Transnational Solidarity Research Articles

Internationalism as Political Praxis: Everyday Actions and Transnational Solidarity Building in the Brazilian Landless Rural Workers’ Movement

Contrarily to “nation-based” or “classic” internationalism, internationalism as political praxis today shows a dynamic relationship between different scales of action that influence each other, notably according to structural changes in the social, cultural, and political-economic system. Furthermore, it differs from classic internationalism in focusing on different political struggles and debates, mobilizing more horizontal methods of organization, acknowledging a diversity of tactics, embracing a larger set of political principles and struggles (going beyond class to address the environment, race, and gender), and being more concerned with empowerment than with taking power. What is more, although contemporary internationalism is still guided by “socialism,” the term is loosely defined, allowing for ideological plurality based on political experimentation. Ao contrário do internacionalismo baseado na nação ou “clássico”, o internacionalismo como práxis política hoje mostra uma relação dinâmica entre diferentes escalas de ação que se influenciam mutuamente, notadamente de acordo com as mudanças estruturais no sistema social, cultural e político-econômico. Além disso, concentra-se em diferentes lutas e debates políticos do internacionalismo clássico, mobiliza métodos mais horizontais de organização, reconhece a diversidade de táticas, abraça um conjunto maior de princípios e lutas políticas (indo além da classe para abordar o meio ambiente, raça e gênero), e está mais preocupado com o empoderamento do que com a tomada de poder. Além disso, embora o internacionalismo contemporâneo ainda seja guiado pelo “socialismo”, o termo é vagamente definido, permitindo a pluralidade ideológica baseada na experimentação política.

Crisis, Continuity, and Missed Opportunity: Tracing a Transnational Solidarity Economy across Europe in Turbulent Times

Due to an increasingly turbulent and unpredictable socio-economic environment, the sustainability of many CSOs is frequently questioned. To better understand the financial infrastructure of the social economy in times of crisis, we analyse a unique set of responses from 245 CSOs across eight European countries. Given the transnational nature of crisis and austerity, we explore the potential existence of a ‘transnational solidarity economy’. We find limited evidence of a cross-border solidarity economy space. Adopting the analytical framework of isomorphism, we uncover variegated solidarity economies that speak to national configurations and reveal that forces which seek to shape transnational responses to ostensibly transnational crises are weak. Our paper indicates a missed opportunity for the development of a transnational solidarity economy in a previous period of crisis and highlights key hubs that may be crucial in the development of such a cross-border infrastructure.

Book Review: Sebastian Garbe (2022) Weaving Solidarity. Decolonial Perspectives on Transnational Advocacy of and with the Mapuche. Transcript Verlag.

Weaving Solidarity (2022) by Sebastian Garbe is a novel and potent contribution to debates on international solidarity and decoloniality. The thread that connects the book’s different chapters is the author’s examination of how the Mapuche, as a transnational and collective actor composed by the Mapuche living in the Indigenous territory of Wallmapuand the Mapuche diaspora living in Europe, produce their own network of solidarity. Contrary to analyses that interpret relations of solidarity in a humanitarian key, i.e. analyses that make a clear distinction between passive receivers of support who are affected by a particular conflict and active agents (external to the conflict) whose moral imperative is to give support, Garbe shows how the Mapuche are not mere receptors of solidarity. On the contrary, the Mapuche themselves have created a design of transnational solidarity since the 1970s, which has neither been fully determined by non-Indigenous givers of support located in the global north, nor fully occupied or saturated by “the conflict” with the Chilean state.

