The Courage for Civil Repair: Narrating the Righteous in International Migration [1st ed.] 9783030445898, 9783030445904

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xx
Introduction: Understanding Civil Courage in International Migration (Carlo Tognato)....Pages 1-32
Front Matter ....Pages 33-33
The Righteous of the Transnation: Jews, Muslims, and a Politics of Friendship in Berlin (Volker M. Heins)....Pages 35-60
“We Are Jewish and We Want to Help You”: Righteous Cross-Group Solidarity Toward Muslim Refugees in Vienna (Werner Binder, Ana Mijić)....Pages 61-89
Righteous Doctors: Reacting to the Inhumane Treatment of Asylum Seekers in Australia (Anthony Moran)....Pages 91-121
Front Matter ....Pages 123-123
When Saving Lives Becomes a Crime: Performances of Solidarity with Migrants Along Europe’s Southern Border (María Luengo, Kafaa Msaed)....Pages 125-151
The Courage of Piety: Civil Solidarity and the Dead in International Migration (Carlo Tognato)....Pages 153-181
Solidary Cuisine: Las Patronas Facing the Central American Migratory Flow (Nelson Arteaga-Botello)....Pages 183-202
Reaching Across: Migrant Support Activism on a Divided Island (Argyro Nicolaou, Yiannis Papadakis)....Pages 203-230
“We Always Have Been and Always Will Be a Sanctuary City”: Cities as Righteous Actors in the U.S. Civil Sphere (Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky)....Pages 231-262
Front Matter ....Pages 263-263
Conclusion: The Public Performance of Civil Righteousness (Jeffrey C. Alexander)....Pages 265-271
Back Matter ....Pages 273-280

Citation preview

CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY

The Courage for Civil Repair Narrating the Righteous in International Migration Edited by Carlo Tognato Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky Jeffrey C. Alexander

Cultural Sociology

Series Editors Jeffrey C. Alexander Center for Cultural Sociology Yale University New Haven, CT, USA Ron Eyerman Center for Cultural Sociology Yale University New Haven, CT, USA David Inglis Department of Sociology University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland Philip Smith Center for Cultural Sociology Yale University New Haven, CT, USA

Cultural sociology is widely acknowledged as one of the most vibrant areas of inquiry in the social sciences across the world today. The Palgrave Macmillan Series in Cultural Sociology is dedicated to the proposition that deep meanings make a profound difference in social life. Culture is not simply the glue that holds society together, a crutch for the weak, or a mystifying ideology that conceals power. Nor is it just practical knowledge, dry schemas, or know how. The series demonstrates how shared and circulating patterns of meaning actively and inescapably penetrate the social. Through codes and myths, narratives and icons, rituals and representations, these culture structures drive human action, inspire social movements, direct and build institutions, and so come to shape history. The series takes its lead from the cultural turn in the humanities, but insists on rigorous social science methods and aims at empirical explanations. Contributions engage in thick interpretations but also account for behavioral outcomes. They develop cultural theory but also deploy middle-range tools to challenge reductionist understandings of how the world actually works. In so doing, the books in this series embody the spirit of cultural sociology as an intellectual enterprise.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14945

Carlo Tognato · Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky · Jeffrey C. Alexander Editors

The Courage for Civil Repair Narrating the Righteous in International Migration

Editors Carlo Tognato Schar School of Policy and Government George Mason University Arlington, VA, USA

Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky Department of Sociology Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic

Jeffrey C. Alexander Center for Cultural Sociology Yale University New Haven, CT, USA

Cultural Sociology ISBN 978-3-030-44589-8 ISBN 978-3-030-44590-4 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: imagedepotpro/E+/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To our children, and our students.

Series Editor Preface

This extraordinary volume collects eight examples of civil righteousness, acts of civil courage and cross-group solidarity within the context of international migration. The notion of righteousness has religious roots, though its common meaning is much more broad; it has come to mean being in the right relation to others, or more colloquially, doing the right thing. How one judges or underpins righteousness can be culturally and situationally relative, but its “rightness” is what makes an act righteous. In religious tradition, righteous acts can be saintly and sanctified as in living in a way that is pleasing to God or Gods. In secular usage, it can mean acting according to moral principles that transcend a particular situation and that are not regulated by self-interest or practical outcome. Max Weber termed such action value-oriented, actions performed according to one’s deeply held values or principles. Hannah Arendt thought such actions exemplary, revealing of a person’s inner virtues. For her, virtuousness is revealed through the performance of righteous acts in a public sphere. The State of Israel created the phrase Righteous Among Nations to acknowledge and honor the acts of non-Jews who put themselves in danger to help Jews during the Holocaust. The awarding of this title is now under the auspices of the Supreme Court of Israel, with a list of requirements to help determine the righteousness of an action. As the editors suggest it is not surprising that Righteous Among Nations has become an exemplar for a wide range of acts of civil courage including those related to international migration. They have chosen eight cases to reveal

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this and at the same time to expand our understanding of civil courage in the contemporary context. The examples range geographically from Europe, central, south and north America, to Africa to Australia. The cases, which include the coordinated actions of Muslims and Jews in Germany, Jewish refugees in Vienna, Australian doctors, migrant-rights activists in Spain and Morocco, Colombian, Cypriot and American volunteers, make for intellectually and emotionally stimulating reading. At the same time, there is a great deal of practical knowledge to be gleaned from these examples of civil courage and moral commitment. Exemplary action always contains a pedagogic moment, at one and the same time revealing the inner virtuousness of an actor, and revealing how one should act oneself. Ron Eyerman Center for Cultural Sociology Yale University New Haven, CT, USA

Preface and Acknowledgments

When Jeffrey C. Alexander laid out civil sphere theory (CST) in 2006, he presented it as a general theory designed for universal application. Yet, the empirical cases focused primarily on the United States. Since 2015, Jeffrey C. Alexander has gathered a broad group of scholars from Latin America, East Asia, and Europe to push the boundaries of CST. This effort has resulted in a long pipeline of books: The Civil Sphere in Latin America (Cambridge UP, 2018), edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander and Carlo Tognato, The Civil Sphere in East Asia (Cambridge UP, 2019), The Nordic Civil Sphere (Polity Press, 2019), Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere (Cambridge UP, 2020), and Populism in the Civil Sphere (Polity Press, 2021). Our current book builds upon this line of work. At the time of his chapter contribution to The Civil Sphere in Latin America, back in 2016, Carlo Tognato started to give shape to an interventive strand of CST, an agenda that he later pursued and expanded in his chapter contribution to Breaching the Civil Order as well as in book chapters (“Countering Violent Extremism Through Narrative Intervention,” “Conversaciones de paz en las universidades”), an article (“Los Justos en el Conflicto Armado Colombiano”), and two conference presentations in 2018 at the Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society in Baltimore and at the World Congress of Sociology in Toronto, respectively. In the meantime, in July 2016, Tognato started to experiment in Colombia

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with a narrative extension of the category “Righteous Among the Nations” for the purpose of reactivating cross-group solidarity in a society that had been deeply divided by many decades of internal armed conflict. This resulted in the organization between 2016 and 2017 of a National Journalism Prize on “The Righteous in the Colombian Armed Conflict,” spinning off into a series of lectures at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia (2017), the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota (2018), the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Pittsburgh (2018), and at the Program on Latin American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (2018). Between October 31 and November 2, 2017, Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky traveled to Bogota after an invitation by Tognato to give a series of lectures at the National University of Colombia about The Boundaries of Belonging: Social Organizations and Media in the Debates Over “Illegal” Migration. Prompted by the images of suffering that, at the time, were circulating in international media in relation to migrants held in detention centers, Tognato and Jaworsky gave shape in Bogota to the idea of this book. Soon after, Jeffrey C. Alexander joined the project and in the following months, an invitation was extended to the contributors in this book to participate in this endeavor. Volker M. Heins, María Luengo, and Nelson Arteaga-Botello had previously participated in other CST projects. Like Heins, Jaworsky, Luengo and Tognato, Werner Binder, who later contributed to Populism in the Civil Sphere, has been, for many years, faculty fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale, of which Alexander has been founder and director. Ana Miji´c, Anthony Moran, Kafaa Msaed, Argyro Nicolaou and Yiannis Papadakis, on the other hand, have joined anew our network of CST scholars and cultural sociologists for this occasion, thereby helping us expand the horizons of our conversation. On October 16–18, 2018, we gathered at Masaryk University in Brno, where Jaworsky and her Center for the Cultural Sociology of Migration hosted us, for two days of discussion over our chapters. In the summer of 2019 Palgrave Macmillan accepted our book project. We are grateful to our editor at Palgrave, Mary Al-Sayed, and to editorial assistant Madison Allums, for accompanying us along the publication process, as well as the editorial board of the Cultural Sociology Series at Palgrave for its support in this project. Additionally, Jaworsky wishes to acknowledge the financial support of the Grant Agency of Masaryk University, through the student research

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project “Migration and Social Inequality: Cultural Sociological Perspectives,” project number MUNI/A/1068/2018 and “Migration and Contemporary Societies: Cultural Sociological Perspectives,” project number MUNI/A/1157/2019. Arlington, USA Brno, Czech Republic New Haven, USA

Carlo Tognato Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky Jeffrey C. Alexander

Praise for The Courage for Civil Repair

“Given this moment of heightened xenophobia and nationalism, this book could not be more timely. Not only does it shed light on the underlying cultural processes that make some migrants ‘deserving’ while others get treated as undesirable burdens, it also helps identify the conditions that lead to successful mobilization on migrants’ behalf. By bringing together cases from across the world, and incorporating the voices of a range of relevant actors, The Courage for Civil Repair makes an important contribution to theory and practice.” —Peggy Levitt, Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American Studies and Professor of Sociology, Wellesley College, USA, and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, USA “The original scholarship and unique insights that inform The Courage for Civil Repair cannot be ignored. The contributors behind this timely work build upon the ‘Righteous among the Nations,’ a post-World War II official designation meant to enshrine the heroic actions of non-Jews who risked it all to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Here they refashion this distinction for a new age in order to salute today’s upstanders for their efforts to relieve the suffering of migrants and refugees across the globe. In the wake of ethnonational polarization and rampant nativism,

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PRAISE FOR THE COURAGE FOR CIVIL REPAIR

each chapter sheds light on exemplary stories of community mobilization, empathy, solidarity and courage in the face of startling indifference.” —Alejandro Baer, Associate Professor of Sociology and Stephen C. Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota, USA

Contents

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Introduction: Understanding Civil Courage in International Migration Carlo Tognato

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Part I Righteous, Between Yesterday and Today 2

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The Righteous of the Transnation: Jews, Muslims, and a Politics of Friendship in Berlin Volker M. Heins “We Are Jewish and We Want to Help You”: Righteous Cross-Group Solidarity Toward Muslim Refugees in Vienna Werner Binder and Ana Miji´c Righteous Doctors: Reacting to the Inhumane Treatment of Asylum Seekers in Australia Anthony Moran

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Part II Righteous, Today 5

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When Saving Lives Becomes a Crime: Performances of Solidarity with Migrants Along Europe’s Southern Border María Luengo and Kafaa Msaed The Courage of Piety: Civil Solidarity and the Dead in International Migration Carlo Tognato

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Solidary Cuisine: Las Patronas Facing the Central American Migratory Flow Nelson Arteaga-Botello

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Reaching Across: Migrant Support Activism on a Divided Island Argyro Nicolaou and Yiannis Papadakis

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“We Always Have Been and Always Will Be a Sanctuary City”: Cities as Righteous Actors in the U.S. Civil Sphere Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky

Part III 10

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Conclusion

Conclusion: The Public Performance of Civil Righteousness Jeffrey C. Alexander

Index

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Notes on Contributors

Jeffrey C. Alexander is Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University and the founder and codirector of Yale’s Center for Cultural Sociology. Among his recent writings are What Makes a Social Crisis? The Societalization of Social Problems (2019), and The Drama of Social Life (2017). Nelson Arteaga-Botello is research professor of sociology at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales México, and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. His research interests focus on violence and culture. His publications include “It Was the State: The Trauma of the Enforced Disappearance of Students in Mexico,” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 32(2018): 337–355, Sociedad, cultura y la esfera civil (edited with Carlo Tognato, 2019), and “The Populist Transition and the Civil Sphere in Mexico” in Populism in the Civil Sphere (edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Peter Kivisto, and Giuseppe Sciortino, 2021). Werner Binder is assistant professor at Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic). After studies in Mannheim, Potsdam and Berlin, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Konstanz with a thesis on the Abu Ghraib Scandal. He is author of Abu Ghraib und die Folgen (2013, Transcript), coauthor of Ungefähres (2014, Velbrück) and coeditor of Kippfiguren (2013, Velbrück). His fields of interest include sociological theory and cultural sociology, as well as textual and visual methods of interpretation.

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Volker M. Heins is Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities (KWI) in Essen, Germany, and professor of political science at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He is also a member of the executive board of the Centre for Global Cooperation Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He has recently published (with Christine Unrau), “Anti-immigrant Movements and the Self-poisoning of the Civil Sphere: The Case of Germany,” in Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere, (edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trevor Stack, and Farhad Khosrokhavar, Cambridge UP, 2020). Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky is associate professor of sociology at Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic), and Faculty Fellow at Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology. Her latest book, The Boundaries of Belonging: Online Work of Immigration-Related Social Movement Organizations, was published in 2016. Her two most recent articles, featuring the cultural sociological analysis of media coverage on refugees entering the United States and Canada, have been published in 2019 in Nations and Nationalism and Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies. Her current research focuses on public perceptions of migration, border narratives, and the migration-populism nexus. María Luengo is associate professor in the Department of Communication at Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain). Her work focuses on journalism and the civil sphere. Recent book publications include The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Democratic Culture, Professional Codes, Digital Future (co-edited with Alexander and Breese, Cambridge UP, 2016) and News Media Innovation Reconsidered (co-edited with Susana Herrera Damas, Wiley, forthcoming). Her research has appeared in European Journal of Communication, Media, Culture & Society, Journalism, and Journalism Studies, among others. Ana Miji´c is postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology at the University of Vienna (Austria), where she also earned her Ph.D. She was a fellow at the International Research Centre for Cultural Studies and at the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute at Trinity College Dublin. Theoretically based within the sociology of knowledge, her research focuses on identity and ethnicity, (post)war and migration. She is author of “Verletzte Identitäten” and several articles published in international journals and edited volumes. Her current

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research project “Postwar Diaspora(s)” is funded by the Austrian Science Fund. Anthony Moran is associate professor in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, Australia. His books include The Public Life of Australian Multiculturalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), Ordinary People’s Politics (Pluto Press Australia, 2006) and Australia: Nation, Belonging and Globalization (Routledge, 2005). He teaches and researches in the areas of race, ethnicity, nationalism, multiculturalism, migration, Indigenous/settler politics and relations, and social policy. His articles have appeared in various journals, including Nations and Nationalism, Political Psychology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Journal of Sociology and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Kafaa Msaed is a journalist and a Ph.D. student in the department of communication at Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain). Her work focuses on the images of violence against women in the Lebanese media. She follows a cultural sociological approach to examine the media, and uses content analysis and discourse analysis to obtain empirical results. Argyro Nicolaou is postdoctoral research associate at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies at Princeton University, USA. She is a cultural scholar and filmmaker whose research interests include the representation of Mediterranean migrations in literature, film, and visual art, and the interaction of art and politics. Her work has been featured in the American Historical Review and the Journal of Mediterranean Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with a secondary field degree in Critical Media Practice from Harvard University in 2018. Yiannis Papadakis is professor of social anthropology in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cyprus. He is author of Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide (I.B. Tauris, 2005, also translated in Greek and Turkish), co-editor of Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict (Indiana University Press, 2006) and Cypriot Cinemas: Memory, Conflict and Identity in the Margins of Europe (Bloomsbury, 2014), and editor of a 2006 special issue of Postcolonial Studies on Cyprus, among others. His published work has focused on borders, nationalism, memory, history education, cinema and migration.

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Carlo Tognato is visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Social Change, Institutions and Policy by the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University. His latest publications include Sociedad, cultura y la esfera civil (with Nelson Arteaga-Botello, FLACSO-Mexico, 2019), The Civil Sphere in Latin America (with Jeffrey C. Alexander, Cambridge University Press, 2018), Cultural Agents Reloaded: The Legacy of Antanas Mockus (The President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2017). His research focuses on civil reconstruction, civil degradation, civil courage, and civil intervention.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Understanding Civil Courage in International Migration Carlo Tognato

International migration has always been a field of suffering as much as one of hope for those who undertake the tortuous journey of leaving home to find a new one. At the same time, it is a terrain on which democracies have again and again been called to battle for the purpose of preserving their moral core and maintaining the civil ideals by which open societies have traditionally managed to uphold human dignity—reasonableness, autonomy, truthfulness, openness, criticism, trust, honorability, deliberation, transparency, accountability, rule of law, and inclusion. Today, democracies around the world are fiercely in the midst of such a battle. Recent debates concerning US, EU, and Australian migrant detention centers provide clear proof, as observers on all sides of the political spectrum have reacted to reports about children being separated from their parents, “deprived of soap, clean water, toilets, toothbrushes, adequate nutrition and sleep” (Montero 2019), of babies fed from the same unwashed bottle for days (Malik 2019), of migrants banging on cells and pressing notes onto windows begging for help, crammed in overcrowded spaces (Pitzer

C. Tognato (B) Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_1

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2019), without fresh water, and standing on toilets for the purpose of catching a breath of air (Katz 2019), or, thousands of miles away, of young children engaging in self-harm (Harrison 2018), attempting suicide (Zhou 2018), or simply withdrawing from life (Harrison 2018), and of adults going on hunger strikes and sewing their mouth shut in protest (Liljas 2018), or falling victim to sexual abuse and torture (Malik 2019). On the one end of the debate spectrum, some have sought to justify and normalize such institutional realities by diminishing the humanity of the detainees, labeling them a priori as “animals” (Hirschfeld Davis 2018), “wild ass shitbags,” and “subhumans” (Thompson 2019), or treating them like pests (Simon 2018) for which shooting “may be the only effective means of keeping them out” (Levitz 2019). “Racist and xenophobic anti-immigrant and anti-foreigner rhetoric” has then been matched with “smear campaigns” against migrant rescuers to infuse society with a “climate of hatred and discrimination” (Sharman 2018), which might then support the plausibility of such degrading labels and the sanitization of cruelty by euphemization. Others, instead, have sought to justify such realities by attaching anticivil attributes to migrants or to their modes of entry into the receiving countries and by stressing the urgency of realistically tackling the challenge of international migration without letting emotion come in the way of rational policy. After all, they stress, the moral need to limit human suffering cannot do away by fiat with the harsh reality of resource scarcity. And yet others, within the opposite camp, have rejected on principle racist and xenophobic justifications of such cruel modes of containment and objected, as well, to their rationalization on civil grounds, claiming that these regularly fail the test of authenticity each time they come short of accounting for the inevitability of cruelty in policy responses. Such intense cultural work constitutes an important dimension of the civil process by which societies go about determining who is worthy of inclusion and who is not. Alexander (2006) has shed light over the mechanics of such dynamics in his foundational book about the “civil sphere.” As he puts it, the civil sphere is a distinctively democratic field of solidarity that sustains universalizing cultural aspirations vis-à-vis other noncivil spheres of society such as the economy, religion, science, primordial associations, and states. As such, those who people the civil sphere recognize each other as bearers of civil attributes and feel bound to one another by obligations of civil solidarity. When the universalistic idealizations of the civil sphere are instantiated in time and place, though, they

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become compromised and, as Alexander and Tognato (2018: 2) explain, “classes, races, genders, sexualities, ethnicities, religions, and regions may become the signified for pejorative anti-civil signifiers.” As a consequence, in real civil spheres, the members of a civil community end up demarcating “us” from “them” by engaging in symbolic boundary work geared toward bestowing insiders with pure civil attributes and outsiders with polluting anticivil ones. This, in turn, often entails the mobilization of powerful icons of purity and pollution. In many Western countries, Holocaust memory provides a rich reservoir of such icons and, over the years, it has been again and again invoked for the purpose of catalyzing humanitarian responses on a variety of civil issues of public interest (Alexander 2003). It is therefore not surprising to witness references to Holocaust memory also in relation to international migration. In the recent back and forth of public arguments over the civility of US migrant detention centers, for example, some observers have ventured to link them with Nazi concentration camps in an effort at projecting pollution over them, at sensitizing public officials and citizens on the condition of the detainees, and at snapping them out of their perceived selfcomplacency or indifference (Katz 2019; Levitz 2019; Pitzer 2019). As US Member of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it in a tweet, “if that doesn’t bother you … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something” (Montero 2019). Holocaust memory has also been evoked to draw public attention to those upstanders who take risks and may even pay a personal price to relieve the suffering of migrants. For example, the sacred icon of the Righteous Among the Nations, that is, those righteous gentiles who during the Shoah risked their lives to hide, protect, and sometimes save the lives of Jews from Nazi extermination, has recently surfaced in religious discourse in relation to the story of a migrant rescuer, Scott Warren, from the Arizona organization “No More Deaths” (Harvey 2019). In 2018, Warren, a 36-year-old geography teacher, was arrested and charged by US authorities with three felonies for helping two undocumented Central American migrants as they were crossing the Arizona Desert, which might land him in jail for over a decade (Jordan 2019).1 Warren’s case has drawn public attention across the United States and beyond. About 125,000 people signed an online petition demanding the dismissal of the case, and in a statement about the case, the United Nation’s Office of the

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High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that “humanitarian aid is not a crime” (Harvey 2019). Thousands of miles away, Carola Rackete, captain of Sea-Watch III, a migrant rescue ship operated in the Mediterranean Sea by a German NGO, was arrested after docking without authorization in the Italian island of Lampedusa and disembarking 41 African migrants, whom she refused to return to their port of origin in Libya, as she deemed it unsafe for them. Her story, as well, inspired an association with Holocaust memory, though this time via a passage from “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” by Martin Luther King: “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and…It was ‘illegal’ to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany” (Russo Bullaro 2019). The use of powerful icons of purity and pollution in the symbolic boundary work over civil incorporation is generally a highly contentious matter. And indeed, recent references to Holocaust memory in relation to the treatment of migrants are no exception. With particular reference to the association of US migrant detention camps with Nazi concentration camps, for example, while some Holocaust scholars, such as Waitman Wade Beorn (Montero 2019) and Timothy Snyder (Malik 2019), have backed it, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum rejected any “analogies between the Holocaust and other events, whether historical or contemporary” (Montero 2019). Within the community of survivors of the Shoah and their families, in turn, some distanced themselves from the analogy, insisting that in Nazi extermination camps, captives lived “in daily fear of being killed” (Montero 2019), while others have noted that “those who invoke the Holocaust to emphasize the moral urgency of aiding detained migrants don’t demean” their relatives’ suffering during the Shoah “but rather redeem it.” The Shoah, after all, still has “important lessons for what’s happening … today” (Montero 2019). Echoing this posture, in July 2019, 18 Jewish activists with the group Never Again Action staged a protest on Capitol Hill against US migrant detention centers. Never Again Action later declared that “as Jews, we know what the separation of families, the covert rounding-up of people and the creation of concentration camps can lead to. We refuse to wait and see what happens next…. We know what happens when people unaffected by crises act as bystanders and look the other way.”2 This stance also powerfully resonates with an earlier action carried out in 2018 in Israel by Rabbi Susan Silverman and the organization Rabbis for Human Rights as they invoked the memory of Anne Frank and of the family friend who hid her in his home in

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an effort at prompting Israeli families to hide African asylum-seekers and save them from deportation (Kraft 2018).3 Scholars working on the civil dynamics of incorporation tend to read such symbolic boundary work as an exercise of “civil translation,” by which members of a civil community recast concrete actors, relations, and institutions in civil terms for the purpose of coding them as deserving of acceptance and support or alternatively of rejection (Alexander 2006). While we accept this, we still believe that it is necessary to zoom further into the process of civil translation and analytically unpack it in relation to its context for the purpose of bringing into focus some relevant aspects of the fine mechanics of solidarity formation in society. As people bestow civil and anticivil attributes onto insiders and outsiders and as they invoke to that end certain icons of purity and pollution that are available in their broader public culture, they are almost regularly bound to intervene into the cultural fabric of their civil community. Such cultural interventions, in turn, entail two types of action that pull in opposite directions. On the one hand, people are bound to breach the local horizon of cultural expectations within their community each time their exercise of civil translation is geared toward civil repair, and thus to the inclusion of actors into their horizon of civil solidarity from which the latter have been traditionally excluded.4 On the other hand, their new coding of prior outsiders as insiders will still need to make cultural sense and ring authentic in order to be persuasive. The cultural translation that goes into civil repair, in other words, happens within the chasm that opens up between breaching and conforming with the horizon of cultural expectations of a civil community and also unfolds under the Damocles’ sword of the reactions to be expected on the part of the defenders of the local social order who will mobilize to neutralize or reverse the breaches. While such a chasm constitutes a distinctively poietic moment in civil repair, it also identifies a space for courage. On one occasion, Arendt (1961: 156) noted that courage is “demanded of us by the very nature of the public realm’ because ‘in politics not life but the world is at stake.’” Indeed, this is apparent when we delve into the very micro-mechanics of civil translation. The horizon of cultural expectations that is breached in an exercise of civil repair, after all, makes up the ontology of the social world of a civil community and bears an extraordinary moral weight, as Garfinkel (1967) already recognized. The breadth of this cultural chasm between breach and conformity, in turn, crucially depends on how socially and culturally difficult it is to

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weave more encompassing forms of cross-group solidarity within a given context. In societies plagued by profound divisions and extreme levels of polarization, engaging in acts of civil repair that seek to include social groups into the civil community that were previously excluded from it may turn out to be quite costly for those who do so. Under such circumstances, people seeking to solidarize with members of outer groups may face a backlash from members of their own collective, who might come to see their gesture as a betrayal of ingroup solidarity. This situation may thus face the former with a dilemma. They may either go ahead with their act of cross-group solidarity and possibly sacrifice their social ties with members of their own group, or remain indifferent to the suffering of the members of other groups and thus put up with the moral responsibility for other people’s suffering that may be inherent in civil indifference. Furthermore, in social settings where cross-group solidarity has withered due to deep social divisions or extreme polarization, extending solidarity to certain outsiders may become not only socially problematic but also almost unimaginable. When this occurs, the chasm between cultural breach and conformity in civil repair widens up, as it pulls the breach further away from what might be otherwise expected by the members of a civil community. Navigating the space between breaching and fitting in while preparing to face the defensive responses on the part of the guardians of the local social order makes up a relevant dimension of courage in civil repair. Cultivating that courage, in turn, is about teaching the competence to move across that space. This book seeks to contribute to such cultivation by bringing into focus what that may actually entail. And by doing so, it also aligns with the recognition in the literature that competence matters in courageous acts: “The best preparation for courageous action is the preparation for action; competence and confidence in competence” (Rorty Oksenberg 1988: 303; in Miztal 2007: 77–78; see also Brandstaetter and Frey 2003; Frey et al. 2007; Jonas et al. 2007; Rachman 1978, 2004). Quite remarkably, the phenomenon of civil courage in social life has been overlooked by the civil society literature in spite of its relevance. As Swedberg (1999: 514) and Press (2018: 181) point out, social scientists have focused on why people obey and conform (Arendt 1963; Bauman 1989; Hilberg 1992; Hamilton and Kelman 1989; Milgram 1974; Zimbardo 2007) rather than on how they stand up, distance themselves

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from a hostile majority, and “rock the boat” (Said 1994: 55; in Miztal 2007: 34). Part of the reason for such neglect may have depended on the perception of courage “as an individualistic phenomenon driven by conscience” and thus impervious to sociological analysis (Presser 2018: 181). On the other hand, liberal scholars have also traditionally dismissed civil courage as old-fashioned (Shklar 1989) and instead stressed toleration, civility, compassion, and reasonableness (Scorza 2001). In democratic societies, they insist, laws, education, moral principles, and institutions do away with fear and thus with the need for courage (Robin 2000). In this book, we distance ourselves from such a posture. In democratic societies, courage is still necessary because behaving in a non-conformist manner may entail personal risks, difficulties, and dangers for those who decide to do so as they come out and take a public stance to contest a norm or a cultural representation in an effort at changing it (Merton [1949] 1968: 413–415; Schwan 2004: 113; Wallace 1978: 81). When civil translation aims at incorporating within a community the members of a social group that has traditionally been excluded from it, such translation almost regularly breaches the horizon of cultural expectations of that community, which may entail personal costs in the form of “derision, ostracism, loss of status, demotion, loss of job,” or even physical dangers (Miller 2000: 258). This is why, to navigate the cultural chasm between breach and conformity for the purpose of broadening that horizon, agents of civil repair are often bound to engage in acts of courage. And thus, to that end, they will need to draw from their commitment to the moral principles on which the civil community is based, from their awareness of the risks, costs, and dangers that such acts might entail, and from their willingness to endure them (Kidder 2005: 7). And while at it, they will need to face ambiguity, exposure, and, very possibly, loss (Kidder 2005: 130–131). Such acts of courage, in turn, inextricably intertwine civil and moral motives. To paraphrase Sontag (2003: 6), they are not carried out by agents of civil repair just because the latter want to be in the right or appease their own conscience and much less because they are confident that their action will succeed. They do so out of solidarity and they are inspired by the universalistic ideals of civil society (Swedberg 1999: 522). This is why it is relevant to take into consideration both literatures on civil and moral courage for the purpose of bringing into focus how this book moves their frontiers forward.

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Scholars working on civil and moral courage see acts of courage as the culmination of a process by which certain actors reinterpret their context, take responsibility for some wrongs, choose a path to repair, and finally do help (Fogelman 2002; Latané and Darley 1970). Along that path, they have found culture, society, and personality to matter in a variety of ways. Scholars working on righteous rescuers during the Holocaust, for example, emphasize their “universalistic perception of the needy” (Tec 1986: 154), their “love of humanity” and “universal sense of justice,”5 their universalistic view of their ethical obligations (Oliner and Oliner 1988), their strong sense of “inclusiveness” (Oliner and Oliner 1988: 175), and their capability of seeking in the victims human beings similar to themselves (Oliner and Oliner 1988: 144; cf. Fogelman 1994; Hallie 1994; London 1970; Tec 1986). Belief in the aspirational ideals of the civil sphere, in other words, works as a source of strength and, ultimately, of courage. Social locations, settings, networks, and institutions have also been looked at as potential factors of influence in acts of courage. The literature on righteous rescuers within the context of the Holocaust, for example, has looked into the influence of social class, occupational status, economic resources, gender, and political or religious affiliations and found that social class, economic capital, or occupational status are insufficient for determining actions of rescue,6 that the impact of gender7 and political affiliations8 is contradictory, and that the moral content of religious teachings rather than religious affiliation per se may be a relevant motivating factor in rescue decisions,9 particularly when such teachings insist on the importance of valuing other human beings.10 Some scholars have also considered the socially marginal position of the rescuers, their being at odds with their respective communities, and their adventurous lives11 as potential factors of influence, but they have concluded that none of these characteristics is representative of all righteous rescuers.12 Social networks, as well, have been recognized as significant in the mobilization of information, resources, and support for the actions of rescue (Sémelin et al. 2011: 8; Thalhammer et al. 2007). Some scholars, though, have insisted that courageous acts of rescue are the result of the structures of opportunity that are inherent in social networks as well as of chance and contingency (Moore 2010). In his contribution on civil courage, in turn, Swedberg (1999: 523) urges social scientists to take notice of the impact on civil courage of different institutional settings, such as schools, universities, corporations, families, and friends.

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As far as personality is concerned, scholars have emphasized the importance of such character traits as bravery, persistence, integrity, vitality, and strength of will (Peterson and Seligman 2004: 199; Rachman 2004: 169, 173; in Miztal 2007: 73; Sekerka and Bagozzi 2007; Sekerka et al. 2009). The literature on righteous rescuers during the Holocaust, in particular, has looked at the “expanded sense of duty of the rescuer resulting into their virtuous character” (Flescher 2000: 2), to their moral values and their altruistic dispositions (Tec 1986; Oliner and Oliner 1988), their empathy (Oliner and Oliner 1988; Tec 1986), and their capability of focusing on the helplessness of the victims. And they have even explored the parental model of moral conduct to which righteous rescuers were exposed in the course of their upbringing (Eztioni 1988; London 1970). Although, in this book, our contributors touch, to different degrees, different cultural, social, and psychological factors that these literatures have addressed, their focus is on the cultural work that courageous agents of civil repair engage in. And by concentrating on the intense meaningmaking processes that permeate civil dynamics in international migration, this book also adds to the growing literature in migration studies that acknowledges the role of culture (Jaworsky 2016), thus departing from a certain bias against it that over many decades characterized this field (see especially Levitt 2005, 2012), partly in reaction to the “culture of poverty” literature in the 1960s which was perceived to be blaming the victim (Levitt 2005).13

Our Cases of Civil Courage in International Migration Both scholars and activists understand that the defense of the civil core of our democracies crucially relies on the digging of multiple trenches around it, each of which needs to be occupied by citizens willing to endure some level of risk or sacrifice in order to defend it. In Western public culture, the Righteous Among the Nations have often risen to the status of iconic guardians of the last line of defense of humanity and civil ideals in society. Thus, it is not surprising to witness that scholars trying to make sense of moral and civil courage and civil society activists seeking to cultivate it have again and again turned to the exemplary stories of the Righteous Among the Nations to better understand how people may engage in acts of cross-group solidarity in the face of prohibitive personal costs and extreme danger and to inspire others to follow their footsteps,

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even at a great distance, by going down the rocky path to justice in the face of hostility on the part of the very members of their own community. The Righteous Among the Nations punctuated with flashes of light a historical time of darkness when, to paraphrase British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, the lamps had gone out all over Europe. Some were religious leaders, doctors, journalists, or social workers, like Bernhard Lichtenberg, Adélaïde Hautval, Odoardo Focherini, or Irena Sendler. Others were ordinary citizens like Berlin housewife Johanna Eck. Some acted alone, while other acted as a community, like in Le Chambon sur Lignon or in the Greek island of Zakynthos. Bernhard Lichtenberg, provost of the Cathedral of St. Hedwig in Berlin, reacted to the Nazi pogrom on Kristallnacht in his evening’s mass by solidarizing with the Jews. Later, in October 1942, he delivered a public prayer for the Jews being deported to death camps and urged his community to follow Christ’s call to “love thy neighbor.” He was denounced and reported to the authorities, tried in court, sentenced to two years of hard labor, and died on his way to the Dachau concentration camp.14 Down south in a Vichy-controlled region of southern France, psychiatrist Adélaïde Hautval was arrested and imprisoned for crossing the demarcation line as she sought to reach Paris and assist her dying mother. In prison, to show solidarity with Jewish detainees wearing a yellow patch, she pinned a yellow piece of paper on her clothes saying: “Friend of the Jews.” After being shipped to the Birkenau death camp and being tasked by the camp commander to serve as a doctor, she did not report the prisoners who fell ill with typhus, thereby saving them from immediate execution. After being transferred to Auschwitz, she refused to assist Dr. Eduard Wirths’ experiments on Jewish women as well as Dr. Mengele’s experiments on twins. As a result, she was sent back to Birkenau, later transferred to Ravensbrück, and, in the end, survived until the liberation.15 Further south, Odoardo Focherini, a journalist managing Italy’s Catholic newspaper, L’Avvenire d’Italia, started out in 1942 on his mission to save Jews by faking documentation and helping them cross the border into Switzerland. In March 1944, he was discovered, imprisoned, and deported to the Hersbruck concentration camp, where he died.16 Back north, Johanna Eck sheltered four Jews from Nazi prosecution in her small apartment. One of them, Elfriede Guttmann, managed to survive till the end of the war but died in June 1946, just before her scheduled migration to the United States. Eck remained at her bedside

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in the hospital till she passed away. Then, she inquired within the Jewish community about the names of her parents and brother who had died during the Holocaust, bought a gravestone with her own money, had it engraved with the names of Elfriede, her parents, and her brother, and had Elfriede buried in the Berlín-Weissensee cemetery.17 A few hundred miles east, Polish social worker Irena Sendler helped rescue 2500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto, placed them in convents and with non-Jewish families, and saved them from extermination. She was discovered, arrested, tried, and sentenced to death but the ˙ Zegota, the Council to Aid Jews, bribed the prison guards and she was released.18 Occasionally, such righteous acts were carried out by entire communities. In the village of Le Chambon sur Lignon in southeastern France, Pastor André Trocmé, leader of the local Protestant congregation and his villagers offered a sanctuary for hundreds of Jews fleeing the Nazis and their French collaborators,19 while in the island of Zakynthos, Metropolitan Bishop Dimitrios Chrysostomos refused to submit a list of the 275 members of the local Jewish community to the SS commander in charge. He hid them with the help of his fellow islanders in various rural villages and then handed in, instead, a list that included only his name and that of the Greek police chief of the island, Major Loukás Karrer.20 As Yad Vashem, the Israel Holocaust memorial center in Jerusalem, points out, during the Holocaust “bystanders were the rule, rescuers were the exception.” Only a few took upon themselves the responsibility of safeguarding the lives of Jews; thus, the title of Righteous Among the Nations was awarded to recognize almost exclusively this tiny minority. At those dark times, though, more people sought to distance themselves from the inhumanity that surrounded them and engaged in sporadic righteous acts, some of them involving minor risks, others greater ones: “Some people gave food to Jews, thrusting an apple into their pocket or leaving food where they would pass on their way to work. Others directed Jews to people who could help them; some sheltered Jews for one night and told them they would have to leave in the morning.”21 Throughout history and up to the present, many more people around the world have engaged in courageous acts of cross-group solidarity in a broad variety of contexts in which civil ideals and the care for humanity called for some urgent widening of the horizon of civil solidarity. The stories of some mimic more closely those of the Righteous Among the Nations, while others come closer to the ones of those who during the

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Holocaust stepped in but did not step all the way up. These stories altogether identify a field of righteous courageous action and a specific language of humanity, solidarity, and civility that begs for careful analysis. They are also threads in the broader fabric of collective memory, some tightly connected with one another, others still loose and waiting to be woven more tightly together. In many societies, the Righteous Among the Nations have become an icon that condenses an entire field of language and action. On occasion, the association of lesser-known stories with them has helped integrate the former into that tapestry of collective memory and has contributed to translate them and make them more relevant to Western audiences. Most interestingly, though, the use of such an icon in association with cases of righteous courageous action outside the context of the Holocaust that involved lesser risks and dangers, has played a useful role on one further front. Rather than cheapening the symbolic value of the Righteous Among the Nations, it has sought to realize its full social potential. By extending their aura onto less dramatic forms of moral and civil courage, after all, such associations have meant to increase the moral pull of the latter on their respective audiences within contexts and over issues in which acts of civil courage have been still too rare or all too shy. When successful, this has produced a welcome outcome. Scholars have found that moral courage is not only facilitated by competence, but also by repeated successful practice and experience (Rachman 2004: 173; Ruff and Korchin 1964). As a consequence, teasing citizens into less risky acts of civil courage may put them in a position to gain the experience and the self-confidence that is needed later on to engage in more daring ones. The iconic power of the Righteous Among the Nations, as a result, may have served the purpose of placing more people onto that very track of progression. Bearing this in mind, it is not surprising that the memory of the Righteous Among the Nations has been invoked in the public sphere in relation to courageous acts of cross-group solidarity over international migration. This is also the spirit with which this book presents the following eight cases of civil courage under that very frame. In Chapter 2, Volker Heins presents the Salaam Shalom Initiative, which emerged in late 2013 in Berlin around a small group of Jewish residents who were later joined by Muslims and others. The group is a loose network held together by face-to-face meetings, public debates, and social

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performances and features as its spokesperson Ármin Langer, a Hungarian Jew who was kicked out of the rabbinic seminary at the University of Potsdam after having harshly and publicly condemned the immigrationskeptical attitude of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. The chapter zooms into the enactment on the part of Salaam Shalom of its counternarrative against the artificial barriers between migrants with Jewish or Muslim backgrounds and sheds light over the sheer complexity of doing so against the background of the local cultural meanings attached to being a Jew, a Muslim, or a German. Heins stresses that Salaam Shalom engages in an affective politics of civil repair that complicates the dichotomy of “brotherhood and otherhood” by breaking down the umbrella categories of Germans and foreigners, Jews and Muslims. The articulation of a “transnation” that ensues from such effort becomes the very origin of righteous narrative interventions and plays an all-important role in the emergence and recognition of “righteousness” with regard to certain acts of cross-group solidarity. In Chapter 3, Werner Binder and Ana Miji´c explore the NGO Shalom Alaikum—Jewish Aid for Refugees in Vienna. Unlike its Berlin counterpart, Shalom Alaikum is dominated by Jewish women and has operated in a societal context that has been more hostile toward Muslim refugees than in the case of Germany. The work of the NGO is not only informed by cleavages in the Austrian civil discourse, but also by conflicts within the Jewish community in Vienna, where there are reservations about Muslim refugees regarding their potential anti-Semitism. Jewishness appears to be an important symbolic marker for the group, informing and legitimizing its work, drawing on the memory of the Holocaust and the experience of being a vulnerable minority in Austria. The authors illuminate how the NGO operates in such an increasingly hostile environment and how its members make sense of their work despite the adversities they face. In Chapter 4, Anthony Moran tells the story of Australian doctors advocating for asylum seekers, speaking out over the terrible conditions in migrant detention centers, and risking prison for doing so. The chapter explores their motivators, including visceral experiences with asylum seekers, the ethics of care, and the social and institutional resources, such as support by medical associations and broader social networks, which have inspired groups of doctors in their acts of righteousness. Moran stresses that the narratives of care and responsibility promoted by “righteous doctors” within broader networks of solidarity with asylum seekers provide resources to overcome civil indifference toward the suffering of others

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and may occasionally work toward tilting the balance over government policy in favor of an improved treatment of migrant detainees. In Chapter 5, Maria Luengo and Kafaa Msaed explore public narratives on migrant-rights advocates operating along Europe’s southern border with a particular focus on the stories of three journalists-cum-activists from Spain and Morocco—Helena Maleno, José Palazón, and Chakib Al Khayari. Against the background of increasing fragmentation and contestation over migration in European public debates, their stories have served as powerful sources for solidarity narratives, to such an extent that they have transcended national boundaries and generated public and media interest not only across Europe but also around the globe. The authors suggest that Moroccan journalist and human rights advocate Al Khayari, in particular, performed civil solidarity more successfully than the others, embodying deep ideals of justice, humanity, and inclusion before international audiences and effectively enacting their foreground scripts based on authenticity and courage. In Chapter 6, Carlo Tognato tells the story of coroner Sonia Bermúdez from a northern coastal town in Colombia. Since the early 1980s, Bermúdez has taken care of the unclaimed or unnamed dead processed by her office as well as the dead of poor families that were earlier unceremoniously disposed of in mass graves. She has attended to their bodies, built the coffins on her own dime, and clandestinely buried them in a terrain of her municipality, risking disciplinary sanctions or more. With the Venezuelan migration emergency, the fate of Venezuelan migrants dying in Colombia under the most destitute circumstances has fallen into the cracks of the policy instruments devised by Colombian authorities, international agencies, and civil society, which were almost exclusively designed to meet the needs of the living. Bermúdez has tried to fill that gap. The chapter explores how she has stepped up within a socio-cultural context that defies the practice of civil piety. In Chapter 7, Nelson Arteaga-Botello presents the case of Las Patronas, a group of homemakers that since the mid-1990s has provided food and assistance to Central American migrants passing through their community on top of the “Beast,” the train that crosses Mexico from the southern to the northern border. Although Las Patronas are now recognized nationally and internationally and in spite of their deeply Catholic motives, they have faced criticism and opposition, and still do, from their community as well as from some ecclesiastic authorities, which

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had excommunicated them. Arteaga-Botello stresses that, although over time the group has come to tap into the civil discourse of human rights to legitimize its acts before broader audiences, noncivil, religious motives and narratives still continue to play an important role in supporting and legitimizing the acts of cross-group solidarity that Las Patronas carry out in spite of the social costs associated with them. In Chapter 8, Argyro Nicolaou and Yiannis Papadakis address the case of KISA (Movement for Equality, Support, and Anti-Racism), the oldest and most-established NGO supporting migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees in Cyprus, and its co-founder and executive director, Doros Polycarpou, who worked for years in welfare services, protecting children and female victims of domestic violence. In the Cypriot public sphere, the dominance of the Cyprus Problem (referring back to the multiple conflicts leading to the island’s division) turns any insinuation that Greek Cypriots might oppress others into a politically and socially intolerable proposition that borders on the treacherous. Against such a background, KISA’s appeal to the trauma of becoming a refugee in relation to its assistance to migrants, which evokes the dominant public rhetoric Greek Cypriots use for themselves, unsettles some audiences and triggers institutional resistance or outright opposition on the part of the police, of unsympathetic politicians, of the island’s racist educational system, and of state institutions that have progressively dried up funding available for KISA’s activities. To bypass such obstacles, KISA has appealed to a transnational civil sphere for leverage, recognition, and support from foreign institutions. In Chapter 9, Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky unpacks how San Francisco turned into a sanctuary city, worked to foster inclusiveness among all its residents in a context of hostility and indifference, and battled to defend its status against the Trump administration’s repeated attacks on sanctuary cities. To this purpose, the author outlines the discursive contours of the narrative battle between the City of San Francisco and the Trump administration through the disaggregation of three themes. First, she elaborates the issue of public safety, manifesting primarily as protection from “aliens” on the side of the Trump administration and as equal protection from crime for all residents within the city of San Francisco’s story. Then, she looks at the ways the idea of prosperity or economic success is implied or explicitly invoked. And finally, she examines the role of a quintessential civil value, the rule of law, as enshrined in the US Constitution.

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Cultivating Civil Courage by Leveraging the Pedagogic Potential of Exemplary Stories Delving into such stories not only sheds light over the intense cultural work that goes into weaving cross-group solidarity with migrants, thereby contributing to sharpen our understanding of such civil process and potentially sustaining via increased cultural competence the exercise of civil courage in relation to international migration. The stories presented by our contributors in this book are also pedagogically useful on one further front. As Ignatieff (2013: 7) has observed, situations that call for moral courage do not only face individuals with the choice of siding with one camp or another. Rather, they also demand that they decide who they are. In other words, the deciding moral self is not a given… we are a mystery to ourselves and in moments of moral crisis, we ask: who, in this scene, do we wish to be? Whose values do we wish to enact? Moral action can serve as an affirmation of who we are, but it can also represent our wish to redeem ourselves in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Our first act of the imagination is to settle on which character we will play in the moral drama.

Although people who display moral courage have the capacity to stand alone (Fromm 1941: 173; Kennedy 1955: 4; in Press 2018: 183) and are indeed bound to be alone (Walzer 1970), curiously enough, they do not end up defining alone their role in that moral drama. Rather, they draw on the support of an internalized, imagined community of others who share their normative values, sympathize with their stance (Anderson 1983; Press 2018: 184; Staub 2003: 5) and with whom they remain in conversation (Taylor 1989: 37). Such community, in turn, may include exemplary figures from the past and the present as well as people who identify with their example of courage. Thus, the stories of civil courage presented in this book not only provide a background of collective representations that may grant plausibility to the exercise of cross-group solidarity within society in relation to international migration, particularly when divisions and polarization over this issue have made solidarity over it less imaginable. The characters of those stories and their sympathetic audiences that this book might also contribute to assemble make up that imagined community of others with a

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normative commitment to cross-group solidarity that may in turn inspire more acts of civil courage on the part of a broader circle of people along the lines of Ignatieff’s argument (Press 2018: 184; Staub 2003: 5). Carriers of civil repair, in other words, may thus engage with them in tacit inner conversations at a distance while deciding over the moral course of their actions and may turn to their stories for templates of the characters into which they may consider to constitute themselves in their own moral dramas of cross-group solidarity (Taylor 1989). That said, we are not naïve about the fact that to inscribe our stories within that community more is needed than merely laying them out in a book. To realize their full pedagogic potential, it is necessary to deploy them across a variety of institutional scenarios beyond the scientific one, such as the aesthetic, the educational, the religious, the media, the legal, and the administrative. In each of them, in turn, these stories will need to be performed in a convincing manner before a broad spectrum of relevant audiences in order to make them resonate with the latter and exercise sufficient moral and social traction on them (Alexander 2003). Though this book does not go that far, it takes one first step into that direction by providing a set of scripts that civil society activists, educators, cultural producers, religious leaders, lawyers, and civil servants may later build on in their own practice. Different initiatives around the world reaffirm the pedagogic potential of exemplary stories for the purpose of cultivating civil courage. In the UK, for example, the Anne Frank Trust designed and delivered a videocurriculum entitled “Moral Courage: Who’s Got It?” to teach courage to young students, establishing an award for moral courage to recognize educators, students, or community members “who decide to risk acting with moral courage to confront bigotry, racism, and other forms of injustice head on” (Kidder 2005: 232).22 The school program starts out with Anne Frank’s story and then relates it to “contemporary issues of prejudice and discrimination.” Its Ambassadors Program selects and trains peer-guides that later deliver presentations to their local primary schools on issues of prejudice and discrimination. Similarly, the Civil Courage training program run by the Mauthausen Committee in Austria builds on the stories of various courageous individuals from the Holocaust, the US Civil Rights Movement, and beyond for the purpose of turning “noninvolved spectators into helpers” and empowering “people to intervene in ‘unpleasant’ public situations … in which people are attacked, unconscious, acting aggressively or causing fear.”23

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In the United States, in turn, the Giraffe Heroes Project tells stories of courageous individuals to K-12 students. Following the motto “Stick your neck out for the common good,” the curriculum has produced books, audiotapes, and videos to tell the stories of more than nine hundred “Giraffes” (Kidder 2005: 232–233). This program asks students to hear those stories, then tell the story of local heroes in their own communities, and finally become the story by directly engaging local problems under the framework of service-learning projects. Similarly, the Foundation for Moral Courage has produced 12 educational television programs about ordinary individuals who engaged in acts of courage, featuring stories about the Righteous Among the Nations and of courageous figures in relation to the Soviet Gulags or the more recent Balkan wars in Macedonia and Croatia. In 2001, the Foundation established a film studentmentoring program at the School of Fine Arts in Boston College that encourages film students to get involved in the production of films concerning acts of moral courage. This resulted in the production of over 250 films during the past 18 years.24 So far, this introduction has laid out two reasons why the analysis of the intense cultural boundary work involved in the pursuit of civil repair may contribute to sustain civil courage in international migration. First, it may cultivate the cultural competence that agents of civil repair may need to more confidently navigate the chasm between breach and conformity that often opens up in civil translation as they seek to broaden the horizon of social inclusion within society while expecting the defensive reactions of the guardians of the local social order. And second, it may put scholars in the position of telling stories of courageous actors that agents of civil repair on the ground may use as moral templates for the purpose of cultivating civil courage among their fellow citizens. The last part of this introduction will address an epistemological implication that the study of civil courage might have on civil sphere theory and its practice. That is, scholars might have to turn to intervention in order to fully grasp their object of analysis. After clarifying why this might be the case and how explanation might coexist side by side with intervention within civil sphere theory, it will be possible to understand why this book constitutes the first leg in a broader exercise of civil intervention.

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Understanding Civil Courage and the Use of Intervention Whenever in society the practice of cross-group solidarity reaches the point of defying public imagination, often as a result of deep sociopolitical divisions and extreme polarization, narrative interventions geared to restore its imaginability inevitably breach societal expectations of cultural appropriateness and elicit defensive reactions on the part of the defenders of the local order. Civil courage commonly occurs right in the midst of the social space that suddenly opens up between such breaches and the anticipation of those reactions. By engaging in narrative intervention alongside agents of civil repair on the ground as they engage in civil translation, scholars may have a chance to observe from within that social space and gain a more intimate exposure through that window to the universe of experience in which civil courage manifests itself as the local horizon of opportunities, constraints, and risks becomes more apparent and comes to bite on those who experience it in the first person. Narrative intervention, in other words, becomes a channel for enhanced observation and allows researchers to decenter their site of analysis toward the very social location of agents of civil repair whose civil courage they seek to understand. Though this book does not directly engage in such an intervention, it sets the stage for it. It gathers a series of stories about courageous civil agents and links it from its very title to Holocaust memory by extending the category of the Righteous Among the Nations to the context of international migration and by using the broader category of the “righteous in international migration” as a “family resemblance,” and as a frame, which brings together stories of courageous agents of civil repair that in this book explicitly refer to the Holocaust with others that do not. Together with civil activists on the ground, scholars may later deploy and pilot such stories and their frame while connecting them to courageous acts of cross-group solidarity by local agents of civil repair. Doing so will allow them to assess to what extent that narrative intervention may help increase the moral and social traction of those courageous acts in the eyes of their audiences and how far it might inspire civil courage among the latter along the lines suggested by Ignatieff and Taylor. This may not only allow scholars to get a closer look at the fine mechanics of civil translation in the weaving of cross-group solidarity within society. Engaging in

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such intervention may also place them right in the very eye of the contentious struggles over civil translation where civil courage may actually occur, thereby providing them with a better vantage point for observation. Over the years, the category of the Righteous Among the Nations has been extended on a variety of occasions beyond its context of origin. For example, it was evoked to facilitate the witnessing of rescue within the context of genocide in Armenia,25 Rwanda,26 and Bosnia,27 in relation to internal conflicts in Argentina (Casiro 2016), Chile (Bonnefoy 2016), Guatemala (Brett 2016; Esparza et al. 2016), Colombia (Duncan 2017; Escobar and Tamayo 2016; Giraldo 2016; Guerra 2016; Redacción IPad 2016; Tognato 2016a, b, c; Valencia 2017; Velásquez 2016; Wasserman 2017), and Sri Lanka (Hoole 2009; Stokes Dreier 2009) and with reference to massacres of Sikhs (Mander 2001) and Muslims (Mander 2009) in India. Analysts have seen value in echoing the category of the Righteous Among the Nations outside its semantic context of origin for the purpose of “confronting the role of passive bystanders” (Dudai 2012: 2), to push perpetrators to take responsibility for their actions (Rosoux 2006: 493), and to undermine the binary logic of identity that homogenizes people from other groups (Halpern and Weinstein 2004: 567, 579)28 through blanket prejudices and stereotypes29 and that ultimately dehumanizes them to the point of justifying aggression against them (Aiken 2010; Verdeja 2009: 63). At the same time, scholars have also cautioned about the risks associated with deploying the linkage between the Righteous Among the Nations and rescuers. The framing of the righteous as national hero figures in Rwanda, for example, occasionally backfired and triggered resentment (Rosoux 2006: 494, 498), bitterness, and alienation on the part of the victims, thereby hindering the witnessing of the acts of cross-group solidarity that were carried out by rescuers (Dudai 2012: 29). Victims, after all, often resisted the idea of their agency being underplayed. They rejected their being cornered into the role of pathetic victims by contrast with heroic rescuers (Dudai 2012), and often insisted on the need to represent rescuers just as people who maintained their humanity in the midst of atrocities (Mujawayo and Belhaddad 2005: 14). Some observers also remark that within certain contexts of violence the categories of perpetrator and rescuer may blur (Rosoux 2006: 495; Waldorf 2009), thereby further reducing the margin for cultural resonance between the category

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of the Righteous Among the Nations and that of rescuer (Waldorf 2009: 113), while others recognize that in other settings rescuers often came from the victims’ camp, unlike the Righteous Among the Nations who generally belonged to the bystanders’ camp (Blustein 2016: 165–166; Escobar and Tamayo 2016). Scholars have also warned that within certain societal contexts, semantic constraints may limit, or even hijack, the performativity of the cultural resonance between the category of the Righteous Among the Nations and that of rescue, on the one hand, and courageous actions by civil actors on the ground, on the other (Escobar and Tamayo 2016: 125–126). Extensions of the category of the Righteous Among the Nations to the field of international migration have so far been quite sporadic. Bearing in mind the risks and limits inherent in such extensions, this book will hopefully contribute to anchoring through them these stories of civil courage in international migration more firmly into our public spheres at a time at which it might be increasingly urgent to do so. Some analysts of civil dynamics might feel at this point that such a move toward intervention might distract them from their scholarly vocation. They shouldn’t. Their genuine commitment to the ideals of the civil sphere already exudes from the pages of their writings. There are times, though, when the instantiation of those very ideals in our societies becomes compromised to a point that might demand more action. That is when Martin Luther King, Jr.’s call to be true to what we said on paper rings louder than ever (King, Jr. 1968). Nesting intervention into the analysis of civil life as we seek to bring civil courage squarely into its focus may provide one route to do so by further cultivating a more robust disposition for civil action among students of democracy and civil society.

Notes 1. His prosecution marked an escalation in the US government’s crackdown on migrant rescuers who in the previous 15 years had walked the Arizona desert in search of missing migrants or for the remains of the dead and regularly left jugs of water, canned beans, and blankets in the spots where migrants were known to cross. See Jordan (2019). 2. “Jewish Activists Arrested After Protesting Migrant Detention on Capitol Hill.” 2010. Democracynow, July 10. Retrieved October 17 (https://www.democracynow.org/2019/7/10/headlines/jewish_ activists_arrested_after_protesting_migrant_detention_on_capitol_hill).

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3. On the complexities associated with the cultural use of Holocaust memory in Israel, see Alexander and Dromi (2011). 4. Breaching the horizon of the cultural expectations of their civil community entails enacting cultural performative repertoires that do not belong to it. The breaches may not only depart from expected pragmatic moves within its respective settings. They may also introduce unexpected actors, scripts, means of symbolic production, stages, audiences, background cultural representations, or sources of social power. Or they may recombine expected ones in unexpected ways. Furthermore, they may also disrupt the cultural performative repertoires of reproach, correction, condemnation, and stigmatization, by which local actors seek to repair the local social order in response to a breach. See Tognato (2020). 5. Samuel Oliner in Geras (1995: 158). 6. Oliner and Oliner (1988: 127–129) and Tec (1986: 115–119, 127–128). See also Manfred Wolfson in Baron ([1985] 1986: 186). 7. Friedman (1978) found that women were driven to rescue more than men, while other authors have yielded contradictory findings in this respect, thereby leaving the influence of gender undetermined. 8. Bauer et al. (1989: 76) indicated that political affiliation to left-wing groups mattered in rescue and Tec found some corroboration of that. Oliner and Oliner (1988: 159–160), on the contrary, found no correlation between rescue and political affiliation. 9. Tec (1986: 137–139, 145–149), Oliner and Oliner (1988: 155–157), Baron ([1985] 1986: 239–240), Oliner and Oliner (1989: 510–513), and Paldiel (1989: 520; in Geras 1995: 157). 10. Huneke (1989: 489–490; in Geras 1995: 158). 11. Perry London (1970), Huneke ([1981] 1982: 146), Oliner (1989: 482), Oliner (1984: 135), Tec (1986: 152, 154, in note 21; in Geras 1995: 172). 12. Baron ([1985] 1986: 243–244) and Oliner and Oliner (1988: 176) contradict this point on social marginality. Paldiel (1989: 520), in turn, objects to the idea that an adventurous trajectory might be a predictor of a disposition to engage in rescue. 13. I am grateful to Nadya Jaworsky for bringing this to my attention. 14. “Bernhard Lichtenberg.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/lichtenberg.html). 15. “Adélaïde Hautval.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-auschwitz/ hautval.asp). 16. “Odoardo Focherini.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (http://db.yadvashem.org/righteous/family.html?language=en&itemId= 4014852).

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17. “Johanna Eck.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (https:// www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous-women/eck.asp). 18. “Irena Sendler.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (https:// www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/sendler.html). 19. “André and Magda Trocmé, Daniel Trocmé.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/ stories/trocme.html). 20. “Under the Wings of the Church: Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Dimitrios Chrysostomos.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/righteous/ chrysostomos.asp). 21. “About the Righteous.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/about-the-righteous.html). 22. See also the Anne Frank Trust School Program at https://annefrank.org. uk/education/schools-programme/. 23. “Zivilcourage - Trainings.” n.d. Mauthausen Komitee Österreich. Retrieved October 17, 2019 (https://www.mkoe.at/jugendprojekte/ zivilcourage-trainings). 24. See website for The Foundation for Moral Courage at http://www. moralcourage.us/. 25. See Hovannisian (1992: 173, 197; in Dudai 2012: 5). See also Miller and Miller (1993) and Shirinian (2015). 26. See African Rights (2002), GARIWO, PRI (2002), PRI (2004a, b), Chrétien (2000), Vidal (2001), Staub (2003), Hatzfeld (2003), de Vulpian (2004), George (2006), and Rosoux (2006: 492, 493). 27. See GARIWO and Kritz and Finci (2001). 28. In Dudai (2012: 21–22). 29. Halpern and Weinstein (2004: 569; in Dudai 2012: 3, 13, 21–22).

