity in Brussels.
Ismail Oubad (Center for Ethnic and Migration Studies, University of Liège; University of Genoa)
In the context of Europe’s illegalization of unauthorized migrant mobility, newcomers are increasingly excluded from formal reception and accommodation channels, leaving them reliant on precarious squatted shelters among other limited options. In Brussels, migrants’ support networks have multiplied and gained institutional legitimacy as they become integrated into the delegation of reception and accommodation for vulnerable migrants, absorbing responsibilities once primarily managed by the state. All the same, undocumented squatters are often funneled into shelters framed as emergency responses, which address immediate needs but avoid tackling the root issue of their irregular status, leaving them vulnerable to guardianship and eventual eviction. This situation has compelled some undocumented squatters to, albeit ambivalently, aspire to exit the guardianship of established organisations. Simultaneously, they navigate alliances to access resources and support to meet their immediate housing needs and to negotiate their legal predicaments. Drawing on activist ethnography (Routledge, 2013) conducted in three squats and shadowing observation (Quinlan, 2008) of four protagonists during and after eviction, I reflect on their interactions with state actors, momentary alliances with established organisations, and their navigation of criteria of deservingness and vulnerability shaping the provision of accommodation to illegalized migrants. This paper aims to shift the focus to the practices of undocumented squatters, examining how strategic alliances are formed, experienced, and contested at different moments, and how they make sense of hostile evictions and imposed dependency on established organisations. Ultimately, this paper calls for a rethinking of the ways undocumented squatters’ trajectories unfold in contexts of illegalization and hierarchies of deservingness. Thus suggesting an alternative interpretation of solidarity surrounding migrants’ support practices.

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