Impossible Futures? The Ambivalent Temporalities of Grassroots Humanitarian Action

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2370735
AutoresRobin Vandevoordt (0000-0003-4591-5602, Ghent University, autor correspondente), Larissa Fleischmann (Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)
Ano2021
Volume47
Fascículo2
Páginas187-202
Data de publicação2021-03-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoCritical Sociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0896-9205 • E-ISSN: 1569-1632
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0896920520932655
OpenAlexW3034192398
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas26
Referências citadas56

While humanitarian action is often criticised for its focus on immediate needs in the present, social movements and political activists are usually thought to work towards a different future. With this article, we aim to complicate these clear-cut distinctions. We investigate how grassroots initiatives supporting migrants navigate different temporalities, relating their actions both to the present and to the future. These interwoven temporalities, however, come with ambivalent political effects. Drawing on cases from Belgium and Germany, we show how they range from potentially shrinking grassroots' power to intervene to opening windows of political possibility. On the one hand, we illustrate how grassroots initiatives in Belgium feel stuck in a temporal dilemma, when they are forced to focus on the present. On the other hand, initiatives in Belgium and Germany have nonetheless engaged in strategies of future-making, trying to bring about more structural changes to migrants' living conditions

Ambivalence · Collective action · Dilemma · Epistemology · Grassroots · Political action · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · Temporalities · Gender Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Peacebuilding and International Security · Social Psychology