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Suedfeld, Peter, and Stefanie de Best. 2008. “Value Hierarchies of Holocaust Rescuers and Resistance Fighters.” Genocide Studies and Prevention 3(1): 31– 42. Swedberg, Richard. 1999. “Civil Courage: The Case of Knut Wicksell.” Theory and Society 28(4): 501–528. Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tec, Nechama. 1986. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi Occupied Poland. New York: Oxford University Press. Thalhammer, Kristina E., et al. 2007. Courageous Resistance. The Power of Ordinary People. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Thompson, A. C. 2019. “Inside the Secret Border Patrol Facebook Group Where Agents Joke About Migrant Deaths and Post Sexist Memes.” ProPublica, July 1. Retrieved October 21, 2019. https://www.propublica. org/article/secret-border-patrol-facebook-group-agents-joke-about-migrantdeaths-post-sexist-memes. Todorov, Tzvetan. 2003. The Fragility of Goodness: Why Bulgaria’s Jews Survived the Holocaust. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tognato, Carlo. 2016a. “Los justos en el conflicto armado colombiano.” La Silla Vacía, June 30. Retrived October 21, 2019. http://lasillavacia.com/blogs/ los-justos-en-el-conflicto-armado-colombiano-56299. Tognato, Carlo. 2016b. “Paz sin indiferencia, con indignación.” La Silla Vacía, December 10. Retrieved October 21, 2019. http://lasillavacia.com/blogs/ paz-sin-indiferencia-con-indignacion-59062. Tognato, Carlo. 2016c. “Las FFAA (y Mindefensa): ¿Una oportunidad perdida?” El Espectador, December 16. Retrieved October 21, 2019. http:// www.elespectador.com/opinion/ffaa-y-mindefensa-una-oportunidad-perdida. Tognato, Carlo. 2020. “Radical Protest on a University Campus: Performances of Transition in Colombia.” In Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Farhad Khosrokhavar, and Trevor Stack. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42–69. Valencia Restrepo, Darío. 2017. “Los justos en el conflicto armado colombiano.” El Mundo, January 9. Retrieved October 21, 2019. http://www.elmundo. com/noticia/Los-justos-en-el-conflicto-armado-colombiano/44655. Velásquez, Carlos Alfonso. 2016. “¿Justos en el conflicto armado?” El Nuevo Siglo, December 5. Retrieved October 21, 2019. http://www.elnuevosiglo. com.co/articulos/12–2016-justos-en-el-conflicto-armado. Verdeja, Ernesto. 2009. Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Vidal, Claudine. 2001. “Les commémorations du génocide au Rwanda. Violence symbolique, mémorisation forcée et histoire officielle.” Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 613 (March–April): 575–592.

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Waldorf, Lars. 2009. “Revisiting Hotel Rwanda: Genocide Ideology, Reconciliation, and Rescuers.” Journal of Genocide Research 11(1):101–125. Wallace, James D. 1978. Virtues and Vices. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Walzer, Michael. 1970. Obligations: Essays on Disobedience, War and Citizenship. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wasserman, Moisés. 2017. “Los justos.” El Tiempo, January 5. Retrieved October 21, 2019. http://www.eltiempo.com/opinion/columnistas/moiseswasserman/los-justos-moises-wasserman-columna-el-tiempo-54528. Zhou, Naaman. 2018. “UN: ‘Health Crisis’ Demands Closure of Australia’s Offshore Detention Centres.” The Guardian, October 13. Retrieved October 21, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/13/unhealth-crisis-demands-closure-of-australias-offshore-detention-centres. Zimbardo, P. 2007. The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil. New York: Random House.

PART I

Righteous, Between Yesterday and Today

CHAPTER 2

The Righteous of the Transnation: Jews, Muslims, and a Politics of Friendship in Berlin Volker M. Heins

It is before all things useful to men to associate their ways of life, to bind themselves together with such bonds as they think most fitted to gather them all into unity, and generally to do whatsoever serves to strengthen friendship. (Spinoza, Ethics, Part IV, Appendix 12)

When, in 2017, the German police began to systematically collect and analyze data on anti-Muslim violence in the country, at least 950 attacks on Muslims and Islamic institutions such as mosques were counted that year. The attacks included arson offenses, death threats, hate messages on walls and buildings, assaults on women wearing headscarves, and using pigs’ blood to defile places of worship (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2018). In the same year, about 2200 asylum seekers and more than 300 refugee shelters were attacked (Süddeutsche Zeitung 2018a). While none of this violence was officially condoned, a case can be made that the strident anti-immigrant rhetoric throughout Europe and the West prepared the ground for violent action against perceived outsiders (Heins

V. M. Heins (B) Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_2

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and Unrau 2019). At the same time, when the state used force against migrants without papers, these actions were not only defended by politicians and journalists, but openly celebrated. In July 2018, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer gleefully remarked that 69 Afghans had been deported right on his 69th birthday. Then, it became known that one of these former asylum seekers committed suicide upon arrival in Kabul. Other European politicians showed their contempt for refugees in even more drastic ways. Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, for instance, blithely called African refugees, who were pulled from small boats in the Mediterranean Sea by private rescue ships, an unwelcome cargo of “human flesh,” a term he had used before when he called a refugee accommodation center in Sicily a “supermarket of human flesh” (cited in Rame 2018).1 The exclusionary enthusiasm driving increasingly restrictive immigration policies is underpinned by the widespread trend of ridiculing compassion and solidarity with migrants and their supporters in civil society. Of course, the persistent attempts to marginalize and dehumanize refugees and migrants or their descendants meet with considerable resistance from social movements, political parties, civil associations, churches, and other institutions. Sometimes even unaffiliated individuals with no organizational backing have acted against what they considered to be cruel and unjust. For example, between 2013 and 2016, a former senior official at the German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, identified under German privacy laws only as Ulrike B., granted asylum to allegedly more than 1200 applicants without valid legal reasons for their approval. (The figure was later corrected downward.) Insisting that “humans” were more important than “numbers,” she singlehandedly approved asylum applications of Yazidis in particular, a persecuted Kurdish religious minority living mainly in northern Iraq and northern Syria. After having been caught and indicted, Ulrike B. publicly defended her actions as motivated by altruistic reasons (Süddeutsche Zeitung 2018b). Around the same time, the French public was stirred by a number of cases involving ordinary citizens committing what aid groups have sarcastically called a “crime of solidarity.” Several citizens living in the FrenchItalian border region were taken to court on charges of having aided undocumented African migrants to cross the border from Italy and for having sheltered them. This is illegal under French law. But a 2013 law allows nominally illegal actions for migrants in need, if the aid is given freely as a gift and without profit, and if the aid is necessary to protect

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their “dignity and physical integrity.” On these grounds, French courts have acquitted the pensioner Martine Landry and the olive farmer Cédric Herrou, among others, of the accusation of having helped the wrong people for the wrong reasons. In both cases the judges referred to the French “principle of fraternité” which overrides other legal considerations (Le Monde 2018). This paper explores another case of a controversial civil association engaging in a politics of friendship between citizens and migrants, and between migrants from different backgrounds in Berlin, Germany. In presenting the results of a case study, I seek to clarify the sources, contexts, and meanings of righteousness in a particular, localized conflict over international migration. The story I am going to tell, like the stories mentioned above, certainly includes much that is quite extraordinary. But I do not intend to confine the attribute of righteousness only to those individuals who risk going to jail for their actions. For the purposes of this paper, I suggest that to qualify as righteous, persons or groups must meet three requirements: they must connect with an outgroup, whose members are marginalized and discriminated against, in a spirit of solidarity; in doing so, they must be prepared to take a risk by alienating or antagonizing the mainstream of the larger group (the nation or the religious community) they belong to, or are perceived to belong to; and they must act without the intention to reap financial benefits from helping others (unlike, for example, commercial human smugglers). In light of this working definition, and building on Jeffrey Alexander’s conception of civil repair (Alexander 2006) as well as on Jacques Derrida’s political philosophy of friendship (Derrida 1997), I outline and contextualize the story of the Salaam-Shalom Initiative, which emerged in late 2013 in the German capital around a small group of Jewish residents who were later joined by Muslims and others. Almost two years later, the European refugee crisis reached its peak. During this crisis, Salaam-Shalom made headlines through a series of interventions aimed at combining a politics of openness toward the unexpected wave of asylum seekers with its broader agenda of improving the relations between migrant minorities in Germany. In what follows, I begin by considering some of the context and consequences of the European refugee crisis of 2015 and the nonroutine politics it triggered in Germany. It is important to realize that this crisis almost instantly morphed from a mundane event into an evocative symbol that gave rise to radically opposed narratives of good and evil. These narratives

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divided not only majority Germans but also the immigrant population and their descendants. In the second part of paper, I move on to examine the Salaam-Shalom Initiative in more detail. “Salaam-Shalom” is a name used by a range of different civil associations and networks across Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. All of them are engaged in improving Jewish–Muslim relations (Firestone 2005). The Berlin-based group is a loose network held together by face-to-face meetings, public debates, and social performances. Only recently has it considered establishing a more formal structure. A key role is played by the young and media-savvy co-founder and spokesperson, Ármin Langer, a Hungarian Jew who was kicked out of the rabbinic seminary at the University of Potsdam after having harshly and publicly condemned the immigrationskeptical attitude of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. In the third part, I explore the counter-narrative and some of the ways in which it is enacted by Salaam-Shalom against what the activists describe as artificial barriers between migrants with Jewish or Muslim backgrounds in Berlin and elsewhere. My central point is that Salaam-Shalom, like other multicultural solidarity movements in contemporary society, is engaged in an affective politics of civil repair that complicates the dichotomy of “brotherhood and otherhood” (Alexander 2006: 22) by breaking down the umbrella categories of Germans and foreigners, Jews and Muslims. What I call, following Bill Ashcroft, the “transnation”—a cultural field populated by people living in between different nations—is not so much the result of righteous narrative interventions, but rather their very origin. The conclusion focuses on the implications of my case study for civil sphere theory which can be developed in such a way as to get a grip on the exclusion of people not only from the civil sphere, but from access to citizenship and the very territory of modern democracies.2

Meaning-Making Around the Refugee Crisis Many advocates of a liberal immigration regime have rejected the term “refugee crisis” to characterize the situation in Europe in 2015 when unprecedented numbers of migrants tried to reach European shores. The term seems to suggest that European societies were faced with “too many” migrants, or with migrants from incompatible cultures. It also seems to lay the blame for the problems of incorporating new migrants exclusively on the migrants themselves. However, it can also be used to describe a crisis not caused by migrants but afflicting them. When the

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German government, supported by large sections of civil society, decided in the fall of 2015 to keep Germany’s borders open to large numbers of asylum seekers pouring in from Austria, the goal was twofold: to avoid the unnecessary suffering of migrants and their families who technically—according to the so-called Dublin III Regulation of the European Union—should have applied for asylum in Greece or Italy; and to avoid making their suffering worse by using massive force at the borders. The rationale behind Germany’s unilateral decision to adopt a temporary open-arms policy toward refugees was to end what otherwise might have evolved into the worst humanitarian crisis on the European continent since World War II. The mass movement of refugees across Europe was indeed a crisis, but a crisis caused mainly by unresponsive or shortsighted European governments. Thousands of people drowned in the Mediterranean, the conditions for refugees arriving in Italy or Greece became unbearable, and Europe’s asylum system began to implode as desperate migrants took the western Balkan route to reach countries such as Austria, Germany, and Sweden. Many got stuck in Hungary where they were unwanted. In the first days of September 2015, shocking images of chaos and misery at Budapest’s international railway station were flooding the news media, showing thousands of refugees languishing without any official assistance. Then, droves of migrants set off on foot toward Austria and Germany, and the Hungarian government decided to send buses to transport migrants to the border with Austria. Germany, in particular, became something like an overflow valve and the most sought-after final destination for a mixed flow of refugees and economic migrants, mostly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but also from sub-Saharan Africa. There is yet another sense in which we can speak of a European refugee crisis. From the perspective of cultural sociology, the situation created by the sudden arrival of almost one million refugees in Germany between July 2015 and March 2016 led to what Alexander (2003: 157), writing in a different context, has called a “fundamental” or “deep crisis.” It was a deep crisis in the sense that the influx and presence of large numbers of refugees from outside of Europe aroused and moved the whole of German society, although society was not moved uniformly in one direction only. The depth of the crisis was not due to the mere fact of large numbers of migrants arriving from across the Mediterranean Sea or overland through Southeast Europe. Rather, this fact was interpreted as opening a

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period of intense social drama in which the fundamental values of society were at stake. Much of the drama was sparked early on by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s response to domestic and international critics of her refugee policy. In a rare emotional moment in the fall of 2015, she told the press, “If we have to apologize for showing a friendly face in an emergency, then this is no longer my country” (quoted in Kornelius 2015). This remarkable comment implied that even for the highest representatives of the second German republic, loyalty to the country should be contingent on even higher principles of humanity—a claim that was, of course, furiously rejected by the political right. Merkel’s comment helped to frame the refugee crisis right from the beginning as something that touches upon the very legitimacy of the German republic and the European Union. Public opinion confirmed this dramatic perception. Throughout society, people held strong views on what was happening before their eyes. The country was split between those who saw the admission of the refugees as a catastrophic deviation from the law and the most sacred values of Europe, and those who believed that they were witnessing an unprecedented fulfillment of the ideals of transnational civil solidarity. While anti-immigrant sentiments were running high, for a short period, an astonishing 66% of Germans supported the decision of the government to admit an unknown number of asylum seekers.3 However short-lived, this statistical majority immediately crystallized into a multicultural “welcome culture” for refugees, composed of millions of individuals engaged in practices of solidarity and gift-giving (Heins and Unrau 2018). This culture permeated sections of the population from different ideological backgrounds, different age groups, and towns and cities of different sizes throughout the country (Hamann and Karakayali 2016). It is important to note that among the activists and volunteers of the welcome culture, many had come to Germany as immigrants themselves, or were descendants of immigrants. Muslims, in particular, were deeply involved in volunteering for refugees, both individually and at the community level.4 By the end of 2015, Muslim communities across the country had recruited more than one thousand volunteers, including imams, who facilitated the communication between refugees and government agencies, taught German classes, trained and sent out “integration pilots” who assisted migrants in everyday life, collected and donated clothes and other household items, and chaperoned the sick to Arabicspeaking doctors, many of which voluntarily worked long extra hours. In

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all of this, Islamic institutions, like other civil associations, always worked in two directions: helping refugees to cope with the new cultural environment, and lobbying established institutions to adjust to the specific needs of the newcomers. To be sure, amid the generosity there were disgruntled voices and objections to the assistance offered to refugees even within the Muslim community, but there is no evidence that Muslims practicing solidarity with refugees faced a massive backlash from members of their own community. Similarly, majority Germans did not have to muster extraordinary courage to solidarize with the new outgroup of refugees. On the contrary, in most places and for a long time, they could feel like members of the moral mainstream and were mostly viewed in a favorable light by the media, the business community, and state authorities. At this general level, then, there was little need for righteousness, if we understand righteousness as involving the willingness to take a personal risk by alienating or antagonizing the mainstream of the larger group a person belongs to. For this reason, I think it is more promising to narrow the focus of my inquiry by taking a closer look at the Jewish communities in Germany, or prominent voices within these communities, who were reluctant to join the general enthusiasm for welcoming refugees. On September 15, 2015, the New York-based progressive Jewish magazine Forward published an article asking “As Berlin Opens Arms to Refugees, Why Are German Jews Silent?” (Goldmann 2015). Since the Jewish community is increasingly diverse and even divided, the reasons for this relative silence were manifold. Several news reports suggested that many Jewish citizens were concerned about the fact that most of the migrants who came (and continue to come) to Europe hail from Muslim-majority countries, where antiSemitism figures prominently in state propaganda, and where Holocaust denial as well as belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are widespread. For these and other reasons, most Jews in Germany were, in fact, silent, at least at the beginning of the crisis.5 This silence is perhaps also the reason why hardly anybody invoked the Holocaust in the metaphorical and universalizing way in which it had been used, for instance, during the campaigns of ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and the Kosovo war (Alexander 2002: 47–49). Given the flexibility and free-floating character of the Holocaust as a symbol of evil, it would not have been entirely pointless to analogize the situation of millions of displaced refugees in squalid camps in Libya and Jordan or of persecuted populations throughout the Middle East with the situation of European Jews fleeing the Nazis.

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In fact, former US President Barack Obama made precisely this comparison at a ceremony in December 2015, when he addressed a crowd of newly naturalized American citizens: “In the Syrian seeking refuge today, we should see the Jewish refugee of World War II” (cited in Ha’aretz 2015). Accordingly, blocking these refugees from entering safe countries would amount to a gross case of passive injustice, reminiscent of the politics of Allied governments who were bystanders to the Holocaust when they prevented the victims of Nazi persecution from seeking refuge in their countries (see, for example, Abella and Troper 1991).6 Unlike in the United States, however, almost no attempt was made in Germany to justify the acceptance of refugees by referring to the Holocaust as a universal symbol of absolute evil. We will shortly see that at least on one occasion a member of the Salaam-Shalom Initiative was making this connection, but this was an exception.7 In general, only a few voices from the margins of the civil sphere commented on imagined connections or parallels between the refugee crisis and the Holocaust. One example is the small, openly Islamophobic monthly Jüdische Rundschau, published in German and Russian, which ran an angry article against Obama’s use of the Holocaust symbol (Welner 2016). Another example is Karl Lagerfeld, the recently deceased former creative director of Chanel and Fendi, who was also famous for his eccentric personality and acid tongue. In November 2017, he said in a French television interview, “One cannot — even if there are decades between them — kill millions of Jews so you can bring millions of their worst enemies in their place” (cited in Safronova 2017). Taken literally, this provocative statement not only rejects the metaphorical extension of the Holocaust to include other experiences such as the plight of refugees from the Middle East. It also suggests that refugees who made it to Europe are the “worst enemies” of the Jews. And it bizarrely insinuates that Germany’s short-lived open borders policy was undertaken with the intention to replace millions of Jews killed in the Holocaust with people who are as evil as the Nazis, historically the “worst enemies” of the Jews. In any case, there was very little applause for Lagerfeld from the German–Jewish community. Only opinion writers of the Berlin-based Jüdische Rundschau endorsed and amplified Lagerfeld’s comment. I mention these fringe voices because they are symptomatic for the growing pluralization of the Jewish community in Germany, which mirrors the global trend toward the emergence of new Jewish cultures, from both the left and the right (Aviv and Shneer 2005). Until 1990,

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West Germany’s tiny Jewish community of less than 30,000 mostly older people was very close to successive German governments. According to the historian Anthony Kauders, Jews who had returned from exile were seen and saw themselves as a “gift” to Germany, because their peaceful existence seemed to show to the outside world that the country was well on its way to shed its global pariah status and become a normal democracy again (Kauders 2007: Chap. 4). While the Jewish community vouched for the civil and democratic credentials of Germany, patronage and philosemitism including “philo-Zionism” (Ó Dochartaigh 2007) were the gifts it received in return from Germany’s political elite. This constellation changed with the massive immigration of roughly 200,000 Jews from the former Soviet Union between 1989 and 2003. Outside of Israel, Germany had become the second most attractive destination for Jewish immigrants, after the United States, which received 378,000 immigrants (Aviv and Shneer 2005: 35). The first change introduced by the newcomers in Germany, who were officially classified as “refugees,” was a decentering of the Holocaust memory. Many Russian-speaking Jews did not see themselves primarily as sons and daughters of victims of the Holocaust, but rather as descendants of the victors of Stalin’s “Great Patriotic War” against Nazi Germany.8 The power of this new collective memory led to controversies and divisions among local Jewish communities who always had been loyal to the idea of “the West.” Instead of a strictly victim-centered and, at the same time, conciliatory way of commemorating the Holocaust together with representatives of the German state, the newly arrived Jews from the East often insisted on celebrating the Russian Victory Day on May 9, complete with the singing of old battle songs and hoisting the Russian flag, to commemorate the surrender of the German army in 1945 (Koerber 2017: 38–39). The second change was that most Russian-speaking Jews, once they had crossed the border into Germany, did not even pretend to fit the image of the persecuted minority longing for a life of freedom. Unlike “sacred” migrants fleeing persecution, they were soon regarded only as “profane” migrants who came for economic reasons, having used their Jewish identity as a mere tool to enter Western Europe. This led to considerable frustration both among German authorities and the Jewish communities who together had advocated Jewish immigration as a way of strengthening authentic Jewish life in Germany (Koerber 2017: 33–34).

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Righteousness and the “New Jews” But there were more setbacks to the project of reestablishing Jewish life in Germany. In August 2012, Rabbi Daniel Alter, who soon after became the anti-Semitism officer of Berlin’s Jewish Community, was accosted by a group of young, allegedly “Arab-looking” men in a middle-class residential area in Berlin. They asked him in the presence of his small daughter whether he was Jewish. When he responded in the affirmative, the men started beating him and broke his cheekbone. This brutal anti-Semitic assault shocked the public and was unanimously condemned. But the story doesn’t end here. About a year later, the rabbi gave an interview in which he interpreted the attack against him as symptomatic for the wider malaise of a city that in his view was rapidly coming unglued, leaving large parts in a continual state of insecurity and dread. Although the attack against him occurred in a bourgeois neighborhood in Friedenau, he insisted that it was dangerous to be identifiably Jewish in what he called Berlin’s “no-go areas”—especially Neukölln, a relatively poor district populated by a high percentage of immigrants from Muslim-majority countries, including a large Syrian community. To understand how people reacted to this label, it is important to know that the English term “nogo area,” which was used by British soldiers during the Northern Ireland conflict for residential areas where they didn’t dare go in without armored vehicles, is used in Germany primarily by the far right to stigmatize areas with concentrated Muslim or nonwhite populations. It was this particular discursive event that led to the idea of the SalaamShalom Initiative. The network emerged in the district tainted by Alter’s much publicized comment and out of the desire of a small group of Jewish residents to project a different image of Neukölln. Present at the very beginning in November 2013 were Ármin Langer and three young women. Two of the women were leftist Israelis who had moved to Berlin. In response to the rabbi’s comment, the group made a series of short video statements by Jewish and Muslim residents living in and defending Neukölln as their home. The video clips were later uploaded to SalaamShalom’s Facebook page, from where they quickly went viral, attracting more members, in particular young Muslims. Langer and his friends, as well as those who were interviewed by them, saw Alter’s comment as reinforcing the already strong xenophobic tendency to delineate polluted spaces within the city and the nation. Since the late 1990s, Neukölln and similar areas inhabited by large numbers of migrants were presented by

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the media as a threat to civility and as “foreign territory inside the nation itself” (Alexander 2006: 198; Wacquant 2007). Long before Alter’s intervention, Neukölln was repeatedly called a “no-go area,” an “outcast ghetto,” and a “foreigner ghetto,” “rotting away from the inside,” where gun violence, rapes, plunders, child marriages, and other signs of civil degeneration were everyday phenomena, and where the police were no longer able to enforce the law (for references, see Mayer 2006). These mass-mediated projections of civil incompetence were deeply ambiguous. On the surface, the “foreigner ghetto” was presented as an urgent problem to be solved by the city government. Between the lines, however, it was insinuated that the ghetto might as well be a solution to the dilemmas of incorporation of unwelcome outgroups. Rabbi Alter’s statement tapped into this set of background representations, to which he added an ethno-religious dimension by opposing Jews and Muslims. The original impulse behind Salaam-Shalom was a sense of anger at this restrictive and exclusionary discourse and a desire to rerepresent the residents of stigmatized areas of Berlin as equals among equals. This desire, however, had to compete with the strategies and ambitions of other actors in the city who sought to deepen the stigma. A wellknown journalist, for example, “borrowed” a black-garbed, bearded rabbi from another district of the city and walked with him down the bustling avenue of Sonnenallee in Neukölln, also called Berlin’s “Arab Street” or simply the “Gaza Strip,” secretly (and in vain) hoping they could provoke angry reactions from the passersby. Similarly, during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict, a Social Democratic politician decided to drive through Neukölln and Kreuzberg with an Israeli flag flying from his car. He then feigned shock when youngsters cursed him at crosswalks or whenever he had to stop at traffic lights, and made sure that the results of this predictable self-experiment were published in the bestselling local tabloid. Langer, who actually lives on Sonnenallee, could hardly control his fury at what he saw as attempts to treat migrants like zoo animals at feeding time, throwing the symbolic equivalents of cuts of meat into their neighborhoods. Salaam-Shalom protested and asked why journalists and politicians don’t try to find out what happens to niqab-wearing women or men in traditional Islamic attire in certain “white” areas of the city (Interview Langer, June 26, 2018). At the same time, the group took great care to avoid the impression of not sympathizing with the victims of anti-Semitism. In fact, its members repeatedly stated that anti-Semitism

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among majority Germans, as well as among Muslims, is real and dangerous. Still, the point emphasized by Salaam-Shalom is that today, in the larger scheme of things, Muslims, not Jews, are the main victims of exclusion from the civil sphere. This fundamental conviction helped to move the agenda of the group from the particular struggle for the image of Neukölln to universal civil ideals of justice and peace under conditions of cultural and religious diversity. An important event in this transition was a newspaper article written by Langer (2014), in which he used his talent for provocation and hyperbole by calling Muslims—or individuals publicly marked as Muslims—the “new Jews.” While he was not the first to use the trope of Muslims as the new Jews in Germany, the fact that the trope was now employed by a student of a rabbinical school caused a scandal and attracted much media attention, both from within the Jewish civil sphere and outside of it. It also gave the public a first taste of the polemical and provocative rhetoric that is the flip side of the message of peace and reconciliation characterizing the language of Salaam-Shalom. Saying that Muslims are the new Jews was a scandal because it raised the unsettling question: “If Muslims are the new Jews, who then are the new Germans?” Langer’s unrelenting polemic against the “Jewish establishment” suggested the even more unsettling answer that this time around some Jews, together with many non-Jewish Germans, might be on the dark side of civil society. The spiral of rhetorical escalation reached its climax during the refugee crisis when, in November 2015, Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, articulated the concerns of sections of the Jewish community by calling for a cap on immigration and pointing to what he described as difficulties of integrating Muslims in mainstream society. He also claimed that the cause of the trouble with Muslims is “not a religious problem, but an ethnic one” (cited in Langer 2016: 80). This choice of words infuriated Jewish activists close to the Salaam-Shalom Initiative, who responded by organizing a small rally against the Central Council in midtown Berlin. In several speeches, the participants expressed not only their rejection of Schuster’s statement but also their sense of betrayal. People held up signs reading “Throw out the Central Council – fill it up with refugees” or, in Hebrew letters, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Someone played with the Holocaust symbol by carrying a placard saying that Germany should accept the iconic number of “six million” refugees. The protesters tried to convey the message that the “Jewish establishment” was buying into a hegemonic discourse that portrays

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Muslims similarly to how Jews were portrayed by Germans a few generations ago. If the success of communication is measured by the power of the response it evokes, this rally and the social commentary surrounding it was certainly a breakthrough for Salaam-Shalom, even though the group was not officially responsible for the rally. Langer, in particular, had to learn that the sense of betrayal expressed by the pro-refugee activists against the Central Council was mutual. As a consequence of the public attacks and his charges of “racism,” he was ousted from the Abraham Geiger rabbinic seminary of the University of Potsdam, where he had enrolled in March 2013. He continued to study Jewish theology at the university, but his dream to become ordained as a rabbi in Germany was shattered, at least temporarily. Regardless of whether one agrees with the substance of the claims made by Langer and his friends, in a formal sense, we are clearly dealing with a case of righteousness. Langer practiced solidarity with outsiders from other groups and faced a backlash from members of his own collective, who accused him of betraying ingroup solidarity. After raising the volume of his public polemic, crucially important social ties with his own group, the organized Jewish community in Berlin, were cut. While some Jewish intellectuals and representatives came to his defense, many more did their best to isolate him. The prominent right-wing journalist Henryk Broder, who a while ago considered running for president of the Central Council of Jews, claimed that Langer was only “a wannabe Jew” (Möchtegern-Jude) who wanted to subvert the real Jewish community from within (Lehning 2016). This language was reminiscent of the Orthodox establishment in Israel which initially did not consider immigrants from the Soviet Union to be Jewish (Barzilai 2010: 30–31).9 If treason presupposes belonging to the group one is betraying, the claim that Langer was only a fake Jew implied that he was not even a traitor but something worse: an enemy. The story so far seems to suggest that an attitude of conscientious dissent or righteousness can only be found among the Jewish members of Salaam-Shalom. Langer’s controversial act of righteousness owed its symbolic power to his close ties to the rabbinical school whose leadership didn’t like his public rhetoric. By contrast, among the Muslims in the network, there is no one on the path of becoming an imam, who could therefore be disciplined by an Islamic institution the way Langer was disciplined. Ozan Zakariya Keskinkilic, one of the most vocal activists of Salaam-Shalom, explains that this asymmetry feeds into the

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message conveyed by the media that Muslims are “only passive beneficiaries of the empathy shown by others,” in this case, young Jews who are often presented by the same media as misguided do-gooders (Interview Keskinkilic, August 21, 2018). When the group, including its Muslim members, stage public protests, for example, against anti-Semitic slogans shouted during the annual pro-Palestinian Al-Quds Day demonstrations in the German capital, these actions go underreported or they are attributed to a few righteous exceptions among Muslims. There is something insidious at play here. Some Muslims are called righteous, but only against the backdrop the logic of Islamophobia which produces a deeply polluted image of the “Muslim” only to project this image onto real Muslims. The sociological distinction between “factual” and “fictional” mass media doesn’t hold here (Alexander 2006: Chap. 5; see Klug 2014). If a “real,” self-identified Muslim doesn’t fit the prefabricated image of the “Muslim,” he or she is considered to be the righteous one-off exception from which nothing can be inferred. The sheer fact of a Muslim protesting against the anti-Semitism of fellow believers is discarded as righteous but irrelevant by the Islamophobic mainstream. The righteousness of individual Muslims is acknowledged but is unlikely to have an impact on powerful fantasies about the generalized Muslim Other. As Keskinkilic puts it: When we do something good, we are never the Muslim voice that speaks for all. We are presented by the media as the beautiful exception. “Too bad all the other Muslims aren’t like them.” If I go out and attack someone, I am all of a sudden representing the entire Muslim community which is seen as attacking others. But if I rescue someone, people won’t say that Muslims are rescuing others, because Muslims are portrayed as attacking others. It’s never the other way around. This makes me very angry. When I do something good, I want people to say: “The Muslim did something good.” I am not the exceptional Muslim; I don’t want to be the exceptional Muslim. (Interview Keskinkilic, August 21, 2018)

This comment points to deep cultural structures regulating public discourse about immigration and religious minorities. At the heart of this discourse is a complex and painful “narrative triangle” (Merkur 2018: 62) between “white” Germans, Jews, and Muslims. Note that this is not an equilateral triangle. Majority Germans think of Jews as being much closer to them than Muslims. Both groups are viewed very differently, although both groups are mostly composed of immigrants or children of

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immigrants. Most Muslims, in particular those of Turkish origin, came as guest workers. Most Jews in post-Holocaust Germany were either remigrants or immigrants from the former Soviet Union. Belatedly, postwar (West) Germany embraced the decision made by the United States before to be “with the Jews” (Alexander 2006: 520–523). Of course, unlike in the United States, in Germany there were hardly any Jews left to be with. Being with the Jews was little more than an official rhetoric and a posture detached from everyday interactions with Jewish citizens. This changed only since the 1990s with the immigration of Russian-speaking Jews and, in places like Berlin, with the additional arrival of Jewish Israelis, whose number is estimated at up to 20,000 and who have been called Germany’s favorite foreigners. Anti-Semitism continues to exist but is considered intolerable and illegitimate. Official philosemitism also continues to exist along with public ignorance about Judaism and Jewish life. Many Germans still think of Jews as a rare and exotic species. Consider the following episode related by a guide at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. One day the guide introduces herself to a class of German 10th graders, telling them that she has a Jewish–Turkish family background. One of the youngsters shouts: “Hey guys, our guide is a real Jewess!” to which someone else replies in amazement: “Whoa, that’s like Jurassic Park!” (cited in Tulgan 2018: 198). By contrast, many religiously educated Muslims have a different perspective on Jews and Judaism that is neither exoticizing nor centered exclusively on the Holocaust and its aftermath. When I met him first, Keskinkilic quoted from the Qur’an, pointing out that the idea of righteousness can be found in his religion as well as in the Talmud: “If anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all mankind” (Qur’an 5:32; see Keskinkilic 2017). However, the negative image of Muslims held by a majority of Germans and Europeans does not depend on how Muslims relate to other minorities. The notion that Muslims (including Muslim refugees) are somehow “against” the Jews further contributes to Islamophobia in Germany, but is not the root cause of anti-Muslim feelings. The well-documented existence of negative stereotypes about Muslims is made worse by the fact that anti-Muslim racism is often treated with a cavalier attitude by politicians and the media. For Germany’s Islamophobes and the far right, Turkish and other non-European immigrants are guest workers who never did the decent thing and went back. Muslims see themselves confronted with mechanisms of exclusion combined with a costly and often unrewarding pressure to assimilate. Research shows that

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the increasing inclusion and upward mobility of Muslim immigrants in the noncivil sphere of the economy is accompanied by persistently high levels of prejudice against them in the civil sphere (FRA 2017).

An Affective Politics of Civil Repair All of this gives rise to the question of how a more inclusive counternarrative might look and how it can be transformed into effective scripts to be enacted on a range of institutional stages with the goal of changing the dominant narrative triangle between majority Germans, Jews, and Muslims. Salaam-Shalom and like-minded groups seek to do two things: to establish and strengthen solidarity between Jews and Muslims and to win over majority Germans and Europeans by weakening both Islamophobia and the sanctimonious philosemitism that has colored German– Jewish relations since World War II. There is a certain tension between the goals of this particular project of civil repair. German post-Holocaust philosemitism is rejected by Langer and his friends as pseudo-inclusive, elitist, and more self-righteous than righteous. At the same time, they suggest to harness and transfer the ideological power of philosemitism to include Muslims as the “new Jews.” This second strategy is the more prominent one. Langer is not the only one among the Jewish members of Salaam-Shalom who has mocked the widespread attitude among Germans to look at visiting, returning, or immigrating Jews as if they were “sacred cows” (Interview Langer, June 26, 2018). But he also explains some of the symbolic successes of the group by pointing to the philosemitism of German elites who are always eager to be with the Jews but have lost their focus on which voices in the growing cacophony of Jewish public opinion they should listen to. Capitalizing on this confusion, Langer is quite explicit about his tactics to make good use of the “oversensitivity” of Germans toward all things Jewish: In spite of my skepticism, I exploited this common interest [in philosemitism]. It is clear to me that the considerable media attention that my activities and the activities of the Salaam-Shalom Initiative attract is partly due to this oversensitivity. Many people will buy my book just because it somehow talks about Jews in Germany. I live with this possibility to advertise the message of the Torah: “You shall not stand aside while your neighbor’s blood is shed.” (Langer 2016: 128–129)

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Langer is a Jew who, with regard to majority Germans, is self-consciously playing up his Jewishness to attract favorable attention. One of the consequences of appealing to the philosemitic sensibilities of the German public is that sometimes Salaam-Shalom does not have to seize the stage, but is invited on stage, for example, when the group was awarded with the Ribbon for Courage and Reconciliation by the mayor of Berlin in June 2015. The network is at its strongest when it uses its hard-earned moral prestige to further confuse majority Germans who are already confused after having learned that Jews are like any other group and don’t speak with one voice. The next level of confusion is reached when they learn that Jews are in many ways not as different from Muslims as many people think they are. A good example of a political action showing the unity of Jews, Muslims, and others against the divisive representations imposed on them was the “Beach Party against Racism,” celebrated before the French embassy in Berlin in August 2016. This event was triggered by a photo of armed police officers on a beach in Nice, France, who forced a Muslim woman wearing long sleeves and a headscarf to take off her shirt (see the images in Quinn 2016). Like other municipalities, the French city had imposed a ban on the burkini, a swimsuit that is compatible with Islamic notions of modesty because it covers the whole body except the face, the hands, and the feet. The images of male police officers surrounding and literally looking down upon a kneeling woman caused international outrage because it so obviously contradicted the proclaimed purpose of the ban: to protect the security of people, women’s rights, and the civil values of the republic. The photo lent itself to the exact opposite interpretation: the ban appeared to be intolerant, callous, and infringing on the right to privacy. It was also completely arbitrary. The woman on the beach did not even wear a burkini but simply leggings, a tunic dress, and a hijab. The gathering staged by Salaam-Shalom in the center of Berlin looked like a visual counterpoint to the civil discourse promoted by the defenders of a burkini ban. Participants appeared in all kinds of burkinis, bikinis, bathing suits, shorts, and summer dresses, emphasizing their freedom to wear whatever they want and, more importantly, their resolve to fight public authorities encroaching upon the civil sphere by claiming to have a monopoly on interpreting the visual appearance of citizens. “Stop interpreting our clothes!” and “Stop undressing us!” were some of the slogans. One of the organizers told me that the spectacle was meant to communicate the central concern of Salaam-Shalom, which is that individuals from marginalized minorities should speak for themselves and challenge those

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who claim to speak on their behalf (Interview Larissa, August 20, 2018). Another aim was to tell the state that by cracking down on Muslims, it also does collateral damage to sections of the Jewish population. Not only do haredi and modern Orthodox women cover their heads in ways similar to devout Muslim women; they also prefer the same kind of modest swimwear. Therefore, both Jewish and Muslim women have good reasons to oppose measures that allow the state to make wardrobe decisions for them. This partial overlap of manners and mores between Jews and Muslims certainly helped to make the city government refrain from a burkini ban, in spite of pressure from the far right and a few incidents in which citizens had complained about the sight of women wearing the full-body swimsuit. The whole story can be seen as the female-related counterpart to an earlier political debate about the ritual circumcision of boys. In 2012, following a local ruling against a Muslim doctor practicing circumcision, a broad coalition of judges, doctors, journalists, politicians, and psychotherapists started a campaign to outlaw the practice, but lost against a European-wide alliance of rabbis, imams, and others who argued that a ban on circumcision would be a violation of basic religious and human rights. In historical perspective, Salaam-Shalom and similar associations have begun to take the age-old debate about the “difference” between Jews and Muslims away from white Europeans who belong to neither group. This debate dates back to medieval and early modern times, when clerical scholars were uncertain about how to distinguish and evaluate different groups within the umbrella category of the enemies of European Christendom. Sometimes they stressed differences between Jews and Muslims, sometimes Muslims were simply called the “new Jews,” and quite often, they expressed their fear that both “circumcised peoples” were in cahoots (cited in Anidjar 2003: 34). Bits and pieces of this old discourse show up again today, in an entirely different guise. The crucial point, however, is that initiatives such as Salaam-Shalom do not simply struggle for civil friendship “between” groups but rather for a kind of friendship that questions and subverts the very groupness of groups. This is done by bringing to light and working with their internal tensions and divisions as well as with hidden crossgroup commonalities. In response to critics who have condemned SalaamShalom for accepting invitations, for instance, by the former imam of the

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Sehitlik ¸ Mosque in Berlin, which is connected to the authoritarian government of Turkey and various dubious organizations, the group defends itself by arguing that Muslims are “victims of racism” regardless of their political orientation or contribution to society, and hence deserve solidarity. The more important argument is that by accepting invitations to mingle with Muslims with all kinds of convictions, Salaam-Shalom is opening a space for controversy about a whole range of topics from homophobia to anti-Semitism. I was even told that the whole concept of Jewish–Muslim reconciliation, which seems to take for granted the existence of two solid collectivities, is only the “thematic anchor” (Interview Keskinkilic, June 27, 2018) for the more radical project to unravel and denaturalize supposedly homogeneous collective identities. Again, Salaam-Shalom is not about building bridges between “Jews” and “Muslims,” or “immigrants” and “natives,” but about confounding rigid classifications in favor of local and discursive spaces of inbetweenness and overlap that already exist in everyday life. The idea of such a project seems evident from the perspective of individuals who are not easy to identify as members of an undisputed larger community. Like some of their target audiences, the activists of SalaamShalom can be described as subjects of a “transnation.” Bill Ashcroft has introduced this term to draw attention to the growing relevance of national subjects who are at the same time subjects of a transnation, even without being global migrants and without having any diasporic commitment to a distant homeland. The transnation is an “open cultural site” within the nation-state and particular localities, populated by subjects “who live in between the categories” by which individuals are normally classified (Ashcroft 2010: 73). This definition perfectly fits the members of Salaam-Shalom, who are deeply shaped by experiences of cultural displacement and mobility and whose belonging to a particular group is subject to controversy, debate, and suspicion: the German-born young intellectual from an Arabic-speaking minority in southern Turkey whose family (including his surname) was forcibly Turkified; the Hungarian Jew whose Jewishness was disputed in Germany for political reasons and who had just passed his German citizenship test when I met him first; the queer female mathematician who moved from her hometown of Tel Aviv to Berlin to study Jewish theology; or the student from Berlin who converted to Islam and defends the Central Council of Jews against Ármin

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Langer. Meetings of the group were attended by gay refugees complaining about homophobia within the refugee community, enthusiastic European exchange students from neighboring countries and, time and again, Israelis unhappy about the politics of their country. Sometimes English had to be introduced as the only language everyone could (more or less) speak and understand. Some of the energies of the network go into old-fashioned interfaith dialogue and “scriptural reasoning” to discover the common truth of different religious traditions. But much more time is spent on practices that are not truth-based but performative and action-oriented. For instance, Salaam-Shalom activists do not deny or minimize anti-Semitic incidents for which Muslims are responsible, nor do they try to recast perpetrators as victims or vice versa. The controversy with the Central Council of Jews was not primarily about facts and figures. Rather, it was about the reasons and the consequences of socio-spatial divisions in Berlin and how to deal with them. While some forces in the city were pursuing a strategy of stigmatization and ghettoization, the Salaam-Shalom Initiative was launched to repair broken social relations. This is supposed to be done not by telling the truth about group identities or religious traditions but, to quote Spinoza ([1677] 1996: 156), by doing more of “those things which serve to strengthen friendships.” A key performative mechanism in this endeavor is to open up to the tainted other and show affection. In one of many appearances in the Sehitlik ¸ Mosque before a mixed Muslim and Jewish audience, Langer began his talk by saying “Ich fühle so viel Liebe in diesem Raum” (“I feel so much love in this room”). This counterfactual gesture seems ultimately motivated by his religious belief in the duty to overcome group egotism.10 If Carl Schmitt was right in claiming that every relationship between social groups and forms of life harbors the “real possibility” of sliding into enmity, then it is also true, as Derrida (1997: 126) writes, that there is always the real possibility of friendship. This defiant insistence on the real possibility of friendship and solidarity across socially constructed collectivities defines the moral core of SalaamShalom. As a corollary to this attitude, the network breaks with the idea that solidarity or friendship necessarily must be fully reciprocal. Implicitly following Aristotle and Derrida, the group offers solidarity to others without expecting an equivalent response. There is the belief that loving (or liking) is more important than being loved (or liked) (Derrida 1997: 7). For this reason, the risk of failure and misunderstanding is willingly accepted as long as the alternative is non-communication and organized antipathy.

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Conclusion The boundaries of the overlapping collectivities of Germans, Jews, and Muslims are far from being self-evident and undisputed. In all three corners of the idealized triangle between those groups, we witness processes of boundary drawing and struggles over criteria for designating insiders and outsiders. In all these groups, there are forces that aim to maintain or restore highly gated communities, thereby restricting the horizon of civil solidarity. The Jewish founder of the Salaam-Shalom Initiative was called a mere wannabe Jew. Sections of the white German population do not recognize people marked as Muslims as belonging to Germany or Europe, even if they are citizens. In this situation of primordial identity politics, the broadening of solidarity may require a break with one’s own group, be it national, ethnic, or religious. I have explored this idea by studying the example of a civil association working mainly on Jewish–Muslim relations in Berlin, but always with an eye on the rest of Germany. With regard to civil sphere theory, I wish to make two concluding remarks. First, my case study contributes to the literature on why and how civil associations and social movements struggle not only for those “who are excluded from civil societies” (Alexander 2006: 7), but also for those who are unjustly excluded from the territory of the national society altogether, in particular refugees in urgent need of help and solidarity. Civil repair is not only about the boundaries between civil and noncivil spheres within firmly established societies, but also about civilizing and repairing the relations between the domestic “inside” and the foreign “outside” of these societies—relations which are often marked by avoidable cruelty. Civil sphere theory conceptualizes systemic barriers to the inclusion of people who are nominally citizens and how social movements are able to break those barriers down. But until recently, this has been done by focusing on individuals and groups in relation to only one state, for example, the United States. However, states differ according to their position in global hierarchies of power and wealth that structure transnational struggles for more open borders and access to full citizenship rights. Democratic life is not independent from the border and immigration regimes governing these particular international or intersocietal boundary relations. Groups like Salaam-Shalom have recognized this, at least intuitively, and are aware that the work of civil repair requires democracy “to de-limit itself” (Derrida 1997: 105) beyond the nation-state.

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Second, similar to “formative” institutions, such as the universities analyzed by Carlo Tognato (2018), progressive social movements and civil associations are contributing to the cultivation of subjectivities that are needed to sustain democratic life in a multicultural society. Those movements and associations are driven by people who not only know, but “feel particularly strongly the demand for universal justice and beneficence” (Taylor 1989: 495; italics added). Alexander counts religion among the noncivil spheres of modern society, because solidarity is typically confined to co-religionists. Nevertheless, religious beliefs are sometimes at least partly responsible for unusual practices of cross-group solidarity. What is more important, however, is the role of people with transnational biographies and outlooks in fostering new bonds of civil solidarity within and across groups. For the transnation of people living “in between” categories—and often in stigmatized areas of major cities—it is relatively easy to muster the courage it takes to cross the boundaries between separate groups. Friendships across groups are both a source of strength and a metaphor for living with difference in the same place. The transnation of citizens and migrants foreshadows the future of a more open democracy.

Notes 1. Throughout this paper, all translations from non-English sources are mine, unless otherwise indicated. 2. Some of this important work has already been done by Jaworsky (2016) and Alexander et al. (2019). 3. See Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Politbarometer, September 2015. Retrieved July 1, 2018 (http://www.forschungsgruppe.de/Umfragen/ Politbarometer/Archiv/Politbarometer_2015/September_I_2015/). 4. A survey by Bertelsmann Foundation found that 44% of Muslims in Germany were involved in volunteer work for refugees, compared to 21% of self-identified Christians and 17% of those who are unaffiliated with any religion (El-Menouar 2017). 5. There were notable exceptions, though, in particular the Fraenkelufer Synagogue in Kreuzberg in Berlin, whose members were very active in practicing and promoting a “Jewish welcome culture” for refugees. 6. Obama’s rhetoric was taken up by some American journalists and Democrats in the US House of Representatives (Hattem 2015). 7. Another exception is the Berlin-based artists’ collective Center for Political Beauty, who, in 2014, initiated a Syria campaign referring to the fate of European Jews during World War II. This campaign was supported by

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two Jewish citizens in Berlin who had survived the Holocaust thanks to receiving asylum in the United Kingdom (Marx 2014). 8. According to historian Arno Lustiger (2003), about half a million Jewish soldiers fought in the Red Army against Nazi Germany. 9. Langer is of patrilineal Jewish descent from a Hungarian Jewish family. Several of his ancestors perished in the Holocaust. Born in Germany, he was raised in Austria and Hungary. When he moved back to Germany in 2013, after having learned Hebrew at a yeshiva in Jerusalem, a rabbinical court confirmed that he was in fact Jewish. 10. Langer is a follower of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, co-founder of Reconstructionist Judaism, who wrote much about “intergroup good-will” as a core element of Jewish civilization (Kaplan 1949: Chap. 8). In November 2018, Langer was admitted to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College near Philadelphia, where he will complete his rabbinical training.

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Rame, Sergio. 2018. “Salvini, notte al Cara di Mineo: ‘Supermarket di carne umana’.” Il Giornale, May 2. Retrieved July 1, 2018. http:// www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/salvini-notte-cara-mineo-supermarket-carneumana-1391746.html. Safronova, Valeriya. 2017. “Now Karl Lagerfeld Has Opinions on Migrants in Europe.” New York Times, November 14. Spinoza, Benedict de. [1677] 1996. Ethics, translated by Edwin Curley. London: Penguin Classics. Spinoza, Benedict de. [1677] 2009. The Ethics, translated by R. H. M. Elwes. Project Gutenberg. Retrieved March 6, 2020. https://www.gutenberg.org/ files/3800/3800-h/3800-h.htm#chap04. Süddeutsche Zeitung. 2018a. “Mehr als 2200 Angriffe auf Flüchtlinge im vergangenen Jahr.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 28. Süddeutsche Zeitung. 2018b. “Ex-Chefin der Behörde in Bremen verteidigt ihr Vorgehen.” Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 30. Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tognato, Carlo. 2018. “The Civil Life of the University: Enacting Dissent and Resistance on a Colombian Campus.” In The Civil Sphere in Latin America, edited by J. C. Alexander and C. Tognato. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 149–176. Tulgan, Shlomit. 2018. “Bittersüße Fragmente aus dem Leben einer türkischen Jüdin.” In Fremdgemacht & reorientiert: Jüdisch-muslimische Verflechtungen, edited by O. Z. Keskinkilic and Á. Langer. Berlin: Verlag Yılmaz-Günay, pp. 197–203. Wacquant, Loïc. 2007. “Territorial Stigmatization in the Age of Advanced Marginality.” Thesis Eleven 91: 66–77. Welner, Michael. 2016. “Wir dürfen Nahost-Flüchtlinge und HolocaustÜberlebende nicht vergleichen.” Jüdische Rundschau, March 4. Retrieved July 1, 2018. http://juedischerundschau.de/wir-duerfen-nahost-fluechtlinge-undholocaust-ueberlebende-nicht-vergleichen-135910404/.

CHAPTER 3

“We Are Jewish and We Want to Help You”: Righteous Cross-Group Solidarity Toward Muslim Refugees in Vienna Werner Binder and Ana Miji´c

In recent years, international migration has become a politically divisive topic in civil discourses all around the world. One could even argue that attitudes toward immigration have replaced more traditional markers of the political divide between left and right, for example, social inequality or labor rights. The recent boom of the migration topic was facilitated by the so-called refugee crisis in 2015, when hundreds of thousands of refugees, mostly from war-torn Syria, entered the European Union and— most importantly—public discourses across the globe. It was the latter, the discursive shift of “refugees” as a signifier from the periphery to the center of public and political debates, not their spatial movement across

W. Binder (B) Department of Sociology, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] A. Miji´c Institut Für Soziologie, Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_3

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borders, which created what we will continue to call the “refugee crisis.” The possible intake of refugees as well as their incorporation into their host societies became a hotly debated question, even in countries otherwise unaffected by the “crisis.” In light of the current debates on international migration and in order to understand them, we must revisit and rethink core sociological concepts such as solidarity, as well as the theories utilizing them. We draw on Jeffrey Alexander’s civil sphere theory (CST) to investigate a case of cross-group solidarity in the context of the contemporary “refugee crisis.” CST offers a general sociological framework, which allows us to understand the symbolic practices of inclusion and exclusion as well as the social production of solidarity in modern societies, but it does not address the challenges to social solidarity resulting from contemporary international migration flows and their public perception. While we find the original conception of CST wanting in this regard (Alexander 2006), we still consider it a valuable tool for mapping cultural and institutional environments, which are important to make sense of the agency of actors in the field of refugee work and asylum seeking. Through the lens of CST, we can see how the binaries of civil discourse are put to work to distinguish between deserving and undeserving refugees, how communicative institutions, including traditional and online media, were instrumental in constructing the “refugee crisis” and how regulative institutions employ legal procedures to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate asylum seekers (cf. Alexander 2006: 53–192). Against this backdrop, we will investigate the work of Shalom Alaikum—Jewish Aid for Refugees, a Vienna-based group of Jewish women promoting and practicing cross-group solidarity with Muslim refugees, one of the many refugee-support groups that formed in Austria in the wake of the “refugee crisis” in 2015. By analyzing their activities and narratives, we will not only identify the motivations behind and reasons for their activism but aim to reconstruct the social meanings informing their work. We are particularly interested in the symbolic and cultural resources the group and its members mobilize to frame and justify their often courageous actions. Civil courage, as we understand it, is not simply a psychological disposition, but a mode of agency embedded in socially shared systems of meaning, in particular, narratives of the righteous. In order to do this, we will investigate the Facebook activity of Shalom Alaikum, interpret its media coverage as well as publicly available and internal documents and discuss a semi-structured interview we conducted

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with one of its founding members and board directors. Our case is characterized by a “double cross-group solidarity,” not only of Austrian citizens toward asylum seekers from abroad, but of Jews toward refugees that are predominantly Muslim. It is the latter, the solidarity across the religious divide between two groups generally known for their strained relationship, which is not only responsible for the remarkable publicity of the group but also makes it particularly interesting for sociological analysis. In the context of CST, we can speak of an intersection between the civil sphere and the noncivil sphere of religion. We will show how for Shalom Alaikum religious divisions are not just an obstacle to be overcome by civil solidarity, but that religion itself can be mobilized in civil ways (see also Nelson Arteaga-Botello’s contribution to this volume). In this particular case, we find that the group-specific sources of meaning are not just rooted in the religious writings of Judaism, but also in the cultural memory and biographical experience of the Holocaust. In contrast to the Berlin-based German activist group Salaam-Shalom (discussed by Volker Heins in this volume), which understands itself as a “transnation” aiming to transcend collective identities by staging provocative performances to problematize philosemitism and fight Islamophobia, the Viennese group defines itself explicitly as Jewish and pursues a different strategy. Although Shalom Alaikum is apparently less radical and controversial, providing much-needed services for refugees while promoting societal reconciliation, its engagement with (predominantly Muslim) refugees, especially in the current social and political climate, is bound to spark controversy and criticism, not just from parts of Austrian society but also from within the Jewish community itself. Many Austrian Jews are concerned about Muslim immigration and fear the possible import of antisemitism. Furthermore, Shalom Alaikum’s appeal to the Jewish experience of the Holocaust in justifying their actions is considered by parts of the community as inappropriate, as a problematic Holocaust comparison questioning the sacred and exceptional status of the Holocaust—which is, of course, not the group’s intention. In our conclusion, we would like to raise and answer the question if and to what extent Shalom Alaikum can be considered a “righteous” actor in international migration, drawing on the master narrative of the Righteous Among the Nations, the non-Jews commemorated at Yad Vashem who helped Jews during World War II, a global icon of cross-group solidarity. We understand “righteousness” as a quality attributed to actors engaging in acts of cross-group solidarity (1), in which members of an

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ingroup provide aid to outgroup members not motivated by material interests but out of moral obligation (2), which not only impose considerable costs on actors but also expose them to risks stemming from possible repercussions from other ingroup members; (3) the everyday civil engagement of Shalom Alaikum may have its costs, mainly time, energy, and resources, which volunteers provide for refugees, but are there really risks involved for its members? Can it legitimately be compared to the acts of the “righteous” who rescued Jews during the Holocaust? While there is undeniably a difference in scale, it is not a difference in kind. Not only do we think that righteousness seems to be applicable to our case, it may also be a civic virtue necessary for the promotion of cross-group solidarity in difficult times. Thus, not unlike the Righteous Among the Nations themselves, the story of Shalom Alaikum—well known in the Austrian context—may serve as a shining example of the righteous in international migration.

Civil Sphere Theory, International Migration, and the Civil Function of Asylum Laws International migration is one of the biggest political challenges for the twenty-first century, and for contemporary sociology, respectively. International migration flows put into question the nation-state, its ability to control its borders, and the conception of national societies as such. Alexander’s CST (2006) offers an account of the production of social solidarity in modern democratic societies, although confined to a national societal community where boundaries of belonging are primarily defined by citizenship. Developed in the context of the United States, a society characterized by intense periods of voluntary and forced immigration, Alexander focuses empirically on the societal incorporation of women and discriminated ethnic groups like African Americans and American Jews, which have been living in the country for generations (2006: 235– 263; 265–391; 459–547). While the paths of these groups toward incorporation have been long and winding, their claims for participation in the American society are relatively settled now (notwithstanding #metoo, Black Lives Matter and the resurgence of an antisemitic far-right). The claims of more recent immigrants, not formally recognized as citizens, constitute an entirely different matter and thus pose a challenge for CST. How can individuals and groups justify claims for inclusion, if they do not

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possess citizenship and thus do not belong to the nationally defined society proper? How can the claim for the universality of civil incorporation be upheld, if one takes into account international migration? This challenge has been partially met by Bernadette Jaworsky’s book on The Boundaries of Belonging (2016), in which she demonstrates how the codes of civil society shape American immigrant-rights and immigration-control discourses alike, drawing symbolic boundaries between deserving and undeserving immigrants. While Jaworsky’s case study on the American discourse on undocumented immigration does not address the specific issue of asylum seeking, it provides a suitable vantage point for understanding discourses on asylum seekers and refugees in contemporary Europe. After World War II, which caused an unprecedented number of refugees, the right of political asylum was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 14). The right of asylum, already in Article 14 of the UN declaration, is not unconditional but specifies legitimate (e.g., political persecution) and illegitimate motives (e.g., criminal persecution) for asylum seeking, a distinction which not only forms the basis for asylum decisions of state bureaucracies and courts but also informs the public discourse on asylum seekers and refugees. Consistent with the general framework of CST, contemporary discourses on asylum seeking put the motivations of refugees under scrutiny: “pure” and deserving political refugees, fleeing from imminent danger, are distinguished from “impure” and undeserving “economic refugees,” who are just looking for a better life abroad (Pajnik 2018: 189–192; Sales 2002). Thus, the discursive representation of asylum seekers and refugees follows the binary structure of civil discourses (Alexander 2006: 53–67). Furthermore, these distinctions are not only proliferated by communicative institutions, like the mass media, but also implemented in the regulative institutions of the civil sphere, especially law. Asylum and other immigration laws and the respective bureaucracies and courts are important institutions, with which democratic societies channel resources and support to those in need, while maintaining their symbolic boundaries and relations to the “outside.” According to CST, law can be an instrument of uncivil oppression as well as a civil force facilitating integration and providing justice for all (Alexander 2006: 151–209). Law is subject to the codes of civil society; it can be criticized as illegitimate and unjust or recognized as legitimate and just. The controversies surrounding asylum decisions give a striking example of this ambivalence. In the case of negative asylum decisions and

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deportation orders, bureaucracies and courts are often criticized for being inhumane and uncivil, which can result in acts of civil disobedience, for example, sanctuary cities refusing to cooperate with immigration authorities (see the contribution of Jaworsky in this volume), churches providing shelter and protection for those who have received a deportation notice, or private citizens defying the law by stopping deportation planes. Such acts of civil disobedience can be framed as criminal offenses, which must be punished, or as “righteous” acts, which should be praised. Disobedient actors, even if they do not face legal sanctions, often suffer from a backlash in their own community, which accuses them of betraying ingroup solidarity. Nevertheless, their righteous acts, if publicized, can also provide powerful examples of cross-group solidarity. Actors engaging in righteous acts of cross-group solidarity can be individuals, groups of people, or even organized groups, such as NGOs or “civic associations” (Alexander 2006: 92–93). For Alexander, civic associations are vital communicative institutions of civil life, making claims on behalf of marginalized groups and translating their interests into the code of civil society. This is, however, not their only function. Especially when it comes to international migration and aid for refugees, civic associations do not only give voice to marginalized groups but often a hand as well. Where they see the responsibility of civil society and the failure of the state, they engage in decisive action, often operating in a legal gray zone and sometimes even violating state law. Their activities range from providing food, clothing, and other services, rescuing refugees from the sea or even “smuggling” them over borders—acts which are often decried as illegal by immigration-control or anti-refugee groups. Shalom Alaikum, the civic association we investigate, works within the legal framework of the Austrian state, but it also enters a space dominated by professional social service organizations and government agencies. It tries to fill the gaps in the institutionalized care for refugees, which sometimes leads to conflicts with established actors in the field—and more often to hostile reactions from their social environment. It is the binary structure of the discourse of civil society and the resulting ambivalence that allows actors to criticize their fellow group members or society’s institutions while engaging in acts of cross-group solidarity, often appealing to ingroup values. It is this axial cultural structure, which enables a critique of society from within the society and renders acts of civil disobedience and righteousness possible—and civil courage a necessity. Even “pure” acts of cross-group-solidarity have the potential

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to antagonize other members of the ingroup, as they not only “waste” resources on members of the outgroup, but suggest by example that other ingroup members have the obligation to do the same. For this reason, even the seemingly inconspicuous acts of Shalom Alaikum are a manifestation of civil courage as they stir controversy in the current social and political climate in Austria.

The Austrian “Refugee Crisis” in 2015 and Its Consequences Alexander’s CST has aspired from its very beginning to universality, conceptualizing even a “global civil sphere” (2006: 550), despite the fact that its empirical demonstrations have been initially confined to the civil society of the United States. Recently, Alexander has teamed up with other scholars to extend the scope and outreach of CST, toward Latin America (Alexander and Tognato 2018), East Asia (Alexander et al. 2019b), and Scandinavia (Alexander et al. 2019a). Especially with regard to immigration, there are crucial differences between the societies of the “new world,” which define themselves often as countries of immigrants, and the nation-states of “old Europe,” which primarily conceive societal belonging in terms of ethnic identity. Nonetheless, many European countries have become de facto countries of immigration. In Austria, almost onefourth of all residents have a migration background, the majority from the European Union. During the Cold War, between the late 1940s and 1980s, many Western countries, including Austria, were relatively welcoming toward refugees from Communist countries (Faist 2018: 415). This welcome has no longer been extended to refugees from the Balkan Wars in the 1990s (Franz 2005) and even less so for refugees from the wars in the Middle East in the twenty-first century. Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, Western media have become increasingly concerned with radical Islamism as political ideology, often conflating it with Islam in general. In many civil discourses, being a Muslim has become a polluted quality and Islam a religion that threatens the integrity of civil societies. In many Western countries, refugees from predominantly Muslim countries are treated with suspicion, as being culturally unable to integrate into the host society or even as potential terrorists. With regard to the mediatization of the “refugee crisis,” the work of associations like Shalom Alaikum plays the role of a crucial corrective, engaging

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with marginalized and stigmatized groups directly, thus counteracting the sterotypization in the media. In 2015, Austria alone received 90,000 asylum requests (Bundesministerium für Inneres 2016), a little bit more than one percent of its total population. Such a large influx of immigrants puts major strains on societies, both economically and socially. Public resources must be provided for refugees, which fuels resentments further, especially in times of financial austerity (Kohler 2017). What makes the Syrian refugee “crisis” particularly problematic is the fact that most refugees identify themselves as Muslims in times of growing Islamophobia. In Austrian politics, the rightwing populist party Freiheitliche Partei Österreich (FPÖ), from 2017 to 2019 part of the government, has been the most outspoken voice for anti-Muslim sentiments. Also, in the Austrian Jewish community, there are skeptical (and sometimes hostile) views toward Muslim immigration and integration, as exemplified by a recent television debate on the topic of antisemitism.1 Despite growing resentment against many of the newcomers, there were thousands and thousands of volunteers, who provided help for the refugees in 2015 and have continued to do so. Nongovernmental, civil society organizations play a crucial role not only in aiding asylum seekers but also in promoting solidarity in the broader public sphere. While a huge demonstration, “Mensch sein in Europa” (Being human in Europe), with over 20,000 participants, took place on the streets of Vienna, the first trains with hundreds of mostly Syrian refugees, who had been stranded in Hungary, arrived at Vienna’s Westbahnhof on the evening of August 31, 2015. During that weekend, more than 10,000 refugees passed through the railway station, where they were taken care of by hundreds of volunteers. The flow of people bringing water, food, sanitary products, and clothing did not cease, physicians and paramedics provided the necessary medical care, and many Arabic-speaking Viennese helped the exhausted and disoriented refugees to manage the situation. The arrival of refugees at various Austrian railway stations did not stop for another couple of weeks. Caritas, a Catholic social service organization, took over the management at Westbahnhof, while the newly founded initiative “Train of hope” supported refugees at Vienna’s Central Station. Although most of the refugees traveled further on to Germany and despite the fact that there had been so many people willing to help and to support the refugees (60,000 attended a pro-refugee demonstration in October), the events in late summer and fall of 2015 had a destabilizing

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impact on the political climate in Austria. In contrast to Germany, where the government (at least initially) responded to the “refuge crisis” in 2015 by promoting a “welcome culture,” in Austria, the intake of asylum seekers and aid for refugees was from the very beginning a much more controversial topic. Fears over immigration, fed by right-wing politicians as well as some media outlets, led to an increase of votes for the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), first in several states of the Austrian federation and then, in 2017, on a national level. However, the policy of closure toward refugees had already begun at the end of 2015, when the first fences were built (at the Slovenian border, followed by fences at the border with Italy in 2016) and the asylum seeking process was tightened, for example, by establishing an upper limit on asylum applications of 37,500 in April 2016 (Müller and Rosenberger 2017)—in contrast to Germany, where such an upper limit still does not exist. With the election of a new government in 2017, consisting of parties that employed harsh anti-immigration rhetorics and advocated stricter immigration policies, things have only become worse, culminating in Austria’s rejection of the UN migration pact in order to “defend national sovereignty” in October 2018. We analyze now how Shalom Alaikum was founded at the height of the Austrian “refugee crisis” and how it continues to operate in an increasingly hostile environment. We are particularly interested in the motivations of its members to engage in their work with refugees and how they continue to make sense of their work despite the adversities they face, drawing on the symbolic and cultural resources available to them.

