TY - JOUR

T1 - Acts of Volunteering for Refugees

T2 - Local Responses to Global Challenges

AU - Bygballe, Line Steen

AU - Kirchner, Lydia Maria

N1 - Published in Nordic Journal of Migration Research special issue: Europe Trouble: Welcome Culture and the Disruption of the European Border Regime. Co-edited by Marie Sandberg og Dorte J. Andersen.

PY - 2020/11/26

Y1 - 2020/11/26

N2 - This article explores volunteering in grassroots networks that formed to support refugees arriving to Europe, in the context of a socio-political landscape marked by disunity in 2015. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Berlin and Copenhagen in 2017, the article analyses grassroots volunteering as local responses to global challenges. The analysis draws theoretical inspiration from a performative approach and concentrates on everyday activities in the networks, with a focus on the motivations and rationales of the volunteers. Building on dynamic understandings of citizenship and borders as proposed by Engin Isin and Chris Rumford, this article discusses the volunteer activities as acts of volunteering that negotiate who belongs in a given society and thus rearrange the notion of citizenship. In this context, this article argues that grassroots networks function as platforms for testing out forms of everyday activism in the specific socio-political context.

AB - This article explores volunteering in grassroots networks that formed to support refugees arriving to Europe, in the context of a socio-political landscape marked by disunity in 2015. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Berlin and Copenhagen in 2017, the article analyses grassroots volunteering as local responses to global challenges. The analysis draws theoretical inspiration from a performative approach and concentrates on everyday activities in the networks, with a focus on the motivations and rationales of the volunteers. Building on dynamic understandings of citizenship and borders as proposed by Engin Isin and Chris Rumford, this article discusses the volunteer activities as acts of volunteering that negotiate who belongs in a given society and thus rearrange the notion of citizenship. In this context, this article argues that grassroots networks function as platforms for testing out forms of everyday activism in the specific socio-political context.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Grassroots volunteering

KW - Forced migration

KW - Citizenship

KW - Ethnography

KW - Northern Europe

U2 - 10.33134/njmr.367

DO - 10.33134/njmr.367

M3 - Journal article

VL - Volume 10

SP - 26

EP - 40

JO - Nordic Journal of Migration Research

JF - Nordic Journal of Migration Research

SN - 1799-649X

IS - Issue 4

ER -