Transnational Solidarity Research Articles

Bearing witness to structural violence against migrants and envisioning transnational solidarity.

Guided by a critical and transnational framework, this qualitative study centers on the perspectives and analyses of activists and organizers working with migrants to the United States who face devastating conditions due to historical and ongoing exploitation of geopolitical powers and structures of violence. Through thematic and reconstructive analyses, we focus on how 18 participants navigate the intersections of legal, political, economic, and cultural implications, as well as complex ethical and moral dilemmas, tensions, and contradictions that emerged in their work. Grounded in their eyewitness narratives, we attempt to learn about the lived experiences of migrants and engage in critical analysis of structural violence (i.e., violence embedded in the social structures and institutions) and oppressive conditions. We examine the notion of "solidarity" and what it means to engage in anti-oppressive transnational solidarity with differentials in positionalities and against the backdrop of professional and institutional reproduction of colonial, imperial, racist, and neoliberal forms of structural violence, including within the academy itself. Juxtaposing empirical and structural analyses, we hope to further contribute to a more nuanced understanding of intersectional social struggles and the potential for organizing towards liberatory solidarity.

Transnational Solidarity? Academia and the Politics of Knowledge, Translation, and (Im)Mobility

Globally escalating attacks on critical scholars and their scholarship demand a response that matches their urgency, intensity, and scale. But the struggle to mobilize academia as a transnational solidarity network is troubled by the complicated political affects attending the labors of solidarity, the uneven burdens of translating local struggles for diverse audiences, and the unequal access to mobility experienced by academics differently situated within hierarchies of citizenship, race/ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. Local and international solidarity efforts with over two thousand Academics for Peace, who in 2016 petitioned the Turkish state for a Turkish-Kurdish peace process and were summarily criminalized en masse, offers an opportunity to reflect on academia as just such a transnational solidarity network. This article offers a feminist analysis of solidarity efforts by and for Academics for Peace and maps the coalescing forces of neoimperialist war, nationalist/racist border xenophobia, heteromasculinist militarism, and academic neoliberalism that together shape the terrain on which flows of solidarity and exiled academics, migrants, and refugees are both facilitated and thwarted. The article concludes with attention to the alternative spaces of knowledge production created by these solidarity efforts and the potential these locales hold for revisioning academia itself.

Revisiting Minjung: New Perspectives on the Cultural History of 1980s South Korea

Revisiting Minjung: New Perspectives on the Cultural History of 1980s South Korea

Introduction: Love Is Solidarity in Action

Introduction:Love Is Solidarity in Action Rashida L. Harrison (bio), Mary Frances Phillips (bio), and Nicole M. Jackson (bio) On November 24, 2021, we watched as a white southern judge reported the verdicts determined by a marjority white jury; they convicted two white men of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man, while a third, received guilty verdicts for his actions as an accomplice. Arbery, a twenty-five-year-old Black man, was out jogging in a white neighborhood when he was violently pursued by a retired police officer and his son. They claimed Arbery was responsible for several thefts in the predominantly white neighborhood. Many of us were holding our breaths and exhaling a little more with each guilty count. The week prior, however, we experienced a collective anger as a seventeen-year-old white teenager was acquitted for several counts of homicide, even as he purportedly left his home with a loaded assault rifle and drove roughly thirty minutes away to "help protect private property and serve as a medic" at a Black Lives Matter demonstration. Protestors of all backgrounds were out in support of an unarmed Black man, Jacob Blake, who was shot by a white police officer seven times in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Even as the two men killed were white, they supported Black lives, and their lives were rendered inconsequential. The white teenager who was acquitted was rewarded for his loyalty to white supremacy as sanctioned by the state. As has been required in countless instances surrounding the extralegal lynching of Black bodies, the survival of Black people over those two weeks has been preserved because love imbues us with hope and the energy to continue the fight for justice. We began our coediting journey thinking about freedom and justice. As our conversations evolved, we often came back to the question of what motivates and sustains Black communities. We came back to love and care as core to our foundation. [End Page 12] In our early discussions, we realized the necessity for ongoing attention to a canon of Black love, particularly within Black feminist traditions. We had several discussions among ourselves about the meaning of love, the historical approach to uncovering Black love, and the barriers to teasing out moments of love in a past too often shaped by violence. We realized that Black love is not always an explicit theme in the writings of Black scholars, but it can function as the prevailing framework in which we research. This realization offered a myriad of possibilities, most importantly, the notion that a conceptualization of love is intertwined with a pursuit of justice. It is from here that we began to reinvision both the intentional and unintentional acts of justice that amount to a particular expression of Black love. We turn to two less obvious examples of public acts of love and the gendered nature of enacting love and care for people of color. Even as they occur in the U.S., they illustrate transnational solidarities. The example of activist and immigrant from the Democratic Republic of Congo Therese Patricia Okoumou opened conversations about how we "do love." Okoumou climbed the Statue of Liberty on July 4, 2018, in protest of the federal government's policy separating immigrant children from their parents at the U.S. border. After being found guilty by the state of New York, she defined her political action as centered in empathy and care for dispossessed people. Okoumou's protest to climb the Statue of Liberty highlighted that instead of welcoming them "what we showed them is cages. So, if I go in a cage with them, I am on the right side of history." Her activism is firmly rooted in empathy, offering the potential for radical solidarity based on love. During the summer of 2018, another event held the attention of Black and brown communities during an Atlanta Braves baseball game. Players, Curacaoan, Ozzie Albies and Venezuelan-born Ronald Acuna Jr. shared an intimate embrace in the dugout. There were varied responses to this public display, which ultimately denied these men the space to show affection, demonstrating the depths of toxic masculinity and the feminization of emotion. But, as one person commented on...

