Embracing transit and transitivity: Discursive solidarity and resistance in the transmigrants’ discourse

Tunisia has long been framed as both a geographic and symbolic crossroads, yet politically and institutionally it is usually cast as a space of departure rather than arrival. This paradox becomes more salient in light of the country’s evolving role as a transit zone for sub-Saharan migrants navigating ‘fragmented journeys’ towards Europe. While much academic work has examined the Maghreb’s role in these circulations, it often overlooks the experiences and self-expressed narratives of the transmigrants. Dominant discourses tend to reduce these transmigrants to passive subjects caught in transit, emphasizing structural constraints over individual agency. In contrast, this article adopts a discursive lens to examine sub-Saharan voices and investigate how transit is conceptualized not merely as a phase but as a dynamic space of ‘situated knowledges’, as per Mignolo, and identity negotiation. Hinging on scarce research on sub-Saharan transmigrants’ self-representations, I qualitatively analyse a corpus produced by sub-Saharan transmigrants on social media between 2018 and 2023. I use Doreen Massey’s conceptualization of space to deconstruct ‘transit’ as a geographic and virtual locus. Then, drawing on resources from decolonial thought, particularly Mignolo, and social actor theory, as developed by van Leeuwen, I focus on the discursive manifestations of ‘transit’ as a state of fluidity and dynamism. I examine the vehicles of solidarity and resistance through the analysis of rhetoric and discursive tactics they use to actively reconfigure transit spaces. Through digital platforms, transmigrants cultivate what Diminescu terms ‘access capital’ to articulate collective identity and enact forms of ‘epistemic disobedience’, a term theorized by Mignolo. Rather than passive victims, they emerge as mobile agents who resist being spoken for, asserting the right to define their journeys and identities on their own terms.