Jewish Aid for Refugees: The Story of Shalom Alaikum The Austrian NGO, Shalom Alaikum—Jewish Aid for Refugees, was founded by a group of Jewish women, many of whom were already actively working with refugees in the summer of 2015. In the fall of that year, several founders walked into a refugee house in Vienna and reportedly told the 100 inhabitants: “We are Jewish and we want to help you.” This founding story not only emphasizes the hands-on approach of an organization dedicated to help refugees in their new home, but also highlights the importance of being Jewish, which we will see is a central element in the self-description of the organization. What makes the

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case of Shalom Alaikum particularly compelling is the fact that it promotes cross-group solidarity not only across cultural and national boundaries (Austrian/non-Austrian) but also across a religious divide (Jewish/Muslim) with the aim of countering antisemitic stereotypes among the refugees of predominantly Muslim faith. In this sense, we can even talk of a double cross-group solidarity. Compared to its size, the work of Shalom Alaikum has received a remarkable share of media and public attention. In 2016, the group received a prize from the Austrian foreign ministry and, in 2017, the Leon Zelman Prize from the city of Vienna. In her acceptance speech on the occasion of being awarded the Leon Zelman Prize, Golda Schlaff, spokesperson of the group, explicitly addresses the somewhat disproportionate attention the group received: Why has [of all groups] Shalom Alaikum been honored with this prize? Because we are women who help refugees. No, that’s not it. According to statistics, there are hundreds of women across Austria, who spend their time, money, and energy to help refugees. We have received the prize because we are Jewish women, who help predominantly, but not exclusively, Muslim refugees. We receive a lot of attention from the media – much more than we deserve. It is somewhat sad that we live in a world, where it is something special that Jewish women help Muslims seeking protection. But that’s how it is, sadly enough.

Golda Schlaff emphasizes not only the Jewishness of the group, but also the fact that it is—like many of the other smaller refugee-support groups in the country—run by women. Sonia, who is one of the other two current board members of Shalom Alaikum, confided us in an interview that initially “also men were involved.” However, “they didn’t show up at the meetings, being unable to come or, sorry, being offended because of something. And this is how we ended up as a women’s club.” Despite the fact that being a women’s group was not something initially planned (and is also not reflected in its name), the predominance of women seems to be characteristic of the whole sector of voluntary work for refugees,2 which is why Golda Schlaff addresses the issue of gender specifically. Nevertheless, it is the Jewishness of the group (and the Muslimness of the refugees), which not only has been from the very beginning part of its name but is also responsible for its remarkable publicity.

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Since its founding, Shalom Alaikum has been present and active on Facebook. In one of the first comments/reactions to its Facebook page, on October 29, 2015, a (male) commenter criticizes the name of the group, claiming that it is false in Hebrew, Yiddish, as well as Arabic. Shalom Alaikum responds that the mix of Hebrew (shalom) and Arabic (alaikum) is not an accidental mistake but intentional, intended to express solidarity (“Verbundenheit”) with the refugees, which are mostly Arab Muslims. It should also be noted that the official name of the group has not only an English subtitle, but uses the anglicized “Shalom” instead of the German transliteration “Schalom,” which gives the Austrian organization a more international appearance. Shalom Alaikum is run on the basis of donations and the unpaid work of its members and supporters, and, occasionally, also by prize money. None of its members receives any money, they don’t have an office or any other expenses for the organization as such, so every cent of its budget is directly used to help refugees in various ways. Sonia, our interviewee, described the work of Shalom Alaikum as “everything except cooking and cleaning,” excluding only the things that the refugees can do for themselves. In their daily work, members of the organization collect and distribute donations and gifts for the refugees, provide assistance with regard to bureaucratic issues and doctor visits, and they even accompany women to hospitals for giving birth. The group also organizes festivities, often celebrating Jewish or Muslim holidays, or events like a picnic for refugees and supporters in Vienna’s famous Prater park (cf. Grabinsky 2016). Their Facebook page with almost two thousand followers, seems to be an invaluable tool for the internal and external communication of the group, for posting specific requests for donations (e.g., baby clothing), or services (like German lessons for kids) as well as job hunting or apartment searching. Occasionally, Shalom Alaikum also announces specific donations such as opera tickets for refugees. Furthermore, they use the channel to coordinate activities and share relevant news with their followers about the living conditions of refugees or the tightening of asylum laws in Austria. From the very beginning, Shalom Alaikum has focused on goods and services which could not or have not been provided by the state and the bigger social service organizations (like Caritas). In the summer 2016, during Ramadan, the inhabitants of a refugee house complained about the intense heat in their apartments (in Central Europe, most houses have no air conditioning), exacerbated by the fact that observing Muslims are

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not allowed to drink anything, including water, during the day. Shalom Alaikum quickly organized ventilators for the inhabitants to relieve their suffering. Professional social service organizations, which provide shelter and aid for most of the refugees in Austria, seem not always to be responsive to the personal, cultural, and religious needs of their clients, preferring to stick to their standard operating procedure. It is in this space that groups like Shalom Alaikum, with a closer and often very personal connection to their protégés, are able to fill the gaps in the official system— although this interference in established procedures is not always welcome. Furthermore, the organization, for instance, steps in, when refugee families are confronted with discrimination on the housing market. For a few families, the organization even acts as the official tenant. Last but not least, Shalom Alaikum offers friendship and empathy. They celebrate birthdays and positive asylum decisions, but they are also there when bad news arrives. And since the change in the Austrian government in 2017, bad news arrives much more frequently. Even while unable to integrate large-scale societies, friendship is an important source of solidarity in social life. When members of Shalom Alaikum stress, in the acceptance speech for the Leon Zelman Prize, as well as in our interview, that they have become friends with some of the people they were caring for, this friendship has not just a personal but also a civil meaning. According to Aristotle, friendship is a civic virtue and the foundation of a healthy civil society, establishing ties of solidarity between its members (cf. Jang 2018). The possibility and facticity of friendship not only undermines the perception of members of the outgroup as potential enemies (see the contribution of Heins in this volume), it also functions as a model of and for civil relations. While many relations in social life are somehow hierarchical (e.g., parent/child or teacher/student), friendship is the paradigmatic example of a relation among equals, also characteristic for the civil sphere as “horizontal community of civil life” in contrast to the “vertical memberships in non-civil spheres” (Alexander 2006: 266). Of course, a suspicious interpreter might criticize the invocation of friendship as ideological, masking the implicit hierarchies and inequalities which characterize the interaction between refugees and volunteers, the former being dependent on the latter. Nevertheless, ideology or not, the idea of friendship entails a symmetry and equality between human beings, which, at the same time, embodies the utopian ideals of civil society.

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Despite this celebration of friendship, the help that Shalom Alaikum provides is not unconditional: they demand from their protégés compliance with the Austrian laws and asylum procedures, they insist on knowing the whereabouts of each person and being able to reach every single one of them. Otherwise, they will not provide assistance. In some cases, Shalom Alaikum have even refused to help, for example, when a mother applied for asylum to obtain a (cosmetic) surgery for two of her children. The woman, who reached Austria on the way from France, where she could have had the surgery but only at her own expense, had her first asylum application rejected, but was able to successfully repeal the decision—although without the help of Shalom Alaikum—and left Austria after the surgery. Despite the fact that the members of the group, including our interviewee Sonia, did in fact empathize with the woman (“we all understand as mothers, one hundred percent, and as women”), and probably would have done the same in her situation, they did not consider her a refugee worthy of their support or state support. The symbolic binary distinguishing between refugees in need and those coming for different reasons is also crucial for meaning-making within the group. As we have mentioned before, asylum seeking is a legal process, in which regulative institutions of the civil sphere, parts of the state administration and specific courts, play an important role. In Austria, the administrative decisions regarding asylum are made by the BFA (Bundesamt für Fremdenwesen und Asyl ); these decisions can be appealed at the federal administrative court, the BVwG (Bundesverwaltungsgericht ), whose verdicts can be, in turn, overruled by the Austrian supreme court. The legal asylum seeking process has the function to distinguish between those in need of asylum protection and those who are not. Decisions granting or denying asylum are supposed to be impartial and civil, affirming solidarity with those in need, which necessarily involves rejecting those considered not fulfilling the criteria. However, once it appears that this legal process violates the principle of impartiality or doesn’t apply the law appropriately, the asylum process and its carrier institutions are threatened by pollution and eventually framed as uncivil. Shalom Alaikum frequently posts news about positive and negative asylum decisions concerning their protégés (“Schützlinge”); they celebrate positive decisions and express their disappointment and disagreement in the case of negative decisions. According to our interviewee Sonia, since the new government took over, every single asylum decision of the BFA concerning the protégées of Shalom Alaikum has been negative. Not

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without righteous anger and distress, Sonia told us stories of families, couples, or young adults whose asylum requests have been rejected in the first instance. She recalls passages from their decisions on asylum, which she considers cynical or even malicious. Sometimes, the negative decisions stand in stark contrast to the positively perceived atmosphere of the official interview, at which members of Shalom Alaikum are often present. Sonia suspects that since the new right-wing government took over, there is a political directive to reject every single asylum decision independent of the case, often dismissing asylum seekers as untrustworthy sources and their stories of life-threatening circumstances as implausible (for instance, by speaking of “alleged rape,” Sonia’s least favorite example). These oddities seem not to be confined to the protégés of Shalom Alaikum. On Facebook, the group shared an article, published in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard on October 8, 2018, in which a journalist reports on a public meeting of judges, lawyers, and artists who criticize the arbitrariness of asylum decisions, that—according to a foreign law attorney—undermines the rule of law.3 This meeting at Vienna’s Theater in Josefstadt was accompanied by a reading of “phony” justifications from negative asylum decisions, often accusing the refugees of lying. This corresponds to the narrations of Sonia, according to which the flight reasons were often put into question or even the whole story of the refugee was dismissed due to seeming inconsistencies or alleged holes relating to unimportant aspects of the story (“Your family had a business in Bagdad and can’t tell us precisely what revenue it made in 2014?”). In 2018, several cases were made public in which the asylum decision process quite obviously was influenced by questionable gay stereotypes and antigay attitudes. The application of an 18-year-old homosexual asylum seeker from Afghanistan, for example, was rejected with the argument that the way he “walks, acts or dresses, does not show even the slightest that [he] could be homosexual” (Horaczek 2018). The public criticism of the practices of the BFA suggests that it no longer fulfills its civil function of distinguishing between refugees deserving asylum and those who are not—by rejecting everyone for political but uncivil reasons. If asylum decisions by the state administration are discriminatory and justice is not served, it is the civil duty of not only the courts but also every other member of civil society to restore the civil force of the law. Asylum seekers must be provided with legal assistance to appeal against unjustified asylum or court decisions. In providing or brokering such assistance, NGOs like Shalom Alaikum do not only help refugees but

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also fulfill an important function for the civil sphere at large. At present, the lion’s share of Shalom Alaikum’s efforts and resources are devoted to secure legal assistance for asylum seekers. According to Sonia, every second appeal to the courts has been successful, which means that the second line of defense of civil society still stands. In contrast to the BFA, which is under control of the Austrian Ministry of Interior Affairs, at that time in the hands of the far-right FPÖ, the courts seemed to have preserved their autonomy—indispensable for the functioning of a civil society.

A Typical Viennese Mélange: Sonia’s Story While CST typically highlights the public dimension of meaning and the importance of cultural codes shared by the whole of civil society, in this case study, we would like to shed light on the agency of specific actors in the civil sphere, their motivations and reasons for action, as well as the symbolic and cultural resources they mobilize for acts of cross-group solidarity. We can find structures of meaning not only in society at large, but also in individual biographies and stories as well as in typical experiences and narratives of specific groups, for example, the Jewish minority in Austria. In the following, we would like to discuss the biographical narrative of Sonia as well as her engagement in Shalom Alaikum, based on a three-hour interview, during which we mainly encouraged her to tell us stories about her work with refugees and her life in general. Although we asked her for information about the organization too, the main goal of the interview was to give Sonia space to elaborate on the meanings of her work with refugees in relation to her life story. In our analysis of the transcript, we paid close attention to recurrent patterns or structures of meaning in her narrative self-presentation. Sonia describes herself as a “typical Viennese mix,” being born in 1950 in Prague to Jewish-Hungarian parents. When she was a small child, her family had to travel a lot but also owned a “nice big flat” in Hungary, her father working as a commercial attaché for the Hungarian government. She attributes to herself an inborn “helper’s syndrome,” which has sadly “become a swearword” nowadays. This is illustrated by a story her mother told her from their time in Berlin, where her father had been working at that time: four- or five-year-old Sonia insisted going as a nurse for carnival, which her older ego interprets as an early sign that she always had wanted “to help people.” In 1956, when many Hungarians fled their country after the failed anti-communist uprising, Sonia’s family decided

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not to return to Hungary from Berlin. They ended up in a small flat in Vienna, being part of a huge crowd of “Hungarian refugees” that, according to Sonia, dwarfs the current number of refugees (in Vienna). She experienced Vienna as a welcoming city in those days and, like other talented refugee children, she was able to attend the Lycée despite her family not being able to pay the school fees. Looking back, however, she views the “welcome culture” of the 1950s in Vienna as rather exceptional and transitory in contrast to the deep-rooted antisemitism and the strong sense of identity (“mia san mia”4 ) which she later came to know as an integral part of the “Austrian soul.” Still a student at the Lycée, she engaged in volunteer work for the first time in 1964, when her geography teacher took her class to the streets, cleaning shoes to collect money for starving children in Africa. Already back then, she experienced skepticism toward and criticism of cross-group solidarity: “Why should I care for African children? […] We have enough poor people [of our own],” she recalls passersby commenting on the activities of her class. Not only now but also back then the uncivil narrowing of solidarity took the form of “my group first.” This childhood memory of Sonia is reminiscent of her report on the controversy surrounding Shalom Alaikum in the Jewish community in Vienna: “As there are so many Jewish people in need without help, [as a Jew] one should help one’s own community first.” While religious doctrines often explicitly advocate cross-group solidarity, the social expectation for ingroup solidarity remains quite strong. Nevertheless, this ingroup solidarity lacks any civil character, as it is not connecting the ingroup to other groups in society and society-wide values. According to her childhood stories, it is no surprise that Sonia became involved in voluntary work for refugees in the summer of 2015, when she went to the Westbahnhof to assist stranded refugees. With her contacts, she helped the founders of the “Kids Corner,” a safe place for refugee children and their parents at the Westbahnhof, to continue their work within the building of the train station. She brought daily leftover food from a Jewish elderly home in Vienna, packed in boxes marked with a kosher symbol, to the Westbahnhof. The kosher stamp did not only signify the food as being permissible according to Islamic law (kosher and halal have similar requirements) but also suggested that Sonia was Jewish. She describes the situation, arriving alone at the Westbahnhof as “the only Jew in sight” with kosher food (there were several Turkish and Arab people bringing halal food), as kind of uncomfortable, but she was welcomed

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by the other helpers, who were at first surprised by her Jewish identity: “You are Jewish? Ah, super.” For Sonia, being Jewish comes always with the uncertainty about other people’s reaction to one’s Jewish identity. Confronting people with her identity while helping other people is for her a chance to fight and change stereotypes, especially on the Arab side. According to her, it is easier to discuss issues with Arabs, despite diverging political opinions regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, than with Austrian right-wing nationalists. At the Westbahnhof, she met Miriam, another founding member of Shalom Alaikum. Golda, the head of the managing board of the organization, who triggered the formation of the group with a Facebook post (cf. Grabinsky 2016), is a friend of her daughter. Sonia describes the birth of the organization the following way: “And then came the moment, when we didn’t know, what to do, except that we knew, what we didn’t want to do.” They did not want to “collect diapers” or “money for cosmetics” but to help people more directly. For the members of Shalom Alaikum, it is important to be engaged personally, in face-to-face interactions with actual people in need. By accident, they heard of a house accommodating around 25 refugee families, about 100 children and adults in total, which they sort of adopted: “We take this house, this is our project, and we will take care of the refugees in this house.” This is, according to Sonia, how Shalom Alaikum came into being. There is a certain division of labor within the organization itself, with different members of Shalom Alaikum specializing in different tasks. Sonia is the one often accompanying women going into labor to the hospitals and she can tell a lot of anecdotes about such visits, frequently involving unfriendly behavior on the part of security personal and even nurses, which makes her wonder about existing prejudices and discriminatory practices. Once, she told us, she had been even thrown out of the AKH, the main hospital in Vienna, by the security personnel. One of her protégés, a woman with headscarf, wanted to have a C-section, which was scheduled but then forgotten by the hospital personnel. The woman needed Sonia’s assistance and comfort, but after she requested a more fitting nightgown for the patient, the nurse started to insist that the visiting hours were already over: And then this idiot in the security service, they have these boots on too, this was somehow creepy. […] the nurse could have just come one more time to say, “Sorry, but you have to go now.” Instead they called the

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security service, two men intimidating me. “You have to go now.” […] I don’t know, if this has really something to do with foreigners or the headscarf […].

It seems that the militaristic behavior and appearance (the boots!) of security personnel triggered an almost visceral reaction in her, a woman being intimidated by men and maybe even as a member of the Jewish minority. This anecdote also illustrates that the members of Shalom Alaikum face adversity in their everyday activities, although one can never be sure to what extent this incivility is due to the discrimination of foreigners, asylum seekers, or Muslims. Sonia, who has been participating on behalf of Shalom Alaikum in many meetings between different refugee aid groups, told us that there was no such meeting where hostilities and insults have not been discussed, even cases of close friendships breaking up over the issue are not unheard of. The aid Shalom Alaikum provides covers a wide range of activities, which includes accompanying women giving birth, thus replacing a grandmother who might be far away in the Middle East or already dead— a role that Sonia clearly enjoys, and which creates lasting bonds between her and these families. Nevertheless, the focus of the group’s activities has shifted over the years. What was relatively “easy going” in 2015 has become a fight against the windmills of the Austrian asylum bureaucracy and the discriminatory practices in the Viennese housing and job markets. Still, Sonia and Shalom Alaikum continue to fight for hospitality, civility, and justice.

Self-Reflection and Interpretation: Holocaust, Religion, and Antisemitism To help those in need, refugees fleeing from dire conditions in their home country, in particular, seems to be a universal global norm, which manifests itself in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as in local practices in real civil societies, for example, in the actions of all those who provided help for incoming refugees in 2015. In addition to these universal norms of solidarity, we can also identify group-specific sources of solidarity and meaning, particular cultural resources which contribute to the universalizing discourse of the civil sphere. When we look at the self-reflection of Shalom Alaikum in their mission statement, their

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Facebook posts, the interview with Sonia, as well as the acceptance speech for the Leon Zelman Prize by Golda Schlaff, we find three particular sources of solidarity, namely cultural and family memories of the Holocaust, the religious commandments to help those in need in Judaism, and helping as a strategy to fight antisemitic stereotypes. In the following, we will discuss each of these sources of meaning in more detail. In a small flyer introducing Shalom Alaikum and its mission in four languages (Hebrew, English, Arabic, and German), the Holocaust is explicitly referred to as a rationale for group’s civil engagement: Because 70 years ago, we Jews found ourselves in a similar situation as you know [sic, according to the German version it should read “now”]: Our parents and grandparents had to flee from Austria. Anti-Semitic National Socialists persecuted them. Our grandparents and parents became refugees, looking for a safe place to live. We are the children and grandchildren of this generation of Jewish refugees. We know how thankful our parents were to everyone that helped them survive. From them we have learned that showing humanity, love and kindness to people in need is the most precious gift.

According to Sonia, stating these similarities between contemporary Muslim refugees and the Jewish refugees of the 1930s and 1940s caused a controversy in the Jewish community: “And this is what people in the end blamed us for, that we claimed: if one would have opened borders to more people in the Holocaust, more people would be alive today.” She emphasizes, however, that no one in the group really compares the “refugee crisis” to the Holocaust. Nevertheless, she adds a statement, which she flags as her personal view: “The uniqueness of six million people murdered because of their religion is one thing, but we should not tempt fate, if it will work again with different people.” Shalom Alaikum walks a fine line, not comparing the Holocaust to the contemporary “refugee crisis,” but instead comparing the situation of (Muslim) refugees today with the situation of Jewish refugees in the past. From their own family histories, they have learned how important it is, not only to be able to flee from mortal danger, but also to receive support in the countries one is fleeing to. The haunting specter of the Holocaust appears also at the beginning of an article on the work of the organization (Grabinsky 2016), opening with a scene from Elias Canneti’s autobiography, in which the author

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witnesses the arrival of Jewish refugees in Vienna. According to Grabinsky, Shalom Alaikum was born “out of a sense of shared history” with the refugees who arrived more recently in Vienna, a conclusion that our interview confirms. The Holocaust is also explicitly mentioned in the speeches of the Leon Zelman Prize ceremony. The Leon Zelman Prize was in fact established in honor of the Holocaust survivor and long-standing director of Jewish Welcome Service Vienna, a city-sponsored organization promoting Jewish culture in Austria. Its dedication contains an explicit reference to the Holocaust: it is awarded to projects that participate in “the fight against forgetting and for the dialog between present-day Austria and the survivors of National Socialist persecution, and in particular their descendants, as the basis for a shared future.”5 In his laudation for Shalom Alaikum, Rabbi Shlomo Hofmeister praised the organization for its practical solidarity with refugees, providing comfort and help, for its civil engagement for democracy and, last but not least, as a symbol of successful religious coexistence and dialogue. At the beginning of his speech, Rabbi Hofmeister evokes the “refugee crisis” as human tragedy, which calls for responsibility and solidarity. He concludes the introduction with a thinly veiled reference to the Holocaust: “One day, our generation will be judged on how we responded to these challenges. And no one of us will ever be able to say that he didn’t know.” “We didn’t know (of it)” is an important trope in German as well as Austrian discourse, through which ordinary Germans and Austrians have denied their involvement in the crimes of the Holocaust (cf. Nolzen 2010). By using this trope, the Rabbi invokes the Holocaust as a universal symbol to appeal to the moral responsibility of all human beings to help refugees. Praising the civil courage (“Zivilcourage”) of Shalom Alaikum, Rabbi Hofmeister quotes not only from religious writings, but also from the leaflets of Die Weiße Rose, a German resistance group under National Socialism, drawing an analogy between the engagement for refugees today and the—unquestionably riskier—engagement for Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis back then. According to the Rabbi, engagement for refugees requires civil courage, because those engaged are frequently ridiculed as naïve and do-gooders (“Gutmenschen”) and often have to face insults and threats. From the Holocaust as a universal as well as group-specific symbol of cross-group solidarity, we now move to Judaism as a source of civil solidarity, which is also invoked by Rabbi Hofmeister’s laudation.

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In CST, religion is considered a noncivil sphere, which nevertheless maintains complex relationships with the civil sphere (Alexander 2006: 7), the latter held together by its own “secular faith” (Alexander 2006: 4). Religious affiliations can become anticivil qualities in the discourse of civil society, as was the case of the Jews in many Christian societies, which were faced with the dilemma of assimilation vs. exclusion (Alexander 2006: 459–502). In the twenty-first century, Islam is often regarded as “anticivil” in many Christian but also non-Christian societies (e.g., Myanmar), a religion incompatible with the values of (Christian) liberal democracy, which raises the question if and to what extent Muslims can be proper citizens. With the arrival of Muslims in Austria and other European societies, Islam and symbols associated with it, such as minarets or the hijab, have been targeted by right-wing immigration critics as anticivil. For several years now, headscarves have been hotly debated in Austria. In 2017, the Austrian parliament enacted a ban of the face-covering burqa (Rosenberger 2018) and, in 2018, a headscarf ban for kindergartens, which most likely will be extended to elementary schools. Religion does not necessarily need to be uncivil or even anticivil— neither does a civil sphere have to be secular, as Robert Bellah (2015) argues contra Alexander. In his study on American civil religion, Bellah (1991) has shown that religious beliefs can become part of the normative and symbolic order of a civil society, which can transcend the boundaries between different religious groups. In a similar vein, Shalom Alaikum invokes in its mission statement the unity of the three big monotheistic religions: We believe that we are all g-d’s6 children and that love and kindness unites us. We Muslims, Christians, and Jews are historically and biblically related. We share the same grandfather, Abraham/Ibrahim, after whom we name our children.

The group stresses the common root of all Abrahamic religions and portrays them as one big family. Although Jews, Christians, and Muslims may not be brothers and sisters, they can be considered cousins in the great scheme of history. Not only religious beliefs transcending specific religions (e.g., the appeal to one common god) can have civil qualities, but each particular religion also has a core of civil beliefs that promote cross-group solidarity. According to the laudation of Rabbi Hofmeister, the work of Shalom Alaikum demonstrates that religion “has to be recognized not as

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cause of the problem but as part of the solution,” a statement echoed almost word-for-word by Bellah (2015: 52). By quoting extensively from Jewish religious writings, Rabbi Hofmeister shows that Judaism as particular religion, just like Christianity and Islam, provides cultural resources for the expansion of solidarity to nonbelievers and those of a different faith.7 Our findings seem to support Bellah’s (2015) claim that the civil sphere does not have to be secular, nor does religion have to be noncivil. Religion does not have to be particular and divisive, as it contains commandments and provides resources for reaching out to members of other communities. This works in two ways. On the one hand, religion can be used to redraw boundaries and unify groups, stating that Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe in the same god and even share the same religious ancestor (Abraham). This is what Bellah had in mind, when he interprets the American pledge of alliance as one nation “under God” not as reference to a specific religion, but as the expression of a civil religion (Bellah 1991: 171). On the other hand, every religion has its particular teachings, which help to promote cross-group solidarity from within. The short description in the flyer does not elaborate on the specific contribution of the Jewish religion, although the speeches, the Facebook posts, and our interview contain references to Jewish religious writings and the conception of cross-group solidarity as a good deed (mitzvah). Like Christianity, with its parable of the good Samaritan, Judaism (and Islam too) promote solidarity with members of outgroups. The sphere of religion as such may be noncivil, but most religions contain teachings and commandments promoting civil solidarity actively. Thus, Bellah might be right that “religious motivation is a necessary factor” in the establishment of a “global civil society” (Bellah 2015: 53). Acts of cross-group solidarity mean something different, if the relation between two groups is strained, for example, during times of rampant antisemitism or Islamophobia. Among the Righteous Among the Nations, commemorated by Yad Vashem for their selfless engagement with Jews during World War II, there was a significant number of Muslims (cf. Gershman 2008). Today, these acts of trans-religious solidarity seem surprising to us. After World War II, the relations between Arabs and the newly founded state of Israel quickly worsened, which had a negative impact on the relations between Muslims and Jews in general. In many Muslim countries, anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and antisemitism became widespread. Conversely, since the terrorist attacks of September

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11, 2001, many (but not only) Western countries have seen anti-Muslim and anti-Islam sentiments on the rise. Nowadays, openly anti-Islam, rightwing parties such as Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in France or anti-Islam social movements as Pegida in Germany supposedly align themselves with Israel and their domestic Jewish population, which are perceived to be threatened by Muslims and Muslim immigration. In many civil discourses, Islam is increasingly perceived as a polluting, anticivil quality. It seems that the rift between the Jewish and Muslim populations in Western countries has never been greater. In such times, examples of cross-religious solidarity are of particular importance. This is the context in which Shalom Alaikum perceives its work as a strategy of fighting antisemitism among Muslims. In her acceptance speech for the Leon Zelman Prize, Golda Schlaff acknowledges the widespread existence of antisemitism and antizionism in Arab countries. She sees the work of her organization as trying to combat antisemitism by fighting those resentments and stereotypes. She is convinced that their Muslim protégés would not allow “anyone in their company to insult Jews.” According to Sonia, one of her protégés even spread the word to Syria, telling his mother, “The only people helping us here are the Jewish people, that is, Shalom Alaikum,” and she reports that the refugee families she is close with made inquiries after her daughter, who lives in Israel, after they heard of a terrorist attack. Sometimes, tales of Muslim antisemitism spread as rumors in the Jewish community. Sonia heard the story of a refugee mother in Vienna, who allegedly refused her child to be treated by a Jewish doctor wearing a Star of David. According to Sonia, the rumor was clearly false as this particular doctor doesn’t wear a Star of David. But even if the rumor were true, Sonia asks, wouldn’t such a refusal be understandable in consideration of the negative stereotypes about Jewish people? So, instead of just complaining about these antisemitic stereotypes, she encourages Jews to fight antisemitism actively. By providing Muslim refugees help, Shalom Alaikum is fighting against the Muslim antisemitism that remains a threat to its own community. This strategy was also advocated by Bini Guttman, Vice President of the Austrian Jewish student association, who explicitly mentioned the work of Shalom Alaikum in a talk show about “antisemitism today” on national television, which focused almost exclusively on Islamic antisemitism.8 It is hard to assess how effective this strategy really is, but it is one of the driving motives of Shalom Alaikum, an entirely “egoistic” reason from the perspective of the ingroup to engage in cross-group solidarity.

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The active promotion of cross-group solidarity appealing to ingroup values and interests can be at the same time divisive because it addresses all members of the ingroup. The normative claim that all Jews, as children and grandchildren of refugees should aid contemporary refugees, that it is their religious duty to do so, and that it is in their best interest to fight antisemitism, puts other members of the community under moral pressure and has the potential to create a conflict within the ingroup, a problem that we will return to in the conclusion.

Conclusion: Shalom Alaikum as a Righteous Actor in International Migration This chapter has investigated the case of Shalom Alaikum, a civic association providing assistance to refugees in Vienna, run by a group of Jewish women. In our analysis of the activities of this organization and the motivation of its members, we build upon CST to shed a light on the cultural codes and patterns employed in constructing cross-group solidarity with refugees. Cross-group solidarity is not just a special case of solidarity, but civil solidarity par excellence: solidarity toward others as others, which is the basis for living together in a diverse society. Our case is characterized by double cross-group solidarity, not only of Austrian citizens toward asylum seekers from abroad, but also of Jews toward refugees, which are predominantly Muslim. As Austrian citizens, the members of Shalom Alaikum welcome the newly arrived refugees into Austrian society. From their protégés, they demand compliance with the rules and laws of Austrian society, while at the same time recognizing their cultural and religious differences. As Jews helping Muslims, they want to remain true to the ethical obligations their religion imposes on them, which does not conflict but overlaps with their understanding of their civic duties, while at the same time fighting antisemitic stereotypes and building bridges between the religious groups, whose relations have often been strained in the last decades. Jewishness is an important symbolic marker for the group, informing and legitimizing its work, drawing on the memory of the Holocaust and the experience of being a vulnerable minority in Austria. In providing help for refugees, Shalom Alaikum is risking conflict with their respective ingroups, the Austrian society on the one hand and the Jewish community on the other hand. Along with other voluntary helpers

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in the country, members of Shalom Alaikum face indifference and hostility, slurs, and even threats, not only at the level of public discourse but also in their everyday work with refugees. While they initially enjoyed some official support, receiving in 2016 a prize from the ministry of foreign affairs, with the government change in 2017, Shalom Alaikum suddenly stood in opposition to the proclaimed goals of the new government, namely reducing the numbers of refugees at all cost. Confronted with political interference in the asylum process, the group channels its resources to fight for the right of refugees to get a fair assessment of their eligibility for asylum. Not only is Austrian society at large polarized over the “refugee crisis,” but there are also contrasting views on the group’s work in the Jewish community in Vienna. Many of its members regard ingroup solidarity more important than cross-group solidarity; in addition, there are (not entirely unfounded) reservations toward Muslim immigration and refugees, considering how widespread antisemitism in the Muslim world is. A paradigmatic example of cross-group solidarity are the Righteous Among the Nations, the non-Jews commemorated by Yad Vashem, some of them even Muslims (cf. Gershman 2008), who helped their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust and took great risks in doing so. Considering that the “Holocaust” did not remain a mere historical event but became a powerful universal symbol (Alexander 2002), which was also evident in our material, we would now like to explore the symbolic value of the category of “righteousness” to understand acts of cross-solidarity in international migration. In what sense can we describe Shalom Alaikum as a “righteous” actor? In our material, we find references to the Holocaust, the insistence on similarities between the situation back then and now, as well as recognition of the fact that the contemporary “refugee crisis” is not comparable to the Holocaust. On the one hand, it’s similar; both exhibit failures of solidarity as well as acts of cross-group solidarity. On the other hand, they are different, in scale and intensity. However, there is one major difference, namely that the Righteous Among the Nations refer to those who helped Jews to flee or shield them from persecution—and not to the ones who welcomed or helped them in their country of arrival. The refugees arriving in Austria are already safe, one could argue, so no righteous acts are needed to save them, nor does helping them expose the helper to major risks. Nevertheless, this difference seems to be a difference in degree rather than a difference of kind. The deeds of Shalom Alaikum

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might not be comparable to the acts of those who saved Jews from the Nazis, but they share similar characteristics: they are acts of cross-group solidarity in an indifferent and often hostile environment. In the interview with Sonia, we learned about the conflicts their civil engagement causes, within the Jewish community in Vienna and Austrian society more broadly. However, according to Sonia, as well as to the acceptance speech of Golda Schlaff, the story of Shalom Alaikum is, in this respect, not exceptional but rather exemplary of voluntary workers for refugee aid organizations. The members of Shalom Alaikum and other refugee aid organizations face hostility in their own communities and from the employees of institutions they interact with, they are derided as “naïve” and “do-gooders” and sometimes even insulted or threatened. In the case of Shalom Alaikum, as we saw in the story of Sonia, these interactions are colored by the biographical experience of being Jewish, of belonging to a vulnerable minority. What makes the case of Shalom Alaikum particularly compelling is the fact that the reference to Holocaust is not only implicit, but explicitly evoked. The Holocaust as a universal symbol of the failure of solidarity and civil society, despite the noble acts of cross-solidarity by a few “righteous,” serves an important role in the discourse on helping refugees, rendering cross-group solidarity as a lesson learned from the past and as an ethical obligation for the present. For the Jewish volunteers, the Holocaust has also a specific meaning, tied to their family history and group identity. By helping refugees, activists like Sonia reciprocate the support that she and her family had received, which allowed them to start a new life in Austria. As an association of volunteers, operating in a social and cultural environment of increasing hostility and indifference, Shalom Alaikum exemplifies the “righteous” in international migration and serves as a shining example of the fact that cross-group solidarity is not only possible but also necessary to keep our societies civil and healthy.

Notes 1. “Pro & Contra Spezial: Antisemitismus Heute.” 2018. Pro & Contra, November 7, 2018. Retrieved October 23, 2019 (https://www.puls4. com/pro-und-contra/videos/ganze-folgen/Ganze-Folgen/Pro-ContraSpezial-Antisemitismus-heute-685012).

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2. According to surveys conducted in Austria (IFES 2016: 38) and Germany (Karakayali and Kleist 2016: 11–12), significantly more women are active in refugee initiatives. 3. Sterkl, Maria. 2018. “Anwälte und Richter kritisieren “Willkür” in Asylverfahren.” Der Standard, October 8, 2018. Retrieved October 23, 2019 (https://derstandard.at/2000088910311/Anwaelte-undRichter-kritisieren-Willkuer-in-Asylverfahren). 4. In our interview, Sonia used this Austrian dialectal expression, meaning “we are we,” to mock an overly rigid and exclusive conception of Austrian national identity. 5. Jewish Welcome Service Vienna. n.d. “The Leon Zelman Prize … for Dialogue and Understanding.” Jewish Welcome Service Vienna. Retrieved October 23, 2019 (https://jewish-welcome.at/en/zelman-prize/). 6. In the flyers and other publications of Shalom Alaikum (and even in our e-mail conversation with Sonia) god’s name is never spelled out following a (fairly recent) Jewish custom, traditionally only applied to god’s name in Hebrew, which circumvents the necessity for a proper burial of the paper on which one of god’s full names is printed. 7. On a more secular note, Grabinsky (2016) refers to “The love for the Other” of the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in describing the work of Shalom Alaikum, which can be regarded as another instance of a text rooted in a particular Jewish tradition, advocating universal solidarity out of its very particularity. 8. “Pro & Contra Spezial: Antisemitismus Heute.” 2018. Pro & Contra, November 7, 2018. Retrieved October 23, 2019 (https://www.puls4. com/pro-und-contra/videos/ganze-folgen/Ganze-Folgen/Pro-ContraSpezial-Antisemitismus-heute-685012).

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Žagar, N. Kogovšek Šalamon, and M. Lukšiˇc-Hacin. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 179–195. Rosenberger, Siglinde. 2018. “Gesichtsverhüllung: In der Öffentlichkeit pauschal verboten.” In Auf dem Weg zur Gleichbehandlung: Festschrift für Ingrid Nikolay-Leitner, edited by S. Feigl and I. Nikolay-Leitner. Wien: ÖGB Verlag, pp. 141–150. Sales, Rosemary. 2002. “The Deserving and the Undeserving? Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Welfare in Britain.” Critical Social Policy 22(3): 456–478.

CHAPTER 4

Righteous Doctors: Reacting to the Inhumane Treatment of Asylum Seekers in Australia Anthony Moran

Modern Australia is an immigrant nation, but it views and treats harshly unauthorized migrants, especially asylum seekers arriving by boat. Human rights organizations have condemned Australia’s asylum seeker policies for breaching international human rights standards (Amnesty International 2013; McAdam 2013). After the Keating Labor government introduced the Immigration Reform Act 1992, mandatory detention of any noncitizen who arrives or is present in Australia without a valid visa became the mainstream policy approach. In the early to mid-2000s, and again since late 2012, asylum seekers arriving by boat have been detained in offshore processing centers on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, with a smaller proportion detained in Australia’s onshore detention facilities.1 Under more stringent policies since July 2013, even after being recognized as refugees, boat arrivals have been refused resettlement in Australia and forced to live for years in a kind of limbo on Nauru and Manus Island (the latter detention center was closed on October 31, 2017).2

A. Moran (B) Department of Social Inquiry, La Trobe University, Bundoora Campus, Bundoora, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_4

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Alexander’s civil sphere theory (CST) argues that every “modern democratic society, and even decidedly less-than democratic ones” (Alexander 2013: 536) has a relatively autonomous civil sphere which posits a utopian, universalizing solidarity that is always inevitably compromised in real-world contexts (Alexander 2006). The civil sphere has a binary symbolic structure distinguishing civil and anticivil motives, social relations, and institutions (Alexander 2006: 57–59). The legal, physical, and symbolic treatment of asylum seekers reflects the binary structure of the Australian civil sphere, with asylum seekers and their supporters polluted as anticivil within the binary codes. While the organization of citizenship within a national framework limits the universalistic solidarity that would embrace asylum seekers as equals, it does not absolutely prevent such an extension of solidarity, enacted by civil society groups, and as shown in this chapter, by Australian doctors. This extension of solidarity is known as civil repair. Using extensive case studies of gender, religious, and racial exclusion (Alexander 2006), Alexander has explained that “processes of civil repair” are “triggered” by “the contradictions between civil and noncivil spheres” and are conducted “via social movements and more incremental struggles for incorporation” of previously excluded others (Alexander 2015: 180). Noncivil spheres include the “market, state, church, school and family” and civil sphere solidarity is also distinguished from “the more gemeinschaftlich solidarities that define ethnicity, gender, sexuality, race and region” (Alexander 2013: 537). Civil repair refers to processes such as extending principles of social justice and incorporation to people whose previous exclusions represent distortions of the universalizing tendencies of the civil sphere. Civil repair occurs through symbolic action (e.g., through communicative institutions) and also through regulatory change (e.g., changes to laws and institutions). Doctors, together with human rights lawyers, judges, religious figures, civil society organizations and activists, and some politicians and heads of government agencies have engaged in morally courageous, practical, and symbolic acts of civil repair toward asylum seekers. Many doctors have spoken out over the terrible conditions in detention centers, and about negative impacts on health of discriminatory treatment of asylum seekers in community settings—in the media, at public hearings and enquiries, through publishing research in academic journals, and by organizing and signing petitions. They have marched, protested, and organized within social movements in support of asylum seekers, and through civil society

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organizations and their peak professional associations. They have donated their services when asylum seekers otherwise could not access health care (Correa-Velez et al. 2008; Spike et al. 2011), through their own clinics, or through refugee organizations. They have directly lobbied governments to make changes to law and policy. Through such activities doctors have at times actively opposed government policy and placed themselves at odds with mainstream public opinion. The Righteous Among the Nations refers to non-Jews who went against their own communities and prevailing belief and political systems to defend or save Jews during the Holocaust, often taking great personal risks (Yad Vashem, n.d.). The concept has a powerful symbolic resonance beyond the Holocaust, just as the Holocaust has become a powerful reference point for human rights abuses and genocide (Alexander 2002). Doctors have been righteous in speaking up for and actively defending an excluded group that has been dehumanized in mainstream discourses. They have faced criticism of being “doctor activists,” and in some cases have lost their jobs for speaking out, for example, when employed in Australia’s detention system (Martin 2018). Analyzing media reporting, websites, and public commentary from doctors, this chapter explores the motivators, including visceral experiences with asylum seekers and the ethics of care, and the forces, such as institutional supports like medical associations and broader social networks, that have inspired doctors in their acts of righteousness. This also indicates how noncivil sphere codes (Alexander 2006), like codes of medical ethics, can translate and become civil codes inspiring strong acts of solidarity with excluded others, in this case, asylum seekers. CST provides a lens to investigate how societies expand their horizons of solidarity and informs this case study in three main ways. First, I examine how discourses of pollution have contributed to the exclusion of asylum seekers. These discourses are organized through the civil sphere’s binary codes, which are also activated by those who challenge the pollution of asylum seekers. Second, I argue that doctors’ acts of solidarity with asylum seekers are acts of civil repair, involving strong attempts to humanize and depollute asylum seekers. In some instances, this involves polluting, as anticivil, government actors, and government policies and actions, as well as the guards and other officials with responsibility for detention centers. These actions are vital acts of civil repair because, I argue, the polluting of asylum seekers as anticivil provides the symbolic support for continued harsh treatment. The compounding effect

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of harsh laws is that these confirm the pollution of asylum seekers’ characters and motives in the eyes of others. Third, I argue that even if, in the present, the narratives of care and responsibility promoted by righteous doctors and other health professionals within broader networks of solidarity with asylum seekers fail to shift government policy, they provide resources to overcome civil indifference toward the suffering of others. Using health as a human right discourse—fusing noncivil medical ethical codes and universalizing civil codes—doctors reinforce the international and national obligation to attend to the human rights of asylum seekers. By emphasizing the dire consequences for health caused by prolonged and indeterminate detention, they provide important ideological resources for broader social movements advocating for asylum seekers and contribute to shifting public opinion toward more humane treatment.

Historical and Policy Background Since discarding the White Australia policy in the early 1970s, Australia has developed a nondiscriminatory immigration program that promotes the benefits of large-scale immigration and includes a substantial managed and “orderly” refugee program. Australia has had a multicultural public sphere since the late 1970s (Moran 2017), but asylum seekers arriving by boat have been bracketed off and excluded by political processes driven by noncivil codes of insular nationalism, potently expressed in former Prime Minister John Howard’s famous slogan from his 2001 election policy speech: “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come” (Howard 2001a). Australian governments and politicians regularly claim that Australia is a generous society with a long history of taking in migrants from all parts of the world, including refugees, but that it will not give in to people smugglers and to people who try to enter Australia by the “back door.” In this, they appear to have considerable public support, judging from opinion polling3 and from the success of conservative parties and governments when they have campaigned strongly on border control and strong asylum seeker policies in federal elections since 2001. The contradiction between Australia’s orderly immigration program, its official multiculturalism, and its view of itself as a “humanitarian” and “welcoming” country on the one hand, and its treatment of asylum seekers on the other (Every 2008) reflects Alexander’s (2006) central claim that the civil sphere is always a real-world civil sphere, shaped by history,

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enacting inclusion and exclusion. At its core are binary codes separating civil from anticivil, and larger discourses of “liberty” and “repression,” through which particular narratives about in- and out-groups, democratic and anti-democratic individuals and groups, are structured (Alexander 2006: Ch. 4). In the process of instituting a strong policy regime, asylum seekers have been repeatedly polluted as anticivil, by politicians (including government ministers), by media commentators, and by members of the broader Australian public. In addition, asylum seekers, existing outside of the other laws and social provisions that protect citizens and other permanent and temporary residents in Australia, are also far more difficult to incorporate within territorial (e.g., national) forms of solidarity, and by extension, to become the subjects of civil repair (Morris 2009). Mandatory detention emerged in response to boat arrivals, mainly from Cambodia, in the early 1990s (Bongiorno 2016; Phillips and Spinks 2013). At the time, government leaders distinguished between “good refugees” worthy of inclusion in Australia and (its civil sphere), and less desirable, self-centered, and devious “self-selecting” asylum seekers, branded as “economic refugees” (Millbank 2001). Detained in remote detention centers, these asylum seekers were largely invisible to the public, so that only a small group of activists, “a close-knit group of lawyers, nuns and priests and researchers,” who nevertheless “had well-developed networks with refugee advocacy organizations outside Australia,” advocated on their behalf (Tarzeiter 2010: 205). When larger numbers of asylum seeker boats arrived in the late 1990s, the conservative Howard government proclaimed it an issue of border control. Australia’s detention centers were already filling up when the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa rescued over 400 asylum seekers off the coast of Indonesia, and then headed for Australia’s Christmas Island in late August 2001. The Howard government refused its entry to Australian waters, causing international controversy, and then opened up offshore detention centers on Manus Island and Nauru. Australian media reported hunger strikes, suicides and suicide attempts, rioting, and detainees sewing their lips together and lying down in selfdug graves in Australia’s vast onshore and offshore detention system (Tyler 2003). This disturbed human rights and refugee activists and sections of the Australian public, but others were less sympathetic, spurred on by tabloid media that strongly supported the government’s tough stance. The plight of children in detention was highlighted by sections of the media, and in protests by civil society groups. Health professionals,

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including mental health professionals, emphasized the damaging health effects of long periods of indeterminate detention, especially for children, and apart from raising their voices in the media, and with governments, also published research about the terrible health impacts of mandatory detention in outlets including the Medical Journal of Australia,4 and The Lancet (Loff 2002). The plight of children locked up and witnessing distressing scenes in detention centers became an issue of public concern (Newman et al. 2013), and eventually, in 2005, children and their parents were released into community detention. However, temporary protection visas (TPVs) restricted access to government services and benefits, and kept asylum seekers in limbo, fearful of being returned to countries of origin. The Howard government’s range of stringent deterrence policies, including boat intercepts, excising nearby Australian islands from the migration zone (McAdam and Purcell 2007), offshore detention, and TPVs, contributed to stopping boat arrivals. The detention centers eventually emptied out, as most of the asylum seekers were found to be legitimate refugees. The last of the asylum seekers on Nauru were brought to Australia in 2008, soon after the Rudd Labor government was elected (Karlsen 2016). Between 2008 and 2010, Labor governments closed offshore detention facilities, canceled the policy of intercepting and turning back boats, attempted to speed up refugee assessment processes, and scrapped TPVs. However, boats arrived again in larger numbers, onshore detention centers filled, and there were mounting numbers of deaths at sea (estimated at more than 1000 in the passage between Indonesia and Christmas Island or Ashmore Reef), for which the Labor government was blamed, including by the conservative opposition, which campaigned strongly on border control, claiming that people smugglers had been encouraged by Australia’s weakened asylum seeker policies (Manne 2018). Labor Prime Minister Gillard reintroduced offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru in late 2012 (Karlsen 2016). Rudd replaced Gillard in 2013 and announced on July 19, an agreement with Papua New Guinea that all asylum seekers arriving by boat would be transferred there for processing, and would be resettled in Papua New Guinea or in another participating regional state. Rudd also announced, “As of today, asylum-seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia” (Hall and Swan 2013). Later Rudd entered into a similar memorandum of understanding with the Nauruan government to process asylum seekers (Karlsen 2016).

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These offshore detention policies were strengthened under Conservative governments (from September 2013 onwards) with policies such as “Operation Sovereign Borders,” with the military patrolling Australian waters and turning back boats, and the reintroduction of TPVs. Asylum seekers languished for years in detention centers with no hope of being resettled in Australia. The Nauru and Manus Island detention centers were shrouded in secrecy, with reporters frequently blocked from accessing them. Whistle-blowers risked their jobs and reputations by speaking out, and after the Abbott government introduced “Secrecy and Disclosure” provisions in the Border Force Act 2015, detention system employees risked up to two years imprisonment if they spoke out about conditions and abuses. The political consensus on border control between Australia’s major political parties has stymied more humane policies for asylum seekers. Outside the federal parliament, however, the process of attempted civil repair has been carried by courageous, outspoken individuals and groups, including righteous doctors. They have faced political and public ridicule, even condemnation, branded as “bleeding heart liberals,” naïve, and as unpatriotic Australians who would undermine Australia’s sovereignty. The power of such ridicule depends upon the extent to which asylum seekers have been polluted as anticivil, symbolically, and through legal structures. Alexander (2006: 188) has argued, “When the law formalizes anticivil constructions, members of polluted social categories - whether determined by class, race, religion, gender, nationality, or sexuality - can more effectively be excluded from membership in civil society.” Throughout the period of mandatory detention, as previously mentioned, asylum seekers and at least some of their supporters have been symbolically polluted as anticivil. Developing further an argument initially made about the binary codes of American civil society (Alexander and Smith 1993), Alexander (2006: 58) has explained that the codes of civil and anticivil motives of the civil sphere translate into codes of civil and anticivil relations (see Table 4.1). The descriptors used to dismiss the claims of asylum seekers, and in some cases to demonize them, have included the following: “economic refugees” (greedy, self-interested, and not genuine refugees), “illegals” (deceitful, conspiratorial), “unauthorized arrivals” (deceitful), “queue jumpers” (self-interested, selfishly taking the place of refugees who would wait in a mythical queue),5 and people “coming through the backdoor” (calculating). They have been accused of being “secretive” rather than

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Table 4.1 Binary codes of civil and anticivil relations

Civil relations

Anticivil relations

Open Trusting Critical Honorable Altruistic Truthful Straightforward Deliberative Friendly

Secretive Suspicious Deferential Self-interested Greedy Deceitful Calculating Conspiratorial Antagonistic

“open” about their true circumstances, for example by arriving without documents or identification. After the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers in the United States, asylum seekers were labeled by politicians, including government ministers, and in media reports, as potential “terrorists” (conspiratorial, antagonistic), a polluting label shaped by Islamophobia and the western response to Islamist acts of terror (Klocker and Dunn 2003; Saxton 2003). In late 2001, asylum seeker parents were accused by the Howard government of deliberately throwing their own children overboard from an asylum seeker boat in order to force naval personnel to take them on board so that they could make their claim for asylum. Thus, in what became known as “The Children Overboard Affair” they were polluted as “calculating,” “deceitful,” and “conspiratorial,” even “inhumane.” When asked by a radio interviewer about the purported incident, Prime Minister Howard said “I don’t want in this country people who are prepared…to throw their own children overboard…I don’t know their backgrounds but I do know this, it’s a matter of common humanity. Genuine refugees don’t throw their children overboard into the sea” (Howard 2001b). Their motives, and their imputed social relations, were thus anticivil. The accusation was later proven to be false (Marr and Wilkinson 2003).