Transnational labour solidarity and the question of agency: A social dialectical approach to the field

ABSTRACT The study of labour transnationalism remains theoretically underdeveloped. Taking this as a starting point, I focus specifically on the need to develop a critical theoretical framework for understanding different forms of transnational labour practices. This type of framework is necessary if we want, as Peter Waterman suggests, to recentre the emancipatory dimensions of transnational labour solidarities. This, I argue, means grappling with the complexities and contradictions shaping how solidarities are built and unmade. I suggest that we can elaborate on the critical paradigm proposed by Rebecca Johns that contrasts different forms of transnational solidarities and labour imperialism. Focusing on the problem of labour imperialism, I show how a dialectical materialist analysis, with attention to the social dimensions of class, can provide insights into how different forms of transnational solidarities develop.

False friends: Leftist nationalism and the project of transnational solidarity

A growing number of left-wing scholars criticize practices of transnational solidarity. Pointing to the cooptation of “globalism” by neoliberal capitalism, these scholars utilize this critique to advance leftwing nationalism. In this article, I reconstruct symptomatic texts of this genre and identify the critique of (liberal) cosmopolitanism as the common denominator in their calls for nationalizing the Left. As a consequence of their opposition to cosmopolitanism, these authors reject freedom of movement or global justice activism. In order to examine whether the project of transnational solidarity is affected by this critique, I reconstruct its justifications in Critical Theory and postcolonial-feminist theory. Hauke Brunkhorst and Chandra Mohanty exemplarily theorize transnational solidarity in different ways, but each based on a substantial critique of liberal cosmopolitanism. By that, I show that a principled return to nationalism derived from a critique of cosmopolitanism is informed by coincidental evidence that rejects practices of transnational solidarity because of their alleged embeddedness in cosmopolitan reason. Drawing on La Via Campesina, I illustrate principles of a transnational solidarity project that is not justified with liberal cosmopolitan ideas. Their experiences challenge the nationalist/statist critique while not falling back into naïve and/or neoliberal cosmopolitanism.

Structural core–periphery divergences in the EU: the case of responses to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020

ABSTRACT Pandemic responses within the EU deviate from past large-scale crisis management substituting the austerity paradigm with the normalisation of generous fiscal support. Yet, traditional north-south fault lines remain. The article addresses such a puzzle systematically assessing the core-periphery divide in pandemic management and outcomes across the EU 27. The analysis highlights gaps and geographical heterogeneities across the north-south divide, refuting their sole attribution to differences in the scale of the health crisis. Conversely, we show the contribution of containment measures to heterogeneous economic outcomes across the core and periphery, which extend to the Southern Member States marginally impacted by the outbreak. Findings confirm the pandemic furthered divergences across the Member States, highlighting how the absence of austerity alone is not sufficient to enact convergence within the EU27. Supporting structural imbalances and the need for transnational solidarity, the work contributes to the debate on core-periphery relations and the future of economic integration in the context of the Conference on the Future of Europe and foreseen reform of the Stability and Growth Pact.

