The Doctoral School of Social Sciences and Humanities (2025)

Welcome to Studying immigration, solidarity and civil society in theory and practice

The PhD course Solidarity, migration and civil society in theory and practice offers participants the opportunity to discuss and reflect on their work within a theoretically guided framework on solidarity and civil society.

International crises like the economic crisis and refugee crises have led to new forms of participation and democratic practices in civil society. The notion of solidarity underpins such processes and experiments. There is a rich conceptual literature seeking to theorize such developments. The course will draw on recent conceptualizations offered by the course conductors, that describe solidarity as comprising five dimensions: 

Contentious: it shapes new forms of politics and political subjectification (Featherstone and Karaliotas 2018) which contest modes of exclusion and invisibilisation sustained by the hegemonic order of migration and refuge.

Emerging from moments of disruption or conjunctures: the acknowledgement of a crisis can allow for the articulation of political alternatives through solidarity practices (avoiding the risk of nationalist and xenophobic articulations).

Generative: it can generate new political subjectivities (Bauder 2016) and collective identities (new types of neighbourhoods, social classes, and even humanity as a political community).

Forging alliance-building: it enables the contact between different groups that creates a common ‘interest’ and goal, based on a mutually constitutive relationship.

Situated in space and time and articulating multi-scalar relations: solidarity takes place as relations in spaces, where identities and alliances are constituted, and connects with other spaces through trans-local connections and social imaginaries.

Getting a grasp on theoretical and methodological approaches for studying solidarity can help PhD students in understanding and analysing participatory processes at the local scale and help contextualise civil society organizing and mobilisation within such theoretical frameworks.  The course aims at providing tools for planning, doing, and reflecting on theoretical, methodological and analytical work on solidarity as a political practice in civil society at different scales, from urban to global. It is targeting Ph.D. students whose project engages theoretically and analytically with immigration, solidarity and civil society. Participants can come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, including, sociology, ethnography/anthropology, political science, discourse studies, human geography and field-specific areas such as critical migration studies.

Learning objectives

• To obtain knowledge of basic and central features of solidarity and civil society from theoretical perspectives
• To consider the balancing between analysis and theory building by exploring interdisciplinary approaches
• To explore challenges of access, time, ethical issues, and reflexivity as to researcher engagement
• To reflect on transformative and participatory processes of solidarity practices and the broader societal implications
• To design analytical case studies investigating forms of solidarity in civil society and policy frameworks

Teaching methods:

The course will include an explicit focus on how solidarity and civil society can be studied in theory and practice, but the specific content of activities will be developed in the light of the participants’ profiles. Presentations and discussions on theories and methods will be supplemented with hands-on exercises and analyses of solidarity practices. During the course, all students will be involved in exercises to design and facilitate fieldwork, analysis, and critical reflections.

Description of paper requirements, if applicable:

Participants must register by … and hand in a paper for presentation at the course.  

Paper submissions are to focus on a theoretical and/or analytical reflection on solidarity and civil society within the individual PhD project. The course can include topics like urban solidarities, cosmopolitan practices, criminalisation of solidarity, municipal and civil society relations, and more.

As the presentations and workshop will depart in and consider the project stages of the participant, papers for the course (min. 5 pages) must be submitted beforehand (no later than… TBA). The papers will receive both oral and written feedback.

Time schedule

Day 1

09:00 – 10:00: Welcome and general introduction (Óscar García Agustín & Martin Bak Jørgensen)

10:00 – 11:00: Presentation 1: Conceptualizing Solidarity: Discourses, Imaginaries and Spatial Practices (Óscar García Agustín)

Solidarity, rather than a buzzword or a simple synonymous for good will, refers to the interactions and relations between individuals and groups and how they change identities and our understanding of society. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a clear framework to analyze solidarity when studying migration. In this presentation, three dimensions of solidarity will be introduced: discourse, both as representation and its performative effect; social and spatial imaginaries, to explore the communities that are imagined and the geographies that are enhanced; and spaces, as approach to the relations happening in place. The objective is to reflect on how these intertwined dimensions contribute to define solidarity and how relations and connections between migration and civil society develop.

