Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
How can we organise more strategically in our activism and movement building? This training offers a space to reflect on questions like: How do we move from short-term action toward long-term strategy? How can we shift from fragmented and isolated efforts to ecosystemic approaches and alliance-building? How do we organise in ways that resist cultures of burnout and avoid reproducing patterns of domination? How does our social positionality shape the ways we organise, and how skillfully can we engage with those dynamics?
We will explore these questions through a collective and participatory learning environment, with space to apply insights to our own individual and organisational contexts.
In the current crisis of neoliberal politics and economy, migration policies and border regimes are increasingly shaped by fear, othering, and scapegoating. Organising as migrants—or in solidarity with migrants—can feel especially depleting and disempowering. On top of this, we face familiar movement-wide challenges: internal fragmentation, short-term or project-based thinking, and the limitations of our theories of change.
This training is designed to help us navigate the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising, taking into account our distinct roles and experiences in relation to the nation-state and the emotions that often accompany this work.
We will unpack these dynamics and together, co-develop tools and strategies to engage with them more intentionally and sustainably.
Key topics:
There are many different ways of thinking about organising within the ‘social change’ paradigm. Some of the conceptions we will be exploring are:
Community Organising: Aiming to build power within communities, focusing on addressing local issues and injustices. It emphasises leadership development, relationship-building, and collective action rooted in everyday experience.
Transformative Organising: A more expansive approach to organising that seeks not only to address immediate issues but also to transform underlying systems of power and oppression, and the economic, political, and social structures that perpetuate the status quo and injustice. Early thinking on this practice has been defined by US-based organisers in “Demand Everything: Lessons from the Transformative Organising Model”. Applications to the European context and the learnings and adaptations of this approach to organising are illustrated in “The power of Organising: Stories from Community Organising Campaigns Across Europe”.
Movement Building: A broader approach that goes beyond specific campaigns or issues to build a sustained, interconnected ecosystem of organisations and networks working toward social transformation. Key aspects of Movement Building focus on developing shared visions and narratives, building alliances and networks between organisations, and creating responsive and agile structures that can adapt to changing contexts.
We will explore ideas and practices related to:
Theories of Change: How change happens in the world. Understanding systems and complexity as well as power and influence in today’s increasingly volatile and uncertain conditions. Exploring how individuals and organisations contribute to change.
Approaches to Organising: Looking at different traditions and practises from Community and Transformative Organising to Movement Building.
The Role of the Organiser: Reflections on identity, positionality and aspects of inhabiting the ‘role’, as well as sharpening practical skills and tools.
Alliance building: Effective Organising (of whatever kind) is most successful when performed in resilient alliances. This course will explore the pathways to building strategic, meaningful, empowering relationships.
Resilience: Looking at ways to manage stress and build wellbeing, and weather the impacts of repression and suppression, so that they don’t undermine our organising efforts.
So the aims of the training are to:
Who is it aimed at?
Anyone with experience in socially engaged action addressing political and social justice issues, specifically in the area of migration and border violence. We embrace a broad definition of activism, including: Resistance – action preventing further damage to ecosystems and social justice; Renewal – action focused on developing and creating alternatives for healthier societies and communities; and Building Resilience – action supporting increased resilience in communities to weather the uncertain times ahead.
The course will be delivered in accessible, international English.
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
Contact us
to apply
Location:
Sergio (all pronouns) was born in Romania and migrated to Germany in the early 2010s. In the past, he was a social worker with homeless people and a social consultant for Eastern European migrants for various organisations. Trained as a filmmaker, he spent two years making a documentary about the ‘civic reawakening’ in Romania and the waves of protest it brought with it. In connection to this, Sergio is currently co-steering the development of an online open-source participative knowledge production platform on activism in Romania. Over the past nine years, Sergiu has offered his skills to various journalists, grassroots collectives and campaigns, mostly working within the labour rights, climate justice, international solidarity and anti-authoritarian movements in Germany and Romania. Nonetheless, his biggest focus since 2020 has been his work as an organiser with the anarcho-syndicalist Free Workers Union, where he focuses mostly on organising Romanian migrant workers on construction sites, in factories and in the agricultural field.
an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
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Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have – Lao Tzu
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Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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strategies for weathering, surviving, and recovering from repressive actions by state and non-state forces.
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new stories for a different world.
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exploring the deeper dynamics of collaboration, for transformation.
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strengthening and connecting transformative social movements.
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tools for effective and sustainable activism.
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Ulex: del Llatí, (argelaga en català) nom:
1. Arbust espinós de fulla perenne i floració, amb gran capacitat de regeneració i resistència. Les seves pues s’obren en entrar en contacte amb el foc i torna a brollar dels tocones carbonitzats. Planta successional que creix bé en condicions difícils. Millora la fertilitat del sòl mitjançant la fixació de nitrogen, preparant el terreny per a una renovada biodiversitat.
2. Una opció tradicional per a encendre focs. Crema amb intensitat i lluentor.
3. Un projecte en xarxa que aporta nutrició i fertilitat als moviments socials europeus a través de la formació