Theatre and Solidarity among the Transnational Alevi Community

The Alevi religious minority makes up the largest religious minority in Turkey, and their history of persecution dates back before the Republic of Turkey. The inception of the Republic of Turkey as a secular nation-state in 1923 was initially promising for the Alevis, but the regime remained implicitly Sunni Muslim. So, the community’s experiences of citizenship and belonging continued to be characterized by precarity as they occupied a category of national abjection. Beginning in the 1960s, the waves of migration from rural areas to urban Turkey and Western Europe gradually transformed the experiences of the Alevi community and they became more visible. With migration, Alevi people’s everyday experiences of oppression and discrimination as well as their need for community-building and solidarity intensified. In Europe, the Alevi diaspora was too often categorized simply as Turkish or Muslim immigrants. Many of them wanted to differentiate themselves from the Sunni Muslim Turkish majority in the diaspora and gain recognition as a distinct group. They organized in their new homelands and established formal and informal networks of transnational solidarity. In the formation and sustenance of these networks and solidarity, theatre has played a crucial role. The plays staged by Alevi community theatres and professional groups in Turkey and its diasporas have focused primarily on the histories of violence and persecution against Alevis. As such, theatre functions as a site for the constitution of public memory and the intergenerational transfer and transformation of trauma and serves the affective politics of community-building and solidarity among the transnational Alevi community. The political economy of these performances is a crucial element of the politics of solidarity, contributing to the sustenance of Alevi cultural producers and their communities.

Halal and The Risk Society

In the process of modernization, many Muslims have come to consume industrially produced products. According to Beck, this is a process that unwittingly creates risks, and risks related to Halal are included in those risks. Discussion on Halal is about cultural risks, which arise later than environmental and health risks as Beck brought up. This is because the Muslim population entered the process of modernization later than in developed countries such as Europe and the United States in general. The base of industrial technologies related to food have been established without any awareness of Halal and have had to interpret, create regulations, build systems, and make choices for Halal. Furthermore, in the process of creating new technologies, the risk of violating Halal is further increased. Surrounded by shubhah, Muslims are having to assume responsibility for halal and make choices amid uncertainty in modern society. As consumers, Muslims will have to confront this situation through transnational solidarity and by joining the risks of halal with other risks also created by modernity. Science is a cog in the wheel of industrial progress. In order to address the issue of Halal in a risky society, it is essential to provide information and risk communication to Muslim consumers, in addition to providing alternative technologies suitable for Halal.

Exploring transnational LGBT+ solidarities across the Norwegian-Russian border: The case of Barents Pride

This paper explores the case of Barents Pride, an event organized collaboratively by Russian and Norwegian LGBT+ activists located close to the Norwegian–Russian border. The idea of the Pride is to bring LGBT+ people and activists from Russia, where state pressure limits possibilities of organizing prides, to Norway and to express solidarity across borders. We use this case to investigate pitfalls and promises of queer transnational solidarities, to contest notions of center/periphery, the North/South–East/West division and to analyze how sexuality simultaneously enforces and destabilizes these dichotomies.

‘We are the soil’ to a movement with ‘peasants in the centre:’ The grassroots-social movement learning nexus in Roșia Montană, Romania

Mining development often threatens rural areas with dispossession, but these processes foment learning and opposition by locals, their grassroots organisations, and transnational solidarity campaigns/movements. Emergent solidarity nexuses are sites of knowledge production and amplify grassroots struggles. This article explores how a local grassroots struggle against a proposed mining project at Roșia Montană, Romania was catalysed by processes of incidental learning—through local experiences with preparatory development—which gave rise to more intentional forms of local learning and place-based praxis. The formation of a growing trans/national solidarity network arose from these early efforts and intertwined with the grassroots struggle, augmenting knowledge production with non-formal and formal approaches to learning. Knowledge was produced through various forms and towards critical, informational, tactical, and strategic purposes. The findings herein contribute to the literature on a broadened understanding of adult education from the lens of learning in social action. Further, this article offers an exploratory description of the processes of learning in social action at a nexus of grassroots struggle and a trans/national solidarity network and contributes to an understanding of how diverse forms of learning in social action are integral to processes of local and national social change.

Fostering and sustaining transnational solidarities for transformative social change: Advancing community psychology research and action.

As we planned this special issue, the world was in the midst of a pandemic, one which brought into sharp focus many of the pre‐existing economic, social, and climate crises, as well as, trends of widening economic and social inequalities. The pandemic also brought to the forefront an epistemic crisis that continues to decentre certain knowledges while maintaining the hegemony of Eurocentric ways of knowing and being. Thus, we set out to explore the possibilities that come with widening our ecology of knowledge and approaches to inquiry, including the power of critical reflective praxis and consciousness, and the important practices of repowering marginalised and oppressed groups. In this paper, we highlight scholarship that reflects a breadth of theories, methods, and practices that forge alliances, in and outside the academy, in different solidarity relationships toward liberation and wellbeing. Our desire as co‐editors was not to endorse the plurality of solidarities expressed in the papers as an unyielding methodological or conceptual framework, but rather to hold them lightly within thematic spaces as invitations for readers to consider. Through editorial collaboration, we arrived at the following three thematic spaces: (1) ecologies of being and knowledge: Indigenous knowledge, networks, and plurilogues; (2) naming coloniality in context: Histories in the present and a wide lens; (3) relational knowledge practices: Creative joy of knowing beyond disciplines. From these thematic spaces we conclude that through repowering epistemic communities and narratives rooted in truth‐telling, a plurality of solidarities are fostered and sustained locally and transnationally. Underpinned by an ethic of care, solidarity relationships are simultaneously unsettling dominant forms of knowledge and embrace ways of knowing and being that advances dignity, community, and nonviolence.