Righteous Doctors and Civil Repair For several decades, health professionals, including general practitioners, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and other specialists have spoken out against conditions in Australia’s detention centers, and treatment of asylum seekers released into the community on bridging visas and TPVs. Although

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such civil discourse has not necessarily resulted in specific political change, it has had political effects at particular moments, when alarming revelations have shamed political leaders and resulted in shifts in the public mood toward asylum seekers. In this section, I argue that doctors have been righteous in the sense that they have opposed government policy on asylum seekers, thus defending a marginalized group outside of their own group, and also engaged in other acts of civil solidarity. They have risked their professional reputations by speaking up, and, in some cases, risked imprisonment, under the provisions of the Border Force Act 2015. Doctors have enacted civil repair through their engagement in the public sphere to change the way that mandatory detention is understood—in particular, making the strong case for its health-damaging costs, and its violation of human rights, including rights to health and to equal health treatment. They have performed civil solidarity through their acts of care for asylum seekers, including those in a detention system that traumatizes detainees, as well as the health professionals working within it. Health Professionals and Public Inquiries into the Detention of Asylum Seekers Doctors and other health professionals were prominent critics of the detention of children (and their parents) in the early 2000s, and their powerful testimony featured in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s (HREOC) inquiry into children in detention, and in the 2004 report A Last Resort? National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention (HREOC 2004). At the time of speaking out, there was strong public support for detention policies, but medical professionals helped to subtly shift public opinion, especially in relation to families and children. Medical evidence was marshaled to prove that prolonged, mandatory detention resulted in major psychological harm for children, with chapters of the report devoted to cataloguing the mental health and developmental damage caused to children, and the harms of their exposure to prison-like treatment by guards who referred to them by number rather than by name, and to riots, violence, and self-harm in detention centers. Analyzing this period, Tazreiter (2010) emphasizes the influence of the social movement organization ChilOut (Children out of Detention), formed in 2001 in response to revelations about the plight of an extremely ill and mentally traumatized child detainee, Shayan

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Badraie, whose story had been aired nationally on ABC’s Four Corners program. The emergence of this organization represented an important turning point in action against government asylum seeker policy, because it drew upon a broad section of Australia’s middle class, “such as diplomats, lawyers, doctors and writers, not usually known for protest action” (Tazreiter 2010: 208). In response to growing public concern about the findings detailed in the HREOC report, in May 2005, Howard government backbenchers threatened to present private members’ bills aimed at altering Australia’s detention policies in order to effect the release of all children and their parents from detention, unless they posed a security threat to the public, or were deemed likely to abscond. The Howard government bowed to the pressure and, though retaining mandatory detention, made amendments that allowed for community detention for families with children, and for unaccompanied minors (asylum seekers under the age of 18 arriving without parents or relatives). All of the remaining children, and their parents, were released from detention in the second half of 2005 (Phillips and Lorimer 2005). In this instance, the actions of medical professionals contributed to enacting incremental, regulatory civil repair (Alexander 2006: Ch. 14). The Australian Human Rights Commission’s (AHRC) inquiry and report, The Forgotten Children (AHRC 2014), similarly drew heavily on submissions and public testimony of medical professionals with years of experience working with refugees and asylum seekers in the community and in detention centers, and strongly worded submissions from many medical professional organizations, calling for an end to mandatory detention, and for the release of all children and their families from detention. The compiling of hard evidence of mental illness and other diseases caused by mandatory detention, or exacerbated by it, and the inadequacy of treatment in detention centers, in particular, in the Christmas Island detention center, and in the offshore detention centers on Manus Island and Nauru, presented a bleak and damning portrait of government abuse and neglect. The voices of detained children and former child detainees were also an important feature of this report, and of its impact. The conservative government attacked the inquiry and report as politically partisan, claiming that it could have been held during the Labor years when there were more boat arrivals and more children in detention. It used the civil and anticivil codes in its critique. The President of the AHRC, Professor Gillian Triggs, was targeted and pilloried by

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government ministers, and accused of undemocratic, anticivil behavior, and motives. News Corp media outlets ran a campaign against Triggs, with thousands of words devoted to negative reporting about her in The Australian newspaper, including leaked private conversations with senior government ministers, and leaked confidential AHRC documents (Simons 2018). The government implied that AHRC’s existence was under threat, claiming that there had been a “collapse in confidence” in its impartiality (Farr 2015). Such actions presented a stark warning to people who spoke out about detention policies. The national inquiry and report nevertheless appeared to inspire and galvanize doctors and their medical associations to speak out even more consistently, and in greater unison, as they demanded that governments end the policy of mandatory detention and immediately release all children and their families from detention, arguing that this was a humanitarian crisis. High-profile medical professionals, including Elizabeth Elliott, Professor of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Sydney, and pediatrician and advocate for asylum seekers and refugees Professor Karen Zwi, who also visited Christmas Island as investigators for the inquiry, became important spokespeople for medical concerns about the physical and mental health of asylum seekers (Elliott 2014; Elliott et al. 2015; Zwi and Talley 2016). Doctors Advocating for Asylum Seekers and Challenging Governments in the Mass Media Many high-profile, senior medical professionals have used their national profiles to condemn government asylum seeker policies, and to agitate for regulatory reform. In 2010, psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, in his speech upon being announced as Australian of the Year, referred to detention centers as “factories for producing mental illness and mental disorder,” which powerfully symbolized the damaging nature of Australia’s mandatory detention policy (Cresswell and Health Editor 2010), and was a potent symbolic naming often repeated in public sphere debates after that. The “factory” metaphor also condensed the emerging consensus view of doctors and the professional associations representing them on the damaging health effects of mandatory detention, as is now made clear in medical associations’ position statements on refugees, asylum seekers and detention (AMA 2015; RACGP 2015; RACP 2015; RANZCP 2017). McGorry had long been an advocate for asylum seekers and refugees and

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a critic of government asylum seeker policies and continued to agitate on these issues throughout his tenure as Australian of the Year. In August 2014, the former Director of Mental Health for International Health and Medical Services (IHMS) which was responsible for health services across Australia’s immigration detention system, psychiatrist Dr. Peter Young, spoke out in Australia’s Guardian newspaper, in a long interview and video excoriating the government and the Immigration Department for “deliberately” torturing asylum seekers in detention centers, in order to force them to return to other countries: …you can’t mitigate the harm because the system is designed to create a negative mental state. It’s designed to produce suffering. If you suffer, then it’s punishment. If you suffer, you’re more likely to agree to go back where you came from. By reducing the suffering you’re reducing the functioning of the system and the system doesn’t want you to do that. (Marr and Laughland 2014)

Young claimed that not only did the system have anticivil effects, but also that it was inspired by anticivil motives, including a secret, destructive agenda. Reflecting on his three years’ experience as Director, he said that asylum seekers were sent back to offshore detention after treatment in Australia with medical conditions that were best treated in Australian medical facilities, that officials tried to prevent the transfer of asylum seekers to Australia for treatment because of fears that this would undermine the deterrence policy, and that this caused delays endangering health. There was a damaging culture of secrecy at the centers, and mental health professionals were discouraged from putting in writing the mental health deterioration caused by mandatory detention and the conditions in the centers (advice that was ignored). The Immigration Department had refused to accept statistics collected by IHMS that proved that children were damaged by prolonged detention, and asked IHMS to withdraw them. He pointed out that a medical professional’s primary duty was not to do harm, and that his duty was to speak out when he saw harm being done. His own visceral experiences at detention camps inspired him to speak out: When you go to Manus Island and you walk down what is called the “walk of shame” between the compounds and you see men there at the fences it’s an awful experience…You have to feel shame. You have to understand what

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that feeling is about in order to be able to be compassionate. By feeling the shame you stay on the right side of the line. (Marr and Laughland 2014)

Others have described such visceral experiences leading them to speak out, even under threat of two years’ imprisonment due to the “secrecy and disclosure” provisions of the Border Force Act 2015. Prominent pediatrician, Dr. David Isaacs, who also ran a clinic for refugees in Sydney, agreed to treat children on Nauru in December 2014, and had been horrified and traumatized by what he had witnessed and heard there, having treated a six-year-old child who had tried to hang herself, and a fifteen-year-old boy who had sewn his lips together, among many other distressing examples. He said, “I just saw endless trauma…I saw 20 or 30 children and the trauma they were going through, over a year in prison really without knowing what their fate was going to be, it was appalling.” Returning to Darwin, he and the nurse who had accompanied him suffered nightmares inspired by their experiences. But this also inspired him to advocate more publicly for asylum seekers, as he felt that it was now his duty to do so: “Advocacy is about speaking up for people with no voice and I have not been a good enough advocate before and I’ve decided it was time I was” (Shoebridge 2015).6 Isaacs continued to speak out, despite being warned of the risks by a leading human rights lawyer. On the nationally broadcast ABC Four Corners program in April 2016, which examined the death from septicemia of Manus Island detainee Hamid Khazaei due to a bureaucratic delay in him being sent to mainland Australia for specialist medical treatment, Isaacs was quoted as saying, “I don’t think the Border Force Act is good legislation and I think it should be challenged…Why haven’t I been prosecuted? My feeling is that this legislation is not about actually imprisoning doctors, it’s about silencing doctors, and others” (Thompson et al. 2016). In August 2014, over 200 doctors, lawyers, academics, and refugee advocates from a group named J’Accuse, wrote an open letter to the Abbott government strongly condemning it and the two major political parties, for their motives and actions toward asylum seekers. Again reflecting the strong, binary codes of the civil sphere, the 13 main points of the letter contain accusations of anticivil motives, social relationships, and institutional arrangements. The Federal government and both major political parties were accused of “acting wilfully and deliberately” to pursue detention policies when there was clear evidence that these damaged

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the health of detainees, causing “psychiatric disorders, self-harm and suicide”; they had deliberately harmed some asylum seekers in order to deter others, and as a “political end”; they had contravened the international rights of children by arbitrarily detaining them; they had engaged in “forced deportations to situations of danger with confirmed fatal outcomes”; they had mislead the public and diminished them by persuading them “that cruelty to people who arrive by boat is justifiable on the false pretext that they are ‘illegal,’” by exploiting ignorance of asylum seekers’ circumstances, and by tolerating or encouraging racist media reporting that misled the public, rather than educating them; they had “cynically” negotiated with “poor and weakly governed countries,” thus placing refugees in unsafe environments; they had wasted pubic funds on costly incarceration when the money could have been spent on humane services for refugees and asylum seekers; they had pursued “an arbitrary and unjust refugee determination process,” that pitted humanitarian entrants against boat arrival asylum seekers; and they had ignored expert advice and failed to implement programs to improve the mental health of those most in need, thus going against “Australia’s health, mental health and well-being policies.” Finally, the government and the two major political parties were condemned for the anticivil action of “promoting the acceptability of an insular, more selfish and less ethical society,” thus damaging the social fabric (Doctors for Refugees 2014). In February 2016, pediatricians, including Dr. Karen Zwi (as mentioned previously, a prominent advocate for asylum seekers), who had treated children held in Australian detention centers, or those transferred to Australian hospitals, spoke out on national television on ABC 7.30 about the sexual assaults upon and suicidal states of children, again risking two years’ imprisonment for revealing details of conditions and happenings in detention centers (ABC 2016). On July 27, 2016, Doctors for Refugees mounted a High Court Challenge to the secrecy and disclosure provisions in the Border Force Act 2015, arguing that it was their ethical duty to speak out about health conditions that they encountered or witnessed in Australia’s detention system that should be brought to public attention (Doctors for Refugees 2016). The government backed down and amended the Act to exclude from the provision a range of medical professionals, but retained the ban for child care workers, social workers more generally, teachers, security staff, and others who worked in the detention system (Doherty 2016). Nevertheless, the doctors’ civil and legal action forced a regulatory repair that allowed for doctors with direct

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experience in Australia’s immigration detention system to speak about their concerns, and to enact the further civil repair. The removal of legal obstacles to speaking out did not remove other barriers, as shown by the experience of Dr. Nick Martin, a senior doctor for the IHMS on Nauru, who lost his position because of his advocacy for change in the health treatment of asylum seekers there (Martin 2018). Doctors’ Practical Acts of Solidarity that Contribute to Civil Repair Doctors and other health professionals have not only spoken out and protested, but have also engaged in other acts of solidarity, alone, and also through civil society associations including Doctors for Refugees, Doctors for Justice, and the broader-based, high-profile activist organization, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. They have engaged in acts of solidarity through treating and advocating for asylum seekers in refugee clinics in hospitals, and other community-based clinics for refugees and asylum seekers that provide pro bono medical services for the many asylum seekers who do not have access to the public insurer Medicare. In important acts of solidarity, Doctors for Refugees provide pro bono medical assessments for people in offshore detention, by accessing medical files (passed on to them by health authorities on the islands), and by organizing caseworkers and paying for medical files to be transferred to doctors in Australia. They argue that this work is vital and necessary because there are many detainees at risk, and whose medical needs are not being adequately met by the health officials and access to health care on the Pacific islands (in particular) where they are detained (see www.doctors4refugees.org). In October 2015, over 1000 doctors, nurses, and clinical support staff at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital protested against Australia’s asylum seeker policies, called on the Turnbull government to cease detaining children in detention centers, and refused to allow the small number of asylum seeker children in their care to be removed by immigration officials seeking to return them to detention at Melbourne detention centers. Responding to this protest action from doctors, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton noted that he understood the doctors’ concerns but implied that such actions would only result in even worse outcomes for children, that his Government’s policies were designed to prevent, thus defending his Government’s civil, and humane motives. He explained that he was more sympathetic to the members of his own team: “…the Defence and Border Force staff on our vessels who were pulling dead kids out of

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the water don’t want the boats to restart” (Anderson 2015). There were many other examples of doctors refusing to release patients to be returned to offshore detention, in other Australian states. In early 2016, when a one-year-old girl, referred to as “baby Asha,” suffered severe burns from boiling water in a tent on Nauru and had been transferred for treatment to Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, the treating doctors refused immigration officials’ attempt to return her to Nauru, forcing the government to back down and transfer her parents to community detention in Australia, before the doctors would agree to release her from their care (Tapim 2016). They argued that they could only release her into a “suitable home environment.” Government representatives, including the Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, polluted asylum seekers more generally by claiming that they might prefer hospitalization as a way of getting out of offshore detention centers, and that this might mean self-harm or harming others. In parliament, when questioned about baby Asha’s case, Dutton had said his government would not be “held to ransom,” or “blackmailed” by asylum seekers who would deliberately harm themselves, implying that baby Asha had been deliberately harmed. He said that he would not preside over a situation in which, in an attempt to get Australian citizenship, “we have people self-harming to come to hospitals in this country” (Anderson 2016). In an opinion piece published in the Sydney Morning Herald, Dr. Steve Stankevicius (2016), a child psychiatrist who had recently worked at the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, while stating that he disapproved of current immigration policies, also raised the specter of unintended consequences of the doctors’ actions in making an exception of baby Asha. In a subtler form of polluting of advocates as “naïve,” or “irrational” and “emotional,” and of asylum seekers as anticivil, he argued that the doctors’ actions sent a dangerous signal to others: “Some justifiably desperate people will take risks to find freedom. While Asha’s injury was accidental, this decision may motivate others to exploit illness or injury to replicate the outcome.” In November 2017, 18 of Australia’s most senior doctors, psychiatrists, and surgeons, including presidents and past presidents of peak medical associations, wrote an open letter to the Federal Government requesting that it allow them to visit the refugees remaining on Manus Island after the closure of the detention center to provide free health checks and treatment. A crisis situation had developed, with essential services cut off from the detention center, but with over 400 men remaining there and refusing to leave. In their letter, they wrote, “We believe that the humanitarian

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issues take precedence over politics. This is a matter beyond immigration and border control, but one that affects the health of people and others’ perceptions of our great nation” (Hayes 2017). Their offer was not accepted, including when the offer was renewed in December, after the men had been forcibly removed to other parts of Papua New Guinea, where they were reported to be facing hostile reception from locals. The work of doctors and other health workers within Australia’s immigration detention system is itself an important act of solidarity, in which health professionals face ethically compromised, difficult, and traumatizing situations, experiencing professional helplessness as they attempt to care for asylum seekers in inhumane situations, and face themselves the prospect of developing post-traumatic stress through their work (Puvimanasinghe et al. 2015; Zion et al. 2009). As discussed above, doctors and other health professionals have provided health care within detention centers, including working for the governmentappointed IHMS, despite a powerful debate about the ethics of working with governments to provide care in situations that do not meet accepted health care standards in Australia (Berger and Miles 2016; Koutroulis 2003; Newman et al. 2013; Sanggaran et al. 2014). In a searing essay, a former senior doctor employed by IHMS on Nauru, Nick Martin, wrote of the psychological difficulty of working for a bureaucratic machine that deliberately broke people, of constant interference by government in health care decision-making, of delays in treatment and referrals, witnessing helplessly the suffering that this caused, and the “soul destroying” task of trying to explain the delays, the anger provoked by political lies about conditions on Nauru, and the difficulty of not simply giving in. He emphasized the costs of being seen as an activist. “Advocacy,” a traditional part of the doctor’s role, was cited by staff “as an easy way to lose your job, to be threatened with gagging orders and to have your reputation trashed” (Martin 2018: 10). “Activism,” he wrote, “was stamped out incredibly quickly. It was seen as the greatest crime to be considered an advocate; it was to invite swift cancellation of your visa and nonrenewal of your contract” (Martin 2018: 16). These reflections indicate the emotional costs of righteous acts of solidarity. As the authors of a study of health professionals’ experiences of “vicarious trauma” and “vicarious resilience” warned: …our study contains an important message for the Australian government: harsh and inhumane immigration policies have dire consequences, even

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beyond the psychological and physical wellbeing of refugees and asylum seekers. Our study indicates that such policies, regulations, and laws also take a psychological toll on workers providing healthcare, mental health, and resettlement services to refugees and asylum seekers. (Puvimanasinghe et al. 2015: 762)

The Discourse of Health and Medical Ethics in the Service of Civil Repair In this last section, I focus on the discourse of health and medical ethics, to show how medical professionals have come to a strong position on the need for civil repair (including regulatory civil repair; see Alexander 2006: Ch. 14), and that this has led them to oppose the current government policy of mandatory detention and other policies affecting asylum seekers released into the community on TPVs. I also deal with the boundary relations between the civil and noncivil spheres, as can be seen in the debates among medical professionals about their roles in protecting human rights, and in addressing the broader social circumstances of asylum seekers. Tognato investigated such boundary relations between the university and the civil sphere in Colombia, arguing that they “have a number of elements in common,” such as the “ideals of autonomy, rationality, openness, criticism, and truthfulness,” but that university cultures are also noncivil spheres in which, for example, science “depends on truth criteria that are far from democratic and the university is a ruthless, exclusive, and elitist institutional sphere” (Tognato 2018: 149)—and some of these characteristics can also be found in the medical professions. The “health as a human right” discourse, while for some advocates presented as a politically neutral position, inevitably has policy implications, because of the framing of health as socially determined. This also indicates the intersection between noncivil codes of medical and professional ethics and universalistic civil codes as enunciated through United Nations human rights discourses, declarations, and protocols, and by globally focused organizations such as the World Health Organization. This general framing of health within a universalistic civil discourse can be seen in a statement from Professor Louise Newman and Dr. Sara Townend, two of the founders of Australia’s civil organization Doctors for Justice, which has a strong commitment to the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, among other marginalized and disadvantaged social groups in Australian society. They explicitly link their position on human rights

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and medical ethics to the past unethical behavior of the medical profession, including complicity in human rights abuses, in periods of genocide such as during the Nazi Holocaust: Historically, some doctors have acted in defence of human rights, while others have supported repressive regimes and human rights abuses or remained silent in the face of knowledge of assaults on vulnerable groups. The Nazi Holocaust is an infamous example where some doctors resisted human rights atrocities while others colluded with genocide. Our daily medical practice must reflect the understanding that good health is a core human right. As doctors, we must understand the role of socio-political determinants of health, including those that have a heavier impact on vulnerable groups within society, and advocate for service delivery that allows meaningful participation for the individual. The principles of promoting autonomy, self-determination, and freedom from discrimination and marginalisation are crucial to achieving best health. (Newman and Townend 2018)

Because health is a core human right, it covers obligations not only to Australian citizens, but also all those who are not formally members of the Australian state (e.g., not citizens or permanent residents) whose lives have come under the protection, or responsibility, of the Australian state. In addition, once medical professionals are in a doctor–patient relationship, no matter what citizenship or immigration status the patient has, they are obliged to act in accordance with the same universal ethics of care that applies to all patients. In making this argument, they exemplify the key forms of human solidarity of civil sphere discourse. The extension of a noncivil, ethical professional code to become a civil discourse involves a process of translation, inspired by historical experiences and knowledge, in this instance of what doctors did during the Holocaust (as mentioned above), by the visceral experiences with asylum seekers and the detention system, as well as by engagement with other civil society organizations and social movements, beyond professional medical associations. Such engagements have also resulted in the extension of the ethics of medical care within the medical associations, as indicated in their position statements on asylum seekers and refugees. The translation of medical ethics into a civil discourse has also met with resistance in the medical profession. One doctor, responding to Newman and Townend’s outlining of the position of Doctors for Justice, called for a more restricted ethical role for doctors:

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By all means treat the individual patient as you find them with whatever their situation but bear in mind that they come to you and expect you to look after their health. Do that well for that individual and move on to next waiting patient. That is why you are a doctor. Some have a desire to change social situations, as any member of the community could, but it is not our prime directive as doctors and given the patient load we need to make sure that we are doing our main job. Social and political mayhem will always be around and sometimes a truly positive step will occur but it is everybody’s concern and not per se a doctor’s role. (comment by John Graham, in Newman and Townend 2018)

In 2016, the incoming President of the AMA, Michael Gannon, sought to reorient the Australian Medical Association (AMA) from what he claimed had been an oppositional movement in relation to the conservative government, in particular in relation to asylum seeker policy. The previous AMA president, Brian Owler, had been a strong vocal critic of detention policies, and the AMA under his watch had also moved strongly in that direction. Gannon argued that the AMA had a damaged relationship with government because it had taken too many risks by criticizing asylum seeker policies, that its focus had moved beyond issues of health: It’s not the AMA’s job to talk more generally about asylum seeker policy. But it is their job to defend clear ethical principles regarding the health of asylum seekers [and] appropriate scrutiny of that care. (Lee 2016)

The struggle to occupy a politically neutral position while defending the human right to health of asylum seekers in detention was apparent in an interview with Gannon on ABC Perth Radio, about the plight of asylum seekers on Manus Island in late 2017 who had refused to leave the closed detention center and be transported to another facility, resulting in a tense standoff and a rapidly deteriorating health situation for the men: Look, we’re interested in the health services available to this wretched group of men. There is no question that the situation they’re in puts them at high risk of mental health problems, and like any group of people, they have their own physical health needs as well. We won’t be commenting on the immigration aspects; we’re not citizenship experts, we’re not immigration experts, but the AMA’s full of health experts and we’re concerned about the health of these men.

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However, when questioned further about what the AMA wanted to see done, Gannon could not help but steer into political waters, in an implicit critique of the current government’s approach to asylum seekers, and in pointing to law’s regulatory role in the civil sphere, in promoting the virtues of a humane society: It’s not appropriate for us to comment on the immigration arrangements, but one of the things that we are driven by is our very clear medical ethics on the topic, and the very clear subject of Australian law. People seeking asylum are entitled to the legal protection of the Australian state. People under that protection are entitled to an appropriate standard of healthcare.

Gannon expressed frustration at the lack of government transparency about the health care provided to asylum seekers, and about the impotence of the AMA or other organizations to be able to oversee health standards, as they expected to be able to do in an Australian health care context: What we’ve been asking for, for some time now is independent verification of those standards of healthcare. We used to have a degree of transparency about the healthcare they were receiving… [W]e’ve lost that openness where we were able to advocate on the behalf of individuals – whether they be on Manus Island or Nauru or elsewhere – behind the scenes, without great fanfare, looking after the healthcare of individuals. We’ve lost that relationship. That’s a great shame. (AMA 2017)

Gannon was at pains to put limits on what he was saying, as a national representative of doctors, and to just speak from health expertise. For example, he said that it was not his place, as a representative of doctors, to say whether the men on Manus should go to the United States (under the Obama–Turnbull deal), be allowed to go to New Zealand (as offered for some of them by the New Zealand government, but rejected by the Australian government), or to be resettled in Australia. He explicitly tried to occupy the middle ground, between two extremes, the government and refugee advocates (who he said might be telling this group of refugee men different things), and thus again establish his political neutrality, but at the same time indicated that he saw these men as relatively innocent victims of “a bigger political game…They are innocent victims. Most of them are there because they were conned by people smugglers; they’re

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now part of a bigger international debate on what we do with people like this” (AMA 2017). The AMA’s position statement on asylum seekers’ and refugees’ health is also primarily couched in terms of health as a human right, but the logic of the argument, and of the social determinants of health discourse that underpins the broad definition of health of the statement, results in directives about the ways that policies should be framed and redesigned. For example, it was stated that detention “should be used only as a last resort, and for the shortest practicable time” and that alternatives “to prolonged, indeterminate detention must be sought as a matter of urgency.” The government “must set in law an absolute maximum duration that an asylum seeker can spend in detention” and that after that “the asylum seeker should be allowed to live in the community while their visa application continues to be assessed” (AMA 2015: 2–3). Federal governments have thus far refused to set such a limit on the time spent in detention. The AMA also asserts that detention of children in any circumstances is inappropriate, noting that “An unaccompanied child should never be placed in detention facilities,” and that “accompanied” children with parents should only be held in detention for a maximum of one month, and that after that, “a suitable placement for the child with at least one adult family member must be identified” (AMA 2015: 4), again directly opposing government policy. The well-established negative physical and mental health implications for asylum seekers of indefinite, mandatory detention, and especially offshore detention in potentially harsh physical and isolated conditions, means that the main professional associations for doctors have now established positions against indefinite, mandatory detention, because under such management of refugees it is impossible to protect people from the deterioration of their health, especially as the months and years accumulate. The strong critical stance adopted toward Australia’s asylum seeker policies by leading medical professionals and peak medical associations is reflected in the views of pediatricians. A 2013 survey of Australian pediatricians showed that 80.2% disapproved or strongly disapproved of offshore processing in Papua New Guinea, 81.1% agreed or strongly agreed with the AMA statement that the detention of asylum children was a form of child abuse, and 70.9% disapproved or strongly disapproved of the detention of asylum seeker children (Corbett et al. 2014).

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In late 2018 and early 2019, doctors played an important role in helping to enact a small degree of regulatory civil repair when they lobbied in Canberra with the Opposition Labor Party, the Greens and independents sitting on the cross-benches to introduce “Medevac” legislation, which aims to fast track the medical evacuation of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru whose medical conditions require treatment or assessment on the Australian mainland. The legislation was passed in February 2019. It is highly relevant that the instigator of this legislation is a doctor, Kerryn Phelps, also a past president of the AMA who was elected to the seat previously held by the former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, after campaigning strongly on the issues of the humanitarian crisis of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.

Conclusion The binary logic of the civil sphere, and the dual processes of inclusion and exclusion that characterize its instantiation in space and time, have been shown in this chapter to have profoundly shaped the symbolic and regulatory treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat and seeking refuge in Australia. Doctors and other health professionals have been important advocates for asylum seekers, and through their communicative and practical actions, they have contributed to a process of incremental broadening of solidarity to include asylum seekers, however they arrive, into Australian society. Their actions have been righteous, in that their symbolic and practical support for asylum seekers has put them at odds with prevailing public opinion, and in relation to governments. Sometimes they have lost jobs, and positions on advisory boards, had their reputations threatened, and have endured derision for being “naïve,” “doctor activists,” and accused of contributing to harm, such as weakening Australia’s borders, encouraging people smugglers, and contributing to deaths of asylum seekers at sea, and acts of self-harm. During the last twenty years, they have contributed to processes of regulatory repair, such as community detention of children and their families in the mid-2000s. They have helped secure the release from detention of some children and their families on health grounds in more recent times, without in this respect achieving lasting regulatory change. This work is ongoing, as doctors, lawyers, academics, and other civil society activists attempt to bring all of the remaining children and their parents from Nauru to Australia, arguing that they

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are suffering from rapidly deteriorating mental and physical health, justifying the label of humanitarian crisis (Refugee Council of Australia and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre 2018). The discourse of health and the ethics of care have been important motivators for doctors and other health professionals as they attempt to expand the Australian civil sphere to include asylum seekers. Direct experiences of treating asylum seekers and refugees, in detention centers as well as in community settings, and witnessing their suffering have also motivated doctors and other health professionals to overcome the abstract, polluting of asylum seekers as anticivil, and to emphasize their essential humanity. The focus upon the cruelty of detaining children for indefinite periods of time in harsh conditions has also extended to their parents and other family members suffering from the illness-producing conditions of their detention. Engaging with that suffering, including working within the detention system, has also entailed personal costs for doctors, including vicarious and more direct forms of trauma. They have thus been righteous in taking risks to support people outside their immediate communities. The objections of health professionals to mandatory detention are not their only objection to the treatment of asylum seekers. Health professionals have also pointed to the negative impact of government policies that affect asylum seekers who have been recognized as refugees and released to the community, or into community detention. Depending on the dates when they arrived by boat, and the specific policies of government at that time, former asylum seekers living in the community continue to suffer from government policies that might exclude them from access to health care, employment, and higher education (for example, by being charged fees as if they were international students). Many asylum seekers on TPVs or bridging visas are unable to bring family members to Australia as part of family reunion migration. This treatment has serious, ongoing impacts on health. As pediatrician and Associate Professor Karen Zwi and Professor Nicholas Talley, Laureate Professor of Medicine, noted in a co-published article: Those who are released into the community cannot be assured of permanent protection, but face years of uncertainty on temporary visas. These uncertain conditions are harmful to health, with those offered temporary protection experiencing worse health and mental health outcomes than

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those with permanent protection. This includes an increase in anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. (Zwi and Talley 2016)

The work of civil repair undertaken by doctors and other health professionals will thus need to continue after the emptying out of the offshore detention centers of Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island, and the remaining detention centers on the Australian mainland.

Notes 1. By November, 2018, 3027 asylum seekers had been sent to Nauru and Manus Island since July 2013 (Refugee Council of Australia 2018). The Christmas Island detention center is considered an onshore detention center, since it is within Australia’s territory. 2. 79% and 82% of asylum seekers detained on Nauru and Manus Island, respectively have been found to be refugees (Karlsen 2016). Attempts to resettle refugees in Papua New Guinea and Cambodia have met with serious obstacles and have been spectacularly costly and unsuccessful (Refugee Council of Australia and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre 2018). The agreement between former US President Obama and former Australian Prime Minister Turnbull to resettle in the United States an undisclosed number of refugees from Manus Island and Nauru is proceeding slowly. A few refugees and those whose refugee status was not upheld have agreed to return to countries from which they fled, rather than face indeterminate detention after years of being detained (Karlsen 2016). 3. Opinion polls fluctuate and are affected by the wording of questions. Nevertheless, there was strong public support for the Howard government’s asylum seeker policies between 2001 and 2004 (Moran 2005: 192–194). A Lowy Institute national poll, published in 2017, shows a population divided on asylum seeker policies. When asked about asylum seekers currently housed on Manus Island and Nauru and confirmed as refugees, 48% say they “should never be settled in Australia,” and 45% say that they “should be settled in Australia.” In a 2016 Lowy Institute poll, 54% of Australians agreed that “asylum seekers should be processed offshore in places such as Nauru, before deciding whether they should be settled in Australia,” which was down 5 points compared to when the same question was asked in 2014. In 2016, a large proportion, 42%, disagreed with offshore processing (Lowy Institute 2017: 15). 4. The Medical Journal of Australia devoted a section containing five articles of its December 2001 issue to “Asylum Seekers and Health Care,” which received responses from high-profile Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock (published in a later issue).

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5. Many refugees cannot get to camps, and less than one percent of refugees are resettled annually (McAdam 2013: 437). 6. Advocacy is also highlighted as a key aspect of the psychiatrist’s role when working with all patients, including refugees and asylum seekers. Such advocacy “includes advocating for the wellbeing of individuals as well as for policies or practices that promote mental health or against those that harm mental health” (RANZCP 2016: 2).

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Newman, Louise, Nichola Proctor, and Michael Dudley. 2013. “Seeking Asylum in Australia: Immigration Detention, Human Rights and Mental Health Care.” Australasian Psychiatry 21(4): 315–320. Newman, Louise and Sara Townend. 2018. “Doctors for Justice: Human Rights, Health and Social Action.” MJA InSight, Issue 31/13. Retrieved October 1, 2018. https://www.doctorportal.com.au/mjainsight/2018/31/ doctors-for-justice-human-rights-health-and-social-action/. Phillips, Janet and Catherine Lorimer. 2005. Children in Detention. E-Brief Online Only Issued October 2003; Updated 23 November 2005. Parliamentary Library. Publications Archive Past E-Briefs. Canberra: Parliament of Australia. Phillips, Janet and Harriet Spinks. 2013. Background Note: Immigration Detention in Australia. E-Brief Online Only Issued 20 March 2013. Parliamentary Library. Canberra: Parliament of Australia. Puvimanasinghe, Teresa, Linley A. Denson, Martha Augoustinos, and Daya Somasundaram. 2015. “Vicarious Resilience and Vicarious Traumatisation: Experiences of Working with Refugees and Asylum Seekers in South Australia.” Transcultural Psychiatry 52(6): 743–765. Refugee Council of Australia. 2018. “Offshore Processing Statistics.” Retrieved February 11, 2019. https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereignborders-offshore-detention-statistics/. Refugee Council of Australia and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. 2018. Australia’s Man-Made Crisis on Nauru: Six Years On. Retrieved October 5, 2018. www.refugeecouncil.org.au; www.asrc.org.au. Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP). 2016. Professional Practice Guideline 12 Guidance for Psychiatrists Working in Australian Immigration Detention Centres, February 2016. Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP). 2017. Position Statement 46 The provision of Mental Health Services for Asylum Seekers and Refugees, September 2017. Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP). 2015. Health Care for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, March 2015. Office of the CEO and President. Sanggaran, John-Paul, Grant M. Ferguson, and Bridget G. Haire. 2014. “Ethical Challenges for Doctors Working in Immigration Detention.” Medical Journal of Australia 201(7): 377–378. Saxton, Alison. 2003. “‘I Certainly Don’t Want People Like That Here’: The Discursive Construction of ‘Asylum Seekers’.” Media International Australia Incorporating Culture and Policy 109(1): 109–120. Shoebridge, Joanne. 2015. “Paediatrician May Face Prison for Speaking Out About Nauru.” ABC North Coast NSW, June 19. Retrieved February 12, 2019. http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2015/06/19/4258214.htm.

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Simons, Margaret. 2018. “When the Politics Got Personal: Gillian Triggs’ Culture Shock.” The Monthly, December 2017–January 2018. Retrieved October 5, 2018. https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2017/december/ 1512046800/margaret-simons/when-politics-got-personal. Spike, Erin A., Mitchell M. Smith, and Mark F. Harris. 2011. “Access to Primary Health Care Services by Community-Based Asylum Seekers.” Medical Journal of Australia 195(4): 188–191. Stankevicius, Steve. 2016. “Baby Asha Decision Sets a Risky Precedent.” Sydney Morning Herald, February 21. Retrieved October 5, 2018. https://www. smh.com.au/opinion/baby-asha-decision-sets-a–risky–precedent-20160221gmzlbd.html. Tapim, Francis. 2016. “Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital Refuses to Release Badly Burnt Nauru Baby.” ABC News, February 13. Retrieved October 5, 2018. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-12/brisbane-hospitalrefuses-to-release-nauru-baby/7165470. Tazreiter, Claudia. 2010. “Local to Global Activism: The Movement to Protect the Rights of Refugees and Asylum Seekers.” Social Movements Studies 9(2): 201–214. The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP). 2015. Refugee and Asylum Seeker Health Position Statement, May 2015. [email protected]. Thompson, Geoff, Joel Tozer, and Wayne Harley. 2016. “Manus Island: ‘Pathetic’ Bureaucratic Response Blamed for Asylum Seeker Hamid Khazaei’s Death.” ABC News, April 26. Retrieved October 5, 2018. http://www.abc. net.au/news/2016-04-25/manus-island-blunder-blamed-for-asylum-seekerdeath/7355858. Tognato, Carlo. 2018. “The Civil Life of the University: Enacting Dissent and Resistance on a Colombian Campus.” In The Civil Sphere in Latin America, edited by J. C. Alexander and C. Tognato. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 149–176. Tyler, Heather. 2003. Asylum: Voices Behind the Razor Wire. South Melbourne: Lothian Books. Yad Vashem. n.d. “The Righteous Among the Nations.” Retrieved January 3, 2019. https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/about-the-righteous.html. Zion, D., L. Briskman, and B. Loff. 2009. “Nursing in Asylum Seeker Detention in Australia: Care, Rights and Witnessing.” Journal of Medical Ethics 35(9): 546–551. Zwi, Karen and Talley, Nicholas 2016. “Death in Offshore Detention: Predictable and Preventable.” The Conversation, April 26. Retrieved October 24, 2019. http://theconversation.com/death-in-offshore-detention-predictableand-preventable-58398.

PART II

Righteous, Today

CHAPTER 5

When Saving Lives Becomes a Crime: Performances of Solidarity with Migrants Along Europe’s Southern Border María Luengo and Kafaa Msaed

On January 10, 2018, Helena Maleno, a Spanish journalist, activist, and human rights advocate, appeared in the Tangier Court of Appeal in Morocco. Since 2012, Maleno has been under investigation for allegedly engaging in aiding irregular migration and human trafficking. The investigation was initiated by the Spanish police as a result of the warning calls that Maleno had been making to Salvamento Marítimo, Spain’s maritime rescue organization, about boats of migrants adrift in the strait between Morocco and Spain. The allegations against Maleno could have serious consequences for her, her family, and her organization. In Morocco, human trafficking can carry penalties ranging from six months in prison to life imprisonment. The implications of Maleno’s case extend beyond Spain’s borders. It may set a dangerous precedent for activists working within the Mediterranean migratory routes to Europe. In August 2017, Italian authorities seized a German rescue ship operated by the NGO Jugend Rettet on the Italian island of Lampedusa, accusing the rescuers

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of contributing to illegal migration (Die Zeit, August 2, 2018). Similarly, in 2016, three Spanish firefighters volunteering for Proemaid, a Spanish group of emergency-services professionals that helps people in distress in the Central Mediterranean, were arrested by the Greek coastguard and accused of helping undocumented migrants to enter Greece via the island of Lesbos. And today, actions preventing NGOs and activists from rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean and at other major points along the Southern land border, such as the one between Spain and Morocco, seem to be growing more frequent. By bringing Jeffrey Alexander’s civil and uncivil boundary struggles within the civil sphere (2006a) and his notion of “social performance” (2011) into the context of cross-border migration, this chapter explores public narratives on migrant rights advocates operating along Europe’s southern border. Narratives will be examined as potentially exemplary social performances that have been capable of succeeding in activating particular civil codes and expanding solidarity with migrants. They coincide with the peak years for arrivals of migrants in Spain—one of the main “frontline” southern states of Europe—in the country’s recent history of migration. They also show the increasing climate of complexity, fragmentation, and contestation that surrounds migration issues in European public debates. Many activists working at the borders between Spain and Morocco belong to their respective core group. Not only might analysis of their cases help to illuminate the manner in which outgroups of migrants are discursively mediated from within civil societies, but more crucially it may also shed light on how particular stories of righteousness could help to open up the civil sphere by breaking new ground to transform existing collective identities and expand solidarity (Alexander 2006a). Drawing on narrative discourse and cultural pragmatic interpretations of news stories and interviews, this chapter shows how particular performances of civil solidarity might be more or less successful according to the degree to which the actions of their protagonists resonate with narratives of the “Righteous Among the Nations,” namely, stories of those people who selflessly put their lives at risk to help groups marginalized either by nation-states or by dominant groups. Our empirical investigation demonstrates that the acts of the activists-cum-journalists are in the first instance a potential trigger for a process of solidarity formation. Particular cases of activists working along state borders become sources of solidarity narratives when they manage to come across on the public, transnational stage

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as such. To successfully perform civil solidarity across groups, individual actors must properly flesh out deep codes of justice, humanity, inclusion, affection, or friendship, as well as their foreground scripts, before an international public (Alexander 2006b; Luengo 2018). The chapter will explore the triggering strategies of these individual stories aimed at setting in motion processes of collective solidarity and civil repair. How do righteous and courageous acts manage to expand solidarity, generating sympathy with a wider audience and a wave of public protest against anticivil authoritarian forms of exclusion from political systems? How and to what extent do they help to expand humanitarian and inclusive responses to the “crisis” of refugees and immigrants in the face of exclusionary acts? Our empirical investigation will show how remarkable testimonies act as powerful sources for solidarity narratives, to such an extent that they have transcended national boundaries and generated public and media interest across Europe and the globe. Particular cases demonstrate a symbolic continuity—one that goes beyond each case’s temporal, national, and political context—between the stories told and narration of the Righteous Among the Nations. The chapter will specifically explore the extent to which the description of activist performances resonates with such a narration. In this respect, one of the stories stands out above the others: the narrative on Moroccan journalist and human rights advocate Chakib Al Khayari. He has performed civil solidarity more successfully than the others, managing to embody deep ideals of humanity, justice, and inclusion, as well as their authenticity- and courage-based foreground scripts, before an international public. He has done so in such a way that, as will be shown, he has set in motion a process of deep civil repair that changed migration laws and policies within the Moroccan civil sphere.

The Struggle for Civil Boundaries within Cross-Border Spaces Although human rights activists perform humanitarian functions, they are not humanitarian actors in the proper sense of the term. Unlike search and rescue (SAR) and humanitarian NGOs operating along Europe’s border, for whom advocacy is just one—and not necessarily the main—task that they perform, their raison d’être consists of advocating for migrant rights at national borders. The activities carried out by the type of actors we will focus on include reporting on and denouncing violent acts against

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migrants and cases of unjust deportation. These acts have made the established powers feel uncomfortable, contributing to the activists being characterized with uncivil traits such as “troublemakers” and “instigators” and to the tainting of their performances via allegations that they are involved in illegal activities and groups. These activists’ relationships with migrant communities also differ significantly from those of other actors. They become involved in supporting migrant rights due to their proximity to migrant communities. Their involvement is thus the endogenous product of their engagement with migrants, which, in turn, causes these activists to be characterized as outsiders relative to their national communities and as enemies who stand for outgroups. Given these uncivil qualities, migrant rights advocates must carry out a symbolic struggle in order to clean up their tainted actions if they wish to enter the civil sphere of their respective nations. To push back against the counternarratives of their national critics, activists must symbolically reaffirm their prominent position within the “inbetweenness” of states—that is, the cross-border space in which migrant rights activists operate. The existing literature on transnational migration has underlined the crucial role that individuals or groups located in cross-border spaces play in expanding solidarity and the inclusion of migrants (Waldinger 2015; Faist 2000; Kivisto and Faist 2010). Although these individuals’ or group’s actions might be confined to physical boundaries and controlled by states’ policies and national laws, they transcend these national limits by symbolically connecting “here” and “there,” “north” and “south,” “citizens” and “aliens,” and “ingroups” and “outgroups” (Faist 2000). Migration scholars have commonly framed the notion of cross-border spaces in terms of migrant communities because their research often describes the networks and activities that these communities create, maintain, and expand, in both receiving and sending states. Even though the nature of actions carried out by activists differs from those of migrant communities, however, activists working within cross-border scenarios engage in conflicts over the core groups in which the migrants are expected to be included. What Waldinger (2015: 7) puts forward in the case of migrants who find themselves in the receiving state but increasingly of it can also be said of national activists working in frontier regions. Activists are existing members of receiving states and, at the same time, they act outside their own countries and feel engaged with nonmembers of their core group. The lacuna from which activists operate locates them between

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here and there, members and nonmembers. Their actions make it possible to bring together both sides of the migration phenomenon vis-à-vis the boundary relations between ingroups and outgroups that migration involves. On the other hand, cross-border spaces emphasize the symbolic dimension of the migrant rights activists’ performances. As Waldinger explains (2015: 13), the adjective “transnational” was first coined by German linguist Georg Curtius in 1962 to convey how “all national languages were connected to families of languages that extended beyond contemporary national frameworks.” This connection between transnational spaces and broader systems of languages is temping because it provides grounds for understanding the significant role that cultural structures of signs, narratives, representations, symbols, and so forth might play in processes of boundary expansion and contraction, as well as for grasping their implications in actual migration policies. Host-country activists occupy a key position within this transnational cultural fabric. By reflecting commitments to common values that go beyond ideologies and national interests, their agency can serve as a catalyst for expanding solidarity beyond borders. Thus, migrant rights activists located in the South–North context bring to the fore symbolic ties based on the solidarity of transborder space and communities that are not delimited by nation-state borders (Faist 2000). Their advocacy function in this symbolic “deterritorialized” space, located in frontier regions, provides a thick repertoire of narratives, symbols, and collective representations capable of activating a process of civil repair within national civil societies. This process, in turn, might open new pathways for the incorporation of immigrants and refugees into particular civil societies. However, even a minimally idealized solidarity space does not exist without real processes of cross-boundary formation. Existing boundaries of transnational locations fluctuate between extremely porous (given that even the physical boundaries between frontier regions might be weak and the transit and exchange among locals frictionless, as was the case of the Spanish–Moroccan borders in previous eras) and, by contrast, ones that are almost hermetically sealed due to the heavy-handed approach to migration dictated by governmental policies on borders (for example, the decision taken by the Spanish and the Moroccan governments to erect barbed wire along the border in 2005), national identity groups, far-right political parties, and so forth. The ability to perform solidarity within this transnational setting has crucial implications for the mise-en-scène of

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an activist’s performance and contributes to that performance’s success or failure before an international audience and, consequently, to whether or not it fosters political changes. To successfully embrace ideals of solidarity, generosity, humanity, or inclusion, migrant rights advocates must mobilize the media and other symbolic resources on national and international stages (Jaworsky 2016). Migrant rights advocates, particularly those in our case study who work along Europe’s external borders, strongly position themselves in a struggle against the criminalization of solidarity, abuses of power, coercive measures, and indifference or a lack of respect toward human life. They additionally must face anxieties about migration expressed by citizens across European states, and, in particular, criticism from antimigrant movements that associate activist operations with what such movements perceive as migrants’ threats to the identity and security of European nations. In order to be successful, it is not sufficient for activists to stand for a just human rights cause. They must gain access to a national and international public scene dominated by conflicting views on migration, a sharp activation of “we” (Waldinger 2015), and the spread of antimigrant populist movements. They must perform a set of codes and do so in a way that is capable of changing “hearts and minds” (Jaworsky 2016, 228) and triggering cultural, social, and political changes related to migrants and migration issues.

Performances of Journalists-Cum-Activists in Southern Europe’s Frontier Regions In this section, we explore processes of boundary construction around migration by zooming in on individual stories of migrant rights advocates who have been operating along Southern Europe’s cross-border spaces. We carried out an initial study that took the form of open-ended interviews with different types of actors: migrant rights activists themselves, journalists, and other civil actors and associations.1 We selected particular individuals whose actions were highlighted by our interviewees and searched in national and international media outlets for stories on their activities during the high points of migrant arrivals into Spain from southern migratory routes since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Such peak flows correspond to the years 2004–2006, 2014, and 2018.2 During these particular years, Europe witnessed an intense debate on pressing issues such as policing actions on external borders, so-called “hot returns”

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(summary returns), and the criminalization of NGOs working at frontier regions. Finally, we examined specific events that both involved the actors singled out by our interviewees and occurred during the peak years of immigration flows and of debates on transnational migration. These include the ongoing narratives of Helena Maleno (described above), José Palazón, a photojournalist and activist, and president of the Melilla-based NGO Prodein, an association that works with foreign unaccompanied minors, and Chakib Al Khayari, a Moroccan journalist and human rights advocate and founder and president of the Rif Association for Human Rights (l’Association du Rif des droits de l’homme” or ARDH). For the three cases, we collected material from various types of media outlets, including newspapers (in print and digital formats), news agencies, news websites, radio, and television, as well as from other texts published by national and international organizations. Our selection of such sources was based on the distinctive meaning-making process through which these actors gained prominence in the public arena. The selected texts record the announcement of Maleno’s court hearings in January 2018. Moreover, the material documents the publication of a powerful photograph that Palazón took at the Spain–Morocco border in 2014. The image shows a pristine golf course belonging to an elite club in Melilla, and the composition captures a golfer hitting a tee shot in the foreground as several African immigrants perch on a fence in the background of the scene. The photo, which was awarded Spanish newspaper El País ’s Ortega y Gasset journalism prize a year later, was disseminated globally and massively via Reuters through leading national media in Europe (BBC News, Guardian, Time, and Libération, among many others) and went viral on the Internet in October 2014. The photo was extremely symbolic, as in 2014, Spain experienced one of its largest arrivals of migrants in the twenty-first century. Our examination of news stories on Palazón led us to the years 2004 and 2005, when approximately five hundred subSaharans jumped over border fences. At that time, complaints of African migrants being killed by police bullets during their attempts to enter Ceuta and Melilla started to be reported in the press. One of these deaths led to the creation of ARDH (the Rif Association for Human Rights), of which Al Khayari, the subject of the third narrative, is founder and president. His organization has campaigned for better treatment of subSaharan migrants in Morocco and has denounced the policing of the drug trade in the country’s northern Rif region. Al Khayari was arrested and

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imprisoned in 2009 after his criticism of the government’s complicity in drug trafficking. International human rights organizations called for Al Khayari’s release, which occurred after a twenty-six-month spell in prison as a result of King Mohammed VI’s pardoning of around two hundred political prisoners at the request of the country’s National Human Rights Council, which had been created in 2011. We found a feature that is common to the three individual narratives: the journalist-cum-activist role occupied by their main actors. Maleno’s performance in 2018 cannot be fully understood without consideration of her active engagement on Twitter. By the same token, the paradigmatic image described above encapsulated the long struggle for migrant rights in which José Palazón was involved in the border town of Melilla. Similarly, journalism and human rights advocacy overlap in the profile of Chakib Al Khayari. Narrative Discourse, Cultural Pragmatics, and Performances of Solidarity We drew on narrative discourse (Aristotle 1961; Bakhtin 1981; Barthes 1975; Bell 1999) and cultural pragmatics (Alexander 2011; Mast 2012) to explore the telling of the stories in interviews and media outlet reporting. For each activist and selected event, we looked at the depiction of actions that took place; the context and the physical location of such actions; the person(s) involved; the means or instruments used by the actors; and the reasons the actions in question were carried out. The aim was to identify the way in which the selected actors (the three activists) and actions (the key events in which they were involved) were described and portrayed in the media reports and interviews. We differentiated the particular elements of stories—in essence, actors (“who”), events (“what”), locations (“where”), time (“when”), and goals (“why”)—from how such elements were organized in a continuous form or narrative of the righteous that emphasized particular symbolic codes. By taking Alexander’s binary discourse of civil society (2006a, 57–59) and his model of successful/unsuccessful social performances (2011) as a reference point, we synthesized narrative analysis in key elements of social performances—“scripts,” “actors,” “mise-en-scène,” and “background representations” (Alexander 2011)—and looked at the broader systems of values and corresponding countervalues that might have been

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activated by activists’ performative struggles. Departing from such values and countervalues, we also tried to capture the underlying cultural dynamics, if there were any, that might have fostered changes in migration policies or laws. A Hero-Antagonist Binomial Commenting on different current stories about migrant rights activists, 5W magazine editor Agus Morales (interviewed on July 14, 2018) summarized them via a dramatic narrative structure of heroes and villains. He said: Activists are very interesting figures …. They are under the spotlight of states and xenophobic organizations. Their lives are highly emotive as they find themselves amid judicial proceedings. When narrating their stories, one can observe they respond to the hero-antagonist binomial. This binomial explains the way in which these people relate to their fellow citizens. They are the target of a lot of praise and a lot of criticism. The extent to which they have society’s support is difficult to gauge. They are subjected to personal attacks not because of what they are but because of what they symbolize. They greatly exemplify the twenty-first century’s war of ideas, a war that has much to do with identity.

The stories of Helena Maleno, José Palazón, and Chakib Al Khayari, as they were presented by media accounts, human rights organizations, and public statements both outside and inside Spain and Morocco, neatly fit such a hero-antagonist narrative structure. Their activities centered on reporting and monitoring mistreatment and abuse of migrants by Spanish and Moroccan security forces at the Spain–Morocco border and, in Al Khayari’s and Palazón’s cases, their denunciations of corruption by the authorities were targeted as infractions of the law and as acts that impeded police efforts against illegal migration. In 2006, Moroccan and Spanish newspapers echoed the authorities’ accusations that both Palazón and Al Khayari had assisted in helping migrants to illegally cross the border at Melilla (Al Maghribia, November 10, 2006; Melilla Hoy, November 8, 2006). In a similar vein, Helena Maleno’s court hearings were first presented as simply an act of criminalizing activists. The media adopted an informative style in reporting on the hearings, reproducing state authorities’ discourse to the effect that her acts were illegal on the basis that they involved human trafficking and membership of an illegal immigration network.

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The three stories hinged upon exemplary narratives of heroism and courage. In particular, in February 2009, news stories covered Al Khayari’s arrest and three-year prison sentence for publicly accusing the Moroccan authorities of being complicit in drug smuggling (Assabah, February 26, 2009; Al-Massae, March 3, 2009; AlJarida, October 26, 2009). Finally, following calls from many human rights organizations, his release in 2010 received national and global coverage. In particular, the Moroccan media celebrated Al Khayari’s release and referred directly to him as “a national hero and corruption fighter, a prisoner of freedom of speech” (Lakon, January 6, 2011). By looking at media narratives and other public statements as forms of presenting activists, their actions, and their discourses, we would like to show that the binary narrative structure of hero-antagonist corresponds to a particular structure of cultural codes that was activated through the activists’ performance. Through their acts and words, they came to personify an extraordinarily active and critical attitude that was shared by their public and that fostered inclusive relations. These attitudes and the kinds of relations that they created were accompanied by civil demands for humanity, equality, and law-driven institutions. Scripted Acts (I): A Struggle Against Indifference and Selfishness When we asked José Palazón about the public impact of his story, he framed his answer in terms of a discursive “struggle” between “supporters” and “opponents” of migrant rights. He presented this struggle as a fight between evil (“who they are,” in his words) and good (“who we are”). He indicated that, in the performance of this battle, “society attempts to develop a fetish that serves as a response to the other and says: shut up. Each side acts and reacts” (interview by the authors with Palazón, July 2018). His photo certainly became a fetish object owing to its powerfully symbolic depiction of the situation at the border. The media presented the photo as an iconic image of indifference and selfishness, echoing Palazón’s own explanation. Describing Palazón’s work in Melilla, Europa Press journalist Isabel Vega said, “His actions are necessary, and sometimes indispensable (interview with authors, July, 2018). They are a twinge in the conscience of those of us who continue living our lives without looking around us very often.” The fight against indifference was highlighted by Spanish media when it reported on Palazón’s record as far back as the foundation of the NGO Prodein. Articles presented him as a witness to the distressing situation of more and more

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unaccompanied boys in the streets of the city and the inaction of public authorities. Spanish media highlighted empathy and commitment as factors that motivated Palazón to start helping Moroccan children living in the street in Melilla. These motivations were alluded to in our interview with the photojournalist. Palazón said, You do it because you get to know those people. It is a personal decision about whose side I am on and whose side I should be on. I’m on this side because … we’re surrounded by children who are very little. We went from drawing attention to them to having our home full of children. We’ve got to know them and become involved in their lives. And that’s the dynamic that you follow. You cannot turn your back on violations of human rights when you are living here. It’s purely a question of identifying with them. It’s another thing to be here and not want to see what is happening because if you do, you’ll get involved, and getting involved has negative consequences because you’ll be going against the city’s policies.

From a broader European angle, Loes Rutter, president of AEGEEEurope, referred to the need for empathy instead of indifference and disrespect when we asked her for her opinion of the performance of activists: We are able to solve this problem together but people are so concerned with their national interest. From the perspective of people in Southern Europe, I can also understand their frustration at people in North Europe talking about humanitarian values, but actually not solving the problem. (Interview with authors, June 2018)

In October 2014, Palazón brought about a change in such apathetic attitudes by publishing a photo of migrants at Melilla’s border. The image went viral on the Internet and had a high impact globally, pushing forward the international debate on migration. By September 2014, the number of migrants making their way into Europe had reached unprecedented levels, peaking at 2.3 million illegal crossings between June and August 2018, according to Frontex (2019), and almost the same number of third-country nationals were found to be illegally present in Europe (Eurostat 2019). Due in part to such numbers, the EU’s media, institutions, and citizenry began to talk about “Europe’s migration crisis” (see, for instance, the news bulletin from the European Parliament, European Center for Human Rights 20173 ). “The Photo Denouncing Our Indifference,” reads the headline that El País chose for its news story on the

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photojournalism award won by Palazón (April 16, 2015). The French newspaper Libération gave its story about the image the headline, “The Absurd Face-to-Face Encounter between Golfers and Migrants” (October 26, 2014). In the UK, the Telegraph emphasized the enormous differences between the two worlds that met at the border (October 24, 2014). A Guardian article entitled “African Migrants Look Down On White-Clad Golfers in Viral Photo” (October 23, 2014) quoted officials who commented on Palazón’s photo. “This worries us,” the Spanish spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Maria Jesus Vega, said of video footage recorded by Palazón’s NGO. “These images show that some parties are not acting as they should.” Similarly, Maleno’s story was associated with her fight against apathy. Media reported on her life in Tangier from 2001, where she founded the NGO Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders) and carried out humanitarian work with migrants in transit from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe. As was reported by Spanish media, Maleno and other Caminando Fronteras activists and NGOs such as AlarmPhone counter state inactivity by using a warning system every time a boat leaves Morocco. They stay in contact with the migrants and their families, who, in the event that a boat encounters difficulty, directly call Salvamento Marítimo or contact Maleno, who warns the maritime authorities about the location of the boat. While the Spanish and Moroccan authorities saw these calls as a sign of collusion with smugglers and human traffickers, the Spanish media and citizens via Twitter interpreted them as providing lifesaving information, as making a crucial contribution to ensuring that migrants are rescued and, in short, as saving hundreds of human lives at sea. Maleno’s continuous public statements that express alarm about events arising in the context of Spain–Morocco border crossings have increasingly been interpreted as acts of righteousness and solidarity aimed at protecting and saving people’s lives. Scripted Acts (II): The Opening of Generous, Inclusive Relations Sentiments of humanity and courage were present in the story of Moroccan journalist and activist Chakib Al Khayari. In an interview that we conducted with Al Khayari (July 3, 2018), he explained that 2005 was the first time when large numbers of sub-Saharan migrants (about five hundred in this case) jumped over the metal fence between Morocco and Melilla. He recalled that repressive acts aimed at migrants were committed

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by the Spanish and Moroccan authorities at the time. Al Khayari highlighted a particular incident that had occurred that year. Migrants had created a hole in the metal fence and crossed the border into Melilla. Al Khayari witnessed a person among these migrants who was hit and who died afterwards. This incident was the first time that he collaborated with Spanish activist José Palazón. In his telling of the facts, Al Khayari went beyond the numbers to focus on a single person: the sister of the migrant who died in the attempt to cross the border. Al Khayari and Palazón welcomed her home. She stayed with them for a few days and took her brother’s body back to Cameroon. This episode moved Al Khayari to create an organization advocating for human rights. He observed that between 2005 and 2006 the situation became very serious. Moroccan and Spanish security forces, he said, would start shooting each time the fence was attacked. Migrants hiding in the forest around Nador were declared “hostile elements.” The organization was forbidden to go there, he said. Although it was difficult to access the forest, he continued to meet the migrants there and brought them food, a few pieces of clothing, and water. And he wrote down information regarding the situation. Al Khayari’s NGO was the only organization that focused on migration in Morocco and, consequently, the only resource for the media in the region. For this reason, he explained, they were summoned to appear at the police station on different occasions. During this period of time, the Moroccan and Spanish press reported on Al Khayari and his organization, emphasizing that they had been accused of aiding “illegal” migrants. An Al Maghribia article by Khadidja Bin Achu (November 10, 2006) read: The judicial police of Nador called Chakib Al Khayari, the head of a human rights NGO, to investigate him, as he is accused of … aiding and encouraging sub-Saharan migrants to climb the fence that separates the city of Nador from the occupied city of Melilla.

Spanish newspapers reported on the event in a similar tone that stressed Al Khayari’s alleged complicity in facilitating illegal migration. A news story from Melilla Hoy (October 8, 2006) reported on the Judicial Police’s interrogation of Al Khayari in Nador in relation to accusations made by the police that he helped migrants to reach Melilla clandestinely. Among all the information on illegality and the massive number of migrants crossing the borders, however, Al Khayari managed to bring his

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perspective to the attention of a few media outlets, mostly in Morocco. In the Al Maghribia news article quoted above (November 10, 2006), he appears as a direct source and clarifies the reasons behind deaths of three sub-Saharan migrants in Nador. A feature article by journalist Tereixa Constenla in Spain’s El País (July 7, 2006), entitled “The Drama of Illegal Migration,” used Al Khayari’s more neutral statements on the situation in Nador, but it complemented them with individual migrants’ statements that denounced mistreatment by police officers. Thus, the public narrative on Al Khayari reflected, as those on Palazón and Maleno did, a call to resolute action over migrant rights, which encountered resistance from within both his state’s government and his community. In Al Khayari’s case, however, such calls resulted in institutional recognition and a national effort to articulate and implement solidary politics in the country. Al Khayari commented on the policy shift and the step forward in including migrants in Morocco (interview by the authors, July 3, 2018): What I have experienced with this committee [the National Appeals Committee] … was when one of its workers approaches me explaining some of the problems he is facing with the immigrants and says, “I am asking you, because of your close relationship with them.” And the regional representative of the Moroccan Ministry of Health has on many occasions given us free medicine to distribute to irregular migrants. Although some associations are now doing this, before the royal initiative to settle the administrative status of these immigrants, none of them were approaching them [immigrants].

As will be shown later, Al Khayari’s achievements were certainly the product of a courageousness that won broad publicity due to his reporting on cases of Moroccan authorities’ collusion with smugglers and traffickers. His determination cost him dearly: he was sentenced to three years in prison. There were, however, other aspects, associated with the authenticity of his character and his handling of another cross-border incident that led his performance to be more successful. Actors: Activists’ Portrayals as Active, Independent, and Critical Civil Agents According to Regina Catambrone, founder and director of MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), activists’ actions are “the foundations of civil society.” Catambrone explained (June, 2018): “Civil society is

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a great tool for reacting faster to new, urgent needs and for monitoring the abuses of those in power. Civil society represents independent eyes monitoring the environment we live in.” Al Khayari’s media characterization as a human rights activist shifted from one that presented him as a committed person who has always been “denouncing the situation” (Ignacio Cembrero, El País, November 22, 2006) to one that portrayed him as a determined defender of equality and dignity at the Melilla–Morocco border-crossing points (El País, August 2, 2008), a civil society advocate opposed to “violence against Moroccan citizens at the borders” (Europa Press news agency, July 4, 2008; Al Quds Alarabi, February 3, 2008), a “corruption fighter,” and a “freedom of speech prisoner” (AlQuds Alarabi, April 14, 2001; Hespress, January 24, 2011). This media portrayal connected with the kind of attributes that journalists who specialize in migration issues have assigned to activists. Particularly, journalists characterized the three activists as noteworthy members of civil society. Isabel Vega, the head of Spanish news agency Europa Press’s EP Social, the online section on social issues, said: What is striking is that these individuals are not people who have always dedicated themselves to aiding migrants at risk. There are people with a track record and vocation in other disciplines, who are trained to some degree in other subjects, and who, after a particular experience, decided to commit their lives to the right of others to live their own lives with dignity …. They are civilians helping civilians. (Interview with Isabel Vega, July, 2018)

In the same fashion, SER reporter Nico Castellano, interviewed in June 2018, related activists to “us”—that is, to members of civil society: “They are civil society. They are the hope. They are we. We are they.” The symbolic change in characterization of activists from outsiders to “one of us,” however, did not occur instantaneously. It was the result of a struggle that, in Al Khayari’s story, reached its peak when Moroccan citizens started to be the subject of abuses of power at the border in 2007. Moroccan media outlets gave voice to Al Khayari by including him as a direct source within the reporting of facts. This active and critical attitude aimed at uncovering enforcement officials’ questionable behavior was also highlighted by media articles that gave voice to both Palazón and Maleno. They appeared as independent civil actors who reported on significant events, “performed actions that

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went beyond journalism,” and positioned themselves against the official narrative. In October 2014, Spanish media reported on an injured and unconscious migrant who was allegedly returned to Morocco by the Spanish police. Palazón recorded the event, which was described in detail by national and international media. The scene shows a migrant descending the fence on a ladder while being beaten by the police. The individual falls to the ground, and two officials drag his body away from the fence and try to keep him from getting up. The man remains immobile on the ground. Finally, more officers approach the scene, take the man by his hands and feet, and go through a gate in the fence to the Moroccan side (El País, October 16, 2014). Palazón and his NGO Prodein, it was said, “had been documenting human rights violations at the border fence for more than a decade.” This was certainly not the first time that Prodein had denounced summary returns. However, its attempts to do so had thus far been unsuccessful. But this time the NGO provided the video that contradicted the self-justifying statements by the local government in Melilla. The online newspaper Diario.es noted that Palazón’s photograph had even appeared in a Melilla-based newspaper with the following headline: “Enemy of Melilla.” Activists’ publication of videos and social media posts on cases of police impunity were highlighted in the media reporting on activist Helena Maleno’s critical statement against the Spanish government and her denunciations of human rights violations. Spanish and Moroccan media reported on Helena Maleno’s unjust hearings to silence her: For many years, Spanish journalist and human rights activist Helena Maleno has been one of the most prominent faces of migrant rights in Spain, and especially of those coming from sub-Saharan Africa and Morocco, and she perhaps never expected to be attacked for her efforts to save migrants. (ChamalPost, January 11, 2018)

Al Khayari’s acts echoed similar criticism and pressure. In the following quotation, Al Maghribia journalist Fatiha Bajaj quoted Al Khayari’s own denunciation of mistreatment at the border. However, his performance seemed to resonate more with the public than those of Palazón and Maleno, as this time the victims were not “them”—migrants from subSaharan Africa (or on the Spanish and European side, from Morocco)— but “we,” Al Khayari’s fellow citizens of Morocco:

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Security members at the border point between Morocco and Spain have been hysterically beating citizens with truncheons and belts without differentiating between the young and the old, or between women and men. And the beating is accompanied with insulting and racist curses. (Al Maghribia, September 22, 2007)

The same civil sentiment regarding Al Khayari’s struggle to prevent acts of discrimination directed at Moroccan citizens was presented in the Spanish media as a result of protests by young Moroccans belonging to a different association who blocked the crossing point of Beni-Enzar in June 2008. An online article by the radio station COPE focused on power abuses that excluded Moroccan citizens at the border. The article summarized events as “Protests against the treatment of Moroccans at the border. Official documents issued by the Moroccan state are being defaced with stamps or inscriptions that contain the word ‘cancelled’ in order to prevent people from entering Melilla. The Moroccan representatives of civil society are being provoked.” There was another turning point in the story of Al Khayari’s fight for migrant rights. This climax occurred when his defense of migrants intersected with his criticism of drug-related corruption. In particular, the media reported on how drug smugglers’ boats with migrants on board openly departed from Morocco with the complicity of Moroccan public officials. His critical attitude was especially highlighted by the Moroccan media when Al Khayari was arrested and sentenced to prison in 2010. The event played a crucial role in the success of Al Khayari’s performance. Mise-en-scène: “Humanizing” Borders by Making Appeals to Citizen Equality In the eyes of an international audience, the iconic photograph taken by José Palazón in 2014 symbolically crossed the physical limits of Melilla’s fence in 2014 and linked two divided worlds by showing the inequality between groups on either side of the border. The image was strategically captured by Palazón, who explained: I spent more than a month trying to take a photo that was different from the many that we had seen of a black man on the fence, a black man jumping the fence, or a black man being beaten by the police. Many people saw those photos, and they stopped drawing attention to “hot returns.” There was no rush. And I had spent a lot of time thinking about what to do to attract attention to Melilla. That day, I got up early and when I got

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there, this is what I saw. And I was lucky because when I was approaching the place, the police saw me and sent me away. I saw the scene and it struck me as highly symbolic. I was very aware of what I was doing and of what I was seeing. The violence seen in other photos was not present here, but the image said a lot. … I couldn’t believe the contrast I was witnessing. And when I came back down, I was completely aware of what I had done and of what was going on. And it had major repercussions. (Interview by the authors, July, 2018)

Journalist Agus Morales (interview by the authors, July, 2018) referred to Europe’s southern border in a similar way. He defined the Melilla border as comprising “walls of inequality.” According to him, the walk across this space of just a few kilometers is a strong metaphor for inequality: “The walls are a declaration of power, of exclusion, of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The ‘us’ implies exclusion. This is never made explicit, but it is essential.” The represented locations in which the activists operated are inhospitable, lonely, harsh, and violent. “The borders are ‘nonplaces,’” declares Nico Castellano, the journalist from radio station SER, who had been covering migration news in the field. These features intensify the dramatic effect of the activist performances. In Al Khayari’s case, the physical locations mentioned in articles are the forest around the northern Moroccan city of Nador or the border posts that separate Morocco from Melilla, such as Beni-Enzar, the main crossing point. In some articles, these places and others described in the media reporting on Maleno are referred to as Spain and Morocco’s “common border” (El País, November 11, 2008), “customs,” or “the gateway for entering Melilla [referring to Beni-Enzar]” (Cope.es, June 23, 2008). In most cases, borders, along with detention centers and police stations, are represented as military settings. In a feature article (El País, November 16, 2008) Ignacio Cembrero, El País ’s former correspondent in North Africa, begins a story entitled “Rabat Deploys Riot Police” in the following terms: The place has always been sinister, but since the torrential rains in October in northeastern Morocco, it is even more so. The flood damaged the road and caused trash to accumulate in the Mezquita streambed, which cuts through the Beni Enzar border in Melilla. As night fell, the third-world border turns into something reminiscent of the iron curtain.

