Subversive humanitarianism and its challenges. Notes on the political ambiguities of civil refugee support.

摘要: In the late summer of 2015, hundreds of thousands of Europeans supported the newly arrived refugees. 1 They brought food, clothes, medicines and tents to camps that often emerged spontaneously in public space, and where both the state and professional NGOs remained remarkably absent. From a scholarly perspective, these “moment [s] of solidarity”(Johnson 2012, 109) seemed to be a clear-cut case of “contentious politics”(Tarrow 2011, 3; McAdam et al 2001; Ataç et al 2016; Rygiel 2011): a series of collective actions that can be called contentious because they were incited “by people who lack regular access to institutions, act in the name of new or unaccepted claims and behave in ways that fundamentally challenge others.” Given the political climate, welcoming refugees appeared as a “concerted, counter-hegemonic social and political action” in which Europeans and refugees, citizens and non-citizens “challenge [d] dominant systems of authority”, thereby promoting and enacting “alternative imaginaries”(Leitner et al 2008, 157). From a second perspective, the claims that were explicitly and implicitly being made by refugees themselves seemed to exemplify an “act of citizenship”(Isin & Nielsen 2008): by demonstrating their presence and their intention to stay in spite of governmental policies designed to discourage and prevent their arrival, these refugees were effectively embodying their autonomy from European migration policies, and claiming their rights to European citizenship (Swerts & De Praetere 2016; De Praetere & Oosterlynck 2017; Rygiel 2012; Sigona 2015).None of these literatures, however, seems sufficient to take full …