“The Light That Shineth in the Darkness”: Anglo-American Rural Missionaries and the Cuban Revolution

Though rural Protestant missionaries stationed in Cuba routinely reproduced Anglo-American epistemologies and values, often in the service of US corporations, they also worked alongside their parishioners to challenge state and economic violence, as well as break the cyclical nature of Cuban poverty. Shared struggle with Cubans against Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship proved transformative for many rural missionaries who, in the late 1950s, developed a revolutionary consciousness born through transnational solidarity. Missionaries challenged the dominant narrative coming from the US government and foreign corporations, as the Revolution pursued an increasingly anti-imperial and anti-capitalist agenda after Batista entered exile. While corporate executives and government officials from North America and Europe feared the new government, rural missionaries, often funded by these same corporations, defended the structural changes taking place after 1959. Through oral history and archival research, this article exposes how Cuban Protestants proved particularly influential in shaping the lens by which foreign missionaries came to understand, appreciate, and ultimately support the Cuban Revolution.

Transnational Solidarity Within the EU: Public Support for Risk-Sharing and Redistribution

This paper aims to discover underlying, as yet theoretically and empirically unexplored, distinctions in citizens’ views of transnational solidarity within the European Union (EU). Building on literature regarding national welfare states, the paper presents an original concept of transnational solidarity consisting of two latent, not directly measurable, dimensions: first, citizens’ preferences for risk-sharing among EU states and, second, their preferences for intra-EU redistribution. The diverse types of transnational solidarity examined in previous research should be assignable to either one or the other dimension. Moreover, previous research is based on the idea that the concept of transnational solidarity is comparable across EU countries; however, this premise has not been empirically examined so far. To test both these assumptions, I analyze data collected in Austria, Germany, and Greece in 2019 or 2020. The study runs multi-group confirmatory factor analysis to test whether the presented concept of transnational solidarity (a) applies and (b) is comparable between these nations. The empirical analysis supports both these assumptions. The populations of the three countries share the same understanding of transnational solidarity even though the willingness to express cross-country risk-sharing and redistribution varies significantly between the states. The study contributes to current research in the fields of European integration, political sociology, and survey methodology.

Contesting settler colonial logics in Kashmir as pedagogical praxis

In the aftermath of the Indian government’s decision to change the status of Jammu and Kashmir on 5 August 2019, activism for the right to self-determination in Kashmir came under tremendous pressure. An intense crackdown in Kashmir, including a complete communication blackout and internet blockade, meant the only Kashmiri and dissenting voices left were located in diasporic spaces. As two Kashmiri scholar–activists involved in advocacy work on Kashmir, we examine the challenges of decolonial activism and transnational solidarity building, especially in Western academic spaces. For both of us, Kashmir has been a home and is a place where our scholarly ethos is entwined with intimate knowledge. While the diasporic/exilic location presents its own challenges of representation, the urgency imposed by the settler colonial logics that create existential questions for Kashmiris forces reconsiderations both of political alliance building as well as scholarly frameworks. In this article, we explore the emergent contours of a pedagogy of solidarity that centers Indigenous perspectives in relation to Kashmiri diasporic activism. We examine how our solidarity work takes shape in the neoliberal academy, grassroots progressive spaces, and transnational media.

The 'digital transnational solidarity' and protection of health: Commentary to Principle no. 7 of the Rome Declaration.

