Diversity, power and participation in migrant solidarity work
In the field of social and migrant solidarity work we find ourselves working within deep and diverse social constructions such as gender, race, class, culture, sexual orientation, legal statuses. These are constructions that we collectively create and give shape to our understandings and our actions. Our work in the social realm focuses on attending basic needs, offering tools for empowerment and spaces for political and social participation in the countries or social context people find themselves in.
Sometimes despite our intentions we recreate old power dynamics, unequal forms of participation, conflict and the bitter taste of repeating the same old relationships over again.
This course proposes to start a few steps back looking to the forming of these social constructions. The course guides us into learning to pay attention, identify, and reflect upon the building of social constructions, to then reflect and imagine the creation of renewed forms of understanding each other. Changing the relations among others, could influence the constructions of “you” and “I”. In the words of Patricia Shaw “I cannot go on being the same ‘me’ without continuing to relate to ‘you’ in a certain way, and if that way shifts we are both a little different” (Shaw, 2002).
This course is for people working in social and migrant solidarity work. For people from countries of origin of migration and receiving countries, people migrating, and asylum seekers. People campaigning and/or working in policy change. This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project
Key elements:
Understanding power and privilege, our own and that of others. Co-evolving dynamics of colonialism, awareness of the constructions of “views of the world” and cultural relativism.
Methodologies
This course is a construction site! A place for exploration and practice. A space to share, question, destroy, prototype, discuss together and get to the heart of the issues, conflicts of power relations and our wounded past, to overcome and propose renewed ways of relating and working.
It is a course with an open quality, an explorative, creative space. We will invite people from La Bolina to lead sessions sharing their views and challenges in arriving and forming a life in receiving countries. We will explore the new labels that create the identities they find themselves in such as migrants, undocumented, refugees… and the identities formed in relation: community worker, migrant solidarity activist, social worker.
Methodologies: Some of the things we will do and explore:
This training is hosted as part of the Ulex South Project
Bibliography
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.
Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
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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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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