The interviewed journalists described the frontiers in terms of an enormous harshness. The borders are not just stretches of barbed wire placed

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across the outer border of southern Europe. According to Nicolás Castellano (June, 2018), borders are “barbaric” settings, and the fences represent “real aggression in all senses.” They are the “frontlines of a war,” as he put it: There are more people dying in the Mediterranean Sea or at Spain’s southern land border than the number of people who die in many conventional wars . … Spain’s southern border is a wall built to protect ourselves from the other, to protect ourselves from the barbarian, to protect ourselves from people who are deprived of dignity. We do not call them by their names. We are unaware of their circumstances. We reduce them to numbers. We reduce them to a mass. We use them as a mass that questions our quality of life. In my opinion, borders are the settings of a war against migrants, of a denial of their rights, of a stripping of their dignity.

5W Journalist Agus Morales said that north–south walls have been built since the fall of the Berlin Wall and that Europe’s southern border is one example of this. Journalist Isabel Vega talked about the southern borders not only as evidence of abuses at the physical frontiers between countries, but especially as ethical and moral limits imposed by whoever creates them. Activists’ actions and gestures aimed at helping migrants were presented in terms of isolated actions of humanitarian aid in such “deadly settings,” while the media and public opinion focused widely on police operations and control over the borders. Although media discourses echoed denunciations by NGOs, these complaints were treated with a certain level of suspicion due to questions surrounding the legality of activists’ acts. In Al Khayari’s case, however, operations undertaken by riot police intensified and reached a high point in 2008, when the border was occupied by Al Khayari, members of his organizations, and other Moroccan civil society associations for one week. They blocked the crossing point, preventing the flow of goods from Morocco to Melilla. They protested against victimization of Moroccans committed through abuses of power. As a result, the places reserved for migrants and police forces became “colonized” by activists, bringing new meaning to border-crossing points. The border continued to be a wall of exclusion, but now those who were expelled and mistreated were Al Khayari’s fellow citizens. The protest that blocked the border crossings was loaded with meaning. Al Khayari, who

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spoke on behalf of civil society organizations, protested against discriminatory treatment toward Moroccans who were ordinary citizens and who had to use the Melilla-Morocco crossing points to work in Melilla and return home each day. Building Codes of Meaning for Civil Repair: Humanity, Equality, and Justice In an opinion article in the Guardian (December, 20, 2017), Lorena Gazzotti, an academic at Cambridge University who specializes in migration studies, pointed out that “the criminalization of activists and solidarity networks reduces and discourages the ability of independent actors to monitor and criticize the conduct of state authorities, which is a principle of the democratic process.” She specifically described Helena Maleno’s case as just such an act of “criminalization.” Asked for her opinion on Maleno’s current case, MOAS director Regina Catambrone told us: Criminalization of solidarity has become more and more frequent since the end of 2016. If you act to protect vulnerable people and try to make the world a better place, people think there is something questionable going on. Regrettably, humanity has become a major target of hatred and suspicion.

Maleno’s hearings in 2018 coincided with international denunciations of the internment of migrants in the Archinoda penitentiary in southern Spain, which was temporarily being used as a migration detention center, as well as with the public and activist outrage at a Spanish judge’s decision to close the case against Spanish officers accused of the lethal violence in 2014 at Tarajal, on the border between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta (European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights 2017). Her fight to save lives at sea was seen as an example of activists’ courageous resistance, their continued commitment to defending migrant rights, and their denunciation of the legal impunity of authorities in cases of questionable operations to stop migrant flows into Europe. Palazón’s photo denouncing inequality and his videos recordings of illegal acts committed by the authorities were disseminated via news agencies and published in Spain’s national and international media. The video’s depiction of Spanish Civil Guard officers’ handing over of an unconscious twenty-three-year-old Cameroonian man to Morocco’s police provided evidence of a violation of Spain’s Foreigners Act (Ley de

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Extranjería). News reports covered declarations by a judge who was presiding over a case that had been brought against the Civil Guard. This figure stated that the Spanish and Moroccan police officers’ crossing of frontiers to return a migrant was a breach of the international treaties on borders signed by both countries (Heraldo de Aragón, October 16, 2014). By the time Palazón’s photo was shared across the Internet, Prodein Melilla, Andalucía Acoge, and SOS Racismo had filed a lawsuit against the deputy chief of the Melilla General Command in response to the body’s recourse to so-called “hot returns” at the Melilla–Morocco border. In August of that year, human rights organizations denounced the mistreatment inflicted upon sub-Saharan migrants, especially in the form of immediate deportation to Morocco without any processing of their identities or assessment of their individual circumstances being carried out. The act of illegally crossing borders was not being carried out exclusively by migrants but was also being committed, in breach of international and civil law, by the authorities themselves (El Mundo, September 15, 2018). In October 2014, the Spanish Prosecutor General’s Office launched a prosecution against the police violence exposed in Prodein’s videos. Proceedings were opened after a huge number of citizens sent emails to request an investigation, a course of action that was also promoted via a public campaign. The European Court of Human Rights accepted the case and delivered a ruling against Spain in January 2018.4 Media reporting on Chakib Al Khayari emphasized the filing of court cases and the writing of letters to individuals in positions of authority to expose the corruption of Moroccan authorities in the form of their involvement in drug smuggling. In these smuggling operations, drug traffickers took advantage of minors and migrants to pass drugs from Morocco to Spain. The civil means used by Al Khayari—for example, his bringing complaints before the justice system or his appealing to Morocco’s king to intervene—were characterized as acts that maintained and expanded the lawful order. These aspects were especially highlighted in the Spanish media. Under the headline “Blow against Drug Trafficking in Eastern Morocco,” El País (November 22, 2007) applauded Al Khayari’s fight against smuggling. In interviews that he gave to the Moroccan media, Al Khayari described what led to the fabrication of a false accusation against him. The Moroccan media also talked about the reports issued by Al Khayari’s human rights organization, a letter sent by the activist to King Mohamed VI, and his participation in peaceful civil

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protests at the crossing points. News stories presented other civil means used by the activist. His efforts to be heard through open letters to the president of the Moroccan Parliament, to the Chamber of Councilors (the Senate), and to the foreign and interior ministers were also presented. He used the law against those in the government who had acted outside the law. The association of the migrant cause with Al Khayari’s fight against corruption, as well as his arrest and imprisonment, triggered a wave of international support that extended beyond Morocco and Spain. An editorial published by the Morocco’s Assabah (February 26, 2009) stated that “if the message behind arresting Chakib Al Khayari is to threaten others who fight corruption in this country, we say to them, the message is well received.” And Ahmad Alsnousi said in Al-Masaa newspaper (March 6, 2009): However, I can only wonder, with the utmost naiveté and good faith, whether the human rights’ activist Chakib Al Khayari may have been arrested under an illegal premise which is based on the weird charge that he has undermined governmental efforts [to stop trade in illegal drugs]. Would he have been arrested had he not received an invitation from the European Union for Fair Values (A gathering of seventy European civil society organizations) to participate in a symposium organized by the European Parliament to discuss drug cultivation? Chakib, our brother, we miss you and hope to hug you soon outside the bars used to restrain intentions and ideas.

On October 26, 2009, journalist Ali Anouzla wrote in Al-Jarida that “the parliament is not holy, and its members are not exempt from criticism.” He finally concluded that “whoever knows Al Khayari finds in him a solid and brave struggler with a proud soul. He chose the hard path of being the Don Quixote of his time, and he declared his fight against ‘windmills,’ and he does not deserve to be left to face his tragic destiny alone, only because he dared to scream in the face of the wind” (Al-Jarida, October 26, 2009). Moroccan newspapers reported on the fact that for the fourth time in a row, the Moroccan authorities prohibited the organization of an event to symbolically honor Al Khayari during his imprisonment. Opinion articles emphasized that Moroccan authorities were giving weak excuses in presenting their “illegal decisions,” which were issued verbally and cited “security reasons”: “The forbidding of organizing such an event in itself

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honors ‘the solid fighter’ Chakib,” pointed out journalist Ali Anzouli (Lakoum, 6 January, 2011). Anzouli gave a voice to Al Khayari’s brother: Chakib sees the world as being bigger than his prison cell. And if he had the chance to attend his honorary event, he would dedicate it to his jailer since he gave him the time to read more and to hold the title of a solid fighter.

Conclusion Today, Europe is witnessing record numbers of economic migrants, refugees, and displaced persons arriving at the borders of the Mediterranean and other land border-crossing points. Not only are NGOs becoming involved in SAR, and not only are coastguards experiencing firsthand the vast numbers of people landing on beaches in Greece, Italy, and Spain, but many other actors, from journalists to ordinary citizens, are also seeing large-scale migration arrivals with their own eyes. Among all of these actors, migrant rights activists have become for many the touchstone of Europe’s basic standards for equality and justice. By adopting a vanguard position, they take the lead in expressing sentiments of humanity and compassion that are shared by many of their fellow citizens, even if these sentiments might be attenuated by other factors, such as their assimilation of conflicting notions related to national identity. Their actions have the potential to expand civil solidarity through their forceful demands for recognition and respect of migrants’ rights. As leading figures in voicing allegations and demands, activists have become relevant political players within the arena of migration, particularly since the beginning of Europe’s migration crisis in around 2014. This political role has led them to go from being news sources to being news stories. Activists’ deeds and words contradict official stories and solidify a body of public opinion against inequality, exclusion, or indifference. Despite this potential for bolstering solidarity, today, it is becoming extraordinarily difficult for human rights discourses and civil discourses to successfully prevail over the dominant opposing discourses. In a context of fragmented European civil spheres where a bitter divide between those favoring migrants and refugees and those opposing them is increasingly

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deepening, solidarity movements are facing major obstacles to becoming catalysts for waves of protest and for potential changes to migration policies and legislation that might be triggered by public outcry. In this fragmented scenario, individuals and organizations that have actively advocated for migrant rights at the external borders of the European Union have been targeted as opponents by two different actors, namely nation-states and European identity-based movements, with the latter group including Far-Right populist parties and xenophobic associations. The criminalization of acts in defense of human rights, the association of activists with trafficking and smuggling, and the intimidation of activists by some nation-states have contributed to strengthening national discourses in which activists are seen as outsiders in relation to their homelands and as enemies of their fellow citizens. This characterization has been accentuated by European movements and political parties that used to be on the fringes of public life. The far-right group, Defend Europe, the Golden Dawn party in Greece, and the antimigrant Northern League in Italy have actively brought latent identity sentiments and exclusionary attitudes into mainstream discourses on migration. According to Lorena Gazzotti, “In Europe, solidarity movements try to counter a predominantly toxic and radicalized public discourse. Their leverage power is too weak in a political environment dominated by populist discourses and media discourses” (Interview with Gazzotti, July 15, 2018). These discourses highlight the critical problems that groups and individuals face when they aid communities in transit and unauthorized immigrants. Humanity, equality, and the law were the shared codes activated by the activists working in cross-border spaces to whom we spoke. These codes helped to ensure that the cause of helping migrants outside national civil spheres was not only placed within a broader set of values beyond those of national borders but was also able to appeal to Moroccan and Spanish civil discourses. Stories such as that of activist Helena Maleno are incomplete. Maleno’s performance has not yet managed to go beyond the interpretation still held by many that her acts are legally questionable. By contrast, other stories, such as that of Palazón, ended more successfully and involved specific achievements. At first, the means used to help migrants at the borders were seen as falling outside the law. They were under this profane outside sphere of anticivil illegality and criminality. The shift from viewing activists’ acts as being legally dubious to viewing them as legitimate activities that fell within the civil sphere occurred when the activists came to be seen as staunch defenders of the law through their undertaking

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legal actions. This move from the anticivil to the civil was clear in the particular case of Chakib Al Khayari. After his release, Al Khayari joined the Regional Committee for the Special Settlement and the National Council for Human Rights (a nongovernmental institution whose creation is provided for in the Moroccan Constitution). His NGO has played a crucial role in leading to a royal initiative that aims to settle migrants’ administrative status. He is also leader of the National Security Directorate and regional commander of the Royal Gendarmerie, and he holds positions in other administrative organizations. These are the same bodies that used to keep track of Al Khayari when he started supporting migrants in 2004. Back then, however, such bodies would interrogate him, by order of the judicial police and the prosecutor-general at the criminal court in Nador.

Notes 1. From June to July 2018, we conducted ten interviews. We interviewed Regina Catambrone, founder and director of MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station); Lorena Gazzotti, an academic and expert on migration polices and aid in the EU-Moroccan context; Taco Dankers, editor of Gefira Bulletin and member of the pan-European think tank Gefira Foundation; Loes Rutter, president of the European Students’ Forum (AEGEE-Europe); and four leading Spanish journalists who specialize in migration news. Among the specialized journalists, we interviewed El Mundo reporter and writer Alberto Rojas; Nicolás Castellano, a journalist working on migration and human rights at SER, the leading radio station in Spain; Isabel Vega, the head of Europa Press Social, the online section on social issues of the Spanish national news agency Europa Press; and Agus Morales, writer and Director of 5W, a news magazine started by well-known Spanish foreign reporters and freelance journalists. 2. Recently, Spain has become the main entry point into Europe for undocumented migrants, surpassing Italy and Greece. Data on irregular migrant arrivals from January to December 2018 show that 62,126 people arrived in Spain by sea and land (Spanish Home Office 2018). This figure represents a 128% increase over 2017. In particular, the figure for undocumented migrants arriving by sea (55,621) places Spain in a challenging situation in relation to the so-called “Mediterranean migration crisis.” The year 2018 represents the peak year for arrivals since the refugee crisis in Europe started in 2014 (UNHCR 2017). The figures for 2018 surpass those from the “cayucos crisis” that occurred more than ten years before, in 2006, when thousands of people reached Spain’s Canary Islands in wooden boats (cayucos ), creating a humanitarian crisis for Spain and the EU.

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3. See “Europe’s Migration Crisis.” 2017. European Parliament, June 30, 2017. Updated July 29, 2019. Retrieved November 12, 2019 (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/ 20170629STO78631/europe-s-migration-crisis). 4. See “Case of N.D. and N.T. v. Spain.” 2017. European Court of Human Rights, October 3, 2017. Retrieved November 12, 2019 (http://hudoc. echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-177683).

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11, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/20/ aid-drowning-migrants-criminal-activists-ngo-witness-brutal-border-policing. Jaworsky, Bernadette Nadya. 2016. The Boundaries of Belonging Online Work of Immigration-Related Social Movement Organizations. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Kivisto, Peter and Thomas Faist. 2010. Beyond a Border: The Causes and Consequences of Contemporary Immigration. Los Angeles: Pine Forge Press. Luengo, María. 2018. “Shaping Solidarity in Argentina: The Power of the Civil Sphere in Repairing Violence against Women.” In The Civil Sphere in Latin America, edited by J. C. Alexander and C. Tognato, Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 39–65. Mast, Jason L. 2012. “Cultural Pragmatics and the Structure and Flow of Democratic Politics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology, edited by J. C. Alexander, R. N. Jacobs, and P. Smith. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 636–667. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 2017. “The Mediterranean Refugees/Migrants Data Portal.” UNHCR. Retrieved November 20, 2019. https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean. Waldinger, Roger. 2015. The Cross-Border Connection: Immigrants, Emigrants, and Their Homelands. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER 6

The Courage of Piety: Civil Solidarity and the Dead in International Migration Carlo Tognato

Since 2015, the crisis of the Bolivarian regime has dramatically accelerated the flow of Venezuelans into Colombia. This provoked a variety of xenophobic expressions across Colombian society, which led the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to warn Colombians against walking that dangerously slippery slope.1 Over many decades, cultural representations of Venezuelans in Colombia have depicted them as lazy and complacent rent-seekers living in wealth and parasitically relying on the subsidies that their oil-rich state could afford them. Recently, xenophobic attacks against Venezuelans plugged into such narratives, stressing that Venezuelans come to Colombia to seek assistance from their neighboring state after they had sucked the well of the Bolivarian regime dry. In addition, while the Colombian Far Right traditionally regarded Venezuelan migrants with utmost suspicion, seeing them as former Chavists who left out of need, the Far Left often saw (and sees) them as traitors of the Bolivarian Revolution. The rest of the Colombian public, in turn, has split between two positions.

C. Tognato (B) Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_6

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On the one side stand those who fear the competition of Venezuelans for scarce state resources, as well as for even scarcer opportunities in the Colombian labor market, and on the other stand those who are willing to open their country to their neighbors in need.2 Although in the past few years, the Venezuelan migration has hardly managed to occupy a stable place in national public conversations, national and local media have occasionally reported the acts of generosity toward Venezuelan migrants that Colombian citizens, civil associations, and religious groups have engaged in. Their narratives, though, seldom illuminate the factors that lead to such acts and, even more importantly, they rarely dwell on their complexity. Here, I will address the case of Sonia Bermúdez, a coroner from Riohacha, the capital town of the Guajira province of Colombia, which stretches along the Caribbean coast at the border with Venezuela. In the early 1980s, Bermúdez regularly witnessed the unceremonious disposal in mass graves of the unclaimed and often unnamed dead that her office would process, as well as of the dead of poor families that could not afford a dignified burial in the city cemetery. Bermúdez chose not to be indifferent to them and decided to take care of “her” dead. She attended to their bodies, built the coffins with her own personal funds, whenever she could afford it, and started to clandestinely bury the dead in a wasteland on the outskirts of Riohacha. In 1995, she convinced the city authorities to entrust her with that land so that the poor, the abandoned, and the unnamed could have an identifiable site to rest. She labelled this cemetery “People Like Us” (Gente como Uno). Since the Venezuelan migration emergency hit Colombia, Colombian authorities, international agencies, and civil society have overlooked the fate of Venezuelan migrants dying in poverty on Colombian soil. That is the gap that Bermúdez stepped in to fill by recognizing their universal right to a dignified burial. Civil sphere theory provides a powerful analytical framework that illuminates how societies weave solidarity among their members as well as with those who seek to be admitted into them. So far, the horizon of analysis has focused on solidarity ties among the living. Here, I will address the role that civil piety for the dead may play in civil solidarity formation. Most importantly, though, engaging in acts of cross-group solidarity may be risky and costly, whenever they entail a breach of the horizon of cultural expectations within a given social order, at which point they turn into acts of civil courage. By delving into such breaches, I will be able to unpack the grammar that orients and constrains such acts.

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That said, for the purpose of my case study, I had the option of focusing either on acts of civil courage that involve great personal costs for the people who engage in them or on acts that do not. I decided to concentrate on the latter in recognition of their importance in the maintenance of the fabric of civil solidarity. After all, while Arendt (1963) shows that great evil can be ultimately banal and may spring out of ordinary acts by common people, great good, as well, is also born time and time again from smaller acts of generosity that do not necessarily call for extreme sacrifice. Such acts constitute the first lines of defense for civility that prevent greater injustice and evil from dramatically creeping into society. This is why it is so important to understand how less dramatic acts of civil courage become possible at times when even certain smaller steps toward cross-group solidarity appear to require the climbing of bigger walls.

Cross-Group Solidarity, Civil Piety, Courage, and the Dead In the civil sphere, people weave solidarity ties across groups by tapping into a discourse of liberty and solidarity through which they translate their particularistic interests into generalized ones (Alexander 2006a; Kivisto and Sciortino 2015; Alexander and Tognato 2018; Alexander et al. 2019, 2020). As this sphere becomes instantiated in time and space, the civil quest for ever-expanding solidarity within society is constantly compromised, thereby opening up a gap between real and ideal civil spheres. One may think of a great variety of fronts along which this may happen within society. With respect to international migration, for example, the utopian ideals of civil inclusion are regularly declined in a particularistic fashion after being looked at through the lenses of geography. What falls within a given place, at that point, is bestowed upon with the attributes of the civil. And what falls beyond it, is represented as inherently anticivil. The constant push-and-pull between ideal and real civil spheres moves the boundaries of civil life back and forth within society in relation to those of space, while the utopian aspiration of the ideal civil sphere constantly pushes members of society to lift their horizon of solidarity above and beyond the strictures of space. In the end, this horizon is defined through bestowing civil or anticivil attributes to actors, social relations, and institutions. And the communicative institutions of the civil sphere—media and civil associations,

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mostly—are entrusted with such a task of civil translation, as they recast, and classify, concrete instances of social life in civil terms, thereby prompting solidarity and support for what they code as civil and catalyzing disengagement or outright opposition against what they describe as anticivil (Alexander 2006a). Engaging in civil translation for the purpose of expanding the horizon of inclusion within society, in turn, may occasionally entail the breaching not only of the pragmatic norms of interaction that make up the social order but also, and more broadly, of the grammar of cultural appropriateness that constitutes it. In other words, unlike Garfinkel’s ethnomethodological breaches (Garfinkel 1967), these are culturally “thick” (Tognato 2020). Furthermore, as breaching regularly elicits reactions on the part of the defenders of the social order, it inevitably involves some degree of risk and sometimes, when responses become particularly vehement, it may even turn out to be quite costly for those who engage in it. At that point, breaching stops being a matter of mere generosity and becomes, instead, an act of civil courage. Delving into the resources that agents of civil repair may tap into as they engage in breaches and zooming into their moves may provide useful insights into what civil courage is ultimately about. Here, I will concentrate on one specific dimension of civil courage and argue that it should not be considered the outburst of some unbridled form of voluntarism. Instead, it is bound by a grammar and generally relies on a very nuanced understanding of the socio-cultural terrain across which agents of civil repair navigate as they carry out their breaches. Recognizing this may allow the formative institutions of the civil sphere, particularly within the realm of education (Tognato 2018), to more effectively cultivate civil courage across society. To understand what the grammar of civil courage is about, though, it is necessary to recognize what breaches call for. To begin, people must tap into two types of knowledge to carry them out. First, they must be cognizant of the types of actors, scripts, background social representations, modes of staging, means of symbolic production, audiences, and forms of social power that make up the cultural pragmatic order that they set out to disrupt and of the combinations among such elements that allow it to stick (Alexander 2006b). This performative awareness tells social actors what changes in any of those elements may constitute a breach, how big the breach may be, and how far the social order can be strained before its defensive responses come into play to repair the breach. The second

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type of knowledge has to do with understanding how the inhabitants of a local order may react in the face of a variety of breaches, and how one may survive their reactions. This enables civil actors to assess the risks and visualize the price that they might have to pay as a result of their actions and, therefore, it is crucial in the exercise of civil courage. Knowledge of the grammar of cultural appropriateness that makes up a social order is practical, experiential, and embodied. People develop it as they live within that order and as they participate in the everyday trialand-error, sometimes deliberate and other times inadvertent, by which participants breach it, bring its limits into focus, and continually test its malleability for the purpose of stretching it, while constantly assessing the risks and costs that might be associated with all that probing. Because of contingency, such knowledge does not allow for precise predictions about what might exactly amount to an actual breach, what consequences one might expect from it, and whether or how one might be able to cope with the reactions it may trigger. The experience of such uncertainty and of conjuring civil action up in the face, and in spite, of it makes up a relevant dimension of the subjective world of experience that characterizes the social location of civil actors as they engage in acts of civil courage geared to deliver those breaches. A grammar of civil courage, as a result, may be considered the structure that orients and constrains acts of courage geared toward breaching a social order for the purpose of expanding its horizon of inclusion. It is defined by the grammar of cultural appropriateness of that order, by the experience of trial-and-error that civil agents accumulate throughout their lives as they live at the edge of that order, and by the history of the interactions, and mutual accommodations, over the breaches between such agents and the other inhabitants of their social world. Because of these factors, the grammar of civil courage is highly contextual and positional. In this chapter, I will apply such considerations about cross-group solidarity formation, civil translation, breaching, and civil courage to address one front of international migration that so far has not received the attention that it warrants. Scholars working on incorporation within the context of international migration have focused almost exclusively on solidarity formation among the living while the media, on their part, have approached the deaths of migrants travelling across sea and land, and then on arrival in their countries of destination, either as a mere statistical matter or, alternatively, have described the circumstances of their death and told their stories in

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an effort at bringing into focus their humanity and eliciting greater solidarity with migrants. In January 2019, for example, the Italian public was moved by the story of a 14-year-old boy from Mali who died in a shipwreck while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea. He had sewn onto his jacket his own school report, possibly hoping that it might help him be accepted by the society in the hands of which he planned to entrust his hope for a better future (Tebano 2017). Both in the academic literature and in media accounts, how people in receiving societies actually deal with the migrants who die there or on route remains relatively invisible. I would argue that this omission is problematic, as the way societies handle the dead matters to the formation of generalized solidarities within them and thus, by overlooking this matter, scholars are bound to miss a relevant passage in group solidarity formation, and, particularly, in incorporation processes. As a matter of fact, a dignified burial in societies with a civil tradition bears the expectation that the individuality of those who pass away will be honored by a grave that will bear their name. And when this is not possible, society generally goes to lengths to ritually compensate for it through memorial sites or monuments, thereby symbolically reaffirming the universal value of every single human life, which is so important for society to be able to weave generalized solidarity ties among its members. Processes of incorporation therefore tend to have implications on the way the dead are treated. The standard individualistic practices of piety that apply to civil communities are not only applied to the dead among the newly incorporated. Also, the broader the model of incorporation— from assimilationism to hyphenation and, ultimately, to multiculturalism,—the further back civil piety will be extended to their unincorporated predecessors through a variety of reparatory rituals of collective memory, thereby retroactively bestowing civil credentials upon the latter. And yet, not only does incorporation shape the practices of piety toward the dead, but also such practices may shape the horizon of incorporation within society by providing a site for the cultural work of civil translation and for the breaching of the social order that goes into redefining the limits of inclusion within it. The rest of this paper will focus on this latter front. Before proceeding, though, I will address the context within which my case is embedded.

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The Venezuelan Migration Crisis in Colombia Colombia’s institutional response to the Venezuelan migration crisis entered into full gear only in July–August 2018. As Colombian media reported, up until then, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since 2014, 2.3 million Venezuelans had migrated out of their own country, mostly to neighboring nations.3 Since mid-2015, the Venezuelan migration crisis has accelerated. According to the statistics of the Colombian government and of the IOM, by the end of 2016, 65% of people crossing the Venezuelan–Colombian border were Colombians making their way back. As the crisis in Venezuela deepened, however, the trend dramatically reversed4 and, by the end of 2017, Venezuelans made up 65% of the inflows. In the city of Cúcuta, Colombia’s major point of entry, 35,000 Venezuelans crossed daily and 15,000 per month stayed in Colombia.5 According to the Colombian migration authority, in July 2017, 350,000 Venezuelans were estimated to be in Colombia, of which 140,000 were present illegally. By December 2017, though, this stock went up to 552,000, of which 374,000 were in the country illegally. Sixty percent of the Venezuelans entering the region of Norte de Santander, to which Cúcuta belongs, continued their journey to other parts of Colombia and to other neighboring countries, whereas 40% stayed in Cúcuta. As of 2015, the city’s total estimated population amounted to approximately 650,000; thus, the impact of the Venezuelan migration turned out to be quite dramatic.6 By July 2018, the Administrative Register of Venezuelan Migrants in Colombia indicated that just above one million Venezuelans legally resided in the country, with an estimated 1.5 million Venezuelans in total (Hernández 2018). In August 2018, during a visit to Chile, the Colombian foreign minister compared the Venezuelan refugee migration crisis to the Syrian situation and called for the constitution of a multilateral fund to address it.7 The point was later echoed by UNHCR’s regional representative for the United States and the Caribbean region, who also noted that never in its modern history had Latin America experienced an exodus of such scale. As a result of the sheer magnitude of such a phenomenon, pressures on Colombian society as well as on the state were extensive and profound. Venezuelan migrants were increasingly perceived as a threat to Colombians within the tight labor market, as a fueling factor in crime (Galindo 2018),8 and as a stressor on the front of public health and education.9

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After single-mindedly focusing over many years on the peace negotiation with FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) and then on the implementation of the peace accord, and upon recognizing that Venezuela was one of the guarantors at the negotiating table in Cuba, the Colombian government moved relatively slowly in addressing the Venezuelan migration emergency (Medellín 2018; Ramsey and Sánchez-Garzoli 2018).10 Only in July 2018 did it issue a decree granting a special residence permit for irregular Venezuelan migrants, thereby allowing them access to health and education services as well as to work insurance plans.11 This measure was praised by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights as an example for the region and the world and was further strengthened by a decision of the Colombian Constitutional Court that granted Venezuelan migrants broader access to state services.12 As the Colombian state stepped up in its response to the migration crisis, it also pursued its internationalization upon recognizing that the emergency might overwhelm its capacities for response and, therefore, sought direct involvement on the part of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS)13 as well as of that of the United Nations.14 As a result of the slow institutional response to the crisis on the part of the Colombian state, an overarching strategy on the part of Colombian institutions and civil society failed to gel for the purpose of preventing, and managing, the rise of a xenophobic backlash against Venezuelan migrants.15 The international community and civil society in Colombia, on the other hand, have sought to address xenophobic outbursts in opeds as well as through a variety of media campaigns.16 Occasionally, Colombian media have also reported stories about punctual acts of solidarity on the part of Colombians toward Venezuelans. In August 2018, for example, the inmates of a Colombian prison were reported to donate a week’s worth of lunches to the Venezuelan migrants that were flowing into their city.17 And in Bogota, a group of missioner nuns were reported to have come out on the streets and city squares where Venezuelan migrants concentrated—“physically and morally destroyed”—to cure their feet that had suffered from extenuating marches across Colombia from the Colombian–Venezuelan border.18 Until the beginning of 2018, however, state and civil society responses to the Venezuelan migration often pulled in opposite directions, thereby adding to existing problems in the management of the crisis. The coordinator of the Jesuit Refugee Service in one of the hardest hit border

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regions of Colombia, for example, noted that people in Cúcuta initially reacted with solidarity to the emergency and came out to offer food and refuge to incoming Venezuelans. Early on, though, public authorities criminalized such acts of solidarity and even fined citizens who came out to offer food to Venezuelan refugees in city parks. That, he continued, contributed to the emergence and diffusion of a discourse that framed Venezuelans as delinquents (Abramovits 2018). Throughout 2018, the Colombian state nevertheless made an effort at catching up with civil society solidary responses to the emergency. The public construction of the Venezuelan migratory flow into Colombia as a crisis deserving a solidary response relied on a good amount of cultural work on the part of a broad spectrum of carrier groups that translated the plight of Venezuelan migrants into an issue of general concern before which neither Colombian society nor the state could afford to remain indifferent. In particular, such cultural work tapped into two distinct cultural understandings of legitimacy and solidarity within Colombian society. On the one hand, the experience of Venezuelan migrants was represented in civil terms (Alexander 2006a). And on the other, it was interpreted through the lenses provided by a corporatist discourse with a more conservative and Catholic religious streak, which exalts such attributes of agency as modesty, humbleness, and good-willingness (Tognato 2011). In both cases, cultural representations were geared toward accrediting Venezuelan migrants as worthy actors for inclusion. This move is apparent, for example, in the Colombian media coverage of the three-day long march that thousands of migrants have so far undertaken on foot along the 140-mile route from the border city of Cúcuta to the inland city of Bucaramanga along an uphill road that takes them through a mountain crossing at 3300 meters—the Berlin moorland—and exposes them to the merciless rigor of cold weather, for which most of them—men, women, children, even babies, and the elderly— come gravely unprepared. Everything about the media representations of this ordeal and of the way Venezuelan migrants tackle it challenges earlier representations of Venezuelans as a lazy people spoiled for much too long by an oil-rich state (Mojica Patiño, n.d.; Abramovits 2018). Other media representations resonate with powerful topoi in the Christian tradition, emphasizing the pilgrimage of repentance and expiation and the humbleness of the Venezuelan walkers, and set out to accredit before the more conservative segment of the Colombian public an image of Venezuelans that appears to overrule the narratives that stereotype them as former

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Chavists who sucked the resources of their regime dry and then came to Colombia to do the same (Brand 2018; Mojica Patiño, n.d.; Guarnizo, n.d.) After laying out the context of the Venezuelan migration in Colombia, I will now delve into the story of one specific agent of cross-group solidarity that has attracted the attention of Colombian and international media—Sonia Bermúdez. While acknowledging her engagement on the front of civil translation, though, I will pay particular attention to her distancing from the context of indifference that surrounded her toward one specific group of the excluded. For the purpose of my study, I will rely primarily on media accounts, as well as on interviews carried out in the field. Through a hermeneutic analysis of such texts, in particular, I will not only bring into focus the civil translation that underpins her practice, but I will also seek to pin down the contours of the grammar of civil courage that orients and constrains her solidary service to Venezuelan migrants.

Sonia Bermúdez, a Life in Defense of the Dignity of the Dead and the Excluded For almost 45 years, Sonia Bermúdez served as a coroner in Riohacha, the capital of the coastal department of Guajira on the border with Venezuela, one of the poorest regions of Colombia.19 Many in her community recognize this Afro-Colombian woman as the “queen of the dead” and gossip about the legendary “fruitful madness” that led her throughout her entire life to stand for the dead (Amaya 2018). A journalist even compared her to the Big Mama, sovereign of Macondo, in one of Gabriel García Márquez’s early writings (Amaya 2018). Daughter of the caretaker of the city cemetery and of a tailor, as a child, she aspired to become a doctor, but she could not pursue her dream, because her family’s finances could not cover the long and costly training at a medical school. Since her childhood, she used to visit her father at the cemetery and even played hooky from school to be able to be with him (Wyss 2018). While other girls played with dolls, she would play at the cemetery. It was back then that she saw for the first time how the corpses of the unclaimed dead were dumped in communal graves (Wyss 2018) and felt for them (Ávila Barona 2018). Those people, after all, “were passing to eternity without having anybody to mourn them… I knew that I wanted to help them leave this world in peace and, as soon as I could, I did it” (Chica García 2018).

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In 1975, an office of the Ministry of Justice, which would later become the Institute of Forensic Medicine, was established within the premises of the city cemetery and at age 13, Bermúdez started to serve as an informal assistant to the forensic doctor in charge (Ávila Barona 2018); the doctor repeatedly, and unsuccessfully, tried to dissuade her and send her away. “But how could he send me away if, since I was a child, I was studying beside the graves …? That was my home,” she said in an interview (Amaya 2018). The night she assisted the doctor for the first time, her mother, who had been told about it, welcomed her home with a broomstick and beat her, something she still remembers after so many years (Amaya 2018). In 1978, the doctor nominated her for a scholarship to train as a coroner in Bogota, after which she returned to Riohacha, joined the coroner’s office, and worked there over the next four decades.20 Not long after her return, she witnessed the exhumation of a corpse that had been dumped into a communal grave after the relatives had turned up eight days after its burial. That painful scene motivated her to do something and provide for a place where those corpses would be treated with dignity.21 And so, after her work hours, she started to take the corpses of the unclaimed and the destitute to a plot on the outskirts of the city of Riohacha, where she buried them and prayed for them over their grave (Chica García 2018). Whenever she could afford it, she would build coffins for them. And the rest of the time, she would wrap them in plastic bags (Wyss 2018). After digging dozens of graves in her clandestine cemetery, she decided to turn to the city authorities and reveal what she had been up to, and convinced them to turn the land over to her. And they did so in 1995. The cemetery Gente como Uno (People Like Us) was born. The city also granted her approximately $US 30,000 a year to buy coffins, build crypts, and pay for the gasoline needed to transport the building materials as well as to collect the dead (Chica García 2018) all across the province with her old ramshackle Ford F-150 pickup truck, which she had ironically nicknamed La Loca (Crazy Gal) (Wyss 2018). The reimbursements, however, often came late and rarely covered all her expenses, which is why she continued to draw for her service to the dead on her own money. As Bermúdez says, people die at their own time and, when they do, one must respond at that exact moment, irrespective of whether city funding is in or not (Chica García 2018). Over four decades, Bermúdez, “the gravedigger of the displaced” (Amaya 2018), buried 600 people in her cemetery (Rueda 2018) and

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built two mausoleum crypts for 120 bodies and a columbarium. She still personally buries each one of “her” dead, and then etches their name on the fresh concrete front of their crypt, where she regularly puts some plastic flowers to honor them (Wyss 2018). Today, the cemetery lies before the visitor’s eyes as a wide, empty, semi-desertic space burned by a merciless Caribbean sun, in which the two concrete structures are almost lost to the eye. A tree provides just a bit of shade where mourners may gather around the coffin before sliding it into a crypt. Originally, this large piece of land was covered by thick, wild vegetation that wandering goats and snakes alone would dare pierce. One cannot but feel genuine admiration for Bermúdez as one contemplates the transformation of that entire area that she brought about by regularly spending for years and years on end her weekends and her after-work hours to clear it with her bare hands and her machete. Bermúdez’s personal life has been inextricably intertwined with her service to the dead to the point that the cemetery and the morgue have become her “two other homes.”22 Throughout the years, her commitment has been unyielding: “She never abandoned her dead, neither during her seven pregnancies … nor to save her marriage.” When her second husband faced her with the choice between him and the pursuit of her life mission, she packed, left home, and moved into the morgue for over three months (Amaya 2018). Even if her service cost her two marriages and a third relationship, she believes that “her heart is not alone.”23 Her siblings and her children have unyieldingly offered her their moral support. The youngest among them have again and again accompanied her on her truck whenever she took “her” dead to her cemetery and on Saturdays, they helped her clear the cemetery of its wild vegetation. On her birthdays and on Mother’s Day, she regularly gathers her family members at her cemetery for the celebration, and even has her cake there with them (Ávila Barona 2018). At age 64, she still continues to wake up every day at 4 am to visit her dead and works for them until 10 pm, at which point, she heads back home (Chica García 2018). Her service in favor of the dead has turned out to be costly not only in her personal life but also socially. Today, she surely enjoys wide recognition within her community: “People greet her on the street and cabdrivers know where she lives. ‘Everyone knows Sonia,’ one cabbie explained, ‘she’s the last person to see you when we die’” (Wyss 2018). Over many years, though, long before journalists and academics from Colombia and beyond took notice of her work, she had to put up with the injurious

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gossip of those within her community who accused her behind her back of profiting from the dead and ironized about her fixation on death. In defense of the rights of her dead, Bermúdez breached public regulations and exposed herself to the risk of disciplinary prosecution as she clandestinely buried them on land that was not hers and without the authorization of the competent public authorities. Her service also soured her relationship with the Catholic Church, particularly when she started to be critical of the Church’s control over the Riohacha city cemetery and its financial interests in it. Colombia’s second national newspaper reports that the Church excommunicated her under the pretense that she was the one that actually profited from the dead (Amaya 2018), a hurtful retribution for her acts of disinterested solidarity. Most importantly, though, Bermúdez’s uninterrupted advocacy for the rights of the dead placed her at odds with local institutions and elites each time the defense of the dignity of the dead, of their families, of the poor, and of the excluded set her against hospital administrators, politicians, and regulatory authorities. At the same time, her practice of generalized solidarity also made apparent how profoundly uncivil, local forms of solidarity that almost exclusively boil down to family ties, were, and are, on the part of the local population, thereby mirroring closely the exclusionary understanding of solidarity within its elites. In the end, as national and international attention to her work increased, local institutions have tried to catch up and recognize her contribution to her community. For her service, the Guajira Assembly awarded her the Luis Robles medal of honor (Ávila Barona 2018; see also Laya 2018).

Sonia Bermúdez and the Grammar of Courage It would be a mistake to presume that Bermúdez’s acts of piety constitute a reckless breach of the social order around her. Such a conceptualization, after all, would obscure our understanding of the way civil courage fits into her acts of solidarity and it would stop us from appreciating the grammar that orients them and the way she creatively uses, and at the same time distances herself from, the normative horizon of cultural appropriateness within her own social world. To illuminate these aspects, I will briefly address one specific instance of a “thick” breach of that order on her part.

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The city of Riohacha has traditionally entrusted the administration of its central cemetery to the Catholic Church and, since the 1970s, the premises of the cemetery have hosted a morgue. There, Bermúdez spent most of her professional career and, during that time, she adopted the place as a sort of alternate home. Her relationship with the priests in charge of the cemetery was never particularly smooth. She resented the fact that “her” dead could not be granted a dignified burial in that cemetery, because they could not afford it, and she was deeply offended by the degradation of that holy ground, which lay open and abandoned for alcoholics, drug-addicts, and even lovers to spend the night there. In turn, the priests in charge resented that, at least at the beginning of her pious service, she would still bury some of her dead in the cemetery, thereby using precious grave space and more or less overtly undermining the Church’s full control over it.24 At one point, though, she managed to convince one priest to let her rescue the cemetery from abandonment and deterioration. “Let me organize this brothel,” she told him. And he acceded. She set to work, established opening hours for the cemetery, hired a caretaker, a gravedigger, and a gardener, and even built 36 new colombariums to free space for new graves, thereby generating more revenue for the cemetery, which— she hoped—might be reinvested into making that holy site more dignified for the dead and the families that visited them. The priest, however, seemed to have different plans. One night, Bermúdez turned up at the gate of the cemetery with the body of a man who had died of AIDS in his hut and whose burial she had been called upon to assist. Her intention was to check the body into the morgue and the next day she would be back to get it ready for burial and then take it to her Gente como Uno cemetery. The caretaker, though, refused to let her in. The cemetery, he said, was not hers, a line that the priest in charge of the site had come to use with increasing insistence. In response, she got on her phone and called the personal numbers of the mayor and his chief of staff (secretario de gobierno) but received no answer. While she was at it, some police officers turned up to check on the situation. “What will you do with that body?”, they asked. “This person is not my responsibility, but the mayor’s,” she replied. “Since he’s responsible for his fellow-citizens, I will now head to the townhall and leave this coffin right in front of the mayor’s door.” And off she went. A few minutes later, Bermúdez sat on the coffin in front of the door of the

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townhall, stubbornly waiting for the mayor or his chief of staff to return her call.25 Coincidentally, that night, the priest in charge of the cemetery had organized a procession of the Virgin of the Remedies to invoke the protection of the Virgin Mary against a storm that was expected to hit Riohacha. The procession originated from the cathedral and was bound to pass right in front of the townhall. When it did, people witnessed the bizarre scene of Bermúdez sitting on the coffin, took photos with their cellphones, and began to share them on social media. Bermúdez’s phone rang soon after and there was the mayor’s chief of staff on the other side of the line reproaching her for her crazy stunt, while, in return, she demanded that the mayor do something about the situation and grant his dead fellow-citizen access to the morgue. The chief of staff turned up on the scene, called the caretaker of the cemetery, ordered him to open it, and scolded him for not letting in earlier “such a nut as Bermúdez” (Interview with Sonia Bermúdez, December 11, 2018). The next day, he called her back, reproached her once again for her act of folly, and asked her to turn up that afternoon at a cabinet meeting and publicly apologize to the priest. Bermúdez, on her part, agreed to go but shook off his reprimand. Christopher Columbus, she added, was a “nut” and yet he discovered a new world. At the meeting, the priest criticized her for her pushiness, at which point Bermúdez responded with a vehement speech, listing all she had done for the cemetery and all the Church, instead, had failed to do. She accused everyone at the meeting to act as whited sepulchers who stood with the priest only out of political interest and accused the priest of being a “merchant of the Word.” She closed by reaffirming that her intentions were pure, that she was at peace with God, and that someday all of them would have to respond to him for what they did or failed to do on that occasion (Interview with Sonia Bermúdez, December 11, 2018). Bermúdez’s performance surely constituted a breach of the horizon of cultural expectations within her local context. In Riohacha, after all, the public is used to fatalistically giving its local institutions and politicians a pass in spite of their dramatically inertial responsiveness to pressing social issues, and the latter tend to be quite comfortable at eluding their civil responsibilities in that respect. As far as the Catholic Church’s control over the cemetery is concerned, it was legally entitled to exercise it, but it fell short of adequately discharging the duties inherent in its title. Even so, the public did not really seem to mind. As it was not in the interest of

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any of the institutional parties involved to turn Bermúdez’s breach into a legal or an administrative matter, at which point they might be forced to account for their performance, it made sense for them to address it on a moral terrain. And since the stakes were not particularly high for them at that level, Bermúdez could therefore jump into her disruption with much greater vehemence, hoping that she might get away with it. Even so, making it through involved a good deal of cultural work on both sides and, quite paradoxically, also some degree of cooperation in conflict among them. It is not by chance, for example, that Bermúdez’s stunt in front of the townhall and later at the cabinet meeting was increasingly performed, and interpreted, as the work of a “nut.” This performance allowed Bermúdez to push ahead with her demand for institutional responsiveness without appearing to challenge all too radically the entire social order that allowed local politicians to maintain their power. And at the same time, it also allowed the latter to minimize the magnitude of Bermúdez’s defiance, to de-escalate conflict with her without their authority appearing to be seriously questioned, and, thus, without feeling compelled to vigorously respond against her to bring her back into line. For that to work, however, Bermúdez’s performance needed to come across as authentically that of a “nut.” And indeed, much conjured up to make it appear that way. To many local observers, her biography exactly pointed in that direction. Only a “nut” would dedicate her life to uphold the rights of the dead in a society in which it was not even possible to reclaim those of the living. This background expectation was then further strengthened by the scripts she used in the course of her breach. Praising, for example, Columbus on the phone with the mayor’s chief of staff for also being a “nut” and yet discovering a new world fed into her persona as a “nut” not so much because she ironically paralleled herself with Columbus but, sadly enough, because she implicitly hinted at the possibility that a new world might actually be discovered in Riohacha, one in which public authorities might be more responsive to their citizens and in which the rights of the latter would be effectively upheld. The religious references in her speech at the cabinet meeting, then, which cued the evangelical scene of Jesus entering the temple and denouncing the Pharisees for turning it into a market, also gave credit to her utter detachment from reality. After all, there was Bermúdez invoking the relevance of certain moral and religious principles in a situation in which everybody understood that political realism was all that mattered.

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Furthermore, had Bermúdez been a man, her breach would have constituted an unacceptable act a defiance against the authority and manhood of her counterparts and might have therefore drawn a much more vehement reaction to repair it. However, she is a woman in a strongly matriarchal society. And based on that, her stunt could also be interpreted as that of an angry mama who tries to bring some order in the house, a persona that her elder age also contributed to sustain. This fit quite well with the bizarrely comical mis-en-scène of her stunt as she sat on the coffin at the door of townhall, half like a crazy woman doing something hysterically unexpected and half like some furious mother waiting at the doorstep of her house for the men in her family to come back home and be disciplined. In the end, Bermúdez’s civil courage came into play as she decided to step up her action in defense of “her” dead and face the risks that might be associated with the reactions against her breach of the local grammar of cultural appropriateness in her social world. Her understanding of the cultural topography of her terrain allowed her to devise the breach as well as keep in check the risks that might be attached to it. Her prior interactions with the parties involved in this case allowed her to anticipate at least some of their reactions. Also, it set the stage for the kind of cooperation in conflict that ultimately resulted into some mutually advantageous accommodation.

Civil Translation in Bermúdez’s Acts of Civil Piety Given Bermúdez’s markedly spiritual nature, it is not surprising that religion plays an important role in her acts of civil piety toward the dead and their families. Even if she recognizes that her dedication to her cause has brought some loneliness into her life and drained her personal finances, which, being a middle-class mother of seven, were never exorbitant, she still feels at peace because she is “complying with the law of God” (Rueda 2018). God, she says, gives her strength and, each time she buries a dead person without a family, she feels that her strength is multiplied by God’s blessings.26 On the other hand, religion is not the only source of narratives through which she motivates herself and represents her acts before others. Civil representations also play an important role. First and foremost, she places a great deal of emphasis on the universal value of human dignity. A burial, she points out, must be dignified (Rueda 2018). And thus, one cannot remain indifferent before the sight of people

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being dumped into communal graves naked and with plastic bags over their heads. When she started to do something about it, the first thing she did was actually to gather clothes so that the unclaimed and the unnamed dead could be dressed before their burial. But even then, that still fell all too short of her acceptable standard for a dignified burial. And thus, she started to build the coffins with the confiscated contraband wood that some authorities would donate to her for that purpose.27 Respect for human dignity, in turn, goes hand in hand in Bermúdez’s discourse with the acknowledgment of the principle of equality among all human beings. The sight of people being so unceremoniously disposed of in communal graves struck a very intimate chord in her: I thought it was unfair to bury those people that way. And I wondered why the wealthy were given a dignified burial while the poor were not. … Death does not differentiate among social strata. It takes us all, no matter the differences. And all of us deserve being treated the same. (Chica García 2018)

In her conversations, Bermúdez also ties the civil value of generalized solidarity to individual-level and community-level responses that strive to realize the above-mentioned ideal of equality. “I don’t bury my dead alone,” she says. “I always bring people along so that they may be accompanied.”28 At a more personal level, then, she links the very idea of generalized solidarity with the practice of empathic action. Since she was a young girl, she remarks, she was regularly saddened by the fact that the unclaimed dead had no one to take them flowers. “I thought that somebody somewhere might be missing them,”29 which is why she stepped in. Finally, Bermúdez links the duty to respect human dignity and equality with a civil obligation to remember and ties the latter directly to the practice of generalized solidarity. Life, she stresses, does not end with death but with forgetting. Giving the dead a dignified burial also entails honoring the dead’s right to be remembered. She insists that this is particularly relevant for those who lived as if they did not exist, erased by the indifference of their fellow citizens and their institutions (Rueda 2018). Bermúdez takes up this obligation very seriously by remembering every single person she has buried, including the ones who did not have a name.30 And sometimes this produces very concrete consequences that end up expanding the reach of generalized solidarity beyond national

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frontiers. On one occasion, a French woman called the mayor’s office of Riohacha asking if anyone had seen her son, whom she described to facilitate his identification. She was advised to turn to Bermúdez, who remembered that a year earlier, she had buried a young man fitting the description with a map of Colombia in his pocket. In the end, that mother was able to take his remains back home.31

Sonia Bermúdez, Civil Piety, and the Incorporation of Venezuelan Migrants On the one hand, Bermúdez’s response to the Venezuelan migration crisis was the trigger for most of the international attention to her decades-long service in defense of the rights of the dead. On the other hand, her longterm commitment on that front laid the foundations for her assistance to Venezuelan migrants and contributed to the authenticity of her call via her own practice for their incorporation into Colombian society. All media accounts that addressed her latest engagement in defense of the rights of Venezuelan migrants dying in Colombia described at length her life trajectory alongside the dead. Just in 2018, she buried 30 Venezuelans whose families could not afford a dignified burial. The UNHCR recognized that Bermúdez was in a position to address an increasingly serious social issue that neither local institutions nor international aid did and so it stepped into donate few thousand dollars of concrete and bricks to allow her to build more crypts in her cemetery (Rueda 2018). At the same time, the agency acknowledged that its support of Bermúdez was bound to be contingent and that local authorities in Riohacha would need to intervene at some point and step up if she was not to be left alone in dealing with this specific front of the Venezuelan emergency. The mix of religious and civil justifications that Bermúdez uses to ground her assistance of the dead of Colombian origin carries forward in a seamless fashion to her acts of cross-group solidarity in favor of dead Venezuelan migrants and their families, whom she incorporates into the horizon of civil solidarity that over many years her practice sought to redefine within her own community. Besides advocating for their “Christian burial” (Amaya 2018), Bermúdez stresses the humanity of the Venezuelans who die on Colombian soil and pledges her determination not to be indifferent before it: “What I can tell you is that I will not allow a single Venezuelan who

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dies in Riohacha to be buried like a dog” (Wyss 2018). “Every person,” she insists, “deserves a dignified death and a dignified burial. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you came from. Death has no nationality” (Wyss 2018). Or, “death does not discriminate between Colombians and Venezuelans. Everyone at the time of death should be treated equal” (Rueda 2018). Her commitment to uphold such a broad and inclusive universalism is firm and unequivocal: “If I have to fight tooth and nail for my dead, I will do it” (Wyss 2018). Her track record, in turn, over more than forty years, in defense of the rights of the dead bears witness to the fact that she genuinely means it. To her, the civil ideals of human dignity, equality, and solidarity ring intimately personal. The very same memories that prompted her as a young adult to take action on behalf of her dead fellow-Colombians are now summoned in her discourse to motivate her to act before the plight of Venezuelan migrants and their dead: I don’t want to see what I saw in the decade of the 1990s; bodies thrown into a ditch behind the municipal slaughterhouse, naked, and with a black bag over their face, waiting for the birds to turn them into mere bones, at which point they would be picked up. Everyone deserves a burial, everyone deserves to mourn, and to have a place where families may weep as they should. (Amaya 2018)

And this, in her mind, must apply across frontiers. The rights of the dead, and of their families, are universal. Media accounts of Bermúdez’s service to this population seek to support the plausibility of such extension by emphasizing the common ground of experience that Colombians and Venezuelans share and by bringing into focus the humanity of the latter in an effort to elicit empathic responses on the part of the former. They portray, for example, the burial in the Gente como Uno cemetery of young Venezuelan children who died of starvation (Rueda 2018), a cruel reality that Venezuelans and Colombian parents share in that region. They report the burial of an unborn baby whose mother’s placenta detached and collapsed while she was queuing outside a church relief center to get food (Amaya 2018), once again appealing to the common experience of poverty tearing away from people what they hold dearest, irrespective of their nationality. And finally, they emphasize the commonality of human experience in sickness

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as they tell the story of a woman who came from Venezuela with pancreatic cancer in pursuit of assistance, attempted suicide at the Riohacha hospital to end her “martyrdom,” and, in the end, died in desperate poverty in a hut covered with cardboard (Amaya 2018). Although Bermúdez’s long-term practical advocacy of the rights of the dead creates a platform from which she may now more convincingly engage in civil translation in favor of Venezuelan migrants, her service to this new population still entails the breaching of the local cultural pragmatic order. The UNHCR, for example, admits that she is still fending almost on her own on this front, because public institutions in the region have not brought into focus, and responded, to this emerging social issue, yet. And the media, on their part, go to great lengths to emphasize in their profiles on Bermúdez’s acts of piety the continuing disruptiveness of her practice. After all, it interjects into that common ground of institutional dereliction and aching humanity that in Riohacha, Colombians share with their incoming neighbors. It unfolds in the cracks of the local social order between those who uphold the moral indifference, the cynical fatalism, and the elite insensitiveness to the continuing failure at realizing the basic rights of Colombians and Venezuelans, alike, and those who more or less clandestinely distance themselves from such a state of affairs by casting Bermúdez’s actions against it. The story the media told about Carolina Morles Castro, for example, is particularly suggestive in this respect. A 22-year-old Venezuelan migrant, she was hit by a car as she was selling coffee on the streets of Riohacha. Her mother received “a cold phone call” notifying her that her daughter laid seriously injured at the hospital and then the person on the other side of the line abruptly hung up on her. At the hospital, a security guard—“cold and ruthless”—closed the door on Carolina’s mother as she attempted to enter the ER. Other people shouted at her: “Watch it! This Venezuelan [using a derogatory label] is jumping the queue!” Once inside, the mother had to struggle to gather information about the fate of her Carolina. In the end, a doctor approached her, “emotionless”—“one of those chaps who don’t even look at you, and if they did, they wouldn’t listen.” He told her that her daughter had died and, even before delivering the end of his message, he had already turned his back on her. At that point, the mother had to insist for three days in order to be allowed to see the body of her daughter. During that time, hospital personnel pushed back at her insistence, claimed that Carolina’s case file was still being processed, and that they

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had too much work to do. In the midst of that tragedy, the report mentions that a nurse was moved out of compassion for Carolina’s mother and put her in touch with Sonia Bermúdez, who promptly took Carolina under her wing just as if she was one of her own. She picked her up at the hospital, prepared her body, put makeup on her, obtained a coffin and plastic flowers for her grave, and finally took her to her Gente como Uno cemetery. Looking back at that painful moment, Carolina’s mother remarks: “She was beautiful and had a serene face. It saddened me, but at the same time I felt some tranquility to bury her… In four years, I hope to take her back to Venezuela” (Amaya 2018). In a community in which the dignity of its members is not adequately catered to by its institutions, the inflow of Venezuelan migrants puts additional pressure and generates further strain on the local population. As Carolina’s story shows, hostility on the part of locals toward the latter may be easily triggered. And so, as Bermúdez responds to the plight of Venezuelan migrant families, she inevitably treads into a field of struggles for survival and incorporation that are constantly on the verge of turning mean. She navigates across these potentially risky waters by leveraging the opportunities inherent in her decades-long history of service to the dead.

Conclusion Over the past few years, Colombia has been on the receiving end of a dramatic inflow of migrants from Venezuela, who have sought to flee from the implosion of the Bolivarian regime. To broaden the horizon of solidarity to accommodate the newcomers, agents of civil repair in Colombia have engaged in civil translation, thereby recasting the particularistic interests of the Venezuelan migrants in generalized terms for the purpose of eliciting a solidary response on the part of the rest of the Colombian public. At times, their civil quest for a broader horizon of inclusion has entailed the breaching of a social order that naturalized indifference, apathy, and even hostility toward the plight of Venezuelan migrants. Carriers of civil repair, at that point, have faced risks and occasionally paid a price for their courageous acts of cross-group solidarity. Civil sphere theory has so far dwelt on the cultural and institutional work involved in civil translation but has overlooked how acts of civil courage come about and what kind of resources agents of civil repair leverage to carry them out. In this chapter, I have suggested that such acts are not outbursts of unbridled voluntarism but rather have a structure

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that orients and constrains them. This grammar of courage, I suggest, is comprised of three elements. First, it consists of the grammar of cultural appropriateness in the social order that such acts set out to breach. Second, it builds on the experience of trial-and-error that civil agents accumulate throughout their lives as they relentlessly test the limits of that grammar. And finally, it is defined by the history of the interactions, and mutual accommodations, over the breaches between such agents and the inhabitants of their social world. I have also stressed that unpacking such a grammar of courage is necessary if we are to sharpen the capability on the part of the formative institutions of the civil sphere to cultivate agents of civil courage who may competently uphold the civil order. To show the connections among cross-group solidarity formation, civil translation, breaching, and civil courage, I have presented the case of Sonia Bermúdez, a coroner from the Colombian coastal town of Riohacha, who has recently attracted the attention of international and national media for her acts of piety in favor of Venezuelan migrants dying in Colombia without being able to afford a dignified burial. Focusing on such a case has allowed me to address a relevant gap in scholarly and media coverage of the way receiving societies deal with the death of migrants. I moved from the premise that how societies handle the dead matters to the formation of generalized solidarities within them. As a result, exploring their acts of piety toward the dead may provide a useful window into significant mechanisms in group solidarity formation, and particularly in incorporation processes and, in particular, the cultural work of civil translation and the breaching of the social order that go into redefining the limits of inclusion within society. Finally, in this chapter I deliberately focused on a case of civil courage that does not involve extreme sacrifice on the part of its agent. My goal was to illuminate what comes into play in less heroic and yet remarkably significant acts of courage that any vibrant civil community still needs to rely on for the purpose of fulfilling the civil promise of an ever-expanding horizon of solidarity within society.

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Notes 1. “OIM llama a Colombia a prevenir xenofobia contra venezolanos.” 2017. El Heraldo, 5 July. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www. elheraldo.co/mundo/oim-llama-colombia-prevenir-xenofobia-contravenezolanos-379149). 2. Such representations often surface in social media accounts and informal conversations. See, for example, @javierey5 in https://twitter. com/NoticiasRCN/status/1064667135773827072, lossadax in http:// venemil.forosactivos.net/t344p875-venezuela-colombia, Angie.Sierraa.5 in Valentina Lares Martiz. 2018. “Chavez convirtió a Venezuela en un país de inmigrantes desesperados.” El Tiempo, December 7. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.eltiempo.com/mundo/venezuela/ venezuela-un-pais-de-inmigrantes-desesperados-301972). The narrative that Venezuelan diplomat Edgardo Ramírez deploys in an op-ed for CubaDebate and that frames Venezuelans leaving their country as traitors of the Bolivarian Revolution resonated for a long time within the Colombian Far Left. See Edgardo Ramírez. 2017. “La traición de la ‘izquierda.’” CubaDebate, July 29. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (http://www.cubadebate.cu/opinion/2017/07/29/la-traicion-de-laizquierda/#.XKt7-FxKjIU). 3. “Colombia, Perú y Ecuador analizan crisis migratoria la próxima semana.” 2018. El Universal, August 24. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (http://www.eluniversal.com/internacional/18613/colombiaperu-y-ecuador-analizan-crisis-migratoria-la-proxima-semana). 4. “La migración venezolana ya es una crisis humanitaria.” 2018. La Silla Vacía, January 14. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://lasillavacia. com/la-migracion-venezolana-ya-es-una-crisis-humanitaria-64180). 5. “Con los venezolanos, Colombia vive la más grave crisis migratoria.” 2018. El Tiempo, February 3. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https:// www.eltiempo.com/politica/gobierno/migracion-de-venezolanos-acolombia-es-la-mas-grave-crisis-migratoria-del-pais-178596). 6. “La migración venezolana ya es una crisis humanitaria.” 2018. La Silla Vacía, January 14. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://lasillavacia. com/la-migracion-venezolana-ya-es-una-crisis-humanitaria-64180). 7. “Canciller colombiano por migración de Venezuela: ‘Está llegando a una magnitud similar a la de Siria.’” 2018. Tele13 Radio, August 30. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (http://www.t13.cl/noticia/mundo/ canciller-colombiano-migracion-venezuelaesta-llegando-magnitud-similarsiria). 8. “Alarmante informe sobre los efectos de la masiva inmigración venezolana en Colombia.” 2018. Infobae, April 2. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.infobae.com/america/colombia/2018/04/02/

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9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

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alarmante-informe-sobre-los-efectos-de-la-masiva-inmigracion-venezolanaen-colombia/). “La migración venezolana ya es una crisis humanitaria.” 2018. La Silla Vacía, January 14. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://lasillavacia. com/la-migracion-venezolana-ya-es-una-crisis-humanitaria-64180). “Santos creó Grupo Especial Migratorio en la frontera con Venezuela.” 2018. El Nacional, February 8. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (http:// www.el-nacional.com/noticias/mundo/santos-creo-grupo-especialmigratorio-frontera-con-venezuela_222422); Colprensa. “Gobierno prepara plan básico de salud para atención de migrantes venezolanos.” 2018. El Pais, February 13. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https:// www.elpais.com.co/mundo/gobierno-prepara-plan-basico-de-salud-paraatencion-de-migrantes-venezolanos.html). Redacción Política. 2018. “‘Colombia debe adoptar un enfoque más humanitario a la crisis migratoria de Venezuela’: WOLA.” El Espectador, July 26. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.elespectador.com/ noticias/politica/colombia-debe-adoptar-un-enfoque-mas-humanitario-lacrisis-migratoria-de-venezuela-wola-articulo-802588). “CIDH: Respuesta de Colombia a la crisis migratoria venezolana y ‘ejemplo para la región y el mundo.’” 2018. NotiTuluá, August 17. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://notitulua.com/2018/08/17/ cidh-respuesta-de-colombia-a-la-crisis-migratoria-venezolana-y-ejemplopara-la-region-y-el-mundo/). “Colombia apoya cumbre sobre crisis migratoria venezolana.” 2018. El Colombiano, August 20. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (http:// www.elcolombiano.com/internacional/oea-prendio-alarmas-sobre-crisismigratoria-venezolana-MI9192439). “Colombia pide a la ONU un enviado especial para atender migración venezolana.” 2018. Diario Las Américas, August 21. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.diariolasamericas.com/america-latina/ colombia-pide-la-onu-un-enviado-especial-atender-migracion-venezolanan4160593). “OIM llama a Colombia a prevenir xenofobia contra venezolanos.” 2017. Colombia.com, July 5. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https:// www.colombia.com/colombianos/noticias/sdi/158425/oim-llama-acolombia-a-prevenir-xenofobia-contra-venezolanos); “Venezolanos preocupados ante aumento de la xenofobia en Colombia.” 2018. TalCual, May 31. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (http://talcualdigital.com/ index.php/2018/05/31/venezolanos-preocupados-ante-aumento-laxenofobia-colombia/); “Alerta por xenofobia en contra de los venezolanos en Colombia.” 2018. Semana.com, February 6. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.semana.com/nacion/articulo/ xenofobia-en-colombia-contra-los-venezolanos/569808).