Point 7 of the Rome Declaration is aimed at improving data sharing and technological and knowledge transfer as instruments to implement health policies. The objective of the current paper is to understand if the legal framework (especially at a transnational level) may actually help to achieve the objectives laid down by Principle 7 or if some interpretative or legislative actions will be necessary. The paper analyses the legal sources at international and EU levels. The applicable rules are based on the idea that the information and material are forms of 'property' of the individuals or of the states (i.e., the sovereign). According to the traditional idea of property, the owner has a sort of absolute power over the res and is entitled to exclude others from any rights over the thing. The 'property paradigm' may be useful to protect some relevant interests, but it can also affect collective interests, such as those concerning health during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to build a global system for the exchange of data and materials as provided for by Principle 7 of the Rome Declaration, a new legal approach should be elaborated which takes into consideration the international corpus of fundamental rights, including research freedom, the right to health and the principle of transnational 'digital' solidarity.

Restrictive rules of speechmaking as a tool to maintain party unity: The case of oppressed political conflict in German parliament debates on the euro crisis

In parliaments with party-centred rules of speechmaking, like the German Bundestag, we observe an overrepresentation of loyal frontbenchers on the speakers’ list. Previous research shows that party-controlled access to the plenary floor limits opportunities to voice dissent, but we lack empirical investigation of the overall impact on the contestation in debates. This article presents a case study of Bundestag debates on the euro crisis, which estimates the discursive impact by comparing speeches with MPs’ written expressions, known as explanations of vote (EoVs), and introducing association rule mining in an innovative network analytical approach. The findings confirm that restrictive rules reduce the visibility of intra-party conflict and constrain the space for coherent narratives, backbench concerns and political alternatives at an aggregate level, raising questions about the democratic functions of parliamentary debates. In this case, MPs use EoVs as an alternative channel to promote transnational solidarity in a European crisis.

Building Cross-Border Trade Union Solidarity in the Americas: Putting Organizational Identities at Stake

Purpose:This article considers an in-depth intra-case analysis of a North-South alliance that came into being in the Americas, where the absence of any state power regulating such initiatives makes their emergence more complex. Methodological design:To substantiate this case, some 77 semi-structured field interviews were conducted between 2004 and 2018 with 60 key union representatives in the mining industry. Results: Theyconfirm that a key to the success of transnational alliances lies in the actors’ ability to developa community of risks and fate built around a strong sense of belonging to the group, in opposition to opponents and in the name of clearly defined project and scale. They also confirm that three main levels ofcontingencies have shaped the alliance's evolution. Research limitations: Even though our findings cannot be generalized, wider lessons can be learned from this contribution. Findings:They dissolve the analytical relevance of the North-South cleavage which appears to be overused conceptually. The plasticity of the union responses in terms of transnational solidarity are also strongly rooted in space, time and the contingencies of the moment. Such findings open up an almost limitless field of possibilities for future research and validation in both the North and South.

How Should Clinicians Express Solidarity With Asylum Seekers at the US-Mexico Border?

Migrants along the US-Mexico border have been subjected to transnational violence created by international policy, militaristic intervention, and multinational organizational administration of border operations. The COVID-19 pandemic compounded migrants' vulnerabilities and provoked several logistical and ethical problems for US-based clinicians and organizations. This commentary examines how the concept of transnational solidarity facilitates analysis of clinicians' and migrants' shared historical and structural vulnerabilities. This commentary also suggests how actions implemented by one organization in Tijuana, Mexico, could be scaled more broadly for care of migrants and asylum seekers in other transnational health care settings.

Rewriting Solidarities in Juxtaposition

This essay proposes nonsynchronous juxtaposition as a narrative device to critically engage with the complex historical legacies of the Bandung Conference 1955 and to reclaim the anticolonial poetic of the Bandung Spirit’s transnational solidarity with a classed and gendered perspective of migrant workers’ contemporary struggles. It argues that juxtaposition forges “Bandung chronopolitics”, a postcolonial politics of time that invokes affective entanglements of historical memories and present anticolonial transnational struggles. To demonstrate the creative and dialogical potential of rewriting solidarities in juxtaposition, this essay performs a close reading that puts side by side two poems titled “Kepada Sahabat Asia Afrika” (To Afro-Asian Friends, 1961) by Sugiarti Siswadi and “Seusai Badai Berpeluk Puisi” (After the Hurricane Embraced a Poem, 2009) by Mega Vristian. This essay summarily positions the poetic of juxtaposition and Bandung chronopolitics as a discursive strategy to avoid unchecked glorification of Bandung legacies and to repurpose the Bandung Spirit as a political imagination that brings historical depth to the works of Third World solidarity from below against the highly coordinated global-imperial capitalism.

