Abstract
The special issue contributes to the exploration of transversal solidarities counterpoised to an exhausted neoliberalism on the one hand and a xenophobic populism on the other. It tracks contours of a multifarious countermovement, traversing ‘race’, class and gender, driven by reimaginings of the common and the renewal of democracy. The emphasis is on the understanding of contending urban justice movements, welcoming communities and their liaisons in a multiscale (local, national, transnational) perspective. A collection of theoretically informed papers discusses cases from urban contexts of Europe and the United States, all riveted by schisms of class, ‘race’/ethnicity and gender, occupied by the ‘migration’ issue and challenged by contending movements for social cum environmental sustainability. Exploring examples of social movements and forms of mobilisation in different contexts, the overarching aim is to retrieve options for transversal solidarities transcending identities while focusing on commonalities.
Highlights
The special issue contributes to the exploration of transversal solidarities counterpoised to an exhausted neoliberalism on the one hand and a xenophobic populism on the other
Solidarities with and by migrants and post-migrants in Western European and North American cities and local urban communities. They proceed from the idea that cities, municipalities and urban neighbourhoods may provide spaces across which an energising transversal politics can develop
Richmond (1994), outlined in his book Global Apartheid from 1994, on migration, refugees, racism and a discriminatory post-Cold War ‘new world order’ – the latter today more commonly designated by the floating signifier of ‘globalisation’. ‘[A]s apartheid in South Africa is gradually giving way to political reform’, spelled Richmond (1994: 209), ‘the rest of the world appears to be moving in a different direction’
Summary
Contributions to the special issue explores solidarity as transformative practice (cf. Featherstone, 2012). Focusing on solidarities enables an analysis on how struggles are intersected across different categories, such as class, ethnicity and gender, and create new commonalities (Herrera, 2013) This understanding comes close to YuvalDavis’ (1994, 1999) description of transversal politics. Scale is not indicative of hierarchies (from local to transnational) but emphasises the connectivity of place-based politics within a scalar politics (Bauder, 2019; MacKinnon, 2011) These practices of solidarity illustrate how different spatialities (scale, place, networks, positionality and mobility) shape contentious politics (Fischer and Jørgensen, 2020; Leitner et al, 2008). Their dynamics channel the ways politics and power affect local places. It represents, Bigo (2017: 25) claims, a ‘multiplicity of transversal lines that connect agents of so many different types in terms of scales, but which are influencing each other, generate dynamics of different magnitudes and different forms’
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