Diversity, power and participation in migrant solidarity work
How do we bring more equity into our movements to acknowledge our vastly different starting points? How do we decolonize our thinking, actions and organising? How do we create spaces in political and social participation to ask ‘whose reality counts?’
In the field of racial justice and migrant solidarity work we find ourselves working within deep, historic and intersecting social constructions such as race, gender, class, culture, sexual orientation, legal statuses. Systems of oppression, particularly in this course we focus on colonial and racial oppression, are underpinned by conscious and unconscious perception of ‘other’ dependent on these collectively created social constructions.
In grassroots migrant solidarity work, we aim to co-create intercultural spaces and go beyond the ‘us and them’ of traditional NGO and state response, but despite our intentions we sometimes 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 who have migrated, for people who have connections to migration in their own history and for people working in social justice and migrant solidarity work. 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. We will explore the co-evolving dynamics of colonialism/decolonialism. Increase our awareness of the constructions of “views of the world” and cultural relativism. Learn theory and practical tools from the field of race and restorative justice.
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 conflicts of power relations in 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
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Location:
Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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new stories: different worlds
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Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
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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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Ulex: del latín, (tojo en castellano, argelaga en catalán) nombre.
1. Arbusto espinoso de hoja perenne y floración, con gran capacidad de regeneración y resistencia. Sus púas se abren al entrar en contacto con el fuego y vuelve a brotar de los tocones carbonizados. Planta sucesional que crece bien en condiciones difíciles. Mejora la fertilidad del suelo mediante la fijación de nitrógeno, preparando el terreno para una renovada biodiversidad.
2. Una opción tradicional para encender fuegos. Arde con intensidad y brillo.
3. Un proyecto en red que aporta nutrición y fertilidad a los movimientos sociales europeos a través de la formación