Border activism: intertwined strategies and political and epistemic openings

Abstract

This article proposes reflections on various elements that permeate the political mobilisation strategies of migrants from the Global South articulated with local collectives in Vienna. It is postulated that this political space can be analysed from the perspective of Anzaldúa's The Border, an analysis that, on the one hand, points out the existence of dividing lines, constructed to create exclusions and hierarchies; on the other hand, it reflects on the possibilities of articulation, mediations, intersections, and intermediate spaces in the confluences that emerge as a result of inhabiting the Border. For that, this text proposes the notion of border activism as a possibility to understand the operations, tensions, and potentialities of diverse spaces of articulation and political alliances that emerge in the discursive and performative interweaving of spaces of politicisation, allowing the transversalisation and internationalisation of diverse social struggles. Attention is drawn to the importance of situating and contextualising political strategies in the specific context in which they are developed, through translation exercises: these are operations that occur at different times and aim to give or construct meaning in the geographical and political space in which they are applied, to the genealogies and influences coming from other discursive and symbolic spaces, which gain meaning through the actions and subjects that transport them. Translations enable the articulation of discursive influences as well as political practices in the local space, while simultaneously opening up political horizons beyond the “essentialization” of political identities, epistemic privileges, and the externalisation of social challenges.