Introduction: Race, (b)ordering and disobedient knowledge

In research, we witness a growing interest in perspectives that combine the analysis of race and racism with critical migration studies. While antiracism and migrant (solidarity) activism share many similar goals, these struggles are not always studied together and they are often approached through different theoretical traditions. We build on and elaborate the research tradition that addresses the race–migration nexus, i.e. the co-construction of migration and processes of racialisation in historically and geographically context-specific ways, by combining it with a third axis – political economy. Combining decolonial and race-critical perspectives with critical border studies, the chapter outlines its two main approaches to the study of activism and everyday struggles – the analysis of (b)ordering processes, which articulates the relations between border regimes and global racial hierarchies, and the analysis of disobedient knowledge, which underlines the transformative epistemological and community building practices of such struggles. The chapter discusses resistance by groups that have no other options – for whom questioning border regimes and racialised hierarchies is part of everyday survival – and activism that involves the choice to fight for social justice and global change, when adopting a position of solidarity towards groups targeted by racism and border regimes. With the elaboration of the theoretical framing and outlining its empirical uses, further developed in the rest of the book, the chapter seeks to contribute to an understanding of the varying, but interconnected, conditions of antiracist and border struggles in different parts of Europe.