The geopolitics of a female Chinese migrant charity network in Zimbabwe: Insights from Love in Africa

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on Love in Africa, a female Chinese migrant charity network in Zimbabwe and examines its geopolitical influence. It makes two vital finding by drawing on the theories of critical geopolitics, feminist geopolitics and public diplomacy, as well as the criticism for the lack of attention to transnational geopolitics and insufficient conceptualization of the links between state and non-state actors in existing studies. First, this study shows that migrant organizations such as Love in Africa have dealt with many neglected details in China’s state-led economic development process, which explains that migrant groups do not always challenge the state geopolitical discourse but can also form synergy with it in a form that is different from state practices. Second, this study illustrates how Love in Africa as a feminized subjectivity carves out an alternative space of love, care and transnational solidarity in contrast to the masculinity demonstrated by the state power of China. Even being excluded from state practices, these Chinese females have formed a joint force with the state in shaping geopolitical discourse. These findings reinforce the link between state and non-state actors that is under-explored in existing critical geopolitical studies and prompt an agenda of transnational geopolitics.

Transnational Solidarity Histories in International Service Learning: A Nicaraguan Case Study.

Background: Critical literature examining international service learning does not examine the historical formations or expectations and experiences of hosts in depth. Most studies focus on either a critical examination of colonial or imperial history or a wide analysis of host perceptions without the same critical attention to history. Purpose: The research reported in this article focuses on the experiences and histories of Nicaraguan hosts in international service learning. Methodology: The research includes a qualitative case study and draws on in-depth interviews with 21 Nicaraguan hosts. The research was conducted in 2014 and 2015 as a part of a larger study which also included volunteers. Findings: Nicaraguans who participated in international service learning did so with intentional outcomes that are shaped through Nicaraguan histories of transnational solidarity. This intentional participation meant that programming was cultivated with the hopes for politicized learning outcomes. Implications: International service learning is a complex and problematic pedagogy as has been well documented in the literature. Seeking to understand, however, the motivations and expectations of hosts as contextualized in their own historical formations, cultures and desires can provide alternative frameworks and imagining for international service learning practices.

Organizing a transnational solidarity for social change through participatory practices: The case of People Powered-Global Hub for ParticipatoryDemocracy.

In the context of global democratic crises and pervasive neoliberal policies, civil society organizations (CSOs) play a critical role in promoting democratic processes and advancing social change on local, national, and transnational scales. However, such organizations also (need to) grapple with how they themselves put social justice and democratic principles into practice, and resist coloniality within. This article examines these questions in the case of People Powered-Global Hub for Participatory Democracy, a recently found transnational CSO that advocates globally for participatory democracy as a mechanism for social change and employs these principles in its own governance and operations. The analysis focusses on the creation of People Powered and its first year of practice. Drawing upon decolonial frameworks-and based on our own experiences as founding members of People Powered and our reading of interviews and documents-we identify concrete practices through which the organization seeks to enact epistemic justice, shift power, and emphasize relationality. We argue that People Powered's decolonial roots, collectively articulated values and commitments, radical transparency, and its consistent employment of meaningful participation and reflexivity have built and are likely to sustain this transnational solidarity for social change. At the same time and perhaps critical for fostering solidarity and social change in the long term, People Powered embraces, rather than evades, tensions and contradictions that emerge in these efforts.

Women's Transnational Activism against Portugal's Colonial Wars

AbstractThis article recovers the history of the transnational women's movement that arose during Portugal's colonial wars (1961–1974). This movement connected women in Portugal and its colonies and operated independently of the PCP, MPLA, PAIGC, and FRELIMO. Most research on women's activism in Portugal, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cabo Verde, and Mozambique begins with their relationships to the male-dominated organizations that operated within national frameworks. In contrast, by examining the international connections of these women's groups, this article illuminates their political activities outside national organizations led by men. It shows that women created transnational solidarity networks struggling against the Portuguese Estado Novo and the colonial wars and, in doing so, promoted their own emancipation.