Introduction: The Contentious Politics of Refugee and Migrant Protest and Solidarity Movements: Remaking Citizenship from the Margins

This special issue inquires into their transformative possibilities and offers a collection of articles that explore political mobilizations in several countries and (border) regions, including Brazil, Mexico, the United States, Austria, Germany, Greece, Turkey and ‘the Mediterranean.’

Ataç, I., Rygiel, K. and M. Stierl.  2016. “Introduction: the contentious politics of refugee and migrant protest and solidarity movements: remaking citizenship from the margins”, Citizenship Studies 20 (10): 1-18.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2016.1182681

and

Rygiel, K. 2016. “Dying to Live: Migrant Deaths and Citizenship Politics along the European Border.” Citizenship Studies 20 (10): 1-16.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2016.1182682

Throughout the world, political mobilizations by refugees, irregularized migrants, and solidarity activists have emerged, demanding and enacting the right to move and to stay, struggling for citizenship and human rights, and protesting the violence and deadliness of contemporary border regimes. These struggles regularly traverse the local and constitute trans-border, trans-categorical, and in fact, social movements.

This issue brings into dialog social movement literature, and especially the ‘contentious politics’ perspective, with migration struggles. It connects these to current debates underway within Critical Citizenship Studies and the Autonomy of Migration literatures around rights making, the constitution of political subjectivities, and re-defining notions of the political and political community.

Migrants and refugees continue to die as they attempt to cross into Europe. This article explores the issue of ‘dying to live’ to draw attention to the disturbing fact of these deaths in relation to the state, biopolitics, and citizenship, but also to the growing mobilization around refugee and migrant deaths along European borders. The article examines transnational activism in solidarity with migrants, refugees and their families in response to deaths at Europe’s borders as one example of the many political struggles for greater rights undertaken by refugees, migrants, and solidarity activists emerging across Europe and elsewhere. An examination of struggles around rights of the dead and in response to migrant and refugee deaths suggests that they can be transgressive of the logic of modern citizenship.