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16. See Cantillo Arrieta (2018); Agencia Anadolu. 2018. “ACNUR sobre crisis en frontera con Venezuela: ‘Hay que ponerle rostro a la migración para evitar la xenophobia.’” El Espectador, February 16. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/el-mundo/ acnur-sobre-crisis-en-frontera-con-venezuela-hay-que-ponerle-rostro-lamigracion-para-evitar-la-articulo-739492); Editorial. 2018. “Castigar los casos de xenofobia.” El Nuevo Siglo, May 28. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.elnuevosiglo.com.co/articulos/5-2018-castigar-loscasos-de-xenofobia). 17. “¡Cuánta generosidad! Presos de Yopal ceden sus almuerzos para alimentar a migrantes venezolanos.” 2018. Noticias CARACOL TV, August 30. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://noticias.caracoltv.com/ colombia/cuanta-generosidad-presos-de-yopal-ceden-sus-almuerzos-paraalimentar-migrantes-venezolanos). 18. “Misioneros en Bogotá realizan curación en los pies a migrantes venezolanos.” 2018. W Radio, September 3. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (http://www.wradio.com.co/noticias/sociedad/misioneros-en-bogotarealizan-curacion-en-los-pies-a-migrantes-venezolanos/20180903/nota/ 3794458.aspx). 19. La Guajira. 2013. “Sonia Bermúdez: el ángel de los NN en Riohacha.” El Heraldo, October 27. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.elheraldo.co/la-guajira/sonia-bermudez-el-angel-delos-nn-en-riohacha-129991). 20. Redaccion El Tiempo. 2008. “Mujer creó ‘cementerio’ en Riohacha para sepultar a los NN.” El Tiempo, April 1. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-4062451). 21. Redaccion El Tiempo. 2008. “Mujer creó ‘cementerio’ en Riohacha para sepultar a los NN.” El Tiempo, April 1. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-4062451). 22. La Guajira. 2013. “Sonia Bermúdez: el ángel de los NN en Riohacha.” El Heraldo, October 27. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.elheraldo.co/la-guajira/sonia-bermudez-el-angel-delos-nn-en-riohacha-129991). 23. Redaccion El Tiempo. 2008. “Mujer creó ‘cementerio’ en Riohacha para sepultar a los NN.” El Tiempo, April 1. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-4062451). 24. Interview with Sonia Bermúdez, December 10, 2018. 25. “Sonia Bermúdez, la sepulturera que le da vida a los muertos en pleno desierto de La Guajira.” 2017. CARACOL TV, July 2. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.caracoltv.com/sonia-berm%C3%BAdez-lasepulturera-que-le-da-vida-los-2224-historia). 26. Redaccion El Tiempo. 2008. “Mujer creó ‘cementerio’ en Riohacha para sepultar a los NN.” El Tiempo, April 1. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-4062451).

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27. La Guajira. 2013. “Sonia Bermúdez: el ángel de los NN en Riohacha.” El Heraldo, October 27. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.elheraldo.co/la-guajira/sonia-bermudez-el-angel-delos-nn-en-riohacha-129991). 28. Redaccion El Tiempo. 2008. “Mujer creó ‘cementerio’ en Riohacha para sepultar a los NN.” El Tiempo, April 1. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-4062451). 29. La Guajira. 2013. “Sonia Bermúdez: el ángel de los NN en Riohacha.” El Heraldo, October 27. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.elheraldo.co/la-guajira/sonia-bermudez-el-angel-delos-nn-en-riohacha-129991). 30. Redaccion El Tiempo. 2008. “Mujer creó ‘cementerio’ en Riohacha para sepultar a los NN.” El Tiempo, April 1. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-4062451). 31. Redaccion El Tiempo. 2008. “Mujer creó ‘cementerio’ en Riohacha para sepultar a los NN.” El Tiempo, April 1. Retrieved November 15, 2019 (https://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-4062451).

Bibliography Abramovits, Adriana. 2018. “Así es la dura travesía de los caminantes venezolanos.” El Espectador, August 23. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://www.elespectador.com/tema-del-dia/asi-es-la-duratravesia-de-los-caminantes-venezolanos-articulo-807876. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2006a. The Civil Sphere. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2006b. “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance Between Ritual and Strategy.” In Social Performance, edited by J. C. Alexander, B. Giesen, and J. Mast. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 29– 90. Alexander, Jeffrey C., and Carlo Tognato, eds. 2018. The Civil Sphere in Latin America. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Alexander, Jeffrey C., David A. Palmer, Sunwoong Park, and Agnes Shuk-Mei Ku, eds. 2019. The Civil Sphere in East Asia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Alexander, Jeffrey C., Trevor Stack, and Farhad Khosrokhavar. 2020. Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Amaya, Camilo. 2018. “Sonia Bermúdez, la sepulturera de los desterrados.” El Espectador, November 10. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://www. elespectador.com/noticias/nacional/sonia-bermudez-la-sepulturera-de-losdesterrados-articulo-822979.

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Arendt, Hannah. 1963. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. New York: Viking Press. Ávila Barona, Maybelys. 2018. “‘El amor por los muertos lo heredé de mi papá,’ Sonia Bermúdez Robles.” La Guajira Hoy.com, November 2. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://laguajirahoy.com/2018/11/el-amor-por-losmuertos-lo-herede-de-mi-papa-sonia-bermudez-robles.html. Brand, Carlos. 2018. “Caminantes venezolanos: el lugar en Bogotá donde curan sus pies.” RCN Radio, August 30. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://www.rcnradio.com/recomendado-del-editor/caminantesvenezolanos-el-lugar-en-bogota-donde-curan-sus-pies. Cantillo Arrieta, Juan Manuel. 2018. “Se llevó a cabo el foro Caribe ¿Libre de xenofobia?” El Universal, May, 31. Retrieved November 15, 2019. http://www.eluniversal.com.co/regional/se-llevo-cabo-el-foro-caribelibre-de-xenofobia-279778. Chica García, Adriana. 2018. “El hada del último adiós: la colombiana que vela y sepulta a los migrantes venezolanos que mueren huyendo del régimen de Nicolás Maduro.” Infobae, March 17. https://www.infobae.com/america/ colombia/2018/10/07/el-hada-del-ultimo-adios-la-colombiana-que-vela-ysepulta-a-los-migrantes-venezolanos-que-mueren-huyendo-del-regimen-denicolas-maduro/. Galindo, Jorge. 2018. “La crisis venezolana, un problema (también) colombiano.” El País, April 27. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://elpais.com/ internacional/2018/04/27/colombia/1524790506_963457.html. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Guarnizo, José. n.d. “ADIÓS VENEZUELA: La marcha de la infamia.” Retrieved November 15, 2019. http://especiales.semana.com/adios_ venezuela_la_marcha_de_la_infamia/. Hernández, Tulio. 2018. “¿Qué debe hacer Colombia ante la crisis venezolana?” The New York Times Español, August 24. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/es/2018/08/24/opinion-migracionvenezolanos-colombia/. Kivisto, Peter and Giuseppe Sciortino. 2015. “Introduction: Thinking Through the Civil Sphere.” In Solidarity, Justice and Incorporation: Thinking Through the Civil Sphere, edited by Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1–31. Laya, Luis Alejandro. 2018. “Lo duro de emigrar: Morir en el destierro y la soledad.” VENEPRESS, August, 3. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https:// venepress.com/internacional/Lo-duro-de-emigrar-Morir-en-el-destierro-y-lasoledad1533310937041.

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Medellín, Paola. 2018. “Colombia, sin política migratoria ante crisis venezolana.” Instituto de Estudios Urbanos, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, March 23. Retrieved November 15, 2019. http://ieu.unal.edu.co/en/medios/noticiasdel-ieu/item/colombia-sin-politica-migratoria-ante-crisis-venezolana. Mojica Patiño, José Alberto. n.d. “El peregrinaje infame de los venezolanos.” El Tiempo. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://www.eltiempo.com/vida/laruta-de-los-migrantes-venezolanos-en-colombia-277080. Ramsey, Geoff and Jimena Sánchez-Garzoli. 2018. Responding to an Exodus: Venezuela’s Migration and Refugee Crisis as Seen from the Colombian and Brazilian Borders. Washington, DC: Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). Rueda, Manuel. 2018. “La extraordinaria historia de Sonia Bermúdez, la mujer que entierra en su cementerio a los migrantes venezolanos que mueren en Colombia.” BBC Mundo, September 21. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-45564634. Tebano, Elena. 2017. “L’adolescente di 14 anni morto in mare con la pagella cucita in tasca.” Il Corriere della Sera, January 19. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://www.corriere.it/cronache/19_gennaio_17/bimbo14-anni-morto-mare-la-pagella-cucita-tasca-38df12d6-1a40-11e9-b5e1e4bd7fd19101.shtml. Tognato, Carlo. 2011. “Extending Trauma Across Cultural Divides: On Kidnapping and Solidarity in Colombia.” In Narrating Trauma: Studies in the Contingent Impact of Collective Suffering, edited by J. C. Alexander, R. Eyerman, and E. Butler Breese. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, pp. 191–212. Tognato, Carlo. 2018. “The Civil Life of the University: Enacting Dissent and Resistance on a Colombian Campus.” In The Civil Sphere in Latin America, edited by J. C. Alexander and C. Tognato. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 149–176. Tognato, Carlo. 2020. “Radical Protest on a University Campus: Performances of Transition in Colombia.” In Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere, edited by J. C. Alexander, T. Stack and F. Khosrokhavar. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42–69. Wyss, Jim. 2018. “They Fled Venezuela and Died Far from Home: This Woman Gives Them a Proper Burial.” The Miami Herald, August 2. Retrieved November 15, 2019. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/ world/americas/colombia/article215779535.html.

CHAPTER 7

Solidary Cuisine: Las Patronas Facing the Central American Migratory Flow Nelson Arteaga-Botello

During the past twenty years, there has been an increase in the flow of the migrant population from Central America to the United States, caused largely by the economic crisis, political instability, and social violence experienced in the region (Márquez 2015; Rodríguez 2016). Mexico is a territory of obligatory passage for Central American migration and, recently, of populations from other Southern Cone countries (Pardo 2017). According to the most conservative estimates, 500,000 Central Americans cross the national territory of Mexico each year to reach the United States. The majority of migrants come from Guatemala (76%), followed by Honduras (16%) and El Salvador (8%) (Astorga 2014; GarzaCuellar 2011; Riediger-Röhm 2013; Santos 2010). The response of the Mexican government to this wave of migration has been to establish an intense “migrant hunt” followed by a harsh policy of mass deportation (Gómez 2016; Guevara 2015; Izcara 2013). In this regard, the National Migration Institute (2017) reports that 9 out of 10 Central American

N. Arteaga-Botello (B) Flacso, Mexico City, Mexico e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_7

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migrants detained end up being deported to their country. However, migrants must overcome these obstacles and face other dangers. Organized crime gangs, particularly those linked to drug trafficking, are a major threat to migrants, who are stripped of the little money they have or are kidnapped and held for ransom in exchange for their freedom (Bruckert and Parent 2002; Guevara 2015; Shirk and Webber 2004; Spener 2009). According to the Human Rights Commission (CNDH 2011), between 2008 and 2011, organized crime groups kidnapped more than 20,000 migrants. Those who cannot be rescued by their families end up working in conditions of slavery on drug plantations or are executed— such as the massacre of 72 Central Americans in the community of San Fernando in the state of Tamaulipas, which is on the border of the United States (Astorga 2014). Moreover, women face the risk of being subjected to systematic rape, and some are forced into sexual slavery and prostitution (Acharya and Stevanto 2005; Clark 2012; Garza-Cuellar, 2011; Risley 2010; Ultreras 2012). Although Mexico is a country that traditionally has exiled its population to the United States, it has not been a recipient of large-scale migration. Therefore, the institutional structure is not designed or prepared to respond to the needs of a population in transit (Márquez 2015; Martínez 2012). The municipal, state, and federal authorities are also indifferent to the precarious situation in which migrants live during their passage through the country. Sometimes these same authorities extort money from them to deny their access to health, education, and social security services. Moreover, Central American migrants have begun to experience a variety of xenophobic and racist expressions in the communities through which they transit. Central American migration has become a perennial issue in public debates in Mexico. Local, regional, and national media regularly transmit reports about the risks faced by migrants, the precarious conditions in which they live, the lack of safe havens to provide them shelter, and the different dangers along their way. As with other international experiences, the migrant drama has been condensed into symbolic and iconic referents, such as images of fragile rafts that cross the southern border rivers or the caravans of migrants walking through the northern desert of the country. One of these referents that summarizes the difficult path of Central American migration is the “train of death”—the so-called Bestia [The Beast] (Barrón 2013)—connecting the southern and northern borders of Mexico. Migrants travel on the roofs of the wagons of this train. The journey

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of Central Americans on the “back” of the Bestia has inspired films, documentaries, popular songs, and novels (Delgado 2016; Velázquez 2017), which have made it a significant reference point for migration that crosses the national territory. This harsh migratory scenario has faced Mexicans with ethical and moral dilemmas regarding how they should treat the Central American migrants that reach their communities (Rodríguez 2016; Varela 2015). In some cases, they are met with exclusion and violence, and in others with solidarity and compassion (Azofeifa et al. 2014; Delgado 2016; Espeleta 2015; Orozco 2016; Rodríguez 2016; Varela 2015). Across the country, religious and civil organizations have opened up shelters to receive migrants, in some cases with the support of their respective communities (Correa-Cabrera 2017). By the year 2017, the International Organization for Migration (2017) reported a total of 78 houses and shelters for migrants in Mexico. Occasionally, though, solidary responses in the face of the suffering of others come from voluntary support networks. Solidary actors often end up paying high personal and family costs for their service. Las Patronas are an example of this type of support group. It is made up of 14 female members of the Romero family who provide food and assistance to the Central American migrants crossing through their community—the Las Patronas ranch in the town of Guadalupe in the state of Veracruz. The group’s activities began in the mid-1990s, when members of the Romero family were returning home with groceries. From the roofs of the Bestia, a group of people asked for food. The women gave it to them without knowing who those people were and where they were going. Later, after realizing that they were migrants who traveled on the train hungry and thirsty, the women began to prepare food packages which they would then throw to them as the train would pass.1 Las Patronas justified its actions—and continues to do so—based on their Catholic religious beliefs and on the veneration of the Virgin of Guadalupe—the most important Marian figure of Mexican origin for the Catholic Church in the country.2 Members of Las Patronas consider that God has put them in the path of the migrants to help them. The group constantly reiterates that its activities reflect Christian values. They are a service to the needy regardless of their origin or social condition. Norma Romero, the spokesperson for the group, a former member of the church choir and a catechist in the town’s parish, insistently reminds that the vocation of the group came into

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focus when, on the occasion of the arrival of the train to the community, a group of migrants brought down from the train a black man who was very ill. To lower him, his friends grabbed him by the arms to slide him down to the ground and others pulled his feet down. In that position, Norma remarked, the man looked like a crucified Christ and resembled the Black Christ of Honduras. To them, that migrant reflected the image of Christ in need of help. Over the years, Las Patronas has incorporated a more civil discourse linked to the defense of human rights without leaving behind, though, the religious vision that sparked its activity. Although Las Patronas ’ service to migrants has been recognized nationally and internationally and despite the fact that its discourse shares with its surrounding community deep Catholic roots, it has been criticized by neighbors and relatives and has even faced indifference, and occasionally rejection, on the part of some ecclesiastic authorities, which caused some of its members to leave the group. The rest, however, continued to serve their righteous cause notwithstanding the personal costs. Over the years, the case of Las Patronas has been portrayed in documentaries, films, and reports from around the world as an outstanding act of cross-group solidarity as well as of civil courage. The objective of this chapter is to examine how Las Patronas went about broadening the horizon of solidarity with migrants by appealing, first and foremost, to the principles of care, protection, unconditional love, and solidarity within the noncivil codes of religion and family and only later, and in a subordinate way, to the civil defense of human rights. At the same time, Las Patronas tapped into such noncivil codes to endure the costs associated with their solidary service to the migrants, which they saw as tests that God and the Virgin of Guadalupe put in their path: “If even our Lord, Jesus Christ, was ignored when spreading his word, and he continued with his evangelizing work,” they remarked, “we must learn, as indigenous, poor women, to withstand any harm being done to us.”3 This reaffirms a point that Alexander (2006) made in his seminal book on civil sphere theory. That is, noncivil spheres such as religion and family do not only generate harmful intrusions into civil life but they may also provide facilitating inputs that may contribute to more inclusive forms of it. In the following sections, I will start by referring to the commentaries that academics have so far made in relation to the case of Las Patronas and demonstrating how the analysis in this chapter departs from them. Then, I will build on documentaries, films, news reports, and fieldwork to present how Las Patronas started out and how family and religious

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codes influenced their understanding of their solidary engagement with migrants. After that, I will dwell on the social and spiritual costs that were associated with their service. And finally, I will explore how the framing of Las Patronas ’ engagement on the front of cross-group solidarity in terms of fairness contributed to the civil translation of their noncivil motives for solidary action.

Horizon of Solidarity Scholars have interpreted Las Patronas ’ service to migrants in a variety of ways. Some have read it as an ethical response to the scenarios of violence experienced by Central American migrants, a heroic act and the expression of an “ethical revolution” in the face of the government’s inability and unwillingness to address the vulnerability of migrants (Gómez 2016). Others have interpreted it as a tragic act that reflects a “reactionary ethics of care,” corners Las Patronas into traditional roles as providers of help, shelter, and food for a vulnerable population, and turns their lives into an endless process of assistential work. Las Patronas, as a result, end up reproducing the inequalities between those who care (i.e., women) and those who do not care (i.e., men), pave the ground for emotional blackmail, ultimately opening the door to violence and abuse in relationships aimed at the opposite dynamic, and transfer to the broader public sphere the gender roles and power asymmetries traditionally more characteristic of the family sphere in Mexico (Caamaño 2012; Ramos et al. 2014). In contrast, Varela (2015) approaches Las Patronas ’ solidary action as the result of a dynamics of subjectivation, a creative and rebellious act against circumstances considered unfair and intolerable, a radical spontaneous response that, by itself, transforms its members into “moral militants” who assist migrants without claiming any direct benefits, and pushes them beyond political paternalism to “radicalize the democracy in the territories where they live” (Varela 2015, 160). Las Patronas ’ exercise of hospitality and care, as a result, ends up producing, according to this author, a new geography of “collective insurgencies” that rebel against the “necropolitics” of the neoliberal state. Espeleta (2015), in turn, views Las Patronas ’ actions as the result of a long process of political subjectivation that shifts from reactive action linked to the discourse of Christian charity to an active defense of migrant rights, to connection with other civil society organizations, and to the awareness that migration reflects the process of expansion of capitalism and globalization. And yet, such readings tend

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to attribute with a certain inconsistency purity and impurity, and thus legitimacy and illegitimacy, to Las Patronas ’ actions. For example, their action is seen as relying on a legitimate ethics if it builds on the pursuit of help but it is deemed illegitimate when it reproduces in the public sphere the gender asymmetries that exist in the family sphere. Also, the group’s subjectivity is pure when it results from a spontaneous rebellion or when it appeals to a discourse based on the defense of human rights and impure when it builds on Christian charity. Most importantly, though, such commentaries on Las Patronas overlook how the group actually understands their encounter with outsiders and how it goes about broadening their horizon of solidarity to include them. When a host society receives migrants or external groups, it defines the identity of the latter in terms of language, race, ethnicity, or economic status and converts these historically arbitrary characteristics into primordial ones, transforming them into essences (Alexander 2006). These essences serve to qualify or disqualify migrants and to subject them to some form of domination. On the other hand, they never succeed in being totally legitimate and members of the host group that are most sensitive to exclusion processes lived by outsiders occasionally question, refute, suspend, and even overthrow essentialist attributions out of a civil commitment to broader solidarity and to the rejection of the distribution of status and rights across society based on essentialist criteria (Alexander 2006). Host groups struggling to dismantle such essentialist attributions to migrants manage, at times, to convince their members to stop the processes of exclusion and domination based on them by engaging in the cultural work of civil translation that makes solidarity for outsiders imaginable to insiders. Such translation can be achieved in two ways, that is, either by acknowledging the civil capacities and competencies of migrants or by advocating along noncivil lines for their protection as “brothers” and “children.” Either way, the path to civil repair is not easy. It may entail conflict and strain and may involve personal costs—occasionally very high—for those who stand with migrants. In order to account for this process, I conducted interviews with Las Patronas as well as to key actors linked to their activity between August and September 2018. During the interviews in the kitchen, a main scenario of action for Las Patronas, I performed some activities, at their request, and even prepared sauces for lunch. So, the conversations held with some of them were paced by food preparation as well as leisure moments such as watching television shows. Even though, in the

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interviews, Las Patronas were focusing on the extent of their service to migrants, I was insistent on eliciting from them the social costs and risks that their activity entailed. As a source, I also relied on news reports, documentaries, and films featuring the group, which I viewed before reaching the field, witnessing the seamless performance of members of the group on and off camera. After my fieldwork, I reviewed the academic literature on Las Patronas.

Solidarity Action Las Patronas take their name from the community of Las Patronas, a municipality of Amatlán de los Reyes, Veracruz. This rural area produces sugarcane and coffee, and through it passes the train track that connects the Mexican southeast with the center of the country. The community is 8 kilometers away from the city of Córdoba, one of the largest and most important cities in the region. The community of Las Patronas, Guadalupe, was established as a result of a policy of agrarian reform promoted in the country after the 1910 revolution that allowed the old Hacienda de Guadalupe to be divided among landless peasants (Bruzzone 2016; Orozco 2016; Rodríguez 2016). Since then, the Romero family, which constitutes the core of Las Patronas, has lived there. The activities of the group began in the mid-1990s but gained public attention only after the documentary De nadie [Of no one] (2006) by director Tin Dirnamal, which showed the drama of Central American migration to the United States when passing through Mexico. The film won the audience award at the Sundance Film Festival and drew the interest of the press for the group of Veracruz women that briefly appeared in it (Espeleta 2015). In 2009, the documentary Las Patronas, directed by Lizette Argúello, showed how this group of women prepared food packages for the migrants traveling on top of the wagons of the Beast. As Espeleta (2015) shows, since then several documentaries and reports on Las Patronas followed, including El tren de las moscas [Train of the flies] (2010), Llévate mis amores [Take my loves with you] (2014), Como el viento [Like the wind] (2015), Las patronas (2013)—produced by HBO—and El paso de la bestia [The passage of the Beast] (2016). Each of these visual testimonies features very similar scripts and dramatizations about the daily service performed by Las Patronas.

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Most documentaries, films, and reports regularly feature Las Patronas in their kitchen as they cut vegetables, cook rice and beans, sterilize plastic bottles to fill them with water, and package them in bags, to which they add tortillas or bread. They show the women running to the train tracks as they hear the Bestia approaching and register their excitement on the arrival of the train with its human cargo. And finally, they dwell on the delivery of the food packages. The women at that point extend their arms to allow the people on the train to reach them. That moment triggers cheers, cries of thanks, blessings, and whistles.4 And then comes the calm. As Guevara (2015) puts it, an entire day of work is consumed in 30 seconds as the train passes. Once all is over, Las Patronas comment on the number of packages they managed to deliver and on those that they could not, thereby dwelling with regret on the migrants who could not receive them. All testimonies are quite insistent on the initial trigger for their action. On the way home after shopping for groceries, the early members of the group heard people calling from the roofs of a train passing at low speed in front of them: “Mother, give me your bread!” Surprised by that demand and the unusual accent of the plea, and hesitant as what to do, before the insistence of those people, the women responded by giving them their bread and milk. Later, at home, they discussed with the rest of the family what they had just witnessed and agreed to organize and provide food for those they later learned to be migrants.5 Public accounts about Las Patronas refer to the donations—bread, rice, beans, tortillas and vegetables—that they gather from small local stores, large retail chains, and well-established companies, such as the national corn flour producer MASECA, to support their work while stressing at all times the voluntary and altruistic nature of their service to migrants (Riediger-Röhm 2013).6 They acknowledge the constant presence and participation of volunteers from a wide spectrum of groups such as university students, activists from nongovernmental organizations, actors and actresses, both national and foreign, who participate in the preparation, transfer, and delivery of the food (De Gasperin et al. 2016). Such accounts also stress that, whenever volunteers are admitted, they are first introduced to the kitchen. As a member of Las Patronas puts it, that is where people can begin to understand the meaning of their project (Delgado 2016). In addition, written and visual testimonies also dwell on the informal nature of Las Patronas as a group of women who came

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together, united by ties of family and friendships spanning over three generations (Márquez 2015). Public accounts also emphasize the Christian inspiration at the basis of Las Patronas ’ service, which motivates them to help people in need, irrespective of their differences, since “we are all children of God,”7 and to show compassion and solidarity by engaging in charity, just like in the parable of the Good Samaritan in the New Testament.8 The Virgin of Guadalupe, “mother of all Mexicans,” is also acknowledged to be an important pillar of Las Patronas. As a member of the group points out, the Virgin is “the great patron, woman, mother and migrant,” and “civil society has baptized us as ‘Las patronas’ in honor of her” (Di Matteo 2015, 184). The Virgin of Guadalupe also serves as a bridge between a selfrepresentation of Las Patronas ’ service in religious terms and one appealing to family and the protective role of the mother within it: They told us that we were women facing problems that were beyond our reach. And yes, our work started from our position as women from traditional families, based on customs that allow women to act inside their home and town. We spent the days caring, providing love for our families, and that is precisely what gave us the character to take care of many others. (Las Patronas 2013)

Recently, Las Patronas have added a variety of civil references linked to migrants and human rights to their discourse, mostly as a result of their interaction with nongovernmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, and universities, such as the Jesuit Ibero-American University, which offered the group training courses and workshops (De Gasperin et al. 2016; Delgado 2016) to equip them with the knowledge they might need to defend migrants and to withstand harassment on the part of public authorities or social groups that oppose their service (Di Matteo 2015). That said, such a civil tone has not displaced the markedly religious identity of the group. As one of the members suggests in an interview: The recognition of our work means more commitment to the migrant brothers and to civil society for having believed in us, but it is also a great responsibility as a collective of women committed to God because without him this would not work. (Di Matteo 2015, 184)

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The impact that the work of Las Patronas has had on the national and international levels has led it to win different awards. In 2013, the group received the National Human Rights Prize awarded by the National Human Rights Commission, the National Prize for Voluntary and Solidarity Action by the Government of the Republic, and the National Human Rights Prize awarded by the Don Sergio Méndez Arceo Foundation. In addition, in 2015, Las Patronas were nominated for the Princess of Asturias Award for Concord by Spain. This further contributed to transforming Las Patronas into a national and international civil icon (Bartmanski and Alexander 2012) of care, protection, and solidarity within the context of international migration, which endowed their acts with sacred civil meanings and allowed intense moral identification on a global scale over routine material practices in everyday life such as the preparation and delivery of food. Such images, to put it with Kurasawa (2012), set both the distant suffering of migrants and the humanitarian action of Las Patronas on the same visual plane with fundamental universal values. Women cooking food, where food worked as a symbol of communion among the members of a nuclear community and a group of vulnerable outsiders, was one of the images circulated by the films, documentaries, and reports that transformed Las Patronas into an “iconic force” (Giesen 2012), contributed to tear down the walls that, according to Kurasawa (2012), set national and global audiences apart from the local suffering of a specific group, and set the stage to connect ordinary citizens with common heroes and the suffering of people on the ground. That said, the work of Las Patronas, especially early on, was not exempt from criticism and pressure by members of the community and the local Catholic hierarchy,9 and more recently they have faced opposition whenever they have engaged in acts such as the shelter and care of migrants, the acceptance of specific donations, or the taking of public stances that might be framed as potentially polluting for the civil life of its community.

Social and Spiritual Costs of Solidarity Between Groups At the beginning, some patronas were warned by their parents or husbands that helping migrants was a crime punishable by imprisonment and that they might be even accused of encouraging illegal human trafficking.10 People traveling on the top of the train wagons—they insisted— were murderers, rapists, and members of Central American criminal

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gangs, such as the Salvadoran Mara Salvatrucha, fleeing from justice in their own countries. This is why, they concluded, women should keep to their housework. At home, after all, “there was already a lot to do.”11 And so, according to Las Patronas, 10 of the original 25 members desisted from participating out of fear that they might engage in a criminal activity, support criminals, or that their husbands might abandon them.12 And indeed, as Orozco (2016) points out, on some occasions, such voluntary work was a trigger for jealousy and distrust and ultimately for family separation. On the other hand, the women who endured in their service to migrants were accused of having nothing to do13 and were stigmatized for not being sufficiently committed to their own community or for not participating with sufficient intensity in religious activities within their local parish. This ultimately resulted into their progressive isolation within their community and cost them being cut off of traditional local mechanisms of protection, care, solidarity, and spiritual support. Such isolation becomes most apparent in the cultural activities that Las Patronas organize with universities, private foundations, and government entities, such as the annual “Fandango Fronterizo” carnival, which the local community regularly avoids, thereby accentuating the stinging feeling among Las Patronas that they live on an “island” within their own community.14 To them, the charge of not caring for their own community is deeply unfair. A neighbor asked for their help to obtain a humanitarian visa to travel to the United States to visit a family member who was seriously ill. They interceded for her, made calls, activated their contacts with civil society organizations that might help, even helped organize the paperwork demanded by U.S. authorities, and when the woman returned from the United States, she did not speak to the group again. Las Patronas, however, draw from the Scriptures for the purpose of coming to terms with their social exclusion: “If our Lord Jesus Christ –they say– was a son of God and suffered the rejection of his people, what hope do we have?”15 On the other hand, they have found it much harder to deal with their ostracization from their own parish. Since the beginning, the Catholic Church has attempted to regulate and supervise their service, particularly the in-kind donations, the entry and exit of migrants, and the administration of the dining room. Las Patronas, though, had always resisted that. They had no staff, resources, or time for such activities. They were merely a group of women who organized themselves voluntarily and with

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no intention of growing or acquiring the legal status of a civil association. They simply worked in the kitchen to get food to people in need.16 The local parish priest also attempted to make Las Patronas attend church more regularly, not just on Sundays, but the latter regularly pushed back as “they cannot be wasting their time in the church”: “if you really love God, you have to go out and demonstrate it by action.” Such statements progressively dug a wedge between the two, as the parish priest deemed their attitude to rely on an inadequate interpretation of the word of God. Las Patronas, and their families, were ultimately denied the Catholic sacrament of Holy Communion, which left them in a state of spiritual abandonment. This, they admit, is “the highest cost they have had to pay for the work they do.”17 Local and state authorities have not supported the work of Las Patronas, either. In fact, some authorities sometimes left pile of rocks on the side of the train tracks to prevent the delivery of food to migrants. The state and municipal police, though, have maintained a constructive relation with Las Patronas, whom they recognize to be capable of mobilizing civil society organizations, national and international media, and state and national human rights commissions. In particular, they have sought to safeguard the security of the area where Las Patronas live and operate to prevent them from being targeted by criminals, which would necessarily result in a national or even an international scandal. The Mexican Navy also visits the group regularly.18 During election periods, candidates seek to approach the group to show Veracruz voters that they sympathize with its work: “Politicians even kiss our hands looking for a vote, then they disappear.”19 As Bruzzone (2017) correctly points out, Las Patronas have learned to deal with processes of political cooptation, not only by clearly establishing the criteria and terms of the support that it receives but also by avoiding taking pictures with politicians and making sure that its images are not used for electoral propaganda. The work carried out by Las Patronas also generates suspicion about the purity of its intentions. There are voices within the community that constantly insinuate the group profits from its work, for example, by receiving salaries from the municipal or state government. How is it possible—an inhabitant of the community argues —that these women even fall and get hurt in their effort to feed a person they do

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not even know? Nobody does this unless they are receiving some kind of payment by the local or state government.20

This rumor has led several members of the community to request that they be permitted to work with Las Patronas. The latter have accepted them, but people regularly end up dropping out after a few weeks when they realize that the work does not involve any remuneration and that the living conditions of the members of the collective are similar to those of any other person in the community.21 Some have suggested that, at the time the group was awarded the National Prize for Human Rights, it received “a lot of money” and its members were “already millionaires.” Others have claimed that the group receives money “in large quantities” from the migrants it has helped: “Once they arrive in the United States, these murderers [the migrants] send them dollars that they earned there … who knows if it’s dirty money.”22 These rumors have contributed to spur rejection of Las Patronas on the part of their community. Some also criticize the fame that Las Patronas have been granted by national and international media, which became apparent in the coverage through reports and interviews of the National Human Rights Prize that the group was awarded by the president of Mexico. Since then, their community has accused Las Patronas of claiming merit for work that is not entirely their own. Other families and groups, after all, did something similar long before it but were unable to sustain their endeavor over time, unable to raise the resources to put together the food packages or unable to generate enough donations.23 Also, members of the community consider that the altruistic activity of Las Patronas is excessive and, therefore, inauthentic. In truth, they note that the group must be driven by a thirst for media prominence, prestige, and for gain at the expense of others24 When they meet Las Patronas in the streets, some even address them with irony and reproach: “Oh, there goes what it must feel like to be Mother Teresa of Calcutta.”25 Despite the criticism, obstacles, and isolation to which the group has been subjected by its own community as well as by some civil and religious authorities, its members feel that their work is truly transcending the narrow limits of their community. The presence of volunteers from different countries in Las Patronas ’ kitchen is a clear signal to the community of the strength of the group, providing it with enough emotional energy to sustain its solidary action.26 Las Patronas interpret the visits from foreigners and from people from other parts of Mexico as proof

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that they are doing the right thing while carrying out the task that God and the Virgin of Guadalupe entrusted to the group, namely, helping the hungry and those who suffer the hardships of migration.

Noncivil Codes and Civil Responses The essentialization of migrants as criminals fleeing the law of their own countries is the linchpin of their exclusion from the host community of Amatlán. As in many societies, external groups are considered a potential threat to order and social morality because of their dress, behavior, language, or skin color. Such perception of threat has led in certain rural and urban communities around Mexico to the lynching of those that are deemed to be potential or real criminals—kidnappers, assailants, rapists, child traffickers, or extortionists—and, in some cases, to their killing (Gamallo 2012; Vilas 2001). Since the late 1980s, there have been 366 lynching cases that resulted in death (Rodríguez and Veloz 2014), including students confused with drug traffickers, interviewers confused with kidnappers, or families confused with child traffickers. In most of these lynching cases, victims were the “strangers”—those who “are not from there”—who were coded as a threat that not only had to be expelled but also eliminated.27 In such context, when passing through Mexico, migrants carry two polluted attributes: they are alien to the community through which they travel and are not nationals. The train ride puts migrants in a situation of isolation that disconnects them from the host country and makes them easy prey for the organized crime groups engaged in human trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion. After all, many of the Central Americans who have disappeared or whose bodies have been found in clandestine graves have actually been abducted from the Bestia. Once again, the train becomes a site for the erasure of human dignity, a space of solitude, indifference, and denial of solidarity. Las Patronas, though, appear to encroach on present and past memories of the train as a place of suffering by resignifying it into a site of solidarity and civil repair.28 Las Patronas have drawn from the noncivil spheres of religion and family, facilitating inputs for the civil inclusion of migrants (Alexander 2006). In particular, from Catholicism, they have insistently heeded the call to treat others as equal, along with the association of migrants with the Virgin of Guadalupe and the Black Christ of the Honduras. From family, in turn, they answered the call for unconditional love and care. That said,

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appealing to religion and family has occasionally placed them on a collision course with religious and familial authorities—priests, husbands, and brothers—due to their distancing from the logic of these spheres, which also demands deference to authority rather than reciprocity and transparent dialogue. More recently, Las Patronas have tapped into the civil discourse of human rights for the purpose of expanding the horizon of inclusion so as to accommodate migrants within it. To the members of the group, this does not constitute a break but rather a kind of continuation of the noncivil motives that have always underpinned their commitment to migrants for the purpose of facilitating civil repair vis a vis their exclusion. Las Patronas ’ guestbook, in which visitors leave their comments, only rarely echoes the religious motives of the group and almost regularly stresses its civil significance in relation to the well-being of migrants, the construction of an inclusive citizenship, the protection of human rights, and occasionally even the political transformation of Mexico. The documentaries, films, and reports on the work of Las Patronas acknowledge the civil facet of the group’s endeavor as they recognize the relevance in plural societies of the noncivil ethics of care, emotions, and loyalty that structures their motives for the purpose of sustaining a sphere of civil justice and expanding the horizon of solidarity within society by purifying certain polluted identities and by accepting differences as legitimate variations against the backdrop of a shared humanity.

Conclusion Linked by consanguinity and shared religious beliefs, Las Patronas thought that the pain and suffering of migrants cannot go unnoticed and must be repaired. Based on that, they engaged in acts of solidarity with Central American migrants traveling across Mexico on top of the Bestia, which entailed material and spiritual processes of rescue. This earned the group the recognition, help, and support of migrants, civil society organizations, governmental authorities within Mexico and around the world, but it also alienated them from their closer social and institutional context, thereby cutting them off from the networks of local solidarity provided by their community, their parish, and the municipal government. While they consider the balance of their experience to be positive, they also express sadness and frustration for losing their community’s support. Their commitment to a universalist justice mediated by their religious beliefs as well

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as by their particular understanding of family, however, gave them the courage and strength to face such adversities. In the end, the case of Las Patronas is significant for civil sphere scholarship because it brings into focus the role that such noncivil factors as religion and family may play in courageous acts of cross-group solidarity geared toward civil repair.

Notes 1. Interview with Las Patronas, August 27, 2018. Whenever interviews are referenced, it will be done—at their request—with the voice of the Las Patronas as collective rather than of one person in particular. Las Patronas try to highlight their group work and to avoid being identified by only a few of their members. 2. This devotion is embodied in a mural of the Virgin of Guadalupe at the entrance of the dining room for migrants. 3. Interview with Las Patronas, August 27, 2018. 4. This group of emotions could be observed during the fieldwork. 5. Interview with Las Patronas, August 29, 2018. 6. Interview with Las Patronas, August 30, 2018. During my stay in the field, the daily delivery of tortillas to Las Patronas could be observed. 7. Interview with Las Patronas, September 3, 2018. 8. Interview with Las Patronas, August 27, 2018. 9. Interview with Las Patronas, September 2, 2018. 10. Interview with Las Patronas, August 28, 2018. 11. Interview with Las Patronas, August 28, 2018. 12. Interview with Las Patronas, August 27, 2018. 13. Interview with Las Patronas, August 28, 2018. 14. Interview with Las Patronas, August 28, 2018. 15. Interview with Las Patronas, September 3, 2018. 16. Interview with Las Patronas, September 4, 2018. 17. Interview with Las Patronas, September 4, 2018. 18. According to some people who were present when members of the Navy arrived, the neighbors believed that the latter came to arrest members of Las Patronas; therefore, they went out to thank the Navy members. 19. Interview with Las Patronas, September 5, 2018. 20. Interview conducted with a neighbor of Las Patronas, August 30, 2018. 21. Interview with Las Patronas, August 27, 2018. 22. These comments were picked up at the municipal headboard during my stay in the field. 23. Some members of the community who live by the train tracks insist that they started carrying out the same altruistic work as Las Patronas, although they admit to have later abandoned it due to the work involved

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in getting food and preparing packages in order to deliver them to migrants. Undoubtedly, one of the breakups within Las Patronas occurred because one of the members began to act independently, charging money for lecturing and giving interviews. When the collective learned about this activity, she was asked to leave the group. Interview with Las Patronas, September 5, 2018. Volunteers from Spain, Denmark, France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Egypt, Syria, Canada, China, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Brazil are registered in the guestbook. In addition, it is possible to find students from different national universities who engage in volunteer work, and others who engage in graduate and undergraduate research. In the 1960s, one of the bloodiest lynchings took place in the town of Canoa in the state of Puebla, where the population ended up murdering and mutilating a group of campers who were accused of being a “communist” group seeking to attack the “values” and the “way of life” of the community. I thank Israel Moscati and Carlo Tognato for noting the potential for linkage between the train wagons that carried the Jews during the Holocaust and the wagons of the Bestia, both heading to an uncertain destination, in the case of migrants sometimes marked by violence and death, but above all both featuring a site of loneliness, abandonment, indifference, and lack of solidarity.

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Barrón, Cruz M. G. 2013. La bestia. La tenue línea entre la migración y la trata de personas. México: Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Penales. Bartmanski, Dominik, and Jeffrey C. Alexander. 2012. “Introduction: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life: Toward an Iconic Turn in Cultural Sociology.” In Iconic Power and Meaning in Social Life, edited by J. C. Alexander, D. Bartmanski, and B. Giesen. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 1–12. Bruckert, Christine, and Colette Parent. 2002. Trafficking in Human Beings and Organized Crime: A Literature Review. Ottawa: Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Bruzzone, Mario. 2016. “Respatializing the Domestic: Gender, Extensive Domesticity, and Activist Kitchenspace in Mexican Migration Politics.” Cultural Geographies 24(2): 247–263. Bruzzone, Mario. 2017. “The Politics of the Purifier: State and Economic Subject-making Through Mexican Clientelist Practice.” Political Geography 60(2): 223–231. Caamaño, Carmen. 2012. Entre ‘arriba’ y ‘abajo’: la experiencia transnacional de la migración de costarricense a Estados Unidos. San José de Costa Rica: Editorial de la Universidad de Costa Rica. Clark, Jennifer. 2012. “Sex Trafficking: The Nexus Between Poverty, Gender Discrimination and Violence Against Women.” In Borderline Slavery: Mexico, United States, edited by M. Murphy-Aguilar and S. Tiano. Farnham: Ashgate Press. Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos (CNDH). 2011. “Informe espacial sobre secuestro de migrantes en México.” Gaceta Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos, 247. Correa-Cabrera, Guadalupe. 2017. Trafficking in Persons Along Mexico’s Eastern Migration Routes. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Latin American Program. Retrieved November 25, 2019. https://www.wilsoncenter.org/ sites/default/files/final.pdf. De Gasperin, Rafaél, Enriqueta Del Rio, and Marta Del Gasperin. 2016. “El caso en México de ‘Las Patronas’ y el Premio Nacional de Derechos Humanos 2013.” Direito, Estado e Sociedade 49(2): 168–195. Delgado, Jaime. 2016. “Participating in the Contingency. Painting, Sweeping and Cooking.” Journal in Public Archeology 6(2): 51–74. Di Matteo, Angela. 2015. “Las patronas: ángeles al borde del infierno.” Altre Modenità 13(5): 180–185. Espeleta, Mariana. 2015. “Testimonio y subalternidad hoy. En torno a dos colectivos de mujeres mexicanas en lucha.” Avatares del Testimonio en América Latina 6(4): 989–1009. Gamallo, Leandro. 2012. Crimen, castigo y violencia colectiva: los linchamientos en México en el siglo XXI. México: FLACSO.

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Garza-Cuellar, Margarita. 2011. “Migración y derechos humanos: ‘el tema de nuestro tiempo’.” Análisis Plural 2: 161–171. Giesen, Bernhard. 2012. “Afterword.” In Iconic Power and Meaning in Social Life, edited by J. C. Alexander, D. Bartmanski, and B. Giesen. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 247–251. Gómez, Luis. 2016. “How the US Is Outsourcing Border Enforcement to Mexico.” The Conversation 29(11): 1–6. Guevara, Yaatsil. 2015. “Migración de tránsito y ayuda humanitaria: Apuntes sobre las casas de migrantes en la ruta migratoria del pacífico sur en México.” Forum of Inter-American Research 8(1): 63–83. Instituto Nacional de Migración. 2017. Personas en Detención Migratoria en México. México: Instituto Nacional de Migración. Izcara, Simón. 2013. “Opinión de los polleros tamaulipecos sobre la política migratoria estadounidense.” Migraciones Internacionales 6(3): 173–204. Kurasawa, Fuyuki. 2012. “The Making of Humanitarian Visual Icons: On the 1921–1923 Russian Famine as Foundational Event.” In Iconic Power and Meaning in Social Life, edited by J. C. Alexander, D. Bartmanski, and B. Giesen. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, pp. 67–84. Las Patronas. 2013. “Discurso al recibir el Premio Nacional de derechos Humanos 2013.” Blog de las patronas. Retrieved November 25, 2019. https://lapatrona.wordpress.com/2013/12/13/discurso-al-recibir-elpremio-nacional-de-derechos-humanos-2013/. Márquez, Humberto. 2015. “No vale nada la vida: éxodo y criminalización de migrantes centroamericanos en México.” Migración y Desarrollo 25(2): 151– 173. Martínez, Oscar. 2012. Los migrantes que no importan. México: El Faro, Sur. Organización Internacional para las Migraciones. 2017. Directorio de Casas y Albergues para Personas Migrantes en México. México: Organización Internacional para las Migraciones. Orozco, Miguel Ángel. 2016. “Las Patronas: Experiencia de labor humanitaria.” Espacios Transnacionales 3(6): 80–84. Pardo, Melissa. 2017. Migración y transnacionalismo: Extrañando la tierrita…. México: Flacso. Ramos, Silvia, Carmen Caamaño, and Anna Matteucci. 2014. “Trabajando con población migrante en Costa Rica: Reflexiones sobre la relación entre organizaciones de ayuda y las bases para la acción colectiva.” Rev. Rupturas 52(2): 1–19. Riediger-Röhm, Lara. 2013. “¿México: ruta de la muerte o camino hacia una vida mejor?” Iberofórum 8(16): 167–182. Risley, Amy. 2010. “Sex Trafficking: The Other Crisis in Mexico.” The Latin Americanist 54(1): 99–117.

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Rodríguez, María Teresa. 2016. “Migración en tránsito y prácticas de ayuda solidaria en el centro de Veracruz, México.” Encuentro 103: 47–58. Rodríguez Raúl, and Norma Veloz. 2014. “#Linchamientos en México: recuento de un periodo largo (1988–2014).” El Cotidiano 187(5): 51–58. Santos, Leopoldo. 2010. La tragedia de la frontera latina. México: El Colegio de Sonora. Shirk, Jeremy, and Alexandra Webber. 2004. “Slavery Borders: Human Trafficking in the U.S.-Mexican Context.” Hemisphere Focus 12(5): 1–5. Spener, David. 2009. Clandestine Crossing: Migrants and Coyotes on the TexasMexico Border. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Ultreras, Pedro. 2012. La Bestia: la tragedia de migrantes centroamericanos a México. Mesa, AZ: Hispanic Institute of Social Issues. Varela, Amarela. 2015. “‘Las luchas migrantes’: Un nuevo campo de estudio para la sociología de los disensos.” Andamios 12(28): 145–170. Velázquez, Melba. 2017. “El papel de la cultura popular en la construcción de la identidad nacional mexicana: los fandangos jarochos.” Revista Latinoamericana de Estudios de Cultura y Sociedad 3(599): 1–13. Vilas, Carlos. 2001. “(In) justicia por mano propia: linchamientos en el México contemporáneo.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología 63(1): 131–160.

CHAPTER 8

Reaching Across: Migrant Support Activism on a Divided Island Argyro Nicolaou and Yiannis Papadakis

On November 5, 2010, in the coastal city of Larnaca, located on the Greek Cypriot side of divided Cyprus, three Greek Cypriot ethnonationalist groups—KEA (Movement of Greek Resistance), PAK (Pancyprian Anti-Occupation Movement), and the Movement for the Salvation of Cyprus—joined by various right-wing politicians, marched toward an area where the Rainbow Festival, an anti-racism, and migrant support event, was being held. These protesters, chanting slogans such as “No to the Islamization of our homeland!” and demanding the deportation of all “illegal immigrants,” tried to dismantle the stage set up by the Rainbow Festival’s main organizer—KISA (Movement for Equality, Support, and Anti-Racism), one of the island’s few NGOs dedicated to supporting migrants—on which the Head of the European Commission’s Representation to Cyprus was giving a speech. Violent confrontations ensued,

A. Nicolaou Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Y. Papadakis (B) Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_8

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during which a Turkish Cypriot musician who was taking part in the Rainbow Festival was stabbed. Despite eyewitness accounts, the official police report of the incident blamed the outbreak of violence on KISA, thereby receiving praise from many of the island’s far-right groups. Official charges were brought against KISA and its founder, Doros Polycarpou. The charges against Polycarpou were eventually dismissed by the court in June 2012. This event succinctly illustrates the challenges and complexities faced by migrant support activist groups in the context of a divided Cyprus as well as the high-stakes environment in which civil courage operates. For now, we would like to note the transnational EU dimension of the event; the stabbing of a Turkish Cypriot; and the attempt to criminalize KISA’s actions. As the first, and one of the very few, NGOs supporting migrants in Cyprus, KISA has engaged in laudable and groundbreaking activist work that has been of great value to the most marginalized groups in Greek Cypriot society: migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Cyprus offers a textbook example of an “intractable conflict” where a single issue—“the Cyprus Problem” (referring to the multiple conflicts leading to the island’s division)—has dominated over a host of other sociopolitical questions, including migration, that are deemed much less pressing and have been systematically sidelined. KISA’s work is therefore doubly important, as it actively supports vulnerable populations with no voice, no adequate protection, and no political representation in Greek Cypriot society. At the same time, however, KISA’s work has also been highly controversial. This chapter has two aims. On an ethnographic level, it analyzes KISA as a case study in civil courage, delving into the agency and motivations of activists engaged in exercises of civil translation in order to expand the horizons of solidarity. On a theoretical level, we suggest that this case study reveals how civil sphere theory (Alexander 2006a), whose original formulation is bounded by the borders of the state, could enlarge its scope by incorporating transnational factors. This entails the examination of the specific resources and potential obstacles afforded to a Cypriotbased activist organization, KISA, by a broader EU-wide civil sphere. In his analysis of Jeffrey Alexander’s The Civil Sphere, sociologist Chad Alan Goldberg states that “[i]n successful struggles like the civil rights movement, favorable discursive representations and effective civil translation generate solidarity and identification with out-groups, which in turn is a necessary precondition for regulatory intervention” (2007: 631). In

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terms of agency then, we identify the ways in which KISA has chosen to maneuver between the (universalistic) “civil” and the (particularistic) “noncivil” spheres (Alexander 2006a) in the specific context of Cyprus over its twenty-year history. What are some of KISA’s strategies of civil translation, and how effective have they been in broadening the horizon of solidarity within Greek Cypriot society? How did they “reach across” state boundaries by seeking support from transnational (EU) civil society organizations? Moreover, we explore the agency of civil courage by delving into the subjective meanings and trajectories, as well as the personal ideologies and motivations, of its main protagonists, revealing the difficulties, fears, dilemmas, and obstacles that migrant support activists face. We suggest that in order to expand the horizons of solidarity, KISA has made use of a rhetoric that emphasizes how Greek Cypriots were once violently displaced and became refugees themselves, hoping to create a connection between the local population and the recent arrivals. At the same time, KISA sought alliances with like-minded organizations abroad and critiqued the Cypriot authorities in international fora. These strategies, however, faced serious backlash on the local level limiting the organization’s impact. The case study of KISA has further implications for reframing civil sphere theory in a transnational context.

Theoretical Considerations In our chapter, we follow a primarily Geertzian ethnographic interpretive approach, placing strong emphasis on context (that of an intractable ethno-national conflict within the European Union) and meaning. Structural issues are inevitably addressed, since understanding context entails an understanding of the relevant sociopolitical structures, as well as various structural obstacles and opportunities encountered by KISA. To put it in Geertzian terms, structure is, by necessity, part of “thick description” (Geertz 1973). One of the most frequently cited structural factors—and one hotly debated in the context of the Cyprus Problem—is the issue of identity. It should be noted that local debates over ethno-national identity inevitably relate, feed into, and are influenced by broader (e.g. EUwide) discussions relating to identity vis-à-vis “outsiders,” namely, nonEuropean migrants. Given the various contestations of identity that this interrelationship gives rise to and bearing in mind the conceptual links between solidarity and identity, our chapter will employ the—in our view—analytically

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more productive term “identification” (Krzyzanowski and Wodak 2007). “Identification” focuses on process, change and agency and avoids the essentializing risks of “identity.” This becomes especially significant in understanding the work of KISA, which aims for intersectional solidarity and identification but finds itself often battling against rigid identity politics deeply embedded in Cypriot society. Furthermore, “identification” applies to not only who one identifies with but also how others are identified. For example, in this chapter, we show how migrants, along with KISA activists, may be identified by certain groups as symbolic “Turks,” the purported archenemy of Greeks. Interestingly enough, however, not all migrants are identified as such. As Zembylas notes, “strangeness is unevenly distributed” (2012: 165) between incoming groups comprised of elites (Russian and Chinese millionaires or British expats) and the disenfranchised (mostly migrants from the “East,” broadly defined as Asia, Africa, and the Middle East). In this sense, the “East” is as much a classdefined category as a cultural and geographical one. Given that we examine a small group of people who act against the prevailing social norms, one of the key issues that emerges is agency—what in the language of social movements would be called “activism.” If, as Jeffrey Alexander notes, every action is compelled by “a horizon of affect and meaning,” (2003, 12) one of the major questions that this chapter seeks to answer is what makes migrant support work meaningful to the activists of KISA. To understand this, we conducted lengthy interviews with three members of the NGO: Doros Polycarpou (Founder and Executive Director of KISA), Anthoula Papadopoulou (Founder and Chair of the KISA Steering Committee) and Andriana Kossiva (KISA counseling officer). The three activists each offer their own interpretation of “the horizon of affect and meaning” that propelled their activism. Activist work is not necessarily motivated solely by the norms conventionally associated with solidarity, like “selflessness” or “charity” (which is in fact a concept that all three KISA members reject) but by political ideology, life experiences, and a sense of personal satisfaction for being engaged in projects that are beyond oneself. The effect of urgency should not be underestimated when analyzing the strategies of action employed by KISA and its members, as well as the relative success of those strategies. KISA’s often radical actions, which include demonstrations, hunger-strikes, and public accusations against ministers, officials, and church leaders, intended to achieve immediate

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results for migrants in dire situations, have caused KISA to be characterized as “overtly confrontational” by other civil and noncivil actors, something that we deal with in detail in this chapter. This “confrontational” stance has led to a systematic delegitimization of KISA that has in turn limited the NGO’s support domestically but has pushed KISA to pursue partnerships with a broad, EU-wide network of NGOs committed to migrant support activism. In The Civil Sphere, Jeffrey Alexander’s discussion is firmly located within the boundaries of the state. However, he makes two brief allusions to the possibility of a global civil sphere; first as a hypothetical scenario (2006a: 552) in the main text and later, in a footnote, as an actuality (2006a: 718) in the case of a specific issue (“a new multicultural take on Jewishness”) that involved an audience beyond the United States. He presents a longer meditation on the possibility of a global civil sphere in an article on “Global Civil Society” (Alexander 2006b). In this article, his position on the existence, or the possibility of the existence, of a global civil sphere becomes clearer. He argues that the conditions of possibility for the emergence of a global civil sphere appear after the Second World War through visions of cosmopolitan peace and the emergence of institutions like the United Nations, only to be thwarted by the power of conflicting national interests. His central point in this article is that given the increasing relevance and power of globalizing processes there now exists “a global stage in which local events are evaluated, not only nationally or ethnically, but according to the standards of the civil sphere” (2006b: 523). This “nascent global civil sphere” (2006b: 523) however is weak and episodic. In our chapter, we further develop the possibilities of a civil sphere beyond the boundaries of the state. We suggest that despite the recent wave of anti-immigrant sentiments and practices, a vigorous, albeit fragile, civil sphere has developed within the European Union, based on universalistic principles of solidarity in support of human rights and a large network of NGOs whose influence transcends state borders. A key strategy that KISA has developed in order to achieve its aims in a sociopolitical context of vehement opposition has been to reach out across state boundaries by appealing to a transnational civil sphere for leverage, recognition, and support. As a result, we argue that KISA’s case study points toward the existence of a transnational civil sphere that has the capability of supporting local organizations. While this has provided KISA with welcome resources (funding, knowhow, etc.) that help in fulfilling its aims, this

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strategy has proven to be a double-edged sword. It has often led to accusations on the local level that KISA is exposing Cyprus internationally and harming the Greek Cypriot political cause, by prioritizing solidarity with the migrant “Other” over solidarity with the island’s Greek Cypriot population. This kind of action is what many would regard as the very definition of treason.

Supporting Immigrants in the Cypriot Context The Cyprus Problem is the rudder, or rather the alibi of society in Cyprus. “We who always suffered, we are a small island and we are slaves.” What I mean here is that [people] say that we are under occupation [by Turkey] … so Cyprus has this alibi, this large alibi so as not to do anything in many areas… [Immigrants] are perceived as used by Turkey as a “Third Attila” to change the demographic character of Cyprus, to impose Islam, etc. So [they are presented as if] they are our enemies and that is how we should treat them. (Founder and Chair of the KISA Steering Committee Anthoula Papadopoulou)

In September 2018, the President of the Republic of Cyprus (RoC), Nicos Anastasiades, posted a tweet using the contentious term “illegal migrants.” This tweet was shortly followed by a statement from Averof Neophytou, the leader of center-right governing DISY (Democratic Rally) party. Neophytou stressed “the need for the state to protect its social fabric and the country’s demographic character.” Both comments were warmly received by the extreme-right, anti-immigrant party ELAM (Greek Freedom Front), who rushed to point out that politicians who had in the past accused ELAM of being “extremists and racists” were now adopting ELAM’s very rhetoric and arguments against immigration (Theodorou and Savva 2018; Politis 2018). Responding to journalists’ questions on the matter, the Minister of the Interior, Constantinos Petrides, suggested that immigrants are “systematically and purposely” sent to Cyprus by Turkey as a way of solidifying the island’s occupation (Politis 2018). Petrides’s statement had deep emic resonances in a Greek Cypriot context: it effectively presented those who protested against Anastasiades and Averof’s statements as supporters of Turkish machinations to push immigrants into the RoC and change its demography.

