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At a time of escalating conflict between states and NGOs engaged in migrant search and rescue operations across the Mediterranean, this book explores the emerging trend of citizen-led forms of helping others at the borders of Europe.
In recent years, Europe's borders have become new sites of intervention for traditional humanitarian actors and governmental agencies, but also, increasingly, for volunteer and activist initiatives led by "ordinary" citizens. This book sets out to interrogate the shifting relationship between humanitarianism, the securitization of border and migration regimes, and citizenship. Critically examining the "do it yourself" character of refugee aid practices performed by non-professionals coming together to help in informal and spontaneous manners, the volume considers the extent to which these new humanitarian practices challenge established conceptualisations of membership, belonging, and active citizenship. Drawing on case studies from countries around Europe including Greece, Turkey, Italy, France and Russia, this collection constitutes an innovative and theoretically engaged attempt to bring the field of humanitarian studies into dialogue with studies of grassroots refugee aid and, more explicitly, with political forms of solidarity with migrants and refugees which fall between aid and activism.
This book is key reading for advanced students and researchers of humanitarian aid, European migration and refugees, and citizen-led activism.
List of contents
Part 1: Resisting or Becoming "The System"? Humanitarianism Between Citizenship and the Ngo World 1. Filling the Gaps: Citizen Humanitarianism in the Context of Crisis, Abandonment and Criminalisation 2. A Community Center in a Humanitarian Context: The Professionalization of a Grassroots Initiative in Istanbul, Turkey 3. Citizen Humanitarianism and Local Responses to the Migration Crisis in Serbia 4. "They Just Come and Try to Help": Exploring the Prioritisation of Downstream Accountability in Calais’ Citizen-Led Humanitarianism Part 2: Criminalization and Violence Against Citizen Humanitarianism 5. Melilla: Fight and Survival of Activist Humanitarianism 6. A More Subversive Humanitarianism? The Political Strategies of Grassroots Initiatives Supporting Illegalized Migrants 7. Beyond Borders: The Transnational Turn of Russian Refugee Aid Part 3: The Multifaceted Politics of Citizenship Humanitarianism 8. Contesting Humanitarianism Through Solidarity and Hospitality in the French-Italian Borderscape 9. Proximity and Protest: Citizen Demonstrations Against Anti-Immigrant Policies in Eastern Sicily 10. Memorial Tourism and Citizen Humanitarianism: Volunteers’ Civil Pilgrimage to the "Life Jackets Graveyard" Of Lesvos, Greece 11. Approaching Biographical Life: Grassroots Humanitarianism in Europe
About the author
Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert is a senior researcher and research director at the Dimensions of Security Department, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway.
Elisa Pascucci is a researcher at EuroStorie CoE, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Summary
This book explores the emerging trend of citizen-led forms of helping others at the borders of Europe. It is key reading for advanced students and researchers of humanitarian aid, European migration and refugees, and citizen-led activism.
