Workshop on Transdisciplinary Conversations on Solidariry, Migration, and (International) Law

Contemporary international law has recently grappled with solidarity as a principle/value active in different domains. However, its role concerning migration has been ambivalent, furthering different types of responses. When incorporated in legislation and official policy measures, solidarity tends to operate on a vertical plane, following a hierarchical, State-centred approach that tends to favour government interests. By contrast, when mobilized by civil society organizations and grass-roots movements, solidarity works along a horizontal axis, creating community across territorial boundaries through the recognition of shared humanity. Its normative content and effect are malleable, supporting competing claims by different actors both in furtherance of and in opposition to migrants’ rights and welfare. Scholars and activists have explored the intersection of migration, law, and solidarity from different perspectives, relying on the principle in different ways. Against this background, this workshop engages critically with the relationship between solidarity and migration as mediated by (international) law, seeking to explore the conflicts and tensions inherent in responses to the mobility of people from the perspectives of activism, advocacy, and academia. This transdisciplinary dialogue seeks to examine the concept of solidarity, its different manifestations, paradoxes, and possibilities when it is deployed in response to the needs of migrant populations or as a call to support or accompany their struggles and mobilizations.

The workshop's conveners:

Prof. Alexandra Délano Alonso (The New School)

Prof. Violeta Moreno-Lax (Queen Mary University of London, NYU & University of Barcelona)

Prof. Jaya Ramji-Nogales (Temple, Beasley Law School)