Blurring migrant solidarity: Navigating the troubled regime of ‘helping others’ from the urban ground of Palermo

This paper explores migrant solidarity in the aftermath of the 2015 so-called ‘migration crisis’ from the ground of the Southern Italian ‘solidarity city’ of Palermo, building on ethnographic material collected across 2022/2023. It argues that migrant solidarity both resists and reproduces racialised borders, as it is never entirely and clearly detached from the border regime, but is deeply entangled within it. Although this argument is not new per se, this paper adds empirical depth to it following two strands. First, presenting solidarity in Palermo as embedded within the city's political economy, the paper reflects on how, within a persisting unequal and racialised access to rights, solidarity can allow for multiple extractions to be operated against migrants, while simultaneously providing a ‘safer space’ for existence. Second, drawing on the experiences of migrants who have—at least from a surface level outside perspective—comparatively better positions within the city, the paper defies their portrayals as mere recipients of help, and explores the complex ways in which they navigate the restricted opportunities opened up by solidarity alongside ubiquitous borders. The paper thus shows (1) how in Palermo solidarity has produced several outcomes—moral recognition abroad, local economies, opportunities for a vast array of people involved with migration—in the overall permanence of local shortages and everyday structural racism; (2) how the local solidarity network fills the gaps of a local retreating social care and of the state's repressive politics; (3) how this network is strategically navigated by racialised migrants to carve out opportunities, social ties and space for political development.