Between supporting and reporting : Grassroots textual responses to the pushbacks at the fringes of EU

Hameršak, Marijana (2021) Between supporting and reporting : Grassroots textual responses to the pushbacks at the fringes of EU. INTERSECTIONS: EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND POLITICS, 7 (2). pp. 49-72. ISSN 2416-089X

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Abstract

In response to the 2015 mass mobilities disruption of the European Union border control regime, numerous self-organized, pro-migrant ad hoc solidarity groups proliferated across Europe. Depending on the local, national, and migratory contexts, these groups employed different methods and practices to support the people on the move and to challenge the inefficient, bureaucratized, discriminatory, and securitized modes of action of official, state, and humanitarian actors. Some practices that were developed in this framework of grassroots or vernacular humanitarianism with strong solidarity and a volunteer dimension (Brković, 2017; 2020; McGee & Pelham, 2017; Rozakou, 2017; Sandri, 2018) outgrew the initial crisis context and evolved over time into distinctive formats of response to the border restrictions, exclusions, and violence. One of them is still today a lasting practice of reporting of pushbacks by grassroots groups active at different locations on the southeastern territorial fringes of the EU. After reviewing the relevant literature and outlining the grassroots, selforganized, humanitarian, and human rights background of pushback reports and reporting practices, the author focuses on these reports as a form of writing. Interest in the style, narrative structure, and positionality of these reports opens questions of their parallels with ethnographic inquiries.

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