From ‘dégage!’ to ‘dégagisme’: the travel of the political thinking of the Arab uprisings between Tunisia and France

ABSTRACT The shout of the slogan ‘dégage!’ – ‘to clear’, ‘to release’ – was central to the language of the 2010-11 Tunisian revolution. In 2017, the word was appropriated and reinterpreted by the French presidential candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and transformed into the political phenomenon of ‘dégagisme’. In following the travel of dégage from Tunisia to France, this article demonstrates how the political thinking of the Arab uprisings intersects with spatio-historical differentiations and orderings. I argue that the meaning of dégage was made in the connections and constitutive differences between metropole and colony, West and non-West. As dégage rubbed against historical representations, it both worked to reinforce and contest such distinctions. In turn, such travel recapitulates our understanding of the Arab uprisings in the present, connecting struggles and presenting openings onto transnational solidarities.

Standing with Sacco and Sandino. Anti-imperialist solidarity campaigns in 1920s Mexico City

ABSTRACT How were solidarity campaigns transnationally organized and locally performed? To answer this question, this paper examines anti-imperialist solidarity campaigns and their role in the politics of Mexico City in the 1920s. The paper analyzes two political movements: the campaign against the conviction of the Italian-American anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in the United States and the campaign in solidarity with rebel general Augusto César Sandino who fought against US troops in his native Nicaragua. Transnational solidarity campaigns, it is argued, were an important link between local radical activism and global movements as solidarity had to be performed locally and envisioned globally. Demonstrations, economic boycotts, and public fundraising campaigns were means to perform solidarity in the city, linking local activism to the global anti-imperialist movement. With the example of activism in Mexico City in the post-revolutionary 1920s, this paper analyzes performative and ideological change over time and how the asymmetric potential of localization and globalization affect transnational solidarity campaigns.

Black Feminism and Transnational Solidarity: Mobilization against Police Violence in France

On the basis of about three years of ethnographic research, including interviews with activists, I discuss the role of black feminist activism and transnational solidarity in the movement against police violence, and the resonance of Black Lives Matter in France. I focus on how men of Black and Maghrebin origin are predominately killed at the hands of police, and how women of Black and Maghrebin origin women, including Assa Traoré and Ramata Dieng, are leading this burgeoning movement. This current movement of Black feminist activism is in conversation with earlier periods of Black feminist activism in France as well as with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. Black women activists navigate how to respond to police violence that disproportionately targets particular ethno-racial populations in a context that does not acknowledge the relationship between police violence and racism. They do so by locating the specificity of their identities as both Black and women. Black women’s activism is not only motivated by their particular positionality, but it is also shaped by it. Their unique standpoint (Collins 1986) as Black women, sisters, mothers and daughters also characterizes the transnational solidarity these women activists share with Black Feminist activists around the world. I argue that such a Black Feminist perspective is essential to understand racism in postcolonial France. In Part 1, I introduce the specific context of Black Lives Matter and police violence in France and the United States, including the deaths of Adama Traoré and George Floyd and the need for a Black Feminist interpretative reading of this context. In Part 2, I discuss Black feminist ethnography and the methods for this study, including my positionality as a Black American woman. I further articulate how the French Republican context silences discussions of race and racism, and relegates these concepts as “imports” from the United States. In Part 3, I provide a background on Black feminist activism, including intersectionality and the history of Black feminism in France and the rest of Europe. In Part 4, I discuss notions of transnational blackness, and how to consider the connections between blackness in both France and the U.S., as well as connections among racialized populations in both societies. I also discuss the relevance and resonance of Black Lives Matter in France, and how Black feminism provides a way to analyze these connections. In Part 5, I provide examples from my ethnographic research and interviews of Black women activists mobilizing against police violence. In the conclusion, I consider what it means to center Black women in our analysis of racism, not just in the United States, but also in France.