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It is worth noting, however, that on a previous occasion, in 2015, DISY had reacted differently to a Minister’s anti-immigration Islamophobic rhetoric by issuing a statement in support of migrants, suggesting that their predicament was similar to that of 1974 Greek Cypriot refugees : “as Cypriots we are particularly sensitive to issues related to migrants and refugees, irrespective of nationality or religion…” The communist opposition party AKEL (Uprising Party of the Working People) had been more scathing, arguing that such statements nurtured “racist stereotypes of a bygone era,” while noting that Islam is a constitutionally entrenched religion in Cyprus, and that one fifth of the population of the island— Turkish Cypriots—are Muslims (H Kathimerini 2015). KISA had immediately reacted, calling for the Minister’s resignation. This sketch of the social and political context in which KISA’s migrant support activism is situated makes its local complexities apparent, particularly the symbolic entanglement of issues of migration with the ethno-nationalist ruptures that define the Cyprus Problem, briefly outlined below. In 1960, Cyprus became an independent state—the Republic of Cyprus—with a population of 78% Greek Cypriots (Greek Orthodox) and 18% Turkish Cypriots (Sunni Muslims), as well as other smaller minorities. Following a decade of severe interethnic clashes between the two major communities, in 1974, a group of Greek Cypriot extremists with the help of the Greek junta staged a coup against the island’s president, Archbishop Makarios. This led to a military offensive by Turkey (known as “Operation Attila” by Greek Cypriots) that divided the island’s territory, forcing most Greek Cypriots to the south and Turkish Cypriots to the north. In the wake of Turkey’s offensive, around one-third of a total of 600,000 Greek Cypriots as well as 45,000 Turkish Cypriots became internally displaced. In 1983, the Turkish Cypriot authorities unilaterally declared the establishment of their own state in Northern Cyprus, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). The TRNC has only been recognized by Turkey. After 30 years of segregation, several checkpoints opened in 2003 (one year before the RoC’s accession to the EU) which allowed people to move freely between the northern and southern parts of the island. This possibility of crossing has led to numerous Greek Cypriot public pronouncements and media articles that assert that through these checkpoints, as well as through other ways, Turkey has been “pushing illegal immigrants” into the south in order to change the RoC’s demographic structure. The Greek Cypriot trauma of 1974 has been socially defined as primarily an issue of “200,000 Greek Cypriots

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becoming refugees through Turkey’s barbaric invasion.” Hence, the term “refugee” resonates deeply with Greek Cypriots, along with a powerful sense of victimization by Turkey. Public surveys and academic studies have indicated the persistence of strong racist tendencies among Greek Cypriots, especially toward Muslims from the “East” (Angelides and Papanastasiou 2010; Gouliamos and Vryonides 2010; Trimikliniotis 1999, 2004; Zembylas 2012). One could argue that ministers’ statements like those presented above could only be tolerated in a social context where racism is so prevalent that it manifests itself as common sense. Given the impact of education as a means of socialization, a summary of relevant research in education highlights the major themes and tendencies that define Greek Cypriot perceptions on race and ethnicity. After the country’s 2004 accession to the EU, there had been a rise in feelings of superiority of Greek Cypriots as Christians, Westerners, Europeans, and Greeks (perceived as those who founded European civilization), while persons deemed non-European, non-Western, non-Christian, and non-Greek, including migrants and Turkish speakers (Turkish Cypriots, Roma, Kurds, Pontians), were denigrated (Philippou 2009, 2012a; Philippou and Theodorou 2014; Spyrou 2009; Theodorou and Symeou 2013). This is not surprising, given that the Greek Cypriot educational system has presented Cyprus as historically monocultural, Greek, and Christian (Gregoriou 2004, 2009). As a result, it has become more difficult to enhance respect for other ethnic, racial, and religious groups that are not of Greek origin (Theodorou 2014). Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism have fueled each other and have blocked any attempts to enhance discourses of intercultural diversity (Philippou 2012b). The notions of superiority of Europe, the West, Christians, and Greeks propagated through the Greek Cypriot educational system have been reinforced by (and have themselves reinforced in turn) the dominant presentation of Turks as the exemplary “barbaric,” “Eastern” enemy. Such negative representations have also been transferred to other groups from the symbolic “East” such as Sri Lankans, Filipinos, and Bangladeshis (Spyrou 2009). Reports note significant levels of ethnocentrism, racism, and xenophobia among Greek Cypriot students (Angelides et al. 2004), along

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with the prevalence of negative stereotypes and the frequent racist incidents in schools (Theodorou 2008). For Greek Cypriot children, “Cypriotness” is usually equated with Greek Cypriotness, precluding its coexistence with any elements associated with Turkishness or any other foreign (non-Greek, non-Christian) group (Spyrou 2002). Roma children, for example, have been negatively (and erroneously) labelled as “Turks” (Theodorou and Symeou 2013). The par excellence “Other” of Greek Cypriot society, the “Turk,” has become a term that has enveloped diverse migrant populations from Africa and Asia, whether Muslim or not. As a symbolic category, it has the potential to rouse the collective imaginary of Greek Cypriots, stoking fears and anxieties that relate to the drawn-out ethnic conflict on the island that culminated in Turkey’s military offensive in 1974.

KISA’s Foundation KISA’s establishment in 1998 was a direct response to the then-nascent policy field of migration in the RoC and the government’s abdication of responsibility when it came to the human rights of migrant workers. In the 1990s, rapid economic growth resulted in an increased demand for external labor. This, in turn, gave rise to the RoC’s first government policy paper on migrant labor (Ministry of Labour, Welfare, and Social Insurance 1991). The policy stipulated that migrants could be employed in work environments under very strict criteria. For example, migrant labor permits could be granted if a business suffered from “serious problems with health and safety [in the work environment]” and only until those conditions were fixed and the work environment made appropriate again for the local labor force. The policy paper made no provisions for the various contingencies that are part of any human being’s life: ailing health, having a family, finding a (local) life partner. The paper’s short-sighted take on migration and its lack of any provisions for the human aspect of migrant laborers created an immediate need for migrant support activism on the island. All three activists interviewed for this chapter pointed out that KISA emerged when it did precisely because of the state’s unwillingness to engage with the broad-ranging issues emanating from immigration, which include racism, xenophobia, and discrimination. KISA’s mission statement

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captures the organization’s broad mandate: “[KISA’s] vision is the promotion of an all-inclusive, multicultural society, free of racism, xenophobia and discrimination and where, through the interaction and mutual respect of diverse cultures, there will be equality and respect for the rights of all, irrespective of race, nationality or ethnicity, colour, creed or beliefs, gender, sexual preference or orientation, age, inability or any other diversity” (KISA, Mission and Objectives). The founding members of KISA started out with the broad goal of championing anti-racism and antidiscrimination from outside the mainstream Greek Cypriot political system, which they have always viewed as corrupt, incompetent, and highly partisan. Polycarpou put it thus: “I did not view the traditional political game as the primary means to transform society. [For me] social currents and their resulting social movements [only had that power].” Beyond the specific sociopolitical context of Cyprus at the time and the disillusionment with party politics, there were various other factors that motivated KISA activists to shift the boundaries of solidarity in an already ethnically charged environment. In true sociological fashion, when asked about what brought them to migrant support activism, all three interviewees—Polycarpou, Papadopoulou, and Kossiva—offered a mixture of agency and contingency within a given socio-historical context. A comparison of Polycarpou, Papadopoulou, and Kossiva’s backgrounds, however, indicate that they do share some common traits: all three studied in fields related to social science in Cyprus or abroad, all three had been variously mobilized during their studies in social movements and/or trade-union related activities, and they also view themselves unequivocally as political subjects and actors. Unsurprisingly, they also all espouse left-wing politics, broadly defined.

Civil Translation: A National or Transnational Process? KISA’s attempts at civil translation, the process of negotiating between the (universalistic) “civil” and the (particularistic) “noncivil” spheres, fall under two broad, and interrelated, categories, based on the discourses they rely on. The first category of discourse appeals to human rights as understood through the Greek Cypriot-specific trauma of 1974, while the second appeals to so-called “European” values such as multiculturalism, tolerance, and anti-racism. These discourses have been used—to varying degrees of success—by KISA to expand the horizon of solidarity in Greek

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Cypriot society both vis-a-vis migrant populations and migrant support activism. While the dominance of the Cyprus Problem has turned Greek Cypriot politics into an obsessive, monothematic discussion, it has also made the discourses of human rights and of refugees familiar to mainstream Greek Cypriot society. Greek Cypriots forced to move in the aftermath of Turkey’s 1974 offensive in Cyprus are technically internally displaced persons; however, the term that has prevailed instead in Greek Cypriot discourse is prosfiges (refugees). This has tied the Greek Cypriot trauma of displacement to a global discourse of human rights; something that Polycarpou and Papadopoulou, with their extensive experience in social and labor movements, identified as an opportunity, a tool through which KISA could expand the boundaries of solidarity. According to Polycarpou, the RoC would like to project an image to the outside world that we [Greek Cypriots] are the victims and we respect human rights and that the evil side are the Turks who oppress our human rights. This makes them particularly vulnerable to organizations whose mission is, or who work in terms of, monitoring human rights protection, whether that is the Council of Europe, or the United Nations, or the European Commission. And we have developed a close cooperation with these organizations.

It is not surprising, then, that the terms “refugees” and “human rights” have been staples in KISA’s discourse since the beginning of the NGO’s operation. As we discuss in more detail below, however, there are structural and systemic issues in Greek Cypriot society that make this path for civil translation a particularly tricky one. With the RoC’s accession to the EU in 2004, a wealth of other symbolic and practical resources became available to KISA. Beyond providing international forums where the RoC could be held accountable for human rights violations (the efficacy of which is questionable, as we explain in a later section), the EU has, most crucially, provided funding opportunities to KISA through various EU programs. KISA would quite possibly not exist today, had it not been for EU opportunities, given the lack of funding from the RoC and the structural forces that oppose KISA domestically. As Kossiva put it: “The EU provides some tools for you to use [as an activist]: [European] laws, European directives, and of course European Programs that provide the most practical thing: funding.”

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In the 15 years since the RoC gained membership to the EU, KISA has become an active member of European and international NGO networks such as the European Integration Forum (EIF), the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), the Euro Mediterranean Human Rights Network (EMHRN), and Migreurop. KISA has also implemented a broad range of European programs, including EQUAL, the European Refugee Fund, the European Integration Fund, PROGRESS, DAPHNE, and the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX). Furthermore, KISA has conducted research projects on behalf of, or in cooperation with, European agencies, NGOs, and other organizations, such as the EU’s DirectorateGeneral for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, the Network of Socio-Economic Experts in the Non-Discrimination Field (SEN), the Minority Rights Group (MRG), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Cyprus’s accession to the EU and KISA’s collaboration with European and international migrant support networks have also added to the NGO’s repertoire of civil translation strategies. The presence of the Head of the European Commission’s Representation to Cyprus at KISA’s 2010 Rainbow Festival, for example, provided a powerful symbolic legitimation of KISA’s cause on a European level; the product of a transnational civil sphere’s support system, so to speak. What’s more, when Polycarpou was arrested and KISA was vilified in the Greek Cypriot press following the violent incidents at the Festival, European NGOs put out announcements in support of the Cypriot organization and its founder. Migreurop seized the occasion of Cyprus’s Presidency of the EU in 2012, which coincided with Polycarpou’s case going to trial, to declare the trial as “yet another hostile attempt to prevent KISA from upholding the fundamental rights of migrants … [and] the failure of the Cypriot authorities to fully respect international human rights principles, EU law, and casts doubts on Cyprus’s suitability to take over the EU presidency in July 2012” (Migreurop 2012). Migreurop’s statement exemplifies the way in which the EU and its cultural, political and symbolic currency—here the Presidency—offers activist groups tools to further their migrant support objectives. By tying the charges against Polycarpou’s person to the RoC’s suitability to lead the EU, Migreurop’s statement bridges the particular and the universal by employing transnational, but highly evocative, references. Most importantly, KISA’s close connection to a Europe-wide network of NGOs suggests the emergence of a transnational civil society.

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KISA’s very survival, especially after the RoC stopped supporting it financially, is testament to the effectiveness of this transnational network of solidarity that extends beyond state boundaries, complementing Alexander’s exploration of a global civil sphere. Yet, the controversies surrounding KISA are also emblematic of the ways in which a transnational civil sphere is not a panacea for the obstructions faced by NGOs like KISA on a local level, which we describe in detail in the following section. While a European civil sphere may facilitate some aspect of KISA’s civil translation strategies, the extra challenges produced by civil translation’s failure on a national level are exacerbated by the NGO’s association with non-Cypriot civil and noncivil stakeholders, making the outlook for migrant support activism’s viability on the island bleak.

Civil Courage in the Face of Adversity KISA’s attempts to broaden the boundaries of solidarity have come at a price: their opponents seek to exclude KISA from Greek Cypriot society by ascribing anticivil traits (such as the symbolic category of “Turk”) to the organization and its activists—an extension of the anticivil traits ascribed to migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. In this section, we look at the different ways in which KISA’s forging of solidarity networks with migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in the RoC has adversely impacted the organization’s and its members’ relationships with local stakeholders. “We are often accused that we are traitors of our nation… Because we take [the Republic of] Cyprus to court, even to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and to other international forums… I have even been accused of smuggling migrants and of becoming filthy rich. Totally baseless!” Kossiva said. Given that the RoC has for years used the European Court of Human Rights as its prime forum for accusing Turkey of human rights violations (of the Greek Cypriots), any accusation in this, or similar, forums, that the RoC is violating the human rights of others (e.g. of migrants) is commonly perceived as weakening the Greek Cypriot “national cause.” This gives rise to accusations of treason toward anyone who accuses the RoC at the ECHR. Polycarpou told us that: An image of us that we are anti-Hellenes, that we are this and that, has been systematically cultivated in society and we have been targeted on a personal level. For many years there has been this rumor, we think by police officers, that KISA receives secret funds, suspicious funds. That we

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exploit and take money from migrants. And that we are funded by Turkey and so we are anti-Hellenic.

Polycarpou, in particular, has been taken to court many times. Each time, he has been declared innocent, except in one case where, on the advice of his legal counsel, he accepted the charge against him, since it was his word against several police officers present. In reference to the Larnaca Rainbow incident described in the beginning of the chapter, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern regarding the charges brought against human rights defender Mr. Polycarpou as a result of his peaceful participation in the Rainbow Festival and the impending trial. Further concern is expressed that the charges brought against him may be directly linked to his work in defense of human rights and in particular his work against xenophobia and racism in Cyprus. (Statewatch 2012)

The court verdict in 2012 was to drop the charges against Polycarpou because the police officer’s statements were ruled to be “untrustworthy,” in contrast to those of Polycarpou. Anthoula Papadopoulou highlighted the personal repercussions of being a migrant support activist. “[My work with KISA] has repercussions from others. I am always—we are, I should say, including my husband whose beliefs are similar to mine—always the outcasts of the family,” she sadly mused. This kind of backlash comes in many shapes and sizes: from arrests and trials, to the public smearing of KISA’s members, to purposefully burdensome and difficult interactions with public servants, even when trying to deal with a topic unrelated to KISA. As Kossiva explained: I applied at [one] point for welfare support as an [unemployed] single parent. The public servants whom I met knew me from my work at KISA and their reaction was very negative. They did everything they could to prevent me from obtaining the benefits I was entitled to. And they told me that they know me from my work in KISA.

Beyond the social marginalization that comes with working for a migrant support NGO, which includes accusations that KISA members are “traitors to the nation,” hostility toward KISA, as an entity and toward its members as individuals, also manifests itself as a generalized suspicion toward KISA among the Greek Cypriot public. This hostility is almost

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tangible on social media such as Facebook, where the general public frequently responds to KISA’s announcements, often in an aggressive manner. Kossiva has even received threats targeting her daughter under KISA’s posts on Facebook. A similar sense of suspicion toward KISA is evident in the section comments of online newspaper articles referring to the organization. There are also manifestations of hostility against KISA by specific actors, whether those are police officials, state bureaucrats, or Members of Parliament. These have had far-reaching consequences for the organization as a whole, and at times have targeted specific individuals associated with the NGO. According to Papadopoulou, the person who has borne the brunt of the state’s attempts to delegitimize the organization is Polycarpou himself, who is KISA’s most public figure. Polycarpou identified three main ways that KISA, and he personally, have been targeted by various parts of the state apparatus in the RoC: smear campaigns that aim to damage the NGO’s reputation and the reputation of its members; cutting of funding sources to KISA; criminalizing KISA’s activities, or pressing charges against Polycarpou himself. These recurring attempts at delegitimizing KISA via Polycarpou have, not surprisingly, come at a high personal cost. Polycarpou highlighted a few of the most widely circulated slanders usually hurled at KISA: that the organization accepts bribes; that it swindles migrants of their money; and that it is funded by pro-Turkey interests. Withdrawing funding support has been another powerful tool used by the government against KISA, in some cases as a reprisal for the NGO’s watchdog activities. According to Kossiva, before 2008, KISA had regularly applied to the European Refugee Fund (ERF)1 and was granted funding for several of its programs. When KISA filed a complaint about the behavior of a specific official in the government’s Asylum Services, the organization was never approved for an ERF grant again. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the official against which KISA’s complaint was lodged was also the person in charge of reviewing and approving Cypriot funding applications to the ERF program. Another example occurred in 2007, when the Cypriot government backed out of a contract it had signed with KISA that had allocated 80,000 euros from the ERF to a KISA-driven project aimed at providing asylum seekers with legal advice and social support. In a Cyprus Mail article from 2010, Nicoletta Charalambidou, a human rights lawyer and a member of the KISA board, said that when the time came for the government to pay KISA the money the organization had

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already spent on the project, they backed out, claiming that KISA had not followed the project’s guidelines and that the actions KISA took were inadequate. The government’s refusal left KISA with a debt of approximately 80,000 euros, despite requests from the Ombudsman (the European Commissioner for Administration and Protection of Human Rights) to pay KISA the money (Cyprus Mail 2010). While the particular context of the Cyprus Problem is an important parameter for understanding the pattern of hostility and suspicion that exists toward KISA, there are other systemic factors that fuel the tensions between the NGO and the noncivil sphere, including the civil service. These factors have in turn shaped KISA’s tactics, as well as its public image. In the section that follows, we explore the ways in which KISA’s solidarity with migrants and other victims of racism may have in fact fueled the confrontational, antagonistic communication style that characterizes the organization. Is KISA’s success in creating a platform for immigration issues in the RoC predicated on, or undermined by, the combative approach that the NGO has adopted toward the status quo? In other words: how successful of a civil translation strategy is KISA’s confrontational approach?

A Vicious Circle of Civil Courage? It is safe to say that a large part of the hostility toward KISA on the part of government or state stakeholders is because the NGO has become a thorn in the side of the Cypriot state by pointing out the shortcomings of government policy regarding migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Tools in KISA’s communications arsenal include press releases and announcements that call out specific human rights violations, or disproportionate reactions by the state/police; strategic litigation for certain representative cases that KISA activists consider fundamental in creating legal precedents that can subsequently be widely applied to similar cases; complaints filed to the European Ombudsman’s office regarding violations of human rights; and research-based reports on migration-related issues, which KISA circulates to the government as well as to the general public. According to Papadopoulou and Polycarpou, attitudes toward migration and migrants on the island (and by extension attitudes toward migrant support activism) have been largely determined by the RoC’s official policy on immigration, which we briefly touched upon in a previous

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section of this chapter. Under the title “Criteria and Procedures for Granting Work Permits to Foreigners/Remuneration and Terms of Employment,” the four-page policy document was drafted by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, in consultation with labor unions and employer organizations in response to increased labor needs in the Cypriot economy in 1991. The document was ratified by the Cabinet in 1992 and it still provides the fundamental basis for immigration policy. The policy provides for temporary work permits—up to four years—to foreign nationals but makes no provisions for potential developments in the lives of migrants that arrive in the RoC as laborers. The RoC’s immigration policy is thus predicated on tactically—or conveniently at best— ignoring dealing with migrants as human beings. “The policy ignores the fact that this ‘imported labor’—the language reflects how the government considered foreign labor as if it considered machinery—is human,” Papadopoulou said, adding, “[The expectation is that] single, unmarried individuals arrive on the island, and that they will remain single, in the four years of their stay in Cyprus.” Papadopoulou added that this approach to migration, which ignores the human side of migrating individuals, and thus fails to cater to their basic needs, continues to be a great part of the RoC’s immigration model, something that is evident in the treatment of third-country nationals (non-EU citizens) on the island. According to Polycarpou and Papadopoulou, the 1991 policy document all but enshrines the idea that local workers and migrant workers— Cypriots and third-country nationals—are not equal. Perhaps the most striking provision in the document is the criterion of “the amelioration of working conditions”: “In the case that a business faces serious problems related to working conditions (health and safety, welfare) work permits for foreign labor will be issued for a reasonable time period required for the business to make the necessary changes for the amelioration of these conditions[…]” (Ministry of Labour, Welfare, and Social Insurance 1991).2 The policy document also requires an employer to fire any foreign labor first before proceeding to let local workers go. The document thus creates a double standard for the status of third-country nationals on the island that exposes and perpetuates the systemic racism prevalent within the Cypriot state, which includes the ranks of government employees, bureaucrats, and a large part of the general public. Another reason for the hostility of government officials and the state apparatus toward KISA, according to Polycarpou, is the deeply

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entrenched party politics system in the RoC, where partisanship is pervasive and where there is no long-standing tradition of an independent non-governmental sector. That KISA is an organization formed by people who conscientiously refused to join the political sphere and actively sought to contribute to Greek Cypriot society through the civil sphere, resisting being subsumed or controlled by any of the political parties of the island, may have contributed to KISA’s public image as a kind of pariah. Refusing to co-opt party rhetoric is also part of KISA’s commitment to a steadfast ideological approach of equality, transparency, and independence. This means KISA falls regularly out of favor with political party stakeholders. The RoC’s accession to the EU has not dampened the racist attitudes of Greek Cypriot society. While European anti-discrimination laws and directives have been adopted by the state almost immediately, and with hardly any domestic resistance, general attitudes regarding migrants have not changed as substantially or as swiftly as one would think since the first migration policy document in 1991. Polycarpou recalled a conversation with a government official who very clearly articulated the double standard that KISA claims is characteristic of Cypriot society’s approach to migrants, as well as the often-cynical way in which the Cypriot state handles EU law: “If the person is black, is a European citizen, and his rights are being violated, then it’s discrimination. If the person is black, is a third-country national and his rights are being violated, then it is not discrimination.” This double standard is unacceptable to KISA and its members and is perhaps the strongest reason the organization has adopted (not strategically, its members insist, but out of necessity) a more “confrontational” stance toward government stakeholders. As Polycarpou explained: As KISA, we consider that each human being should demand his/her full rights, in relation to the model or ideal that we set for ourselves as an organization that is the absolute respect of equality, respect of human rights regardless of religion, legal status and nationality.

As an organization founded on an anti-discrimination and anti-racism platform, the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of equality as well as the intersectional implications of such a position, are non-negotiable. Any actions, behaviors, or policies that discriminate against migrants, asylum seekers and/or refugees are dealt with by KISA head-on, without

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engaging in appeasement or any kind of deal-making that might compromise KISA’s values. “We are the only organization that demands that [this double standard] should be abolished. For this reason, we are locked in a permanent confrontation with the state,” Polycarpou added. It is important to remember the adverse structural environment within which KISA tries to protect migrants’ and refugees’ human rights. It deals with people in crisis that need immediate help, whereas bureaucratic mechanisms are not only slow but also often unwilling to help. The migrants do not vote, so there is no interest from politicians to protect or represent them. Arguably, it might even cost political figures votes if they were to try to do so. KISA’s unwavering focus on human rights in this kind of environment would, it appears, lead to severe conflicts with the status quo. This is clearly recognized by the KISA activists. “I am not so good with diplomacy…” Kossiva pointed out, adding, “If you are more diplomatic you may have more results… Maybe the causes of the organization are better served if you are more diplomatic, but for me some lines cannot be crossed. I cannot avoid reality and present a better version of it.” Polycarpou admitted that KISA’s confrontational approach might often contribute to the negative image that many people may have of KISA: Yes, we might be responsible to an extent for the negative public image that KISA might have. Responsible, in the sense that we did not base our reactions on a strategic analysis of the society in which we operate… It might be true that under the pressures we have, and due to the path we have followed, and because of our desire to describe just how bad the situation is in the area of immigration, we might not have the best approach when it comes to deciding whether it is better to clash with everyone, or whether it is better to agree with everyone.

What Polycarpou is driving at here has as much to do with KISA’s day-today work as it does with KISA’s image and reception by the general public of mainstream Greek Cypriot society. Where KISA has potentially fallen short is in the process of discursive representation and civil translation. As Alexander writes: Power conflicts are not simply about who gets what and how much. They are about who will be what and for how long. Representation is critical. In the interplay between communicative institutions and their public

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audiences, will a group be represented in terms of one set of symbolic categories rather than another? This is the critical question. (2006a: 233–234)

At the same time, Polycarpou asserts that KISA’s confrontational public image is also the source of the NGO’s strength and an integral part of the organization’s long-standing capability of speaking truth to power: “KISA is the only NGO on the island willing to clash so intensely with Cypriot society, for better or for worse.” The predicament raised by KISA’s controversial reception in mainstream Greek Cypriot society raises the question of how one can assess what Alexander calls the “discursive success” of a movement, and what factors can affect that success. There is definitely an argument to be made that KISA’s reputation, as well as its confrontational tactics, might act as a deterrent for power abuses by the police or the state when it comes to issues of human rights and migration. In this case, they may be regarded as engaging in successful civil translation. What is useful to keep in mind here is the extent to which the symbolic work of civil translation “draws public attention to an already existing contradiction [between civil and noncivil spheres]” or whether the contradiction is “a matter of interpretation” (Alexander 2006a: 55). In other words: does civil translation require the existence of a conflict between the civil and noncivil sphere in order to do its work? Is the contradiction/conflict a matter of subjective interpretation? The answer in the case of KISA seems to be both yes and no. Anthoula Papadopoulou herself offered the argument that “confrontation” is in the eye of the beholder. “If you ask people who are against discrimination and are anti-racism, KISA is not confrontational,” she argued, adding, “For mainstream society, I think that yes, some might say, even people who are democratic… that we are confrontational.” At the same time, Papadopoulou made the case of certain objective “red lines” between the noncivil and civil spheres in the RoC. Being confrontational is unavoidable in the social and political environment of Cyprus. Papadopoulou referred to an ex-Minister of the Interior’s sexist and racist comments about a Kurdish stateless woman from Syria who was applying for asylum as an example of the ideological urgency of calling out such behavior. Responding to KISA’s demand to grant the Kurdish woman citizenship, the Minister replied: “What, you want me to make that fat woman a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus?” In this case, Papadopoulou stressed the objective inevitability of KISA’s confrontational attitude: “Sadly conflict

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is unavoidable [especially] when you publicly have to ask the government, the President of the Republic, to fire one of his ministers.” For all the unfavorable and even adverse circumstances in which KISA and its members must operate, the organization has succeeded in expanding the horizon of solidarity at least to the extent that it has brought issues of immigration, migration, and asylum in the RoC into the limelight. As one of the first NGOs on the island, and the very first dealing with the issue of immigration, KISA can be credited with the creation of an environment within which migrant support activities can now operate in the RoC. Some systemic changes that KISA’s activities have brought about include the safeguarding of the right to education for undocumented children on the island, as well as their right to a birth certificate; stopping a government policy that required asylum seekers to present a signed lease before being able to comply with a change of address requirement for their “Alien Book”; and granting access to public benefits to thirdcountry nationals whose children were Cypriot or EU citizens. Furthermore, KISA’s use of strategic litigation (especially its appeals to the European Court of Human Rights) have resulted in the creation of Adminis´ ια] on the island. trative Tribunals [διoικητικα´ δικαστηρ Both Polycarpou and Kossiva unequivocally stated that another one of KISA’s biggest successes is the services provided to migrants and refugees in need. The urgency of pragmatic necessities and protections, and the grassroots work that this entails, means that KISA can have a direct impact on people’s lives. This is something that greatly motivates KISA’s employees, making the social stigmatization that they might experience worthwhile. At the same time, all three of KISA’s activists that we spoke to expressed concern about the viability of a services-driven model for the organization. Considering the relationship between KISA’s migrant support services and its confrontational image, Polycarpou floated the idea that KISA’s broader political goals of anti-racism and anti-discrimination might be better served by splitting the organization in two, detaching, as it were, the day to day, necessarily combative work of migrant support services from the awareness campaigns and community outreach that would enable the NGO to ameliorate racist attitudes on the island. Polycarpou explained why, given their very limited resources, KISA has put such emphasis on helping migrants with their concrete everyday needs:

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We found ourselves under so much pressure from the migrants and then the refugees to protect their rights that we ended up, instead of an organization with a vision to engage in anti-racism, mostly providing concrete services to those in need… and in the end we were not able to pursue many other goals that were equally important. [W]e could have said, “you know for now forget about their problems, pretend you don’t know about them and focus on the broader structural and political issues.” In the meantime, five migrants will die, fifty will be kicked out, and eighty will be thrown in jail… For better or for worse, there is no other organization willing to engage into open confrontations with our society,

This also provided part of the explanation for the tactics KISA used. Yet, not all has been bleak. KISA’s work has forged good working relationships with certain branches of the state and effected a positive change in police attitudes. KISA’s case then is also exemplary of “boundary tensions” between civil and noncivil spheres, boundary tensions that, according to Alexander, are necessary and inevitable for the processes of civil translation to take effect. From the perspective of the NGO and its members, therefore, KISA’s mandate shares in Alexander’s idea that “to maintain democracy, and to achieve justice, it is often necessary for the civil to ‘invade’ noncivil spheres, to demand certain kinds of reforms, and to monitor them through regulation” (Alexander 2006a: 34). A recurring point of pride shared between all three of the KISA activists we interviewed were precisely these “reforms” that KISA’s interventions succeeded in implementing in the noncivil spheres of the state, such as the migration and immigration authorities, the police, and the House of Parliament. Papadopoulou proudly claimed that Parliament frequently calls upon KISA to consult its members on legislation regarding immigration, and KISA has a hand in shaping migration/immigration laws more often than not. The media are also much more careful toward KISA than they used to be in the early days of the NGO’s activity.

Conclusion What we [activists] always say is that while in other countries there is Islamophobia, in Cyprus what we have is Turkophobia. (Kossiva)

Like most social narratives, KISA’s story is an ambiguous one. Undoubtedly, the NGO helps and supports immigrants, asylum seekers, and

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refugees with their immediate problems. They were the first to provide such services in Cyprus, and, as a result, they have the most experience and knowhow on the matter. This, as they are the first to admit, has also been a weakness. In dealing with the immediate, sometimes lifethreatening problems of migrants, they have been unable to spend more time working on shifting policy and influencing structures. While on a policy level KISA activists understand the drawbacks of the way they have been allocating their limited resources—admittedly limited due to the state’s negative stance toward them—they suggest that on an emotional, affective level the very idea of abandoning someone with an urgent problem appears intolerable, while the immediate results they are able to achieve give deep meaning to their work, despite the stress that comes with it. In other words, by prioritizing the highly urgent grassroots activities that aim to take care of migrant’s day-to-day needs, KISA may have been less successful in creating a “favorable discursive representation” of its own cause, and by extension, of the out group that it works to incorporate into Greek Cypriot society. As other practitioners have also suggested, grassroots service-based work and discursive or representational work require very different approaches. Polycarpou himself acknowledges this, stating that in retrospect it might have been wiser for KISA to have separated these two levels of operations by creating two organizations with two different identities, and two different “public images.” In such a construction, one “branch” of KISA would focus on direct activism to help with immediate problems faced by migrants on the ground, while the other would focus on the discursive and symbolic realms, focusing on anti-racism and on shifting public opinion and social structures. With its current modus operandi, KISA’s focus on confrontational, service-based activism has left a discursive “vacuum,” so to speak, which other organizations have stepped in to fill. Whether KISA has been able to shift the negative public narrative on migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers by expanding the boundaries of solidarity is unclear. Alexander argues that successful social movements “had to convince people outside their groups; [and] they could do so only by interweaving their particular struggles with universal civil themes” (Alexander 2006a: 7). Human rights, and the European community platform that human rights discourse emerges from, has been the major terrain on which KISA has been discursively operating. This strategy also aims to garner public support for KISA’s work by tapping into Greek

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Cypriots’ insistence on their human rights violations by Turkey. Given this familiar and comforting discourse, and many Greek Cypriots’ traumatic experience of being displaced, one would expect that the horizons of empathy within Greek Cypriot society could be expanded to include migrant out-groups. Yet, as we suggest here, the Cyprus Problem has proved to be a double-edged sword. One possible reason for this is that KISA activists have been involved in the defense of human rights in a symbolic context where migrants have not been treated as fully human. As our brief discussion on the emergence of migrant policy in the RoC above has shown, in Greek Cypriot public and official discourse, migrants are rarely treated as people with bodies, emotions, and human needs. This is reflected in the way migrants are commonly referred to as “working hands” (ergatika heria). This dehumanization of immigrants is institutionalized in noncivil actions, such as a police operation aimed at targeting “illegal migrants” that was given the name “Operation Broom,” suggesting that what the police “gathers” is the equivalent of “dirt,” defined by Mary Douglas (1966: 36) as matter (here people) “out of place.” The extent of structural racism and sexism pervading society, including the police, was tragically brought to the fore with the revelations of police inaction in the face of migrant women and children reported missing over the course of a number of years, leading to the eventual arrest—in 2019—of Cyprus’ most gruesome serial killer (Blunt 2019). An equally important interpretation of such inhumane treatment is the way that both migrants and KISA activists have been cast as symbolic “Turks,” as Kossiva herself put it, and as we have explained above. Accusing KISA activists of being “anti-Hellenes,” “traitors,” or accomplices in Turkey’s machinations to “infiltrate” Greek Cypriot society with third-country nationals in order to change the demography of the RoC, has proved to be an accusation with very powerful resonance. This discursive operation by KISA’s detractors, which wields the discourse of ethno-nationalism, demonstrates a restriction of civility that Alexander attributes to nationalism’s explicit “delineating [of] polluted space ‘outside’ the nation” (Alexander 2006a: 198). Anything or anyone “outside” the nation (here the nation as understood by Greek Cypriot society is Christian and “Western”) is somehow discursively contaminated, and relegated under a negative, anticivil construction of the “Turk.” This discursive operation is productive beyond the confines of the state alone. In an era of globalization, the delineation of polluted space does not only coincide with national boundaries. The concept of “Fortress

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Europe,” and the European Union’s border policing strategies, bear testament to a symbolic and structural operation that designates as “polluted” any space beyond the boundaries of the supra-national organization’s 27 Member States. While a European civil sphere has offered KISA symbolic and financial resources that bear testament to a “nascent global civil sphere,” the current xenophobic climate in Europe, and the increase in Islamophobic sentiment, reflects global trends of uncivility that can reinforce local objections to the civil incorporation of migrants. The Greek Cypriot trauma of forced displacement in the 1974 war did not create the common ground with migrants that KISA or other NGOs may have expected. In fact, as KISA’s case shows, neither has the RoC’s accession to the multi-ethnic structures of the EU. On the contrary, both events seem to have created more distance between Greek Cypriots and nonEuropean immigrants by deeply entrenching the symbolic (and legal) boundary between Cyprus and “the East,” in a similar way that the arrival of millions of asylum seekers in the wake of the Arab spring have exacerbated calls for a “Fortress Europe,” despite the continent’s harsh lessons from World War II. This in turn reinforces local notions of Greek and Western supremacy, increases intolerance toward Muslims as well as other symbolic “Easterners,” or anyone for that matter that can be posited as a symbolic “Turk.” While a European civil sphere is KISA’s only lifeline, the portentous hardening of symbolic and political boundaries throughout Europe3 means that its association with a European-wide network of like-minded NGOs may make KISA’s work even more difficult and its arduous task of civil translation and incorporation even more burdensome.

Notes 1. A European Commission fund intended to support EU countries’ efforts in receiving refugees and displaced persons. 2. Stratigiki gia tin Apasholisi Xenou Ergatikou Dinamikou 2008 ´ Decemτρατηγικη´ για την Aπασχo´ ληση šνoυ Eργατικo´ υναμικo. ber 2, 1991 Policy for the Employment of Foreign Workers annexed to document pp. 14–17. Retrieved January 8, 2020 (https://bit.ly/2UDuBnX). 3. As well, it should be added, as their material manifestations (e.g. internment camps, temporary housing, regimes of deportation) at the time of writing‚ in late 2018.

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Bibliography Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2003. The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2006a. The Civil Sphere. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2006b. “Global Civil Society.” Theory, Culture & Society 23(2–3): 521–524. Angelides, Panayiotis, and Elena Papanastasiou. 2010. [Report: Cypriot Adults’ Opinions and Perceptions of Migrants Who Are Third Country Nationals]. Nicosia: K.Δ.Υ .E. Angelides, Panayiotis, Tasoula Stylianou, and James Leigh. 2004. “Multicultural Education in Cyprus: A Pot of Multicultural Assimilation?” Intercultural Education 15(3): 307–315. Blunt, Rosie. 2019. “Cyprus Serial Killer Case Exposes Abuse of Migrant Women.” BBC, May 2. Retrieved January 6, 2020. https://www.bbc.com/ news/world-europe-48110874. Cyprus Mail. 2010. “Immigrants: Their Own Support Group Scales Back Help.” Retrieved June 18, 2018. http://www.cyprus-mail.com/cyprus/immigrantstheir-own-support-group-scales-back-help/20110910. Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger an Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. New York: Praeger. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic books. Goldberg, Chad Alan. 2007. “Reflections on Jeffrey C. Alexander’s ‘The Civil Sphere’.” The Sociological Quarterly 48(4): 629–639. Gouliamos, Kostas, and Marios Vryonides, eds. 2010. [Perspectives of Cypriot Society Through the ESS Findings]. Nicosia: En Toipis. Gregoriou, Zelia. 2004. “De-Scribing Hybridity in ‘Unspoiled Cyprus’: Postcolonial Tasks for the Theory of Education.” Comparative Education 40(2): 241–266. Gregoriou, Zelia. 2009. Policy Analysis Report: Migration in Cyprus. Nicosia: University of Cyprus. για Xριστιανo´ ς ´ ´ ς Xασικoυ H Kathimerini. 2015. “ α´ λoς απ´o τις ηλωσει ς.” [Hasikos Causes Uproar with “Christian Immigrants” Com´ Mεταναστε ments] H Kathimerini, September 7. Retrieved February 23, 2019. http:// www.kathimerini.com.cy/gr/politiki/217928/?ctype=ar. KISA. N.d. “Mission and Objectives.” Retrieved February 23, 2019. https:// kisa.org.cy/mission-objectives/.

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Krzyzanowski, Michal, and Ruth Wodak. 2007. “Multiple Identities, Migration, and Belonging: Voices of Migrants.” In Identity Troubles: Critical Discourse and Contested Identities, edited by C. Caldas-Coulthard and R. Iedema. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 95–119. Migreurop. 2012. “Cyprus: Persecution of Human Right’s Defender Polycarpou and Breach of Migrant’s Rights Question Cyprus’s Suitability to Take Over EU Chairmanship.” Migreurop, February 20. Retrieved February 23, 2019. http://www.migreurop.org/article2067.html?lang=fr. Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Insurance. 1991. [Criteria and Procedures for Granting Work Permits to Foreigners/Remuneration and Terms of Employment]. pp. 14–17. Retrieved February 23, 2019. https://bit.ly/2UDuBnX. Philippou, Stavroula. 2009. “What Makes Cyprus European? Curricular Responses of Greek-Cypriot Civic Education to ‘Europe’.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 41(2): 199–223. Philippou, Stavroula. 2012a. “‘Europe’, Identity and Citizenship in the GreekCypriot Social Studies Secondary School Curricula.” In “Europe” Turned Local—The Local Turned European? Constructions of “Europe” in Social Studies Curricula Across Europe, edited by S. Philippou. Z¨urich: LIT-Verlag, pp. 237– 270. Philippou, Stavroula. 2012b. “‘Europe’ as an Alibi: An Overview of Twenty Years of Policy, Curricula and Textbooks in the Republic of Cyprus—And Their Review.” European Educational Research Journal 11(3): 428–445. Philippou, Stavroula, and Eleni Theodorou. 2014. “The Europeanisation of Othering: Children Using ‘Europe’ to Construct ‘Others’ in Cyprus.” Race, Ethnicity and Education 17(2): 264–290. ς Eπιμšνει η Kυβšρνηση.” [Gov´ ´ Politis. 2018. “«αρανoμoι» oι Mεταναστε ernment Insists That the Immigrants Are Illegal]. Politis, September 24. Retrieved October 15, 2018. http://politis.com.cy/article/paranomi-imetanastes-epimeni-i-kivernisi. Spyrou, Spyros. 2002. “Images of the Other: The Turk in Greek Cypriot Children’s Imaginations.” Race Ethnicity and Education 5(3): 255–272. Spyrou, Spyros. 2009. “Between Intimacy and Intolerance: Greek Cypriot Children’s Encounters with Asian Domestic Workers.” Childhood 16(2): 155–173. Statewatch. 2012. “Human Rights Defender Acquitted as Police Accusations Are Found ‘Not Credible’.” Statewatch, June 19. Retrieved February 23, 2019. http://www.statewatch.org/news/2012/jun/13cyprus-human-rightsdefender-acquitted.html. Theodorou, Eleni. 2008. “Authoring Spaces: Identity Negotiation Among Immigrant Children at a Cypriot Public Primary School.” PhD dissertation, University of Virginia.

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Theodorou, Eleni. 2014. “Constructing the ‘Other’: Politics and Policies of Intercultural Education in Cyprus.” In Empires, Post-coloniality and Interculturality, edited by L. Vega. Rotterdam: Sense, pp. 251–272. Theodorou, Eleni, and Loizos Symeou. 2013. “Experiencing the Same But Differently: Indigenous Minority and Immigrant Children’s Experiences in Cyprus.” British Journal of Sociology of Education 34(3): 354–372. Theodorou, Michalis, and Katia Savva. 2018. Me Glossa pou Heretizi to ELAM πoυ χαιρετ´ιζει τo EAM.” Politis, September 22. Retrieved ´ - “Mε γλωσσα October 15, 2018. http://politis.com.cy/article/me-glossa-pou-cheretizi-toelam. Trimikliniotis, Nicos. 1999. “New Migration and Racism in Cyprus: The Racialisation of Migrant Workers.” Into the Margins: Migration and Exclusion in Southern Europe. Avebury: Ashgate. http://works.bepress.com/nicos_ trimikliniotis/16/. Trimikliniotis, Nicos. 2004. “Mapping Discriminatory Landscapes in Cyprus: Ethnic Discrimination in a Divided Education System.” The Cyprus Review 16: 53–85. Zembylas, Michalinos. 2012. “Transnationalism, Migration and Emotions: Implications for Education.” Globalisation, Societies and Education 10(2): 163– 179.

CHAPTER 9

“We Always Have Been and Always Will Be a Sanctuary City”: Cities as Righteous Actors in the U.S. Civil Sphere Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky

“We always have been and always will be a sanctuary city,” boasts San Francisco’s mayor, London Breed.1 In the face of multiple threats from the Trump administration to have federal funding withheld from such jurisdictions, the so-called “sanctuary cities” across the country have dug in their heels to defend their policies. This demonstration of civil solidarity has strongly echoed throughout San Francisco’s history as a place of sanctuary and non-cooperation with federal immigration authorities. In this chapter, I unpack the ways in which the City of San Francisco is an actor truly “righteous”2 in regard to its policies on immigrants, working to foster inclusiveness among all its residents. In the latest battle against the administration’s repeated attacks on sanctuary cities, the city has remained steadfast in its solidaristic commitment to its immigrant population. San Francisco first became a “City of Refuge” in 1985 in response to an increase in the number of asylum seekers from Central America, many of whom were caught in the net of Cold War politics; for example,

B. N. Jaworsky (B) Department of Sociology, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_9

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Salvadorans and Guatemalans fleeing right-wing regimes had a difficult time achieving refugee status, while those fleeing the Marxist-inspired Sandinista government in Nicaragua did not. In the burgeoning “sanctuary movement,” a network of churches and faith-based groups had begun to shield the asylum seekers from federal immigration authorities; municipalities followed by declaring themselves sanctuaries. The City of San Francisco’s sanctuary status solidified in 1989 when a city ordinance extended protection from asylum seekers to all unauthorized immigrants. It “generally prohibits City employees from using City funds or resources to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the enforcement of Federal immigration law unless such assistance is required by federal or state law.”3 In 2013, an ordinance entitled “Due Process for All” was passed, and the two ordinances were last updated in 2016, to clarify exactly when local officials would or would not cooperate with federal immigration authorities.4 What is most compelling for the study of civil solidarity is not simply that the city is a sanctuary for immigrants but rather the ways city itself speaks about this status. The values of the civil sphere and an impetus toward inclusion reverberate through official statements. In response to the question, “Why did San Francisco adopt the Sanctuary Ordinance?” the city’s website states: The Sanctuary Ordinance promotes public trust and cooperation. It helps keep our communities safe by making sure that all residents, regardless of immigration status, feel comfortable calling the Police and Fire Departments during emergencies and cooperating with City agencies during public safety situations. It helps keep our communities healthy by making sure that all residents, regardless of immigration status, feel comfortable accessing City public health services and benefit programs.5

Such a statement of solidarity reflects the city’s push to extend membership to unauthorized immigrants, a population regularly marginalized at the national and local levels in the United States; belonging to a “nation of immigrants” is often predicated on legal status and having done the “right thing” by entering/staying in the country only with permission. It is in the civil sphere that the fragile boundaries between citizen and alien are maintained (Alexander 1992, 2006). If the city is a site for citizenship practices that create membership and belonging at the subnational level (Villazor 2010), as well as a place where the creation of

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migrant illegality is possible (De Genova 2005), then it is a discursive space with the power to include as well as exclude. In a context where cities and localities are increasingly passing draconian laws to punish unauthorized immigrants and curtail their constitutional rights, sanctuary cities stand out as righteous in their commitment to civil solidarity. Employing coding that seeks to welcome, include, and protect unauthorized immigrants, the City of San Francisco carves out spaces of belonging for them. In standing out from many of its peers, the city of San Francisco faces enormous risk by embracing a sanctuary city status. In January 2017, President Trump signed an executive order denying federal funding to such cities; the city fired back with a lawsuit within days. In December 2017, the national discussion on sanctuary cities again escalated after the acquittal of an unauthorized immigrant that had confessed to murdering 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle as she walked along the San Francisco waterfront. The city came under scrutiny for having released the accused, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, who had a long criminal history and had been deported five times previously. In January, 2018, the Department of Justice sent out threatening letters to 23 jurisdictions, promising federal subpoenas and the withholding of Byrne JAG grants, a top source of funding for law enforcement, prosecution, and courts.6 Throughout, the city has maintained its commitment to protecting immigrants, regardless of the consequences. As Mayor Breed has asserted: “When you grow up in the projects you spend your life trying to avoid going to jail. This is one of the issues I wouldn’t mind basically going to jail for the first time in my life over.”7 In this chapter, I unpack the recent “narrative battle” that has ensued between the city and the Trump administration. To elaborate the ways in which San Francisco has proven to be “righteous in migration” in the face of its latest battle to defend its status as a sanctuary city, I call upon several sources of data. I look at documents produced by the city, including resolutions and orders, as well as official statements made to the press by the mayor, the city attorney, and the police department. In addition, I survey local media coverage of San Francisco as a sanctuary city, primarily in the most-read newspapers, the San Francisco Examiner and the online version of the San Francisco Chronicle (SFGate.com), supplementing with television, radio, and other news coverage. I also look at executive orders issued by President Trump, as well as speeches in which sanctuary cities are highlighted, both during the presidential campaign and in office.

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The Civil Sphere as a Discursive Battleground The narrative battle I wish to unpack in this chapter takes place in the “civil sphere,” an analytically distinguishable, morally constituted space in which the negotiation of the boundaries of belonging takes place. It is a way of conceptualizing civil society, as Alexander (2007: 26) theorizes, a solidary community of autonomous individuals, of brothers and sisters. In this civil sphere, every person is treated simply as a human being, receiving the recognition that this sacred status demands. This is a civil community because it is a universalizing one, a community that transcends primordial ties of family, ethnicity, and race, hierarchies of class and divisions of religion, a community that sustains collective obligations and individual autonomy at the same time.

As such, solidarity in the civil sphere is understood as a form of connection overcoming particularistic ties. Although in ideal terms, everyone is included, in the reality of instantiation, certain individuals are necessarily excluded from the civil sphere. This process occurs through a “discourse of civil society” (Alexander and Smith 1993), a highly elaborated symbolic code that encompasses three levels: motives, relations, and institutions. It is in this realm that the symbolic boundary work (Lamont 2000; Lamont and Molnár 2002) concerning the inclusion or exclusion of populations such as immigrants takes place. Through boundary crossing, shifting, burring, and maintenance, immigrants are discursively constructed as belonging (or not) to a given polity through legal and moral criteria (Jaworsky 2016; cf. Alba 2005). Further, as a regulative institution of the civil sphere, laws solidify or loosen such boundaries through their application, but only after they are interpreted through the symbolic codes of the civil sphere (Alexander 2006: 185). Belonging is articulated not only through laws but also through communicative institutions such as media, public opinion, and voluntary associations. In short, the civil sphere is a space of social solidarity, but who belongs is always up for negotiation, as “real” civil societies are always in flux. In the “real” case of San Francisco, the city’s self-image of its civil sphere is one of inclusivity, in which all immigrants, regardless of legal status, are welcomed and enjoy equal status with the native born. They have a “right to the city” as Lefebvre (1996) would call it; notwithstanding their lack of nation-state citizenship, they belong. As Bauder (2016:

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9) argues, “In respect to the discursive aspect, sanctuary discourses disrupt the nation state’s monopoly on defining who deserves to belong and who does not, and shift the scale of belonging from the national to the local.” Arguably, unauthorized immigrants in San Francisco possess a form of “local citizenship” (Blank 2007; Ridgley 2010; Villazor 2010). Viewed through Bosniak’s (2006) lens of citizenship as manifesting along four dimensions—formal legal status, rights, democratic participation, and identity—Villazor (2010) sees unauthorized immigrants in the city as stakeholders and de facto members of the local community. Ridgley (2010) puts it slightly differently, in terms of “urban citizenship,” seeing sanctuary policies as having “troubled the boundaries of national citizenship” (4), concluding that they are a “subtle but persistent challenge to the boundary making processes of the federal state” (144). In a completely different and more pessimistic vision of sanctuary policies, Mancina highlights that what such studies fail to acknowledge is the ways in which they actually reveal the lives of the unauthorized, making them “knowable” by local as well as federal governments (2016: 10). He posits the concept of “sanctuary-power,” through which “municipal government agencies, with the help of immigrant advocacy groups, work to incorporate undocumented immigrants as active participants in general municipal governance, all the while connecting municipal practices to the federal deportation regime and federal benefits agencies in a border-filled world” (ibid.: 7). Similarly, Bagelman (2016) points to the fact that the sanctuary city acts as a kind of governmentality, creating waiting subjects whose deportability has not been suspended. While I recognize that sanctuary may not be completely liberating or empowering, what remains important is the fact that discursive battles in the civil sphere precede actual boundary change with regard to who will be included within its limits (Alexander 2006, 2007; Jaworsky 2013). Thus, understanding the “narrative battle” occurring in the United States, and in San Francisco in particular, is important to understanding how social change may (or may not) occur for unauthorized immigrants. It is only through a reconstruction of the meanings underlying the symbolic categorizations made in the civil sphere that we can understand the relationship between “culture structures” (Rambo and Chan 1990) and the political and economic forms of the social power to include or exclude (Alexander 2007: 24). Accordingly, I employ the analytical lens of “structural hermeneutics,” the cornerstone of the strong program in cultural sociology (Alexander and Smith 2003). The goal is to make the

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internal structures of meaning visible, a sort of “social psychoanalysis” that brings the social unconscious to light (Alexander 2003: 4). I do so through “thick description” (Geertz 1973) that “brackets out” culture structures from other social structures (Alexander and Smith 2003: 13–14). In other words, I grant relative analytical autonomy to culture through a reconstruction of pure cultural text. The culture structures I illuminate in this chapter take the form of narratives, with a clear beginning, middle, and end (Aristotle 2006). I operate under the premise that this narrative structure “allows for the construction of collective identities, expectations, and solidarities” (Alexander and Jacobs 1998: 31). To understand the plot unfolding in the battle over sanctuary cities, I first situate San Francisco as a long-term righteous actor, and then, move on to thick description of the narratives.

The Context of San Francisco as a Long-Term Righteous Actor San Francisco is home to many immigrants, with 115,000 noncitizens; about 44,000 are unauthorized.8 The city’s first move in offering sanctuary to unauthorized immigrants came in December, 1985, with a resolution affirming “the City and County of San Francisco be declared a City and County of Refuge for Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugees” (No. 1087-85, cited in Bau 1994). In 1989, the city’s Board of Supervisors moved beyond the largely symbolic resolution and passed a binding ordinance (No. 375-89) applying to all immigrants that prohibited cooperation with the INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) and the use of city funds or resources for federal immigration law enforcement. In the midst of a climate of “anti-immigrant” sentiment in California in the 1990s (Jacobson 2008), the ordinance was amended to revoke sanctuary protection for adults accused of a felony; juveniles remained protected until 2009. The Due Process for All ordinance of 2013 (No. 204-13) mandated that individuals eligible for release from the custody of law enforcement could not be held on a civil immigration detainer for deportation unless they were convicted felons being charged with a violent felony. The death of Kate Steinle in 2015 significantly changed the climate of the city with regard to its sanctuary laws. Jose Ines Garcia Zarate,9 an unauthorized immigrant previously deported five times, admitted to

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killing Steinle by accident, and was acquitted of all charges related to the murder in late 2017. He had been facing a sixth deportation in 2015, and was in San Francisco’s custody for an outstanding drug charge, but was released when the prosecutor dropped the charge, without ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) being informed.10 In response to increasing pressure, the city’s sanctuary policy was modified in compromise to allow the sheriff to notify ICE in certain circumstances, for example, if the individual is facing a violent or serious felony charge and has previously committed certain felonies (Ordinance No. 96-16). The city’s sanctuary law as it stands now dictates that city employees may not use city resources to: cooperate with ICE on civil immigration law violations; ask about immigration status on applications for city benefits or services or limit such services; offer information to ICE about the release of those in custody except for the felony cases mentioned above; or hold someone on a civil immigration detainer if they are otherwise eligible for release.11 The election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has further strained San Francisco’s status as a sanctuary city. The city is among the 171 jurisdictions with official sanctuary policies.12 Just five days after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order that sought to withhold federal funding from such jurisdictions. He was making good on a campaign promise to crack down on sanctuary cities. Specifically mentioning Kate Steinle as among “the victims of the ObamaClinton open borders policies,” Trump vowed, “We will end the Sanctuary Cities that have resulted in so many needless deaths.”13 San Francisco immediately responded with a lawsuit, filed on January 31, 2017. At stake was nearly $2 billion in federal funding.14 Several months later, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued an injunction against implementation of the order. The Trump administration pushed back repeatedly, but finally, on August 1, 2018, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco declared the executive order unconstitutional, with the majority opinion stating that the “power of the purse” belongs to Congress and that the order “violates the constitutional principle of the separation of powers.”15 Tenaciously, Attorney General Jeff Sessions responded by encouraging Department of Justice lawyers to resist and push back against the “unconstitutional” nationwide injunctions entered against Trump’s executive orders.16 For now, as of early 2019, San Francisco’s funding may be safe, but the battle with the Trump administration is not over.

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The Narrative Battle for Safety, Prosperity, and the Rule of Law That the interaction between sanctuary cities and the Trump administration is a battle has been trumpeted across national headlines. On the day Executive Order No. 13768 promising to defund sanctuary cities was issued, the Washington Post headlined, “Trump’s intervention into policing, voting and immigration sets up showdown with America’s largest cities.”17 A year later, the newspaper still referred to the “escalating battle” between the Justice Department and sanctuary jurisdictions.18 And the battlers themselves use the language of war. Shortly after issuing the executive order on defunding sanctuary jurisdictions, President Trump told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly: “I don’t want to defund anybody. I want to give them the money they need to properly operate as a city or a state. If they’re going to have sanctuary cities, we may have to do that. Certainly that would be a weapon.”19 In his praise for the city’s lawsuit filed against the order, San Francisco’s mayor declared, “Today, we fight back.”20 In what I call the “narrative battle” over sanctuary playing out in the civil spheres of cities all over the country, San Francisco has been leading the charge, escalating the fight with its lawsuit filed against Trump’s executive order. In short, the title of the executive order belies its purpose, “Enhancing Public Safety of the Interior of the United States”; it also alleges that sanctuary jurisdictions have “caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic.”21 The underlying narrative begins with “removable aliens” who present a “significant threat” to the United States and have been “released into communities across the country,” setting up the American people as the victims. It moves on to chastise the places that “willfully violate Federal law” to shield such “aliens,” ending with a heroic protagonist—the executive branch—that will “employ all lawful means to enforce the immigration laws of the United States.” In contrast, San Francisco’s narrative highlights a beginning in which all residents, including unauthorized immigrants, are equal and worthy of protection, “always” a sanctuary. The middle is a defense of “what’s right” and the city’s “values,” congruent with American values. It is about maintaining not only a “safe” city but also a “prosperous” one. In the end, the city is the hero and protector, empowered by various resolutions, such as the one asserting its leadership in “eliminating the good vs. bad immigrant narrative” (No. 17-00002).

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In the following sections, I outline the discursive contours of these narratives, demonstrating how city of San Francisco is a righteous actor with regard to its unauthorized immigrant population, stepping outside of the dominant mainstream narrative regarding the “illegality” of this group. I approach the narratives through the disaggregation of three themes, which, while analytically separable, overlap considerably in reality. First, I elaborate the issue of public safety, manifesting primarily as protection from “aliens” on the side of the Trump administration and as equal protection from crime for all residents within the city of San Francisco’s story. I then look at the ways the idea of prosperity or economic success is implied or explicitly invoked. Finally, I examine the role of a quintessential civil value, the rule of law, as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Public Safety A confluence of events in mid-2015 marked the beginning of San Francisco’s latest battle to defend its status as a sanctuary city. The first was then-presidential hopeful Donald Trump’s remarks announcing his candidacy on June 16, 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they are bringing those problems to us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”22 These remarks brought immigration to the forefront of the election campaign. Two weeks later, the death of Kate Steinle at the hand of an unauthorized immigrant catapulted San Francisco’s sanctuary policy into the national spotlight, creating controversy even among its supporters.23 Within days, “Kate’s Law,”24 a part of what would later be dubbed the “Donald Trump Act,”25 sought to establish harsh jail sentences for those re-entering the United States after either an aggravated felony conviction or twice re-entering the country illegally. These three events unfolding over the course of the summer put the issue of public safety in sanctuary cities front and center of immigration debates taking place in the national, state, and city levels of the U.S. civil sphere. Early on in this battle, in its October 2015 resolution (No. 38915) rejecting the Priority Enforcement Program, an Obama administration immigration law enforcement mandate, San Francisco made clear its stance on then-candidate Trump’s immigration views in its very first clause:

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WHEREAS, There has recently been a vicious flare of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States, with political figures such as Donald Trump demonizing Latino immigrants and using racist and xenophobic rhetoric, which has spurred hate crimes based on perceived immigration status;

It then goes on to affirm, “San Francisco County is a diverse and immigrant-rich county…therefore our city strives to create an inclusive environment which integrates and respects all of its residents equally,” implicitly articulating a right to equal protection against the increase in “hate crimes based on perceived immigration status.” The resolution explicitly states how such enforcement programs “seriously harm public safety.” It also cites a study entitled “Insecure Communities,”26 which found that the unauthorized immigrant crime victims they surveyed were less likely to contact police due to fears about immigration status. The idea that not only immigrants but all city residents are safer when crimes are reported is a thread that runs through the city’s self-image. The fact that sanctuary jurisdictions appear to have less crime is also cited by city officials, for example, referring to a 2017 report published by the Center for American Progress (Wong 2017).27 As City Attorney Dennis Herrera elaborates: This executive order also doesn’t make sense. It won’t improve public safety. It will do the opposite. While the president plays to people’s fears by demonizing immigrants, the evidence is clear: not only are immigrants less likely to commit crimes, sanctuary jurisdictions also have lower crime rates. That’s because victims and witnesses are willing to come forward and report crimes to police. That gets criminals off the streets and makes everyone safer.28

In short, San Francisco’s battle narrative begins with the assumption that “everyone” deserves equal protection, imbuing them with a sort of local citizenship (Villazor 2010). In a different vein, Trump’s executive order frames the battle for public safety (and national security) as a fight against “aliens” that present a significant threat to national security and public safety.”29 The opening of the narrative is one in which a large but undetermined number of immigrants (“many”) are dangerous. The tasks at hand include “the faithful execution of the immigration laws of the United States” and to “[s]upport victims, and the families of victims, of crimes committed by removable aliens.” The narrative unfolds into a scenario in which “aliens”

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are shielded from removal by sanctuary jurisdictions, thus causing “immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic.” The order asserts that “many” of the “removable aliens” are criminals, but as Trumpian rhetoric demonstrates, the line denoting criminal or dangerous immigrants is often blurred, for example, the “good people” he assumes are among the Mexican “rapists” and those “bringing drugs” and “bringing crime.” Unlike the City of San Francisco, which extends rights to all its residents, Trump’s order targets those who “have no right to be in the United States.” In a campaign speech introducing a 10-point plan for reforming immigration, “one of the greatest challenges facing our country today,” Trump grants rights instead to “a sovereign nation” that should choose immigrants that will “thrive and flourish here.”30 He goes on to immediately contrast such individuals with the “illegal” immigrants who have killed “incredible Americans” such as Kate Steinle. Immediately following, he refers to the entire unauthorized population in the country, eschewing any claims they might be entitled to: “The truth is, the central issue is not the needs of the 11 million illegal immigrants – or however many there may be. That has never been the central issue. It will never be the central issue.” Such language shifting lumps murderers in with the broader unauthorized population, making fuzzy any distinction for his audience. In contrast, in the context of San Francisco, the distinction between criminal and non-criminal immigrants is constantly being made. For instance, after the shooting of Kate Steinle, the alleged perpetrator is singled out: “San Francisco supervisors David Campos and John Avalos were among the elected officials who attended the rally, where many people spoke about the importance of separating the crime from immigration and the behavior of the accused criminal from the behavior of all immigrants.”31 Further, the city’s narrative posits San Francisco as a protector of all unauthorized immigrants. For example, the “Resolution to encourage the City and County of San Francisco to be a leader in eliminating the good vs. bad immigrant narrative,” which suggests elimination of the term “Dreamer” to identify those immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children,32 proclaims, “We must fight for all 11 million [unauthorized immigrants].”33 This type of narrative is typical not only of the city’s regulative institutions such as its laws, but also its communicative institutions such as media and public polling. For example, a poll taken in early 2017 reveals that 79 percent of San Franciscans approved of the sanctuary law.34

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Finally, an important aspect of the battle over public safety is the question of who exactly has the duty to protect the public from criminal immigrants. For the administration, the Department of Homeland Security and ICE are the heroes, as Trump points out in an address to law enforcement officials: “You’re saving American lives every day.”35 The city of San Francisco sees itself as the savior. In response to what he called Trump’s “misguided” executive order that actually “makes our cities less safe,” then-Mayor Edwin M. Lee asserts, “We need strong cities to continue to push our nation forward. San Francisco will not standby as the safety of our residents and cities, and the values we stand for are compromised.” Cities like San Francisco will “push our nation forward” through standing by its value of protecting “our residents”; in this passage, “our” also represents the broader national community. Even the school board joins in the role of protector: “No student should show up at school and have to worry about their safety. They should know their school district has their back.”36 While it is the job of cities to ensure everyone’s public safety, it is the responsibility of the federal government to enforce immigration law. And as the city attorney explains, the city already cooperates with federal authorities in this regard: The president likes to spread the falsehood that sanctuary jurisdictions harbor criminals. Not true. The federal government knows everyone in San Francisco’s jails. We send them their fingerprints. If the federal government thinks someone is dangerous, all they need to do is get a criminal warrant or a court order.37

In other words, city already offers protection from “dangerous” actors. If the federal government follows the rules and obtains a warrant or court order, justifying an immigrant’s criminal status, the city will surrender them. In this sense, the city is the ultimate and righteous guardian of public safety by holding the federal government to a high standard of accountability based on the rule of law, which, as I demonstrate below, is paramount in the battle over sanctuary. Prosperity The second main theme running through the narrative battle over sanctuary cities concerns prosperity. Both sides consider economic success important, and jobs stand out as the means to achieve a better quality

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of life. Indeed, from Trump’s side, jobs are in the same breath as life itself: “Together, we can save American lives, American jobs, and American futures.”38 In his State of the City address delivered one day after Trump’s January 2017 executive order, then-Mayor Ed Lee places the city’s core values of equality and diversity straight alongside economic success: People say we live in our own world here in California and San Francisco. This, I have to say, is just an “Alternative Fact.” Let me tell you about our America, our City. In our America, people are equal, no matter race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. In our America, we embrace our differences and understand they make us stronger and more vibrant. We are a sanctuary city, now, tomorrow, forever. […] The late historian and San Francisco native Kevin Starr said that our state is the prism through which America sees its future. The Republicans talk about “American Carnage.” I say, come see San Francisco, come experience our celebration of diversity and our economic success.39

So the narrative of San Francisco as a space of equality, inclusiveness, and diversity begins, with a definition of how “our” America looks, notwithstanding other imaginings of California as somehow separated from the rest of the country. The mayor also talks about “fighting back,” presumably against the executive order, and perhaps more broadly against Trump’s vision for the country. The future of the country figures prominently in the discourse of each side, even as they diverge so drastically. As with countless other statements, the assertion about San Francisco’s status as a sanctuary is clearly articulated along a temporal continuum, “now, tomorrow, forever.” Such assertions accompany virtually all mayoral statements on immigration, even if not directly related to sanctuary. Hardworking immigrants are an important part of San Francisco’s selfnarrative. If the narrative begins with equality and inclusivity, with the city “forever” a sanctuary, then the middle is a discursive space in which immigrants then succeed and the city prospers; thus, they deserve equal protection. As the city’s vision, outlined in the Strategy and Performance page of the mayor’s website, headlines, it is “A safe, vibrant and inclusive City of shared prosperity.”40 And as is typical with positive immigrant

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narratives in the United States, the struggle for the American dream figures prominently (Hoenig 2001), as does “civic-economic participation,” a culture structure that signifies how immigrants’ economic contributions fulfill their civic duty and justify belonging (Jaworsky 2016). Even though the City Attorney speaks mainly about the rule of law and the Constitution, as I will elaborate in the following section, he also repeatedly refers to hardworking immigrants and how they have built families, business, and homes in their own battle for the American dream: We are a nation of immigrants…These folks are hard-working and are fighting for the American dream. They’ve built families and lives here. These are our neighbors, our co-workers, our classmates. Trump’s broad effort to target, persecute, and divest immigrants and the cities that stand by them is un-American and cruel.41

He invokes the well-sedimented idea that the United States is (and should be) a “nation of immigrants” (Kotowski 2013) and chastises Trump’s actions as “un-American.” By using the word “our” three times in a row, he reinforces that immigrants are part of the city’s social fabric, standing equally as neighbors, co-workers, and classmates. And as such, as the end of the narrative goes, they are worth protecting and fighting for. For Trump, “There can be no prosperity without law and order,” as highlighted already in his presidential campaign.42 The January 2017 executive order to defund sanctuary jurisdictions places abuse of the public coffers (“any program related to receipt of public benefits”) alongside a criminally based laundry list of offenses that would make an “alien” removable and thus, a “risk to public safety or national security.”43 And as he would assert as president, the entitlement to such wealth is something natural, a claim based on a hard-won legacy: “the birth right of prosperity that our ancestors won for us with their sweat, with their sweat, with their blood, with their work, with their muscle, with their brain. They won it for us and we’re gonna make it bigger and better and stronger than it ever was before.”44 Trump is striking a note that resonates for the public; as Alexander (2006: 63) points out, democratic law is seen by contemporary Americans as the result of the voluntary struggles of the “founding fathers” and guaranteed by documents like the Constitution. As with San Francisco’s narrative, there is a temporal continuum in which the future envisioned by the nation’s founders is highlighted.

