SOLIDARITY WITH MIGRANTS IN AND AROUND GRENOBLE - DIVA
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Solidarity with migrants in and around Grenoble
Volunteer commitment: from reflection to action
Elsa Leone
International Migration and Ethnic Relations
Two-year Master’s program
Master thesis 30 credits
Spring 2020: IM639L-GP766
Supervisor: Brigitte Suter
Word count: 21 968Abstract
This thesis explores the drivers of the commitment of volunteers that support migrants. It aims at
investigating the reasons that lead people to decide to get involved in solidarity action with
migrants through the case study of Grenoble and the Isère department, in France. Through
qualitative interviews with volunteers and coordinators from solidarity organizations in the
geographical area, this ethnographically inspired research identifies factors participating to the
birth of solidarity action. Beyond finding that there is never one reason for people to get involved,
the study identifies internal and external drivers of the commitment and the mechanisms within
which they operate. It concludes that a combination of internal and external factors resulted in the
volunteers getting involved physically in helping migrants. Additionally, it contributed to the
discussion on solidarity, including its political dimension, and generated findings about motives
for volunteering that may benefit civil society actors supporting migrants.
Word count: 148
Key words: solidarity, volunteering, Covid-19, ethnography, Grenoble, politics
2Table of contents
Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................... 5
Prologue........................................................................................................................................... 6
1) Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 8
1.1 Motivation and aim of the study ...................................................................................... 8
1.2 Research questions ........................................................................................................... 9
2) Background information ................................................................................................. 11
2.1 Migration policies and management in France .............................................................. 11
2.2 Grenoble, the Isère department and migration ............................................................... 12
2.3 The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown ......................................................................... 14
3) Previous research ............................................................................................................. 17
3.1 Volunteering and motives for helping ............................................................................ 17
3.2 Solidarity in France and Europe with migrants since 2015 ........................................... 18
3.3 Solidarity during the Covid-19 crisis ............................................................................. 19
3.4 Contribution of the thesis ............................................................................................... 20
4) Conceptual framework .................................................................................................... 21
4.1 Solidarity ........................................................................................................................ 21
4.2 The psycho-sociological approach ................................................................................. 22
4.3 Disagreement, resistance and political solidarity ........................................................... 23
4.4 Humanitarianism and moral principles .......................................................................... 25
5) Methodology ..................................................................................................................... 27
5.1 Ethnographically inspired research ................................................................................ 27
5.1.1 Methods, sampling and access to the field ................................................................. 27
5.1.2 Validity and reliability ............................................................................................... 28
5.1.3 Delimitations .............................................................................................................. 28
5.2 Material .......................................................................................................................... 28
5.2.1 Organizations ............................................................................................................. 28
5.2.2 Interviewees and other interlocutors .......................................................................... 29
5.3 Positionality .................................................................................................................... 31
5.4 Ethical considerations .................................................................................................... 32
6) Analysis: the driving forces of the commitment ............................................................ 33
6.1 Internal drivers of the commitment: building a ‘fertile ground’ for solidarity action.... 33
6.1.1 Life trajectories and personal history, socialization ................................................... 33
6.1.2 Religious convictions: beliefs and faith ..................................................................... 35
6.1.3 Political convictions ................................................................................................... 37
36.1.4 Emotions and psychological elements ....................................................................... 41
6.2 External drivers of the commitment: triggers ................................................................ 46
6.2.1 Leaders and sources of inspiration ............................................................................. 46
6.2.2 Life trajectories .......................................................................................................... 47
6.2.3 The networks .............................................................................................................. 48
6.2.4 Media coverage of the distress of migrants ................................................................ 50
6.2.5 Impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown ...................................................... 51
6.3 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 53
7) Discussion: Beyond the question of why people help .................................................... 55
7.1 The political dimension of commitment ........................................................................ 55
7.1.1 De-politicization or re-politicization? ........................................................................ 55
7.1.2 What makes our emotions political? .......................................................................... 56
7.1.3 Humanitarianism versus political? ............................................................................. 57
7.1.4 A political dimension influenced by the organization itself ...................................... 58
7.2 Motivations in special times: what about the crisis effect? ............................................ 59
8) Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 62
References ..................................................................................................................................... 64
Appendices .................................................................................................................................... 74
Appendix 1: Organizations ......................................................................................................... 74
Appendix 2: Interlocutors ........................................................................................................... 76
Appendix 3: Interview guide ...................................................................................................... 79
Appendix 4: Citations in original language from the interviews................................................ 83
4Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my supervisor at Malmö University, Brigitte Suter, for her helpful advice and
enlightened opinion during the academic journey that this thesis has been and which has helped me
grow as a future researcher. I also want to express my appreciation for her support and
understanding in the complicated circumstances in which I have conducted this work.
