Historicising geographies of solidarity

Abstract

This article evaluates two of the most productive recent areas of research in the historical geographies of solidarity: first, work relating to class and the labour movement; and second, debates clustered around race and colonialism. The two are, of course, not entirely distinct, and there has been much useful thinking at their intersections. I suggest that questions of mobility have been crucial in thinking about the formation of diverse solidarities across geographical and social boundaries. The article looks at how relationships can both be developed across differences of gender, race, and sexuality and how solidarities can be used to entrench forms of oppression and inequities of power. Thinking about this issue through the concept of intersectionality, I argue, would be a useful way of engaging with such questions. I suggest three areas which could be developed further. First, there is potential for a greater engagement with theoretical debates around the nature of solidarity itself. Second, historical geographers could pay more attention to the role of memory and “usable pasts.” Finally, I argue that more ambitious historical narratives, framed within wider social processes, would allow us to make broader arguments about how solidarity develops over time.

Migrant Solidarity Work in Times of ‘Crisis’: Glasgow and the Politics of Place

“…Glaswegians often note that 'We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns', expressing egalitarian sentiments, but racism is as much part of Glasgow's present as its past (Davidson et al 2018) and cannot be presumed a 'settled matter' (Emujulu & Bassel 2017: 67). Kelliher (2018: 2) describes the collective memory of solidarity practices as 'how history continues to shape contemporary practices of solidarity'. Yet this history does not necessarily play out in straightforward ways and different parts of the stories emerge.…”

Migrant solidarities and the politics of place

“…Solidarity has not only been a practice linked to class conflict but also to anti-colonial struggle (Kelliher, 2018). Also following a dialectical framework, Fanon (2008 [1952]: 201) wrote: ‘Every time a man has brought victory to the dignity of the spirit, every time a man has said no to an attempt to enslave his fellow man, I have felt a sense of solidarity with this act.’ Solidarity is a critical moment in the struggle for liberation from colonial oppression.…”

“…Migration often plays a central role in the formation of solidarity between places. In a review of the historical literature of solidarity, Kelliher (2018) observes that ‘questions of mobility have been crucial in thinking about the formation of diverse solidarities across geographical and social boundaries’ (p. 2). Mobile groups of workers and travelers connected the struggles that occurred in different places, thus contributing to the formation of solidarity in the contexts of labour organizing and anti-colonial resistance.…”

“…In other contexts, however, physical presence and proximity are crucial conditions for political action and subject formation (Butler, 2012;Isin, 2002). International migration, in particular, generates forms of solidarity that arise when people who were geographically separated from each other by national borders now encounter and interact with each other in particular locations where 'activists root themselves in place' (Kelliher, 2018: 3). International migration does not mean that the international segmentation of labour ceases to exist; workers from the Global South often continue to experience the devaluation of their labour and humanity in the Global North, reproducing the international segmentation of labour at national and local scales (Bauder, 2006).…”

“…When people migrate or flee war or other circumstances, they connect places, and their arrival causes people in different circumstances to interact with each other. The importance of international migration and flight in fostering solidarity has not been lost on scholarship (Kelliher, 2018). A particular avenue of solidarity research has focused on the politics of place (Featherstone, 2012).…”