Care without Control: The Humanitarian Industrial Complex and the Criminalisation of Solidarity

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we discuss the criminalisation of migrant solidarity, intended as practices of resistance to the current regulation and management of borders in Europe. We argue that the target of criminalisation is not simply humanitarian assistance: rather, we propose a differentiation between autonomous solidarity and humanitarianism, arguing that while the first is criminalised, the latter is often complicit in the harms and violence of borders. Drawing on critical humanitarian studies, we argue that autonomous migrant solidarity distinguishes itself from what we address as the ‘Humanitarian Industrial Complex’ in its active refusal to the legal obligations to control and report undocumented migrants to the authorities; its resistance to the racialised hierarchies entailed by humanitarian aid; as well as in its contestation of the commodification of migrant lives. Rather than ‘filling the gaps’ of the state or ameliorating borders and their violence, autonomous practices of migrant solidarity seek to ‘create cracks’ in the smooth operation of border regimes. It is because of their intrinsic character of opposition to both the militarisation of borders and to humanitarian technologies of government, we argue, that autonomous practices of migrant’s solidarity are accused of ‘facilitating illegal migration’ and become the target of state repression.

Acknowledgments

We thank three anonymous reviewers for the many critics and suggestions that they have provided to us. We are grateful to the many constructive comments we received by the participants at the AAG conference in New Orleans in 2018 and at the SqeK meeting in Catania in 2018 where an earlier version of this paper was presented. We also thank the Solidarity Against Borders collective, as well as migrant communities and solidarity groups for the in-depth discussions and debates on the topic.

Notes

1. Mobile common is the knowledge and affective reservoir produced by innumerable and uncoordinated but cooperative actions of people, that offer vital resources and energies to the migrants on the road or when they arrive in a new place (Papadopoulos and Tsianos 2012).

2. After the first conviction, the French Constitutional Court had declared the legislation incompatible with the French constitutional principle of fraternité. Nevertheless, Cedric Herrou’s was eventually found guilty and convicted.