Border Solidarity

Abstract This essay investigates how border solidarity—that is, grassroots coalitions against the current state of migration and border governance—allows for a radical articulation of traditional theories concerning the foundations of solidarity. Drawing on four years of activism and participatory fieldwork with the New Sanctuary Movement in the United States, the author looks at specific coalitions within migrants’ rights social movements to argue against traditional or otherwise familiar conceptions of the normative foundations of solidarity, such as a common social membership, a shared moral feeling, or a shared experience of oppression. Rather, the author argues, border solidarity as a praxis of contesting border regimes clearly shows the conceptual insufficiency of methodological nationalism, implicit in all three familiar conceptions, for articulating the meaning of solidarity. Taking a cue from materialist feminists bell hooks, Beatriz Nascimento, and Verónica Gago, the author argues that border solidarity as praxis is grounded in differential interdependence and heterogeneous transversal alliances that forge new territories (and constituencies) in opposition to hegemonic ones.