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But unlike San Francisco’s vision of inclusivity documented above, for Trump, the start of the narrative is a zero-sum game: when immigrants win, U.S. Americans lose. In the following excerpt from the Arizona campaign speech outlining his immigration goals, then-candidate Trump explains: On top of that, illegal immigration costs our country more than $113 billion a year. For the money we are going to spend on illegal immigration over the next ten years, we could provide one million at-risk students with a school voucher. While there are many illegal immigrants in our country who are good people, this doesn’t change the fact that most illegal immigrants are lowerskilled workers with less education who compete directly against vulnerable American workers, and that these illegal workers draw much more out from the system than they will ever pay in.45

The sensational statistic regarding the $113 billion in annual costs of “illegal immigration” is truly impressive (even if unsupported by reliable data). One million “at-risk” children are pitted against this abstract phenomenon. The clarification of the illegality scenario is sobering: although some are “good people,” the majority of the unauthorized “compete directly against vulnerable American workers,” taking much more than they contribute. In both instances, something “illegal” threatens those who are vulnerable, elsewhere in the speech referred to as “working people,” “decent and patriotic citizens from all backgrounds” concerned over the “record pace of immigration and its impact on their jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills, and living conditions.” Coexistence is impossible in such a “competition.” And as already discussed in the prior section, the line between more and less desirable types of immigrants is blurred and they are lumped together: “Our enforcement priorities will include removing criminals, gang members, security threats, visa overstays, public charges – that is, those relying on public welfare or straining the safety net, along with millions of recent illegal arrivals and overstays who’ve come here under the current Administration” (emphasis mine). In the midst of this narrative of the “illegal” stand the nation’s sanctuary cities. An e-mail sent from Trump to his supporters after the December 2017 acquittal of Jose Ines Garcia Zarate in the killing of Kate Steinle opens with the declaration: “Sanctuary cities like San Francisco, Chicago, and Seattle have spent decades breaking our country’s immigration laws --

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and getting away with it.”46 Calling for signatures on a petition to “Defund Sanctuary Cities,” it asks, “Where is the sanctuary for the Americans (sic in original) citizens who haven’t seen their wages rise in years because of massive illegal immigration?” Again, the zero-sum game has surfaced, and “American citizens” are the losers. In promises that stretch all the way from the presidential campaign to the present, the Trump administration will be the hero that ensures prosperity. Point 9 of the 10-point plan candidate Trump had espoused vows to restore economic equilibrium: “We will turn off the jobs and benefits magnet…[and] select immigrants based on their likelihood of success in U.S. society, and their ability to be financially self-sufficient. We need a system that serves our needs – remember, it’s America First.”47 One of the remedies includes the “Buy American and Hire American” executive order (No. 13788), which states: “In order to create higher wages and employment rates for workers in the United States, and to protect their economic interests, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to rigorously enforce and administer the laws governing entry into the United States of workers from abroad.”48 As with public safety, the narrative ends with the idea of a “protector,” in this case, the executive branch of the government. Rule of Law The final, and far from least, theme running through the battle narratives is about the sacred democratic value of the rule of law, as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The law in the United States helps the nation define its very identity: “That American identity and law are conflated is indisputable. But American ideology incorporates a particular vision of law, which is law as the rule of law, and law as the guarantor of democracy, equality, and freedom” (Dudziak and Volpp 2006: 4). As I have shown elsewhere (Jaworsky 2016), both immigration control and immigrant rights organizations in the United States call upon the rule of law to justify their positions. For them, law, “American values,” and morality are inextricably intertwined: the idea of “the law” is indeed a powerful “ideological construct dividing good from evil in the contemporary United States” (Nevins 2002: 100; see also Alexander 2006: 171). The parties waging war in the battle over sanctuary cities engage in discourse that reveals similar underpinnings. The City of San Francisco also calls into its arsenal the binary discourse of civil society (Alexander and Smith 1993) in their depiction of the other side as undemocratic and un-American.

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Donald Trump’s immigration narrative provides San Francisco with an enormous target upon which to fire the guns of democracy and the rule of law. Beginning with his presidential campaign speeches, Trump has invoked law and legality on a regular basis. In his acceptance speech for the nomination as the Republican candidate, he boldly labels himself in contrast to then-President Obama: In this race for the White House, I am the Law And Order candidate. The irresponsible rhetoric of our President, who has used the pulpit of the presidency to divide us by race and color, has made America a more dangerous environment for everyone. We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities. I have been honored to receive the endorsement of America’s Border Patrol Agents, and will work directly with them to protect the integrity of our lawful immigration system.49

As the “Law And Order candidate,” he will protect “everyone” from a “dangerous environment.” By stating that “our” system of immigration is “lawful” and has “integrity,” he establishes a baseline for the 10-point immigration plan he would announce the following month and his “Contract with the American Voter,” a 100-day action plan released in October 2016. The immigration plan promises to counter the “Constitutional Crisis unlike almost anything we have ever seen before” triggered by Hillary Clinton’s immigration proposals for the country.50 Of the promised “Five actions to restore security and the constitutional rule of law” in the 100day action plan, four relate to immigration, including a pledge to “cancel all funding to sanctuary cities.”51 And in his eventual characterizations of making good on campaign promises, the rule of law and its relationship to sanctuary cities re-emerges. At 2017 Ohio rally, he opens his narrative on immigration by referring to certain immigrants as “these animals,” setting the stage for a heroic rescue: “The predators and criminal aliens who poison our communities with drugs and prey on innocent young people, these beautiful, beautiful, innocent young people will, will find no safe haven anywhere in our country.”52 Again, in the midst of the narrative, the culprit is the sanctuary city: “And that is why my administration is launching a nationwide crackdown on sanctuary cities. American cities should be sanctuaries for law-abiding Americans, for people that look up to the law, for people that respect the law, not for criminals and gang

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members that we want the hell out of our country.” “Americans” are people that look up to and respect the law, and moreover, follow laws. Just two days later, in a speech made to the “special Americans” that are law enforcement officials, the resolution is even clearer: Failure to enforce our immigration laws had predictable results: drugs, gangs and violence. But that’s all changing now. Under the Trump administration, America is once more a nation of laws and once again a nation that stands up for our law enforcement officers.53

The narrative becomes whole: dangerous immigrants threaten the American people, sanctuary cities flout the rule of law by protecting them and the Trump administration “liberates”54 the nation’s town and cities from the danger, restoring safety and the rule of law. The City of San Francisco has fired back righteously every step of the way. Immediately after the U.S. presidential election, the city’s “Resolution responding to the election of Donald Trump and reaffirming San Francisco’s commitment to the values of inclusivity, respect, and dignity” opens with a declaration that the city will remain a sanctuary city. Statements by the mayor and the school system uphold the city values stated in the resolution, and city officials promise that information collected from unauthorized immigrants in the issuance of municipal IDs will not be released.55 When Trump actually enters office, and issues the executive order defunding sanctuary jurisdictions, the city swiftly responds with a lawsuit against it.56 The city attorney sums up the rationale behind the filing: The president’s executive order is not only unconstitutional, it’s unAmerican. That is why we must stand up and oppose it. We are a nation of immigrants and a land of laws. We must be the “guardians of our democracy” that President Obama urged us all to be in his farewell address. This lawsuit is not a step I take lightly. But it is one that is necessary to defend the people of this city, this state and this country from the wild overreach of a president whose words and actions have thus far shown little respect for our Constitution or the rule of law. This country was founded on the principle that the federal government cannot force state and local governments to do its job for it, like carrying out immigration policy. I am defending that bedrock American principle today.57

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Law and democracy naturally follow from one another, as do a “nation of immigrants” and a “land of laws,” and the Constitution and Americanness. The separation of state and federal government is a “bedrock American principle,” another reference to the Constitution. As the plot thickens, San Francisco defends itself over and over as the administration continues to fire back, trying to find legal loopholes to withhold the city’s funding. Federal courts have thus far sided with the city and its attorney, but the administration appears intent on pushing back against the court’s injunctions. In a letter sent to San Francisco and 22 other sanctuary cities in January 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatens the cities, but in an almost pleading manner: “Protecting criminal aliens from federal immigration authorities defies common sense and undermines the rule of law. We have seen too many examples of the threat to public safety represented by jurisdictions that actively thwart the federal government’s immigration enforcement—enough is enough.”58 The words are impatient, almost desperate. The city attorney’s response is, in contrast, crisp and to the point: “San Francisco is proud to be a sanctuary city. We’re also in full compliance with federal immigration law. What the law requires is narrow, and San Francisco follows the law. It’s that simple.”59 Similarly, the city attorney’s reaction to the district court ruling in November 2017 that permanently prohibited Trump’s executive order from being enforced, is just as succinct: “This is a victory for the American people and the rule of law. This executive order was unconstitutional before the ink on it was even dry.”60 In terms of the motives in the binary discourse of civil society (Alexander and Smith 1993), the city comes across as a rational, reasonable, and calm actor, in contrast to the irrational, hysterical, and excitable U.S. Attorney General Sessions. In response to the sustained pressure on sanctuary cities, San Francisco has called upon another binary that could arguably be included in Alexander and Smith’s (1993) discourse of civil society: protector vs. bully. The city protects and serves all its residents equally, regardless of legal status, as then-Acting Mayor London Breed proclaims in response to threats of ICE raids: “San Francisco is a safer, stronger and healthier place because all residents can access the critical public services they need, regardless of their immigration status. We will never turn our back on those policies, and we will never abandon our San Francisco values of inclusiveness and compassion.”61 Meanwhile, Trump is “bully-in-chief,” as state Assembly

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member David Chiu puts it.62 In the saga of the sanctuary city battle narrated by the city attorney’s office, President Trump is constantly referred to as a bully, pitting him against a city that seeks to protect: With a stroke of his pen, President Trump is trying to seize the spending power that our Constitution entrusts to Congress. Then he’s using it as a weapon to illegally bully cities and counties across this country, potentially threatening funding for things like meals and medical care for seniors and low-income families. These entitlement programs are not the president’s to take away from those in need, and San Francisco is not one to back down from a bully.63

The rule of law and the Constitution stand on the side of the city, and the Trump administration is made “un-American”: Again, this president is trying to bully local governments into doing the federal government’s bidding on immigration enforcement. It’s unconstitutional, and it flies in the face of the principle of dual sovereignty that our nation was founded on. Once again, this administration is saying one thing in public and something else when they think people aren’t watching. Saying you’re playing by the rules while you secretly try to change them is simply un-American, and it’s not going to work.64

The discourse of civil society is again referenced, as the city attorney makes sacred the value of transparent and open relations, and profanes the secretive. In the end, the City of San Francisco is the one “playing by the rules,” complying with the letter of the law. As then-Mayor Lee declares when commenting on the court’s preliminary injunction barring the de-funding of sanctuary cities: “San Francisco’s Sanctuary City laws are in compliance with federal law. If the federal government believes there is a need to detain a serious criminal they can obtain a criminal warrant, which we will honor, as we always have.”65 The city is willing to punish the profane, but only in accordance with the sacred value of the rule of law.

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Conclusion: The Call for Righteousness in the U.S. Civil Sphere The narrative battle over San Francisco’s sanctuary city status plays out in three thematic arenas: public safety, prosperity, and rule of law. As I have noted above, the themes are only analytically separable. For example, in a press conference announcing the city’s lawsuit against Trump’s executive order, the city attorney first focuses on its lack of constitutionality and reminds the audience that the United States is a “land of laws.” But in the next breath, he talks about public safety and the economy: “We are all safer when everyone, including undocumented immigrants, feel safe reporting crimes. We are all healthier when every resident has access to public health programs. We are all smarter and economically stronger when every child attends school.”66 The message of inclusivity is never far away from the plot of the narrative. Likewise, President Trump interweaves the three themes in his 10-point immigration plan, which calls for protecting public safety with a border wall, canceling Obama’s “unconstitutional” executive orders on immigration and instead enforcing the law and helping prosperity by turning off the “jobs and benefit magnet.”67 In the end, both sides are seeking to be the protector of the public, but what that public is comprised of is completely different: all San Francisco residents regardless of legal status vs. “Americans.” As Bauder (2016: 3) argues, San Francisco is an “important milestone” in the history of sanctuary cities in the United States. Like the “Righteous Among the Nations,” the city stands in contrast to prevailing indifference and even hostility. The U.S. public is, at best, ambivalent toward immigrants in general, valuing their contributions to society at the same time that they would prefer lower levels of immigration and higher levels of border security. And when it comes to unauthorized immigrants, a majority “personally worry about illegal immigration” either “a great deal” or a “fair amount.”68 Media portrayals of immigrants help affirm such sentiments, often depicting them as dangerous and racialized others (Chavez 2013; Suro 2008). Beyond the communicative institutions of the mainstream of the U.S. civil sphere, the regulative institutions, such as immigration policy, reflect the growing presence of anti-immigrant views (Pierce et al. 2018). Battles over border walls, sanctuary jurisdictions, and refugees threaten solidarity and inclusiveness, testing the utopian aspirations of the civil sphere.

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San Francisco, as a righteous actor in the U.S. civil sphere, is far from utopian, of course, reflecting the fact that civil society is always a project, a “restless aspiration that lies deep in the soul of democratic life” (Alexander 2006: 551). For example, the prosperity that the city attributes to immigrants may not actually benefit them; the rise in living costs increasingly prices low-wage workers out of the city.69 As Mancina describes, “Needless to say, sanctuary city in San Francisco is a forever-unfinished governmental project…The utopian vision of a sanctuary city where all residents regardless of immigration status trust the government without fear of deportation and who regularly access public services when they need them will not be fully achieved anytime soon” (2016: 428–429). But as he importantly acknowledges, it serves as “a beacon or guiding principle aimed at a moving target,” “important” for the vision of city officials and activists (ibid.). Such a sentiment also reflects the city’s own articulations of its identity. At a unity gathering following the election of Donald Trump as president, then-Mayor Lee, standing alongside members of the Board of Supervisors, the San Francisco Police Department and community leaders called for San Francisco to be a “beacon” for the rest of the country, offering the battle cry, “We will always be San Francisco.”

Notes 1. Smith, Christie. 2018. “San Francisco Won’t Be Deterred From Protecting Sanctuary City Policies: Mayor.” NBC-4, January 19. Retrieved September 27, 2018 (https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california/SanFrancisco-Wont-Be-Deterred-From-Protecting-Sanctuary-City-PoliciesMayor-470042533.html). 2. I am referring here to the “Righteous Among the Nations,” the nonJewish individuals and institutions honored for their protection and rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, who acted in the face of indifference and hostility. I posit that the City of San Francisco represents such a “righteous” actor through its sanctuary policy. See “Righteous Among the Nations.” n.d. Yad Vashem. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https:// www.yadvashem.org/righteous/about-the-righteous.html). 3. See City and County of San Francisco. n.d. “Sanctuary City Ordinance.” Retrieved September 27, 2018 (http://sfgov.org/oceia/sanctuary-cityordinance-0%20). 4. The Due Process ordinance now prohibits local law enforcement from responding to immigration detainer requests unless the individual has

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been convicted of serious, violent, or multiple felonies within a certain period and there is probable cause that the person has committed another felony. Even in such cases, though, the sheriff must consider factors like community ties or rehabilitation (Free SF Coalition. n.d. “A Quick Guide: Upholding Due Process for All.” Retrieved September 27, 2018 [https://freesf.squarespace.com/s/20160712-Upholding-DueProcess-Factsheet-EN.pdf]). See City and County of San Francisco. n.d. “Sanctuary City Ordinance.” Retrieved September 27, 2018 (http://sfgov.org/oceia/sanctuary-cityordinance-0%20), emphasis mine. See U.S. Department of Justice. 2018. “Justice Department Demands Documents and Threatens to Subpoena 23 Jurisdictions as Part of 8 U.S.C. 1373 Compliance Review.” Retrieved September 27, 2018 (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-demandsdocuments-and-threatens-subpoena-23-jurisdictions-part-8-usc-1373). Smith, Christie. 2018. “San Francisco Won’t Be Deterred From Protecting Sanctuary City Policies: Mayor.” NBC-4, January 19. Retrieved September 27, 2018 (https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california/SanFrancisco-Wont-Be-Deterred-From-Protecting-Sanctuary-City-PoliciesMayor-470042533.html). Sabatini, Joshua. 2017. “Supes Add $1.5 M for Immigration Defense Amid Trump Deportation Fears.” San Francisco Examiner, January 25. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (http://www.sfexaminer.com/supes-add1-5m-immigration-defense-amid-trump-deportation-fears). Also known by the alias Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez. Mark, Michelle. 2017. “Kate Steinle’s Death at the Hands of a Mexican National Became a Flashpoint in the Immigration Debate— Here’s the Story Behind Her Killing.” Business Insider, December 1. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.businessinsider.com/whois-kate-steinle-murder-immigration-2017-12). See City and County of San Francisco. n.d. “Sanctuary City Ordinance.” Retrieved September 27, 2018 (http://sfgov.org/oceia/sanctuary-cityordinance-0%20). Of such jurisdictions, 37 are cities, 4 are states, and the remainder are counties (“Sanctuary Cities: What and Where Are They?” 2017. Dopplr The Legal Radar, April 27. Retrieved October 1, 2018 [https:// www.dopplr.com/sanctuary-city-list/]). Two years later, as this chapter goes to print, I believe there may be more, but I was not able to locate a non-ideologically tinted listing. For example, the immigration control group, Center for Immigration Studies, which its detractors label “anti-immigrant,” reports higher numbers of sanctuary jurisdictions (see Griffith, Bryan and Jessica M. Vaughn, 2019, “Map: Sanctuary Cities, Counties, and States.” Center for Immigration Studies,

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17.

18.

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April 16, Retrieved December 24, 2019 [https://cis.org/Map-SanctuaryCities-Counties-and-States]). Politico Staff. 2016. “Full Text: Donald Trump Immigration Speech in Arizona.” Politico, August 31. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https:// www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-immigration-addresstranscript-227614). According to the city attorney’s website, “San Francisco has about $2 billion at stake, including $1.2 billion in annual operating funds, or about 13 percent of San Francisco’s budget; and another $800 million in multi-year federal grants that are not part of the annual operating budget and used primarily for large infrastructure projects, like bridges, roads and public transportation.” The funds go toward “core services” for its “most vulnerable” residents, such as Medicare and public safety programs (“Herrera Moves to Have Trump’s Sanctuary Executive Order Ruled Unconstitutional.” 2017. City Attorney of San Francisco, August 30. Retrieved September 28, 2018 [https://www.sfcityattorney.org/2017/08/30/herrera-movestrumps-sanctuary-executive-order-ruled-unconstitutional/]). United States District Court. 2018 “San Francisco v. Trump,” August 1. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/ opinions/2018/08/01/17-17478.pdf). “Attorney General Sessions Delivers Remarks Announcing New Memo on Nationwide Injunctions.” 2018. The United States Department of Justice, September 13. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.justice.gov/ opa/speech/attorney-general-sessions-delivers-remarks-announcing-newmemo-nationwide-injunctions). Zezima, Katie, Wesley Lowery, and Jose A. DelReal. 2017. “Trump’s Intervention into Policing, Voting and Immigration Sets Up Showdown with America’s Largest Cities.” Washington Post, January 25. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.washingtonpost.com/ politics/trumps-intervention-into-policing-voting-and-immigration-setsup-showdown-with-americas-largest-cities/2017/01/25/128b40aee31b-11e6-a547-5fb9411d332c_story.html?utm_term=.74f392514f9a). Zapotosky, Matt. 2018. “Justice Department Threatens to Subpoena Records in Escalating Battle with ‘Sanctuary’ Jurisdictions.” Washington Post, January 24. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https:// www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-departmentthreatens-to-subpoena-records-in-escalating-battle-with-sanctuaryjurisdictions/2018/01/24/984d0fee-0113-11e8-bb03-722769454f82_ story.html?utm_term=.e8a5391d206f). Mallin, Alexander, and Linnette Rodriguez. 2017. “Trump Threatens Defunding Sanctuary States as ‘Weapon.’” ABC News, February 5. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://abcnews.go.com/

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Politics/trump-threatens-defunding-sanctuary-states-weapon/story?id= 45286642). Sabatini, Joshua. 2017. “SF Sues Trump Over Sanctuary City Executive Order.” San Francisco Examiner, January 31. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-sues-trump-sanctuary-cityexecutive-order/). “Executive Order: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.” 2017. The White House, January 25. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executiveorder-enhancing-public-safety-interior-united-states/). “Trump: Mexico Not Sending Us Their Best; Criminals, Drug Dealers And Rapists Are Crossing Border.” 2015. Real Clear Politics, June 16. Retrieved September 17, 2018 (http://www.realclearpolitics. com/video/2015/06/16/trump_mexico_not_sending_us_their_best_ criminals_drug_dealers_and_rapists_are_crossing_border.html). Right after the Steinle case, then-Mayor Ed Lee asked the sheriff to rescind his department policy that limited communication with ICE. Then-Sheriff Mirkarimi vigorously defended his position, saying, “The mayor has got to quit playing into the hands of Donald Trump” (Owen Lamb, Joshua. 2015. “Update: SF Mayor Calls for End to Sheriff’s Policy That Bars Communication with ICE.” San Francisco Examiner, July 14. Retrieved October 3, 2018 [http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-mayorcalls-for-end-to-sheriffs-policy-that-bars-communication-with-ice/]). The Board of Supervisors was split, voting 6-5 against a resolution supporting the mayor’s position (Sabatini, Joshua. 2015. “Board of Supervisors Stands Behind Sanctuary City Policy.” San Francisco Examiner, October 20. Retrieved October 3, 2018 [http://www.sfexaminer.com/board-ofsupervisors-stands-behind-sanctuary-city-policy/]). “Sen. Cruz and Rep. Salmon Introduce “Kate’s Law,” the Establishing Mandatory Minimums for Illegal Reentry Act.” 2015. Ted Cruz.com, July 21. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.cruz.senate.gov/ ?p=press_release&id=2395). The “Enforce the Law for Sanctuary Cities Act,” which would have defunded sanctuary cities, eventually passed the House of Representatives but failed in the Senate. Carney, Jordain. 2015. “Reid Derides Sanctuary Cities Bill as the ‘Donald Trump Act.’” The Hill, October 19. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/257349-reidsanctuary-cities-bill-the-donald-trump-act). Theodore, Nik. 2013. Insecure Communities: Latino Perceptions of Police Involvement in Immigration Enforcement. University of Illinois at Chicago. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://greatcities.uic.edu/wpcontent/…/Insecure_Communities_Report_FINAL.pdf).

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27. “Herrera Asks Court to Block Trump’s Unconstitutional Executive Order Targeting Sanctuary Cities.” 2017. City Attorney of San Francisco, March 8. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.sfcityattorney. org/2017/03/08/herrera-asks-court-block-trumps-unconstitutionalexecutive-order-targeting-sanctuary-cities/). Indeed, there exists evidence that locales with what Martinez et al. (2018) call “limited cooperation policies” do not have higher crime rates, as critics suggest. 28. “Herrera: President’s Motion is Desperate Move That Can’t Save Unconstitutional Order.” 2017. City Attorney of San Francisco, July 12. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.sfcityattorney. org/2017/07/12/herrera-presidents-motion-desperate-move-cant-saveunconstitutional-order/), emphasis mine. 29. “Executive Order: Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States.” 2017. The White House, January 25. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executiveorder-enhancing-public-safety-interior-united-states/), emphasis mine. 30. Politico Staff. 2016. “Full Text: Donald Trump Immigration Speech in Arizona.” Politico, August 31. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https:// www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-immigration-addresstranscript-227614). 31. Bay City News. 2015. “Activists Rally for Immigrant Rights Following National Anti-immigration Sentiments.” San Francisco Examiner, July 14. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (http://www.sfexaminer.com/ activists-rally-for-immigrant-right-following-national-anti-immigrationsentiments/), emphasis mine. 32. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which in some version has been before Congress repeatedly since it was first introduced in 2001, targets unauthorized youth brought to the United States as young children for legalization of status. Those who would qualify have come to be known as “Dreamers,” with the implication that because they have grown up in the United States, they are “American” in every way except legal status. 33. City and Country of San Francisco. 2017. Resolution 17-00002, “Eliminating the Good vs. Bad Immigrant Narrative.” Retrieved September 28, 2018 (http://sfgov.org/oceia/sites/default/files/Documents/IRC% 20Resolution%202017-02_GoodBadNarrative_Certified.pdf), emphasis mine. 34. The Takeaway. 2017. “San Francisco as a Sanctuary City: A Story of Blame, Tragedy, and Debate.” WNYC, May 1. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.wnyc.org/story/san-francisco-sanctuary-citystory-blame-tragedy-and-debate/). 35. “Remarks by President Trump to Law Enforcement Officials on MS-13.” 2017. The White House, July 28. Retrieved September

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56. See City and County of San Francisco v. Donald J. Trump, et al., U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Case No. 3:17-cv00485, filed January 31, 2017. 57. “Herrera Sues President Trump for Unconstitutional Executive Order Targeting Sanctuary Cities.” 2017. City Attorney of San Francisco, January 31. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.sfcityattorney.org/ 2017/01/31/herrera-sues-president-trump-unconstitutional-executiveorder-targeting-sanctuary-cities/). 58. See U.S. Department of Justice. 2018. “Justice Department Demands Documents and Threatens to Subpoena 23 Jurisdictions As Part of 8 U.S.C. 1373 Compliance Review.” U.S. Department of Justice. Retrieved September 27, 2018 (https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ justice-department-demands-documents-and-threatens-subpoena-23jurisdictions-part-8-usc-1373). 59. “Statement from City Attorney Dennis Herrera on Department of Justice Grant Compliance.” 2018. City Attorney of San Francisco, January 24. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.sfcityattorney.org/2018/ 01/24/statement-city-attorney-dennis-herrera-department-justice-grantcompliance/). 60. “Court Rules Trump’s Sanctuary Executive Order is Unconstitutional.” 2017. City Attorney of San Francisco, November 20. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.sfcityattorney.org/2017/11/20/court-rulestrumps-sanctuary-executive-order-unconstitutional/). 61. “Acting Mayor London Breed on Threat of Federal Immigration Enforcement Action.” 2018. Office of the Mayor, January 22. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://sfmayor.org/article/acting-mayor-london-breedthreat-federal-immigration-enforcement-action). 62. Sabatini, Joshua. 2018. “SF Leaders Stand Up for Sanctuary Policies after Sessions Speech.” San Francisco Examiner, March 7. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (http://www.sfexaminer.com/sf-leaders-stand-sanctuarypolicies-sessions-speech/). 63. “Herrera Asks Court to Block Trump’s Unconstitutional Executive Order Targeting Sanctuary Cities.” 2017. City Attorney of San Francisco, March 8. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.sfcityattorney. org/2017/03/08/herrera-asks-court-block-trumps-unconstitutionalexecutive-order-targeting-sanctuary-cities/). 64. “Herrera Blasts Trump’s Effort to Secretly Change Federal Immigration Law.” 2017. City Attorney of San Francisco, May 23. Retrieved September 28, 2018 (https://www.sfcityattorney.org/2017/05/23/herrera-blaststrumps-effort-secretly-change-federal-immigration-law/). 65. “Mayor Lee on Federal Court Ruling Regarding San Francisco’s Sanctuary City Policy.” 2017. Office of the Mayor, April 25. Retrieved September

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Lamont, Michèle, and Virág Molnár. 2002. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 28: 167–195. Lefebvre, H. 1996. Writing on Cities. Translated by Eleonore Kofman, and Elizabeth Lebas. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Mancina, Peter. 2016. In the Spirit of Sanctuary: Sanctuary-City Policy Advocacy and the Production of Sanctuary-Power in San Francisco, California. PhD thesis, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Martínez, Daniel E., Ricardo D. Martínez-Schuldt, and Guillermo Cantor. 2018. “Providing Sanctuary or Fostering Crime? A Review of the Research on ‘Sanctuary Cities’ and Crime.” Sociology Compass 12(1): e12547. McDede, Holly. 2018. “Hey Area: A History of San Francisco’s Contested Sanctuary City Status.” KALW Public Radio website. Accessed September 23, 2018 (http://www.kalw.org/post/hey-area-history-san-franciscos-contestedsanctuary-city-status#stream/0). Nevins, Joseph. 2002. Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Making of the U.S.-Mexico Boundary. New York: Routledge. Pierce, Sarah, Jessica Bolter, and Andrew Selee. 2018. U.S. Immigration Policy Under Trump: Deep Changes and Lasting Impacts. Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved October 1, 2018 (https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/usimmigration-policy-trump-deep-changes-impacts). Rambo, Eric, and Elaine Chan. 1990. “Text, Structure, and Action in Cultural Sociology: A Commentary on ‘Positive Objectivity’ in Wuthnow and Archer.” Theory and Society 19(5): 635–648. Ridgley, Jennifer Suzanne. 2010. Cities of Refuge: Citizenship, Legality and Exception in U.S. Sanctuary Cities. PhD thesis, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. Suro, Robert. 2008. The Triumph of No: How the Media Influence the Immigration Debate (Brookings Institution). Retrieved October 1, 2018. http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/ 2008/9/25%20immigration%20dionne/0925_immigration_dionne.pdf. Villazor, Rose Cuison. 2010. “‘Sanctuary Cities’ and Local Citizenship.” Fordham Urban Law Journal 37(2): 573–598. Wong, Tom K. 2017. The Effects of Sanctuary Policies on Crime and the Economy (Center for American Progress). Retrieved May 8, 2020. https://www. americanprogress.org/issues/immigration/reports/2017/01/26/297366/ the-effects-of-sanctuary-policies-on-crime-and-the-economy/.

PART III

Conclusion

CHAPTER 10

Conclusion: The Public Performance of Civil Righteousness Jeffrey C. Alexander

Erving Goffman (1972) wrote about the usefulness of civil inattention. Our volume, by contrast, highlights the significance of civil indignation. Such righteous indignation can be powerfully regenerative. It triggers public performances of civil generosity toward stigmatized and vulnerable others who have been left alone, in full view, to fend for themselves. Public performances of civil righteousness are as vital for the sustenance of democratic societies as they are unusual. They call upon human capacities that are rarely deployed, like physical bravery, moral courage, and conspicuous emotional empathy. Yet civil righteousness is more than the exercise of such extraordinary capacity. Individual performances draw strength from an institutional framework that promises protection and facilitates communication, and from a symbolic landscape filled with narrative and codes that promise solidarity, salvation, and hope (Tognato, this volume, Chapter 1). The landscape and institutions are those of the civil sphere.

J. C. Alexander (B) Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4_10

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Being righteous in response to international migration means extending a helping hand to persons whose status and identity fall beyond the pale of what members of a national community define as civil. It’s about extending solidarity beyond where it currently stops, to include others whom core group members would rather exclude, believing them not deserving. Solidarity is central to every human society, but it ranges from the primordial to the civil (Alexander 2014). Primordial bonds mean that we experience solidarity only with kith and kin, with our kind, for members of our family, religion, ethnic, and racial groups, for those who share our sex, gender, or nation. Civil ties are different; more generalized, they aim for a transcendental position that traverses the particularities of our kind. The civil is the social universal. To establish such a civil form of solidarity is the challenge of the civil sphere, an idealized cultural and institutional world that is analytically, and to varying degrees empirically, differentiated from other, noncivil institutional domains and particularistic groups. No matter how ideal its aspirations, every civil sphere must be instantiated in space and time. An empirical civil sphere is attached, not to the world as a whole, but to delimited and particular regions within it. The ancient Greek polis and Renaissance city-state, Platonic ideals of civil democracy, were tightly circumscribed by their own city gates (Jaworsky, this volume, Chapter 9). They were Hellenic, not Persian; Italian, not German. Athens and Florence were not only great civil republics but fighting units making military alliances with some city-states and fighting desperately destructive wars against others. Modern civil spheres have expanded from city to nation, and have global ambitions, but the contradiction of place remains (Alexander 2007). The effectivity of civil solidarity more or less stops at the borders of the nation, which means that even the “modern” civil sphere is very particular indeed. The historical vagaries of time add another layer that filters the civil. Modern civil spheres are not only founded in particular spaces, as nations, but at particular times, by founding groups—settlers, pilgrims, imperialists, revolutionaries—who have particular primordial qualities. Founders become the nuclei for core groups who paint abstract civil qualities in particularistic hues. In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASPs) believed that immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, not to mention from southern and eastern areas of the globe, were not capable of exercising the self-control, rationality, honesty, and cooperativeness required for self-government. In the Soviet Union and the

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People’s Republic of China, revolutionary core groups defined themselves class-wise, as workers’ republics, with people of bourgeois, petitbourgeois, or aristocratic origin polluted as uncivil, sometimes for generations. Founded by Ashkenazi European Jews, modern Israel’s core group polluted Sephardic Jews from North Africa and the Middle East, made non-Jewish Palestinian Israelis second-class citizens, and exercised military domination over non-Jewish Palestinians in Israeli-occupied Gaza and the West Bank. Despite the fact that post-colonial India was founded as a secular state, the religiously Hindu core group has increasingly sought to identify Muslim citizens as anticivil, threatening their status as citizens. Migrants knocking at the door of nationally bounded and primordially restricted civil spheres push all these buttons. They are not seen for who they are, as fellow human beings who have suffered in their native lands, exercising agency, energy, and daring to transport themselves to new territory, often across vast expanses of sea and land. Instead, they are viewed as party crashers, folks who have not been invited and have no right to come in. This may not be the case if the newly arrived possess primordial qualities resembling those of the core group itself (Alexander 1980, 2006; Moran, this volume, Chapter 4). During the 1930s, the United States welcomed some European emigres fleeing from Nazism. If Christian, they needed to be from Northern and Western Europe, and either wealthy themselves or able to provide evidence of financial support. If Jewish, they usually had to be highly cultured or famously accomplished, and able to provide similar assurance of material support. Such primordial isomorphism is rare. Most international migrants are polluted as dangerously anticivil, and strenuously excluded from national civil spheres. Even if they have some formal standing, indeed even if legally they are citizens, they may still expect to be symbolically classified and emotionally rejected as aliens (Jaworsky 2013, 2016, and this volume, Chapter 9). Even if they have been invited to enter by a nation’s most powerful authorities, as Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel did for a million refugees in 2015–2016, the warm welcome may eventually turn cold, and they might be asked, or pushed, to go back to where they came from (Binder and Miji´c; Heins, this volume, Chapters 3 and 2). This is not, however, where the immigrant story necessarily ends. It is possible to translate the suffering of immigrants, and perhaps even their non-core primordialities, into a more civilly compelling frame. To illuminate such processes of civil translation is the singular contribution of this book. Contributors document and analyze how the goalposts of social

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solidarity can be shifted. They describe how social activists, journalists, lawyers, doctors, rabbis, priests—and ordinary men and women of conscience like Sonia Bermúdez (Tognato, this volume, Chapter 6) and the Romeros family (Arteaga-Botello, this volume, Chapter 7)—have worked prodigiously to reframe immigrant pollution as an injury, not only to the outsiders themselves, but to the moral purity of the receiving nation’s own civil sphere. “The persistent attempts to marginalize and dehumanize refugees and migrants or their descendants,” Heins demonstrates (this volume, Chapter 2), “meet with considerable resistance.” Such pushback is triggered by righteous indignation and fueled by civil courage. Responding to the shameful contradictions of actually existing civil societies, brave men and women take it upon themselves to restore the civil sphere’s honor, to shine the light of human solidarity into anticivil darkness, to redeem the “promissory note” evoked by Martin Luther King, the “promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Declaring “we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt,” King insisted on the American civil sphere “honoring this sacred obligation” (King 1963). Civilly righteous individuals act despite physical danger to themselves and despite the calumny directed against them by core groups. Speaking in the utopian register of civil ideals, demanding justice, human rights, friendship, democracy, and universal solidarity, the righteously indignant establish face to face relationships with immigrants and attend to their material needs, creating a microcosm of civil solidarity (Arteaga-Botello; Binder and Miji´c, this volume, Chapters 7 and 3). Such non-conforming, idiosyncratic actions can be magnified by the civil sphere’s communicative media, by journalists and film, television, and documentary makers (Luengo and Msaed, this volume, Chapter 5). Communicative mediation allows contingent and micro-interactions to be narrated in generalized, archetypical frames, which can resonate far beyond the actual scenes of solidary actions. When this happens, civil translation is effected, for these new stories can pry open the restricted, no-go areas of actually existing civil spheres (Stack 2019), deepening their reservoirs of empathy and concern. When righteous actions on the ground are “witnessed” by communicative agents, they can be seen by civil sphere members not on the scene. Righteous action becomes a social performance that reverberates and connects.

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Righteous indignation about the anticivil treatment of other human beings, and the willingness to sacrifice one’s comfort and sometimes even one’s life so that solidarity can be extended to others, may be highly uncommon in a statistical sense. It is, however, something written into the DNA, not only of Western culture, but of civil spheres throughout the world. The prophets of ancient Judaism, whose indignation is recorded and praised in the Torah, railed against the injustice and selfish limitations of their own Jewish societies. Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King issued thundering denunciations of the exclusionary properties of theirs. This cultural DNA provides the background representations that inform social performances of civil righteousness. While such solidarizing actions frequently take place in barren physical settings, these performances do not require elaborate means of symbolic production. What they do require are good scripts, skillful actors, receptive audiences, and witnessing media that project such local performances to a broader civil audience, whether national or global. The first and most important challenge is creating a new, action-and-immigrant-oriented script, one that draws from civil code and narrative to fashion an arresting solidaritycreating plot. The righteous are plotted as protagonists, possessing the power of agency and action. Refugee is the label given to the innocent and suffering immigrants on whose behalf the righteous work (Nicolaou and Papadakis, this volume, Chapter 8). The role of antagonist is assigned to the primordial nation-state and its agents, who have treated would-be refugees in anticivil, repressive ways. The tension between liberation and repression drives the plot. As civil protagonists endeavor to overcome anticivil barricades, and bring refugees to safety, they expose themselves to danger. Civil media project these courageous performances of solidarity outward, emplotting a story of civil heroes standing up to dark forces, acting on behalf of the vulnerable and weak. Civil justice now has a face, becoming an object of civil identification. Personhood is also restored to refugees. Personalization undercuts demonization. Transformed from a mass, and a mess, into individual human beings with words and feelings, they, too, become symbols upon which solidarity can be built (Alexander 2002). Righteous civil performances separate the symbolic center of nations from the organizational structures that compose their material centers (Chan 1999). Core group agents of the state become anticivil enemies;

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marginalized immigrants and activists become carriers of right. Successful civil performances of righteousness trigger backlash movements that try to take newly achieved civil gains away, to keep everything as it once was, to shut the door that has recently been pried open. The righteous are accused of betraying the spirit and laws of the national communities within which real civil societies must be sustained. A struggle for the soul of the nation is under way, one in which what Abraham Lincoln (1861) called “the better angels of our nature” become engaged.

Bibliography Alexander, Jeffrey C. 1980. “Core Solidarity, Ethnic Outgroup, and Social Differentiation: A Multidimensional Model of Inclusion in Modern Societies.” In National and Ethnic Movements, edited by J. Dofny and A. Akiwowo. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 5–28. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2002. “On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The ‘Holocaust’ from Mass Murder to Trauma Drama.” European Journal of Social Theory 5(1): 5–86. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2006. “Then and Now: My Thinking About ‘Incorporation’ Over One Quarter Century.” In Etnická ruznost ˚ a obˇcanská jednota, edited by R. Marada. Brno: Centrum pro studium demokracie a kultury. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2007. “Globalization as Collective Representation: The New Dream of a Cosmopolitan Civil Sphere.” In Frontiers Of Globalization Research: Theoretical And Methodological Approaches, edited by I. Rossi. New York: Springer, pp. 371–382. Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2014. “Morality as a Cultural System: On Solidarity Civil and Uncivil.” The Palgrave Handbook of Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity, edited by V. Jeffries, London: Palgrave, pp. 303–310. Chan, Elaine. 1999. “Structural and Symbolic Centers: Center Displacement in the 199 Chinese Student Movements.” International Sociology 14(3): 337– 354. Goffman, Erving. 1972. Relations in Public. New York: Penguin. Jaworsky, Bernadette Nadya. 2013. “Immigrants, Aliens and Americans: Mapping Out the Boundaries of Belonging in a New Immigrant Gateway.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 1(2): 221–253. Jaworsky, Bernadette Nadya. 2016. The Boundaries of Belonging: Online Work of Immigration-Related Social Movement Organizations. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. King, Martin Luther. 1963. “‘I Have a Dream,’ Address Delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” Stanford University. Retrieved

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December 23, 2019 (https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/ documents/i-have-dream-address-delivered-march-washington-jobs-andfreedom). Lincoln, Abraham. 1861. “The First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln.” The Avalon Project. Retrieved December 23, 2019 (https://avalon.law.yale. edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp). Stack, Trevor. 2019. “Wedging Open Established Civil Spheres: A Comparative Approach to Their Emancipatory Potential.” In Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere, edited by J.C. Alexander, T. Stack, and Farhad Khosrokhavar. New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11–41.

Index

A actors, 138–141 advocacy, migrant. See migrant activism AEGEE-Europe, 135 Afghanistan, 74 Africa, 76, 140 African Americans, 64 AKEL (Uprising Party of the Working People), 209 AlarmPhone, 136 A Last Resort? National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention, 99 Al Khayari, Chakib, 14, 125–149 Alsnousi, Ahmad, 146 Alter, Rabbi Daniel, 44–46 Amnesty International, 191 Anastasiades, Nicos, 208 Andalucía Acoge, 145 Anouzla, Ali, 146 anti-Semitism, 41, 44, 45, 48, 49, 53, 54, 68, 78–84, 85 antizionism, 83

Arendt, Hannah, 5, 155 Argentina, 20 Argúello, Lizzette, 189 Aristotle, 54 Armenia, 20 Ashcroft, Bill, 38, 53 assimilation, 81 assimilationism, 158 asylum law, 65, 73–74 Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, 105 asylum seekers, 13, 69, 91–115, 227, 231 Australia, 13, 91–115 Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), 100 Australian Medical Association (AMA), 110–112 Austria, 13, 39, 61–86 Avalos, John, 241 B baby Asha, 105–106 Badraie, Shayan, 100 Bagelman, Jennifer, 235

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 C. Tognato et al. (eds.), The Courage for Civil Repair, Cultural Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44590-4

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INDEX

Bajaj, Fatiha, 140 Bauder, Harald, 234, 251 Beach Party Against Racism, 51–52 Bellah, Robert, 81 Beorn, Waitman Wade, 4 Berlin, 35–56, 76 Bermúdez, Sonia, 14, 153–175 Bestia (The Beast), 183–198 binaries., 73, 134. See also civil society, binary discourse of Black Lives Matter, 64 Bolivia, 174 Bosnia, 20 Bosniak, Linda, 235 boundaries, 129–130, 232 boundary drawing. See symbolic boundary work boundary relations, 108–113 boundary tensions, 224 breaching, 153–175 as culturally “thick”, 156, 165 Breed, London, 231, 233, 249 burkini, 51–52 C Cambodia, 95 Caminando Fronteras (Walking Borders), 136 Campos, David, 241 Canneti, Elias, 79 Caritas, 68 carrier groups, 161 Castellano, Nicolás, 139, 142, 143 Catambrone, Regina, 138 Catholic Church, 165–169, 185, 193 Cembrero, Ignacio, 142 Central Council of Jews, 38, 46, 53 Ceuta, 131, 144 Charalambidou, Nicoletta, 217 Chile, 20 ChilOut (Children out of Detention), 99

China, 267 Chiu, David, 250 Christianity, 81, 210 Christmas Island (detention center), 95, 100, 101, 115 Chrysostomos, Bishop Dimitrios, 11 circumcision, 52 citizenship, 55, 64, 92, 197, 222, 235 local, 235 urban, 235 civic associations, 66 civil courage, 1–21, 80, 203–227, 268 grammar of, 153–175 civil discourse, 51, 61, 99, 148, 197 civil disobedience, 66, 207 civil friendship, 52, 56 civil generosity, 265 civil inattention, 265 civil incorporation, 65 civil indifference, 6, 13 civil indignation, 265 civil intervention, 19–21 civil piety, 14, 153–175 civil repair, 5–9, 13, 37, 55, 91–115, 144–147, 156 civil righteousness, 265–270 civil society binary discourse of, 62, 65, 66, 92, 95, 113, 132, 155, 234, 246, 249 civil solidarity, 11, 14, 80, 84, 99, 147, 231 civil sphere communicative institutions of, 62, 65, 155, 234, 251, 268 facilitating inputs into, 186, 196 formative institutions of, 56 global, 207, 215 regulative institutions of, 62, 65, 73, 234, 251 transnational, 207, 215

INDEX

civil sphere theory (CST), 55–56, 62, 64–67, 75, 81, 92, 93–94, 154, 174, 186, 204 in transnational context, 205 civil translation, 4–5, 7, 18–20, 153–175, 188, 203–227, 267 class, 8, 97, 206 Clinton, Hillary, 247 codes, 148 binary. See civil society, binary discourse of civil, 93, 97–98, 108 family, 183–198 noncivil, 198 religious, 183–198 Cold War, 67 Colombia, 14, 20, 108, 153–175 counter-narrative, 50 cross-border spaces, 127–130, 148 cross-group solidarity, 1–21, 56, 66–67, 80, 82, 84, 153–175, 183–198 “double”, 63, 84 cultural pragmatics, 126, 132, 156, 173 cultural structures, 48, 66, 129, 235 Curtius, Georg, 129 Cyprus, 15, 203–227 Cyprus Problem, 15, 204, 208–211, 213, 218 D deep crisis, 39 Defend Europe, 148 democracy, 55, 247 Derrida, Jacques, 37, 54 detention, 2, 13 detention centers, 91–115 Dirnamal, Tin, 189 discourse health and medical ethics, 108–113, 114

275

discursive struggle, 134 DISY (Democratic Rally), 208 Doctors for Justice, 105, 108 Doctors for Refugees, 104, 105 Don Sergio Méndez Arceo Foundation, 192 Douglas, Mary, 226 Dreamers, 241 Dublin III Regulation, 39 Dutton, Peter, 105–106

E East Asia, 67 Eck, Johanna, 10 ELAM (Greek Freedom Front), 208 Elliott, Elizabeth, 101 El Salvador, 183 equality, 72, 134, 139, 144–147, 148, 170, 172, 220 Espeleta, Mariana, 187, 189 ethnocentrism, 210 Eurocentrism, 210 Europe, 35, 38, 43, 55, 65, 67, 135, 147 European Court of Human Rights, 145, 215 European Integration Forum (EIF), 214 European Network Against Racism (ENAR), 214 European Refugee Fund (ERF), 217 European Union, 39, 61, 207, 213–215, 227 exclusion, 38, 46, 49, 62, 81, 92, 93, 95, 113, 143, 147, 188, 197, 233, 234

F Facebook, 71, 79 Fandango Fronterizo, 193

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FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia), 160 Focherini, Odoardo, 10 The Forgotten Children, 100 Fortress Europe, 227 FPÖ (Freiheitliche Partei Österreich), 68, 69 France, 10, 11, 37, 51, 73, 83 Frank, Anne, 4 friendship, 37, 54, 72, 127. See also civil friendship Frontex, 135

G Gannon, Peter, 110–112 García Márquez, Gabriel, 162 Garfinkel, Harold, 5, 156 Gazzotti, Lorena, 144, 148 Geertz, Clifford, 205 gender, 8, 70, 92, 97, 187, 188 Gente como Uno (People Like Us), 154, 163, 166, 172 German Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, 36 Germany, 4, 13, 35–56, 69, 83, 267 Goffman, Erving, 265 Goldberg, Chad Alan, 204 Golden Dawn, 148 governmentality, 235 Grabinsky, Alan, 80 grammar of cultural appropriateness, 157, 175 Greece, 126, 147 Greek Cypriots, 203–227 Grey, Sir Edward, 10 Guatemala, 20, 183 Guevara, Yaatsil, 190 Guttman, Bini, 83 Guttmann, Elfriede, 10

H Hautval, Adélaïde, 10 hero-antagonist, 133–134 Herrou, Cédric, 37 Hitler, Adolf, 4 Hofmeister, Rabbi Shlomo, 80, 81 Holocaust, 3–5, 8, 9, 12, 42, 78–84, 93, 109 as a universal symbol, 85 Holocaust denial, 41 Holocaust memory, 13, 19, 43, 84 Honduras, 183 horizon of affect and meaning, 206 hot returns, 130, 145 Howard, John, 94, 100 human dignity, 139, 169, 170, 172, 196 humanity, 2, 8, 12, 14, 40, 127, 130, 134, 144–147, 148, 171 human rights, 94, 99, 108, 148, 186, 191, 197, 207, 212, 213–215, 221, 226 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC), 99 Human Rights Commission, 184 Hungary, 39, 75 hyphenation, 158 I iconic force, 192 identification, 206 Ignatieff, Michael, 16, 17, 19 inclusion, 5, 14, 18, 50, 55, 62, 64, 95, 113, 127, 128, 130, 155, 174, 233, 234 incorporation, 5, 157, 171–174 India, 20, 267 Indonesia, 96 Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, 160 International Health and Medical Services (IHMS), 102–103, 107

INDEX

International Organization for Migration (IOM), 153, 159, 185, 214 Iraq, 36 Isaacs, David, 103 Islam, 67, 81, 209 Islamism, 67 Islamophobia, 50, 63, 68, 82, 209, 224 Israel, 47, 83, 267 Italy, 147 J J’Accuse, 103 Jesuit Ibero-American University, 191 Jesuit Refugee Service, 160 Jewish Museum in Berlin, 49 Jewish-Muslim relations, 35–56 Jewish Welcome Service Vienna, 80 Jews, 10–11, 12–13, 35–56, 61–86, 93 “new”, 44–50, 52 journalists, 125–149 Judaism, 49, 82 Jugend Rettet, 125 justice, 8, 14, 46, 65, 78, 127, 144–147 K Karrer, Major Loukás, 11 Kauders, Anthony, 43 KEA (Movement of Greek Resistance), 203 Keskinkilic, Ozan Zakariya, 47 Khazaei, Hamid, 103 King, Jr., Martin Luther, 4, 21, 268 KISA (Movement for Equality, Support and Anti-Racism), 15, 203–227 Kossiva, Andriana, 206, 212, 213, 215–217, 221, 223

277

Kristallnacht , 10 L Lagerfeld, Karl, 42 Lampedusa, 4, 125 Landry, Martine, 37 Langer, Ármin, 13, 35–56 Larnaca, 203 Las Patronas , 14, 183–198 Latin America, 67, 159 Lee, Edwin, 242, 243, 250, 252 Leon Zelman Prize, 70, 72, 79, 80, 83 Le Pen, Marine, 83 Lesbos, 126 Libya, 4 Lichtenberg, Bernard, 10 M Makarios, Archbishop, 209 Maleno, Helena, 14, 125–149 Mancina, Peter, 235, 252 Manus Island (Papua New Guinea), 91–115 Mara Salvatrucha, 193 Martin, Nick, 105, 107 MASECA, 190 McGorry, Patrick, 101 Mediterranean migration route, 158, 125–149 Melilla, 125–149 Mengele, Josef, 10 Merkel, Angela, 40, 267 #metoo, 64 Mexico, 183–198 migrant activism, 14, 125–149, 203–227 migrants.. See also asylum seekers; refugees Afghan, 36, 39 African, 4, 36, 39, 131, 145

278

INDEX

Central American, 3, 183–198, 231 Iraqi, 39 Syrian, 39 Venezuelan, 14, 153–175 migration “illegal”, 134–138, 159, 208, 231–252 migration crisis. See refugee crisis Migreurop, 214 Minority Rights Group (MRG), 214 mise-en-scéne, 141–144, 169 MOAS (Migrant Offshore Aid Station), 138 moral courage, 8, 9, 12, 16–18 Morales, Agus, 133, 143 Morles Castro, Carolina, 173–174 Morocco, 14, 125–149 Movement for the Salvation of Cyprus, 203 multiculturalism, 94, 158, 212 Muslims, 20, 35–56, 61–86, 209

N narrative battle, 231–252 narrative intervention. See civil intervention narrative triangle, 48 National Human Rights Commission, 192 National Migration Institute, 183 Nauru (Australia), 91–115 Nazis, 3–5, 10–11, 41–43, 80, 86, 109 Nazism, 267 necropolitics, 187 Neophytou, Averof, 208 Network of Socio-Economic Experts in the Non-Discrimination Field (SEN), 214 Neukölln, 44–46 Never Again Action, 4

Newman, Louise, 108 Nicaragua, 232 no-go areas, 44–46 No More Deaths, 3 Northern Cyprus, Turkish Republic of, 209 Northern Ireland, 44 Northern League, 148 O Obama, Barack, 42, 111, 239 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 3 Operation Attila, 209 Operation Broom, 226 Operation Sovereign Borders, 97 Organization of American States (OAS), 160 Orozco, Miguel Ángel, 193 Owler, Brian, 110 P PAK (Pancyprian Anti-Occupation Movement), 203 Palazón, José, 14, 125–149 Papadopoulou, Anthoula, 206, 212, 216, 218, 222, 224 Papua New Guinea, 96, 107 pedagogy, 16–18 Pegida, 83 performance, 265–270 Petrides, Constantinos, 208 Phelps, Kerryn, 113 philosemitism, 49, 50, 63 philo-Zionism, 43 polarization, 6 pollution, symbolic, 3–5, 44, 95, 196, 226, 267, 268 Polycarpou, Doros, 15, 204, 206, 212–214, 216–218, 221, 223 Press, Eyal, 6 Prodein, 131, 140, 145

INDEX

Proemaid, 126 prosperity, 15, 242–246 public safety, 15, 239–242 purity, symbolic, 3–5 R Rabbis for Human Rights, 4 racism, 2, 47, 49, 184, 210, 211, 220, 226 Rackete, Carola, 4 Rainbow Festival, 203, 214, 216 reactionary ethics of care, 187 refugee crisis, 38–43, 46, 61–64, 67–69, 85 European, 37, 135, 147 refugees, 61–86, 203–227 African, 36 Greek Cypriot, 205, 209 Syrian, 42, 159 Regional Committee for the Special Settlement and the National Council for Human Rights, 149 religion, 15, 56, 78–84, 161, 169–171 Ridgley, Jennifer, 235 Rif Association for Human Rights (ARDH), 131 Righteous Among the Nations, 3, 9–12, 19–21, 63, 82, 85, 93, 126, 251 righteous doctors, 13, 91–115 right to the city, 234 Romero, Norma, 185 rule of law, 15, 246–250 Rutter, Loes, 135 Rwanda, 20 S Salaam Shalom Initiative, 12, 35–56 Salvamento Marítimo, 125, 136 Salvini, Matteo, 36 sanctuary cities, 15, 66, 231–252

279

sanctuary movement, 232 sanctuary-power, 235 San Francisco, 15, 231–252 Scandinavia, 67 Schlaff, Golda, 70, 79, 83, 86 Schmitt, Carl, 54 Schuster, Josef, 46 scripts, 134–138 Seehofer, Horst, 36 Sendler, Irena, 11 Sessions, Jeff, 237, 249 Shalom Alaikum—Jewish Aid for Refugees, 13, 61–86 Sikhs, 20 Silverman, Rabbi Susan, 4 Snyder, Timothy, 4 social performance., 125–149. See also cultural pragmatics solidarity., 62, 71, 78, 92, 105, 107, 130, 147, 158, 161, 165, 170, 172, 215, 223, 234, 265–270. See also cross-group solidarity civil, 266 primordial, 266 Sontag, Susan, 7 SOS Racismo, 145 Soviet Union, 43, 47, 49, 266 Spain, 14, 125–149, 192 Sri Lanka, 20 Steinle, Kathryn, 233, 236, 239, 241, 245 structural hermeneutics, 235 Swedberg, Richard, 6 Sweden, 39 symbolic boundary work, 3, 4–5, 65, 234 Syria, 36, 61

T Talley, Nicholas, 114 Taylor, Charles, 19

280

INDEX

Tazreiter, Claudia, 99 9/11 terrorist attacks, 67, 83 thick description, 205, 236 Townend, Sara, 108 Train of hope, 68 transnation, 13, 35–56, 63 transnational migrants, 127–130 Triggs, Gillian, 100 Trocmé, Pastor Andre, 11 Trump, Donald, 15, 231–252 Turkey, 53 Turkish Cypriots, 203–227 Turnbull, Malcolm, 105, 111, 113 Twitter, 136 U United Kingdom, 38 United Nations, 207 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 159, 171 United States, 3, 38, 43, 55, 64, 159, 183, 189, 193, 207, 231–252, 267 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 65, 78 U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 4 V Varela, Amarela, 187

Vega, Isabel, 139, 143 Vienna, 61–86 Villazor, Rose Cuison, 235 Virgin of Guadalupe, 185, 191, 196 W Waldinger, Roger, 128 Warren, Scott, 3 welcome culture, 40, 69, 76 Wirth, Eduard, 10 World Health Organization, 108 World War II, 39, 50, 63, 82, 207 X xenophobia, 2, 44, 148, 153, 160, 184, 210, 211 Y Yad Vashem, 11, 82, 85 Yazidis, 36 Young, Peter, 102–103 Yugoslavia, former, 41 Z Zarate, Jose Ines Garcia, 233, 236, 245 ˙ Zegota (Council to Aid Jews), 11 Zwi, Karen, 101, 104, 114