Cities Without Borders
Type of activity: Workshop, graphic activism and media campaign
Date: Ongoing
Location: Málaga, Córdoba, Sevilla, Tenerife, Las Palmas, Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza, Bilbao, Pamplona, Barcelona, Tarragona, La Coruña and Oviedo
Organizers: Universidad Nómada and the Social Rights Bureaus
Co-produced by: Museo Reina Sofía
Web: http://www.ciudadessinfronteras.net/
This campaign aims at raising awareness about one of the priorities in the practices of current social movements in Spain: the understanding, awareness and reporting of the governing devices of migration movements organized around the notion of border regime.
As is well known, the current context of systemic crisis is generating an intensification of the mechanisms of attachment and productive control of migrants, manifest in many forms, which drives the latter into areas of darkness as far as basic rights and minimum standards of dignity for the reproduction of life are concerned. The latest sociological indicators warn about an increase of racism in the population, and a clear and accelerated impoverishment of the migrants' living conditions.
In the last few years, collectives, networks and associations have launched a true social laboratory in terms of creating alliances among migrants and locals, giving impetus to innovative forms of social self-management and practices of research and collective statement about the demand of full equality of rights for all people. One of these institutional creations of movment has been the launch of the Social Rights Bureaus network, with whom we have developed this proposal, which articulate a variety of intervention mechanisms grouped around the idea of a biopolitical trade union, or biosyndicalism.
The Cities Without Borders campaign is located in this context as an experimentation with new forms of public enunciation and intervention which can allow the expression, from the standpoint of a broad alliance of local and migrant citizens, the unbrearability of the current migration policies in the context of the crisis.
Meaning and objectives of the campaign
- Awareness and public denunciation of the border regime
By border regime we understand a complex set of mechanisms of security regulation of immigration in all its aspects, both explicit (the fences in Ceuta and Melilla, the Frontex system, the Detention Centers), and the most imperceptible internal borders which cross our cities (checkpoints and ID controls, administrative barriers, differential inclusion policies of immigrants in the rights system, etc.). A process of research / action on the operation of these devices in our territory is relevant for this scenario.
- Federation of statements and public interventions
There are many collective spaces working on the struggle for migrants' rights, even in a scenario of a notable dispersion and fragmentation. The Cities Without Borders campaign is not seeking to federate spaces, organizations or collectives (it is not a case of creating a meta-organization), but to federate public statements and interventions, so that, without losing autonomy, the statements, demands, and occasional struggles can be manifested more strongly. Sharing and dissemination of common materials, the exchange of information and news and using the Cities Without Borders logo in public interventions are the minimum requirement for this loose federation of statements and forms of intervention.
- Construction of broad alliances in the territory
CWB aims to be an instrument for the construction of broad and extensive alliances in the territory, with the intention of producing a framework of social consensus about the intolerable violence of the border regime and the demand for the expansion and equality of rights between locals and migrants. Four spaces or areas of intervention are presented for the construction of these alliances:
1- A more or less formal network of immigrant associations
2- Organizations of the local population (neighbourhood associations, trade unions, NGOs, other associations, political parties, etc.)
3- The Internet
4- The diffusely designated as disorganized civil society (small businesses, "normal" citizens, etc.).
- Empowerment, disobedience and the production of spaces of freedom in the territory
CWB seeks to strengthen and promote spaces of collective self-management among migrants and locals, and to be useful for the construction of social counter-powers in the territory, capable of stopping the systemic violence against the migrant population, the reduction of rights disguised in the security paradigm of production of fear. CWB promotes a creative and non-violent disobedience to the law, and conflicts with the powers that be, always seeking the maximum citizen consensus through clear, understandable and shareable statements. The adoption of the reform of the Aliens Act and the European legal framework on migration call for a reduction in the scale of intervention (without relaxing the pressure on higher levels), locating the working scenario in the squares, neighbourhoods, institutions, social services, etc., of the different cities. CWB seeks a conflict between formal legislation and its material application in our territories, and the inclusion of increasingly more people who, in the face of the extreme injustice of the law, are willing to be creatively disobedient, and to create the conditions for greater levels of freedom and dignity in the lives of migrants.
- A citizens' campaign, anonymous, open
CWB is not a campaign launched and undersigned by a set of social organizations. It is the provisional form by which we seek to collectively enounce a malaise and a set of citizen demands. The collective agent of enunciation does not correspond to formal organizations, but to a diffuse, extended, contagious feeling of rejection of the violence of the border regime, and a demand for equality which stems from the cititizenry / multitude. It is key to take into account this element, both in terms of enunciations and languages, and in the organization structure to be adopted by this campaign, and the mechanisms of adhesion or support for it. Thinking about "who we are" in our backing and support for this campaign invites us to reflect on "a set of citizens, migrants and locals, who find the situation of violence and inequality produced by the current legislation in terms of immigration intolerable, and work under the skyline of a number of cities without borders, where all of us, regardless of our place of origin, skin color or administrative situation, can live with dignity.
Production of materials for the CWB campaign
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