Spotlight: Middle East Caucus

Spotlight:Middle East Caucus Kareem Estefan (bio) and Viviane Saglier (bio) The Middle East has a rich and diverse history of film and media production, but Western film markets have consolidated hegemonic media narratives by overrepresenting subjects such as terrorism and the veil. Scholars of Middle Eastern media affirm such imperialist discourse, obscuring local understandings of screen cultures and the historical conditions they register and circulate within. The Society for Cinema and Media Studies' (SCMS) Middle East Caucus intervenes in this situation by promoting rigorous, transdisciplinary study of the cinema and media of the Middle East and its diasporas. The caucus's history reflects the geopolitical stakes of the Middle East and the political responsibilities of scholars who study the region's film and media. Since its founding in 1993, the caucus shifted from a Zionist orientation to one that engages scholarship critical of Israel when current caucus members Terri Ginsberg and Chris Lippard became co-chairs in the late 2000s. The caucus now actively grapples with legacies of colonialism that frame the Middle East as a coherent political, economic, and cultural space, as such discourse benefits colonial epistemologies, geopolitical domination, and resource extraction.1 The institutional location of SCMS in North America similarly implicates US and Western imperialism in the region, which persevere through a diverse and expansive media apparatus. In recent years, [End Page 1] media and area studies scholars have productively contested such colonial mapping. For example, studies of media circuits across the Indian Ocean are redefining the region's porous borders and underscoring the need to examine histories of South-South cultural exchange. Today, the caucus highlights the variety of approaches to studying Middle Eastern film and media by sponsoring multiple panels at SCMS's annual conference and by compiling an annual list of representative publications. In 2019, the caucus established an annual Graduate Student Essay Award to recognize the contributions of emerging scholars and foster mentorship opportunities within the caucus. Additionally, the caucus supports our subfield's most precarious scholars through academic activism. Although the material circumstances of Middle East film and media scholars differ sharply in relation to their citizenship status, geographic location, race, class, gender, and sexuality, many face severe restrictions on freedom of expression and mobility. The travel ban imposed on several Muslim-majority countries by the Trump administration is a much-cited example. Less discussed are ongoing difficulties non-Americans face in securing visas to enter the United States from (for example) Iran or Lebanon or the discriminatory treatment—including the very real threat of deportation—that Arab and Muslim American scholars wishing to conduct research in Palestine/Israel face when crossing Israeli-controlled borders. (This threat now exists for any academic critical of Israeli policy, including many prominent Jewish activists and intellectuals.) Film and media scholars also face severe limitations on academic expression when teaching in Egypt or Turkey and when supporting Palestinian rights or investigating Israeli settler-colonial practices within the United States and beyond. To address these issues, the caucus organized "Decolonization and Transnational Solidarity in Film/Media Studies: A Workshop Towards Action" at SCMS's 2021 conference. Facilitated by Dr. Layal Ftouni, the workshop investigated potential actions to decolonize knowledge production and support transnational antiracist struggles. Attendees—most of whom were not caucus members—brainstormed steps toward enacting transformative change within the field of film and media studies, SCMS, and the institutions to which we belong. The workshop highlighted the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which originated in Palestinian civil society in 2005 as a nonviolent campaign modeled on South African calls for solidarity against apartheid. In accordance with international law, BDS demands the end of the Israeli occupation and colonization of Arab lands, full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes.2 One element of BDS, the academic boycott, aims to expose Israeli universities' structural contributions to the ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people; it does not impact collaborations with Israeli scholars, unless these collaborations are sponsored by Israeli [End Page 2] institutions or serve to normalize Israeli colonial rule.3 BDS asks scholars to refuse complicity with settler colonialism and actively support...

Queering Iranian Diasporic Cyberspace, Critiquing the Conditions of Belonging

Queering Iranian Diasporic Cyberspace, Critiquing the Conditions of Belonging

Migration de masse et solidarité transnationale : le cas juif au tournant du xxe siècle

À la fin du xixe siècle, plusieurs organisations juives, fondées en Europe occidentale pour promouvoir l’émancipation juive dans l’espace méditerranéen et en Europe orientale, se coordonnent pour venir à l’aide des réfugiés et migrants quittant l’Europe de l’Est pour l’Amérique. Apportant secours, renseignements et aide matérielle pour la traversée transcontinentale, elles créent par ailleurs des infrastructures d’éducation et de formation en amont et en aval du mouvement. Cette œuvre, peu abordée par l’historiographie, vise en même temps à rassurer les inquiétudes nées de l’apparition de mouvements antisémites dans le monde occidental.

Creolizing the Nation

Creolizing the Nation

From Belarus to Black Lives Matter: Rethinking protests in Belarus through a transnational feminist perspective

This article examines the lack of solidarity between the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. and the anti-authoritarian uprising in Belarus in 2020. Specifically, I explore how distant geographies and feminist communities can relate to each other and thus challenge the rise of right-wing conservatism, white supremacy, and neoliberal authoritarianism. This article relies on auto-ethnography and the exploration of public media, political essays, and scholarly contributions discussing the meanings of the BLM and Belarusian protests. Through critical self-reflection and by deploying the concepts of ‘exile’ and ‘transnational feminist solidarity,’ this article suggests a possibility for alternative transnational feminist connections attentive to the complexities of global power relations and uneven east/west interconnections. Rethinking the current possibilities for solidarities may lead to seeing how the uprising in Belarus and the BLM protests have points of connection on the grounds of state-sanctioned violence, neoliberal enclosures, suppression of political dissent, and their racialized/colonial roots. However, forging transnational solidarities also requires a certain work of reflection on how political protests may uphold global racial/colonial logic and overshadow racial violence. Therefore, in this article, I foreground how post-Soviet vulnerability may help disrupt the status quo or the privilege of whiteness instead of reinforcing it.

