This wide-ranging volume is a much-needed intervention in the study of citizen humanitarianism. Tackling an emerging and increasingly important aspect of everyday humanitarian practice, the volume asks important questions around the political possibilities of such work forcing scholars and practitioners alike to reflect on what it means to do good.
Polly Pallister-Wilkins, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
This innovative and important book highlights the compelling stories of citizen-led forms of mobilization and care on behalf of migrants. Beautifully theorized and richly empirical, it arrives at a critical time, offering a nuanced approach to both the potential and the limits of humanitarian assistance.
Katharyne Mitchell, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Citizen Humanitarianism at European Borders
At a time of escalating conflict between states and non-governmental organizations engaged in migrant search and rescue operations across the Mediterranean, this book explores the emerging trend of citizen-led forms of helping others at the borders of Europe.
In recent years, Europes borders have become new sites of intervention for traditional humanitarian actors and governmental agencies, but also, increasingly, for volunteer and activist initiatives led by ordinary citizens. This book sets out to interrogate the shifting relationship between humanitarianism, the securitization of border and migration regimes and citizenship. Critically examining the do-it-yourself character of refugee aid practices performed by non-professionals coming together to help in informal and spontaneous manners, the volume considers the extent to which these new humanitarian practices challenge established conceptualizations of membership, belonging and active citizenship. Drawing on case studies from countries around Europe including Greece, Turkey, Italy, France and Russia, this collection constitutes an innovative and theoretically engaged attempt to bring the field of humanitarian studies into dialogue with studies of grassroots refugee aid and, more explicitly, with political forms of solidarity with migrants and refugees that fall between aid and activism.
This book is key reading for advanced students and researchers of humanitarian aid, European migration and refugees and citizen-led activism.
Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert is a senior resercher and research director at the Dimensions of Security Department, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway.
Elisa Pascucci is a researcher at EuroStorie CoE, Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki, Finland.
Routledge Humanitarian Studies
Series editors: Alex de Waal, Dorothea Hilhorst, Annette Jansen and Mihir Bhatt
Editorial Board: Dennis Dijkzeul, Wendy Fenton, Kirsten Johnson, Julia Streets and Peter Walker
The Routledge Humanitarian Studies series in collaboration with the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) takes a comprehensive approach to the growing field of expertise that is humanitarian studies. This field is concerned with humanitarian crises caused by natural disaster, conflict or political instability and deals with the study of how humanitarian crises evolve, how they affect people and their institutions and societies, and the responses they trigger.
We invite book proposals that address, amongst other topics, questions of aid delivery, institutional aspects of service provision, the dynamics of rebel wars, state building after war, the international architecture of peacekeeping, the ways in which ordinary people continue to make a living throughout crises, and the effect of crises on gender relations.
This interdisciplinary series draws on and is relevant to a range of disciplines, including development studies, international relations, international law, anthropology, peace and conflict studies, public health and migration studies.
The Humanitarian Fix
Navigating Civilian Protection in Contemporary Wars
Joe Cropp
Citizen Humanitarianism at European Borders
Edited by Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert and Elisa Pascucci
Adolescents in Humanitarian Crisis
Displacement, Gender and Social Inequalities
Edited by Nicola Jones, Kate Pincock and Bassam Abu Hamad
The Humanitarian Machine
Reflections from Practice
Edited by Diego Fernandez Otegui and Daryl Yoder-Bontrager
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-Humanitarian-Studies/book-series/RHS
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2021 selection and editorial matter, Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert and Elisa Pascucci; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert and Elisa Pascucci to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jumbert, Maria Gabrielsen, editor. | Pascucci, Elisa, editor.
Title: Citizen humanitarianism at European borders / edited by Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert and Elisa Pascucci.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge humanitarian studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020049601 (print) | LCCN 2020049602 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367557133 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003094852 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Humanitarian assistance, European--Citizen participation. | Refugees--Services for--Europe. | Immigrants--Services for--Europe. | Nongovernmental organizations--Europe. | Refugees--Government policy--Europe. | Europe--Emigration and immigration--Government policy.
Classification: LCC HV640.4.E8 C57 2021 (print) | LCC HV640.4.E8 (ebook) | DDC 362.87/8094--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049601
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020049602
ISBN: 978-0-367-55713-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-55714-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-09485-2 (ebk)
This edited volume is the result of a Research Council of Norway-funded research project, entitled Humanitarianism, Borders and the Governance of Mobility: The EU and the Refugee Crisis (HumBORDER), led by Maria Gabrielsen Jumbert at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). As part our joint work within this project, we, the editors, saw the collection of this volume as the most suitable way forward to capture the multiple stories, and lines of research we knew of, on different forms of citizen humanitarianism responding to the refugee reception and protection crisis in Europe in 2015 and after.
