Transnational Solidarity and Cosmopolitanism from Below: Migrant Protests, Universalism and The Political Community

In recent years we have witnessed how migrants protests have contributed to shape new transnational alliances between migrants and pro-migrants (Agustín & Jørgensen, 2016) and have challenged the nationalist approach to migration (grounded in border control and assimilation). However, it is a relevant question to explore if the transnationalization of social relations automatically implies a form of cosmopolitanism (Mau, Mewes & Zimmermann, 2008). Our position is that transnationalism from below, in order to become cosmopolitan, must entail forms of solidarity, meaning mutual constitutive relationships, the shaping of a common ground and the claim for an inclusive universality. Therefore, we refer to a cosmopolitanism from below as a source for democratic transformation since it imagines and practices an alternative political community, in which universalism coexists with diversity. In opposition to globalization founded on the reinforcement of nation-state borders (Sassen, 1999), cosmopolitanism from below fosters a universal political but formulated in critical and conflictual terms (Caraus, 2015; Agustín, 2017). The resulting community includes both migrants and pro-migrants without hiding the forms of domination they react against (Jørgensen, 2017). It is, in all, a common We composed by universal claims as ‘We are all borderless’, ´We are all precarious’ and ‘We are all excluded’. Thus, transnational solidarity enhances a universalism which transcends nationalized categorizations of borders, class and inclusion and shapes a borderless, class solidarity and inclusive community. The aim of this chapter is to explore how transnational solidarity contributes to constitute cosmopolitanism from below. We use two cases, which illustrate how the new inclusive political community is shaped. All of them reflect a contestation against the hegemonic universalism, based on borders, class or exclusion. Transnational Social Strike aims to build alliances between workers against the ‘government of mobility’, which fragments and isolates the workers. Freedom Not Frontex managed to unite self-organized refugee collectives, the sans-papiers movement and to some degree the precarity movement in the march to Brussels in 2014 and the actions days following. The event displayed the articulation of transitional solidarities and attempt to foster new commonalities.