I would like to thank all the participants to this work who have accepted to give me some of their
time and to talk to me about their experiences.
Thank you to my classmates and friends who helped me with advice but also study sessions and
motivational support, we were all in this boat together and I am grateful that we helped each other
all the way. A special thank you to Emma, Juliette and Armande for their help with comments and
proofreading.
I am thankful for the love and attention of my close ones and friends who took care of me, helped
me blow off some steam, changed my mind and gave me faith in myself.
Grenoble, August 2020.
5Prologue
Feelings about inequalities and others’ distress and difficulties is something that I have always
experienced, and the way we are all different in our relationship to these feelings has always
intrigued me. I have been sensitive to issues of inequalities, racism and discrimination since
forever, having been raised in a family that shares those concerns and later through my experiences
abroad and my encounters with people – friends, teachers, mentors, scholars, activists – who made
me deepen my understanding of and sensitivity to the fight against injustice. Like many others,
during what is called the ‘migration crisis’ but that together with several researchers (Lendaro,
Rodier, and Vertongen, 2019; Farrah and Muggah, 2018) I choose here to call a ‘welcoming crisis,’
or an ‘asylum crisis’ (Braud, Fischer and Gatelier, 2018), I was strongly hit emotionally and felt
powerless when thinking about the challenges faced by the people who were trying to reach Europe
in very difficult conditions. Then, I was already at the time studying political sciences and was
writing my bachelor’s thesis on the Syrian war. This has also shaped my perception of the situation
and made me even more outraged at the fact that some politicians and individuals had discourses
of rejection towards those ‘waves of migrants’ coming to Europe. At that time, the city I was living
in, Grenoble, was far from having those ‘waves’ of immigrants (Courrier International, 2020). It is
only later on, when I started living abroad that the area started to see more migrants arriving, and
especially people crossing the border between Italy and France, or at least this is not before 2017
that I started to hear about it. Then I learned that people on the French side of the border were
helping asylum seekers with accommodation, navigating the system, and even rescuing those who
got lost in the snow while crossing the Alps. When Cédric Herrou,1 a farmer got threatened with
offence charges for having hosted migrants in his farm next to the border, activists all over France
were outraged and started voicing strong opposition against this new délit de solidarité [offence of
solidarity], I took part in this, mostly on social media and in my social circle. I admired the people
who committed to helping those who arrived exhausted in France looking for a better life, fleeing
conflicts and life threats, or trying to reach their families. I think that my admiration was even
reinforced by the fact that anti-immigration discourses and policies were flourishing at the time
and that these people were risking a lot in getting involved. I also admired the people who
1BBC.com (2017). French farmer Cedric Herrou fined for helping migrants. BBC, [online] Available at:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38930619 [Accessed 4 August 2020].
6volunteered in Greece in the refugee camps, or in the North of France where migrants try to reach
the UK, or those who got involved in rescue at sea in the Mediterranean.
The realization that while I was praising solidarity work, I did not personally engage in it became
the starting point for this thesis. I looked at myself and at how I had convictions and was feeling
strongly about this situation, wanting to get involved but for several reasons did not do it, and
started wondering about the reasons that pushed those people to put the beliefs that I shared into
action. At first, I had planned to go to Briançon, a town close to the Italian border, where more and
more migrants started crossing in 2017 and where a strong solidarity movement was formed. In
spring 2020, I was ready to go there and conduct fieldwork for a month with participant
observation. This is when the Covid-19 pandemic hit Europe and France. My plans completely fell
through and I had to change my topic, since an online or distant research was not possible. First,
because of the strict lockdown that was put into place in France. Second, because the field itself
was not “available” anymore, because most of the crossings stopped, and because the people
involved in solidarity there do not communicate or coordinate so much via the internet or were not
available. Switching the geographical focus to Grenoble then made sense, because of the numerous
organizations supporting migrants that exist in the city, and the important number of migrants who
live in and around the city. In doing so, I also did not realize that I would – maybe more poignantly
because I was investigating ‘at home’ – come closer to an answer to my question. This thesis is
about those who get engaged, and the conditions that led them to do so. Conditions that I do not
gather entirely, hence my non-commitment; for now…
Grenoble, August 2020.
