HuK-Forum: Women’s Collaboration and Solidarity-Building

Vortrag von Prof. Suzan Ilcan, Ph.D. (University of Waterloo, Canada)

Over the past several years, there has been a broadening of political mobilisations in Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere by and in solidarity with migrant newcomers. Although these mobilisations are diverse, this paper focuses on community-building in the European migration context. Building on the scholarship on community-building and on transversal politics, the paper addresses the transversal dimensions of community-building that are responses to refugees’ inadequate access to rights and resources. The main argument is that women-led-community-building underlines how women refugees and women volunteers supporting refugees engage their agency to foster dialogue, collaboration, and solidarity across power imbalances and social differences. From a feminist perspective, the paper refers to these processes as “transversal community-building.” It analyses two empirical examples of this form of community-building in Paphos, Cyprus. It shows how women refugees and volunteers enact solidarity across different legal status, class, ethnic, and national backgrounds, and within and beyond the boundaries of civil society organizations, that enables women’s creative and socio-political practices. The article contributes to the term community-building from the lens of transversalism and feminist solidarity-building, and offers an empirically grounded view of transversal community-building in the migration context of Cyprus.