Activist Care

This book explores the disruptive dimension of care: its activist capacity to foster new forms of affective citizenship and to generate civic responsibilities that challenge established political orders. Drawing on a comparative ethnography of migrant solidarity networks in Turin and Florence, Italy, this book follows the lived experiences of volunteers, host families, activists, professionals and local communities involved in welcoming migrants. It brings to light the intimate conflicts, ethical dilemmas and emotional transformations through which care becomes a site for disruptive forms of citizenship. Far from being a simple act of assistance or social maintenance, care emerges in these contexts as a transformative practice that unsettles moral hierarchies, dismantles political boundaries and crosses affective barriers, opening up unprecedented spaces of participation, creativity and political imagination. In the context of restrictive migration policies and the growing precarity of rights, this volume rethinks care as a form of collective action, and offers an integrated reading of care, emotions and citizenship, revealing how, in the ordinary and disruptive gestures of caring solidarity with migrants, a crucial part of the democratic future is at stake.