Migration, Protest Movements and the Politics of Resistance

Migration and cosmopolitanism are said to be complementary. Cosmopolitanism means to be a citizen of the world, and migration, without impediments, should be the natural starting point for a cosmopolitan view. However, the intensification of migration, through an increasing number of refugees and economic migrants, has generated anti-cosmopolitan stances. Using the concept of cosmopolitanism as it emerges from migrant protests like Sans Papiers, No One Is Illegal, and No Borders, an interdisciplinary group of scholars addresses this discrepancy and explores how migrant protest movements elicit a new form of radical cosmopolitanism.The combination of basic theoretical concepts and detailed empirical analysis in this book will advance the theoretical debate on the inherent cosmopolitan aspects of migrant activism. As such, it will be a valuable contribution to students, researchers and scholars of political science, sociology and philosophy.

'This volume brings a much needed contribution to cosmopolitanism in demonstrating how migrants through protest and resistance are re-drawing the boundaries of political community.'—Gerard Delanty, Professor of Sociology and Social & Political Thought, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK‘Following the thread of migrants’ movements and struggles this book gives a refreshing, radical, and new meaning to the notion of cosmopolitanism. While fences and walls proliferate around borders as well as within bounded spaces worldwide, the stubborn search for freedom of migrants invites us to politically reinvent and remake the world. This is a timely and inspiring book in hard times.’ —Sandro Mezzadra, Associate Professor of Political Theory, University of Bologna, Italy

Tamara Caraus is a researcher at the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest. Her area of research includes continental political philosophy and political theory of cosmopolitanism. She contributed with articles to various academic journals and edited volumes, published four books, and co-edited Cosmopolitanism and the Legacy of Dissent (Routledge, 2014), Cosmopolitanism without Foundations (Zeta Books, 2014), and Re-grounding Cosmopolitanism. Towards a Post-foundational Cosmopolitanism (Routledge, 2015), Cosmopolitanism and Global Protests, a special issue of Globalizations journal (2017). Elena Paris teaches interactions among legal orders, and European Union law at the Law School, University of Bucharest. Her research interests lie in the fields of international legal theory, intersections of law and theology, legal pluralism, international economic law, continental philosophy, international refugee law. She has co-edited (with Tamara Caraus) Re-Grounding Cosmopolitanism. Towards a Post-foundational Cosmopolitanism (Routledge 2016), and has most recently written "International law-making and foundations of universality: retrieving an alternative metaphysics", in International Law and Religion. Historical and Contemporary perspectives (M. Koskenniemi, M. Garcia-Salmones, P. Amorosa eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2017), "Re-thinking universalism: post-foundational cosmopolitanism in a relational key" in Re-grounding Cosmopolitanism; "The turn to international law in EU governance" (Romanian Journal of Comparative Law, Supplement 2014).