11:00 – 11:15: Coffee

11:15 – 12:15: Workshop: Thinking solidarity in practice

12:15 – 13:00: Lunch

13:00 – 14:00: Student presentations

14:00 – 14:15: Break

14:15 – 15:15: Student presentations

15:15 – 15:30: Break

15:30 – 16:30: Student presentations

16:30 – 17:00: Concluding on the workshop theme of the day

18:30 – 20:30: Dinner in town

Day 2

09:00 – 10:00: Presentation 2: Studying networked forms of solidarity (Martin Bak Jørgensen)

This presentation investigates the functions played by sanctuary and solidarity cities. It addresses how they organize glocally (connecting the local and global scales) through establishing networks of sanctuary/solidarity cities. The presentation first defines the concepts of sanctuary and solidarity cities and their importance to strengthen progressive localism. Next it presents a framework to understand the relations between the local and global scales (as well as other scales) when organized in a networked form. I apply this framework on three cases that demonstrate the development of a plurality of types of networks of sanctuary/solidarity cities: Fearless Cities, World Social Forum on Migrations and Inclusive Cities, and Solidarity Communities. The presentation is concluded with reflections on the developmental potentials and limitations of these different networks of sanctuary/solidarity cities.

10:00 – 10:15: Break

10:15 – 11:15: Workshop on mapping solidarity networks

11:15 – 12:15: Student presentations

12:15 – 13:00: Lunch

13:00 – 14:30: Student presentations

14:30 – 15:00: Coffee

15:00 – 16:30: Student presentations

16:30 – 17:00: Concluding on the workshop theme of the day

18:30 – 20:30: Dinner at Innovate

Day 3

09:00 – 10.30: Presentation 3: Migrant solidarity and social struggles (Martina Tazzioli)

The approach of ‘Autonomy of Migration’ considers migrants as ‘autonomous’ (agents promoting their freedom of movement by questioning borders and shaping new sociospatial realities) rather than victims. From this perspective, the spatialization of solidarity must include temporality to connect political struggles with the collective memory of solidarity practices. Furthermore, solidarity needs to be reinscribed as well as within the ‘social fabric’ of social struggles to account for the formation of common everyday spaces, rather than reducing networks of solidarity to gestures of hospitality. Through this approach to migration and social struggles, solidarity practices are enacted in heterogeneous places as fields of struggle. Solidarity practices are, then, shaped by antagonistic relationships of alterity.

10:30 – 10:45: Coffee

10:45 – 11:45: Student presentations

11:45 – 12:30: Lunch

12:30 – 14:00: Student presentations

14:00 – 14:15: Break

14:15 – 15.15: Student presentations

15:15 – 15.30: Coffee and goodbye

Óscar García Agustín & Martin Bak Jørgensen, Culture and Learning, DEMOS

Professor Óscar García Agustín, AAU
Professor Martin Bak Jørgensen, AAU
Associate Professor Martina Tazzioli, Università de Bologna

Key literature:

Agustín, Ó. G., & Jørgensen, M. B. (2024). Towards a global network of sanctuary or solidarity cities. In Handbook on migration and development (pp. 417-432). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Agustín, Ó. G., & Jørgensen, M. B. (2019). Solidarity and the 'refugee Crisis' in Europe. Springer.
Bauder, H. (2016). “Possibilities of urban belonging”. Antipode, 48(2), 252–271.
Bauder, H., & D.A. Gonzalez. (2018). “Municipal responses to ‘illegality’: Urban sanctuary across national contexts”. Social Inclusion, 6(1), 124–134.
Featherstone, D., & L. Karaliotas. (2018). “Challenging the spatial politics of the European crisis: Nationed narratives and trans-local solidarities in the post-crisis conjuncture”. Cultural Studies, 32(2), 286–307.
Kreichauf, R., & M. Mayer. (2021). “Negotiating urban solidarities: Multiple agencies and contested meanings in the making of solidarity cities”. Urban Geography, 42(7), 979–1002.
Kron, S., & H. Lebuhn. (2020). “Building solidarity cities: From protest to policy”. In Baban, F. & K. Rygiel (eds.) Fostering Pluralism Through Solidarity Activism in Europe (pp. 81–105). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, pp. 81–105. 
Roth, L., & B. Russell. (2018). “Translocal solidarity and the new municipalism”. Roar, Autumn (8), 80–93.
Russell, B. (2019). “Beyond the local trap: New municipalism and the rise of the fearless cities”. Antipode, 51(3), 989–1010.
Schwiertz, H., & Schwenken, H. (2021). Introduction: inclusive solidarity and citizenship along migratory routes in Europe and the Americas. In Inclusive Solidarity and Citizenship along Migratory Routes in Europe and the Americas (pp. 1-19). Routledge.
Tazzioli, Martina (2014). Spaces of Governmentality. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Important information concerning PhD courses: 

There is a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start of the course.

We cannot ensure any seats before the deadline for enrolment, all participants will be informed after the deadline, approximately 3 weeks before the start of the course.

For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration at aauphd@adm.aau.dk When contacting us please state the course title and course period. Thank you.