Border violence, migrant resistance, and acts of solidarity at individual, collective and community levels: Critical reflections from a Community Psychology perspective

In a global scenario of increasing criminalisation of transnational human mobility, this special issue brings into dialogue different voices and experiences of migration, borders and border crossing. It does so by examining the present and historical socio-political structures of inequality in home, transit, and host societies. As we argue in this introduction, these structural realities shape individual and collective decisions and experiences of migration. At the same time, the relation between people and the power matrices that affect their lives is not smooth, but rather marked by shades of opposition. In taking this dual perspective, on both violence and resistance, the contributions in this special issue offer original insights to challenge individual-centred perspectives that have largely dominated psychological research on migration. These perspectives have ultimately contributed to de-historicise, de- contextualize and de-politicise people’s experiences. In this introduction, we provide a brief history of how this special issue was developed and illustrate the main takeaways lessons from each paper. We conclude by providing some reflections on how community psychology scholars, and overall psychology as a discipline, can support the struggles of those who are confronting border violence and contribute to a transformative change in this field.

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Written by Francesca Esposito and Blerina Kellezi