The Frontiers of Solidarity – SOLIFRO

In recent years, bottom-up support for people in migration, particularly in places of blockage such as border areas, plays a central role in the experiences of mobilities to and within Europe. European borders, both internal and external, have become increasingly militarised and difficult to cross, producing racialised and gendered violence against people in migration from the global South. At the same time these borders have become sites of support and activism. Offering shelter, hospitality, care, basic necessities or practical and legal information, this support, often referred to as solidarity-based, aims to guarantee fundamental rights that are flouted by security-based migration policies and to facilitate the continuation of the journeys of people in migration. Despite a growing body of work on border solidarities, the issue of gendered and sexual violence occurring within the spaces of migrant support and solidarity still seems to be taboo. This project aims at understanding the social processes and hierarchies that produce gendered and sexual violence in the context of aid and solidarity towards people in migration in French border areas. It intends to shed light on violence that has previously remained invisible, and which seems to be systemic in the political context of borders closed to certain migrations and the disappearance of an effective right to asylum. In order to study these forms of violence, it seeks to identify the power relations at play in border situations, grasping both the structural mechanisms and the individual implications that allow it. We intend to understand how these forms of violence are rendered invisible, creating a hierarchy of violence at the borders, between those that must be denounced and those that must be kept silent "for the good of the cause". Addressing the issues of intimate relationships, sexuality and sexual violence, the study aims to deconstruct the myths of "pure" and necessarily legitimate solidarity for people in migration. Our qualitative research at three border-zones - the Franco-British, the Franco-Italian and the Franco-Spanish ones - will allow for a detailed analysis of the (re)production of relations of power and domination between solidarity actors and people in migration. It will look, on different scales, at the (non) regulation of intimate relations between "solidarity people" and "solidarity beneficiaries" in the different contexts of border aid. It will also study the pathways of volunteers/activists and the way in which representations and fantasies of gender and sexuality shape spaces of reception. This will enable to shed light on how gendered and sexual violence is produced, processed and experienced in each local border context. We will pay attention to the different forms of violence, including sexual violence, produced in these spaces and how they interplay with bordering practices, and to understand as well how these issues are differentially problematized in queer and heteronormative solidarity spaces. The project aims to explore these new avenues of research, particularly with regard to the links between migration control, solidarity, sexuality, violence and the (re)production of race and gender in border zones. In addition, the research will look at whether and how people in migration resist the "solidarity order" in place at the borders, particularly in the areas of intimacy and sexuality, and what alternative forms of solidarity they may construct between themselves. The expected outcome of this project is to be able to support associations and collectives in preventing violence in solidarity spaces.