The Civil Sphere

Solidarity. Hidden Histories and Geographies of Internationalism

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Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at U.S. Libraries.

Declaration on the Right to Development

From the combination of knowledge and actions, someone can improve their skill and ability. It will lead them to live and work much better. This is why, the students, workers, or even employers should have reading habit for books. Any book will give certain knowledge to take all benefits. This is what this scales of justice tells you. It will add more knowledge of you to life and work better. Try it and prove it.

The scales of justice.

Solidarity and the 'Refugee Crisis' in Europe

Solidarity Without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances , a contribution to the ‘Reading Gramsci’ series, draws upon Gramscian theories to help understand processes of solidarity-building between civil society and various migrant groups across Europe. Rana Sukarieh welcomes this book, edited by Óscar García Agustín and Martin Bak Jørgensen, for demonstrating the continued relevance of Gramci’s theories for considering coalitions and alliances that could help to build more inclusive societies.

Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances

The so-called ‘refugee crisis’ provoked a wave of solidarity movements across Europe. These movements contrasted with attitudes of rejection against refugees from almost all EU member states and a lack of coordinated and satisfactory response from the EU as an institution. The growth of the solidarity movement entails backlash of nationalized identities, while the resistance of the member states to accept refugees represents the failure of the cosmopolitan view attached to the EU. In the article, we argue that the European solidarity movement shapes a new kind of cosmopolitanism: cosmopolitanism from below, which fosters an inclusionary universalism, which is both critical and conflictual. The urban scale thus becomes the place to locally articulate inclusive communities where solidarity bonds and coexistence prevail before national borders and cosmopolitan imaginaries about welcoming, human rights, and the universal political community are enhanced. We use the case of Barcelona to provide a concrete example of intersections between civil society and a municipal government. We relate this discussion to ongoing debates about ‘sanctuary cities’ and solidarity cities and discuss how urban solidarities can have a transformative role at the city level. Furthermore, we discuss how practices on the scale of the city are up-scaled and used to forge trans-local solidarities and city networks.

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Solidarity Cities and Cosmopolitanism from Below: Barcelona as a Refugee City

Deliberative democracy is increasingly discussed in relation to the transnational sphere in terms of promoting democratic mechanisms of representation and participation. The establishment of the European Integration Forum (EIF) represents an effort to apply deliberation to the field of integration policies at the EU level. The EIF combines an original structure consisting of civil society actors and EU institutions, on the one hand, and national and European organisations, on the other. In this article, the institutional and discursive dimensions of the EIF are discussed. The institutional dimension refers to the benefits of the deliberative model for inclusive policy making and it is argued that it is particularly useful for incorporating immigrant voices in consultative processes. The discursive dimension relates to the articulation of a common European discourse on integration within the already existing EU framework. Discourses of contestation emanating from civil society are constrained especially in relation to the identification of a sole target group of integration policies, namely third-country nationals. The deliberative approach of the EIF is efficient in its institutionalisation through the inclusion of multiple civil society actors, but its discursive potential in terms of reflecting a heterogeneity of viewpoints and the capacity for generating contestation are reduced.

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Oscar Garcia Agustin

Papers

Solidarity and the 'Refugee Crisis' in Europe

Solidarity without Borders: Gramscian Perspectives on Migration and Civil Society Alliances

Solidarity Cities and Cosmopolitanism from Below: Barcelona as a Refugee City

Transnational deliberative democracy in the context of the European Union: The institutionalisation of the European Integration Forum

Podemos and the New Political Cycle