71) Introduction
1.1 Motivation and aim of the study
In 2014, the increase in arrivals of people seeking asylum in the Schengen area was quickly
described as a “refugee crisis” or a “migration crisis” (Del Biaggio and Rey, 2016; Musée national
de l'histoire de l'immigration, n.d.). In France, as stated by the government itself, there was not a
rise in asylum applications until late 2015 (Gouvernement.fr, 2020a) and in 2018, France was the
third country to have accepted the greatest number of asylum application in Europe after Germany
and Italy, but in way smaller proportions – 41 400 accepted cases against 139 600 for Germany –
(Toute l'Europe.eu, 2020). Quickly following the first arrivals in Europe, a polarization emerged
between pro- and anti-migration discourses, countries and citizens (Speciale, 2010). While some
countries like Germany or Sweden were at first more willing to host migrants, the failure to install
a real solidarity between the European countries to share the responsibility for taking in migrants
eventually discouraged the welcoming effort and the borders were closed again (Magnan, 2016).
In 2016, the EU started to make deals with transit countries like Turkey and Libya asking them to
help preventing people from going at sea in exchange of funding (European Commission, 2019)
and migration policies quickly became more restrictive (Stock, 2017).
NGOs and activists were very critical of those policies and words like “welcome” and “solidarity”
were at the center of the pro-migration circles (Della Porta, 2018). One decisive element was the
rising occurrence and visibility of shipwrecks of migrant vessels in the Mediterranean and the
deaths of migrants at sea (Braud, Fischer and Gatelier, 2018). The media coverage of those
tragedies indeed stirred up emotions among Europeans, and played an important role in the surge
in volunteering with migrants across Europe (Lendaro, Rodier, and Vertongen, 2019). However,
volunteering to help asylum seekers, refugees and migrants is not something new; it has been the
object of attention in media and research for a long time (Böhm, Theelen, Rusch and Van Lange,
2018; Herrmann, 2020; Wilson, 2000; Vertongen, 2018). More broadly, the question of “why
people help” has interested scholars, particularly in social psychology, for many years (Batson
1995; Oceja, and Salgado, 2012; Segal, 2018).
This thesis is interested in the specificities of a place and a time. The political context in Europe
since the beginning of the ‘refugee crisis’ seems all but favorable to immigration; migration
policies are becoming more and more restrictive (Stock, 2017), there has been a multiplication of
hate crimes and xenophobic discourses against migrants (Lomeva, Lozanova, Gabova and
8Voynova, 2017) together with a criminalization of solidarity (Fekete, 2018). But even with all of
these elements, thousands of citizens continue to get involved in solidarity work, NGOs, grassroot
groups and individual action to help all kind of migrants – refugees, asylum seekers,
unaccompanied minors, migrant workers, victims of trafficking – with integration, administrative
procedures, basic needs and accommodation, all across Europe (Della Porta, 2018). It may indeed
seem puzzling to see the growing engagement and resilience of people who get involved in
solidarity despite the many obstacles and difficulties faced by migrants themselves but also
defenders of migrants’ rights. In Grenoble, one of these obstacles is for example the unfavorable
political context, with an increasing in anti-migration local political actors, lack of resources for
organizations, and restrictive migration policies at the national level (Braud, 2018).
At the time of writing, another major element entered the picture; the Covid-19 pandemic that
spread globally, hitting Europe too and led most governments to put in place lockdowns and
sometimes state of emergency to fight the spread of the virus when it became out of control during
the spring of 2020 (The German Marshall Fund of the United States, 2020). This situation
undeniably had consequences for migrants and those who help them (McAuliffe and Bauloz, 2020).