Du Bois and Brazil

AbstractIn this article, I discuss Black transnational solidarity and liberation in the Americas by analyzing the historical relationship between W. E. B. Du Bois and Brazil from 1900 to 1940. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Du Bois was studying, writing, and publishing about Brazil. He was interested in creating international solidarity and cooperation among Black people. However, Du Bois (as well as other African Americans) promoted the idea that Brazil was a place without racism, a racial paradise. This idea served as a basis for a theory that oppressed Afro-Brazilians—the myth of racial democracy. In this article, I explore Du Bois’s relationship with Brazil, highlighting possible reasons why Du Bois engaged with the myth of racial democracy. In addition, I argue that this historical event teaches us that an Afro-diasporic liberation project must seriously consider global and material inequalities among Black people.

Towards A Pedagogy of Transnational Feminism When Teaching and Activism Go Online

This article explores the possibilities and limitations of online teaching, based on our experience transforming a study abroad program to Argentina into an online class, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and uprisings for racial justice. In a moment when radical educators and activists are moving online, the article considers the spatial politics involved in teaching about protest and resistance online, and in establishing transnational solidarities between U.S. and Latin American scholars, artists, activists, and students. We introduce the theory and practice of a trasnational feminist pedagogy that incorporates embodied knowledge, fosters transnational collaborations, and promotes liberatory learning practices. Drawing on autoethnography, participant observation, visual and media analysis, student interaction with course materials, and interviews with transnational feminist scholars, we investigate how educators and students adapt their teaching and learning practices to an online environment. Transnational feminist pedagogy is a flexible method that allows for transformative teaching, is attentive to power dynamics in and out of the classroom, and maintains commitments to antiracist, feminist and socialist pedagogy.

The role of memory practices in building spiritual solidarity for survivors of state violence.

This article examines memory as a tool for transnational solidarity that is grounded in spiritual connection with those who have been disappeared or killed by state actors in Colombia. Remembering is one of the ways people come together to push against mechanisms of state violence that render survivors as invisible. By interviewing 15 survivors of state violence in Colombia, this study shows how memory is a life force transmitting agency while simultaneously keeping survivors' memory alive through a network of spiritual solidarity. In this ethnographic research, I ask: How can memory, grounded in spiritual connection, be a form of transnational solidarity and a tool for healing and social justice? The findings offer a powerful definition of spiritual solidarity and show how it is done through memory practices by (1) using memory symbols in everyday actions to connect to loved ones, (2) keeping the memories of loved ones alive by "seeing" them in others and in their surroundings, (3) creating spaces for others to build a spiritual relationship with their own loved ones, and (4) making memory work life's purpose. This article concludes with a set of recommendations for how to conduct community psychology research in service of social justice movements.

The “Fate of Minorities” in the Early Afro-Asian Struggle for Decolonization

Abstract This article explores the significance of minority rights to postcolonial internationalism by examining an emerging Afro-Asian collective at the United Nations in the late 1940s. As postcolonial nations became UN member-states, they fostered transnational solidarity through the Arab-Asian group, a predecessor of the Afro-Asian bloc, and constructed an anti-imperial project that directly engaged with the making of the new international human rights system. However, the Arab-Asian group did not advance minority rights in their struggle for decolonization at the UN. Instead, they favored a gradual path toward formal self-rule and the recognition of national self-determination that worked within the international order, most clearly expressed through the removal of a minority rights article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Transnational Dimensions of a ‘German Case’: The Expatriation of Wolf Biermann and the Politics of Solidarity in the 1970s

In November 1976, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) announced the expatriation of the dissident singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann, preventing his return from a concert tour in West Germany. This step attracted widespread press coverage and sparked a substantial expression of solidarity by East German intellectuals. This article proposes an alternative perspective on this well-known episode in German history by highlighting its transnational dimensions and its international contexts. Biermann’s work interacted with broader cultural currents of the period, while his political engagement with events in Chile and Spain testified to the importance of transnational solidarity for left-wing mobilizations. Moreover, the article points to two important international factors that are crucial for understanding the events of 1976: the role of Eurocommunism within left-wing debate on the one hand, and the resonance of human rights discourse during the 1970s on the other.