Capturing the Border in Refugee Solidarity Camp Visits and City Tours in Germany: Theorizing Relationality through the Border as Horizon in Refugee/Migrant Solidarity Activism as Citizenship Politics

Abstract

This article explores the idea of the border as a connective space using the concepts of ‘border’s capture’, ‘borderizations’, and ‘border as horizon’ to highlight ‘practices of relationality’ where borders ‘run the risk of themselves being captured’. This article discusses refugee/migrant solidarity activism as citizenship politics through two examples from Germany across different snapshots in time, illustrating bordering through the camp and the dispersal of borders throughout the city. This article shows why ‘border’s capture’ is central to solidarity mobilizing as citizenship politics, exploring how borders, while integral to violent orderings, are also productive of relations across them in ways that transgress physical and ontological borders of status and belonging. This article argues for conceptualizing the border as horizon to highlight relationality and shows through the two examples why doing so matters politically in terms of how we relate to those identified as ‘outsiders’.