This research aims therefore at investigating volunteer commitment with migrants through the case
of solidarity action in Grenoble and the Isère department [local district].
The study will take into account the uniqueness of the time during which the research was
conducted, that is to say, the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in France in 2020.
1.2 Research questions
The main research question to this study is: Why do people decide to commit physically in helping
migrants and other foreigners?
More closely:
- How can we understand the transition from caring about the situation of migrants to
practicing solidarity?
- Are there necessary conditions for one to get involved in solidarity action with migrants?
9I intentionally chose the physical commitment, which excludes online individual activism,
donation, ally work, signing petitions… because I am interested in the people who give their time
and who engage bodily in solidarity with migrants. This distinction allows me to understand the
process that volunteers go through and to go beyond feeling solidarity. This does not mean that I
disregard the types of activism that do not entail a physical commitment – in fact, it is extremely
important and useful for social justice – but it is a necessary distinction to frame my topic.
In order to answer these questions, I conducted qualitative interviews in the framework of an
ethnographic approach that allowed me to access in-depth information on the case. Mobilizing a
multidisciplinary conceptual framework on solidarity and help in my analysis of the material, I
provide an answer to these research questions. I also offer a discussion on transversal elements of
the volunteer commitment.
102) Background information
2.1 Migration policies and management in France
In the French law, immigration is organized by the Code of Entry and Residence of Foreigner and
the Right of Asylum (CESEDA) since 2005 and the migration policies are decided by the
government and implemented by the Interior Ministry through the institutions under its tutelage
(Vie-publique.fr, 2019). Migration policies have been a major focus of governments, with
seventeen laws adopted between 1980 and 2018 on the matter. Martin, Orrenius and Hollifield
(2014: 8) consider that they did not include any major changes, and talk about a “strong symbolic
dimension” of migration policy, with electoral strategies playing an important role in this intense
production of new laws. Corneloup and Jault-Seseke (2019) also mention the use of migration
reform as a communication tool. I do not have the space and time to proceed to a detailed overview
of the successive laws, that is why I will focus on the last one to date at the time of writing, the
‘Law of 10 September 2018 for a managed migration, an effective right to asylum and a successful
integration of 10 September 2018’ [pour une immigration maîtrisée, un droit d'asile effectif et une
intégration réussie] commonly called “Law asylum and immigration” or “Collomb Act” from the
name of the Interior Minister. The law, presented by the government as an answer to the increased
“migratory pressure” of migrants and asylum seekers coming to France and Europe (Ministère de
l'Intérieur, 2018), has been criticized by NGOs and academia (Paumard, 2018). Even the Council
of State has criticized the lack of rigor in the figures and studies used to justify it (Corneloup and
Jault-Seseke, 2019). The main objectives and decision brought by this law concern the length of
asylum procedures, the protection and security for beneficiaries of international protection and
regular migrants, the reinforcement of the fight against irregular migration and finally on attracting
highly skilled migrants. The law is criticized in many aspects, mostly for its effect on migrants’
rights. Those include the accentuation of measures linked to the suspicion of fraud – which was
already a tendency in the migration policies before but that is reinforced in the law – or the
extension of the duration of administrative detention for people waiting for deportation (ibid).
Migration policies are very centralized and their management is implemented by the state and its
representative. One exception is the situation of unaccompanied minor. The local district
[département] is the one that determines if people applying for protection as unaccompanied
minors are under 18 years old – the age of majority in France – and if they are isolated and therefore
are entitled to protection from the child welfare services [Aide sociale à l’enfance, ASE] (ibid).
11Municipalities have limited powers when it comes to decisions about migration, but they are the
one on the front line when it comes to providing basic and social services to the migrants who
arrive on their territory. Although in France, as reminded in a report on the competences and
responsibilities of cities on migration, municipalities do in fact have the possibility to take
initiatives, especially concerning accommodation, integration and anti-discrimination
(Organisation pour une citoyenneté universelle, 2019). However, at the local level, decisions about
who has the right to access accommodation facilities and social services are taken by the state,
mostly through prefectures.
2.2 Grenoble, the Isère department and migration
Grenoble is a city of about 160 000 inhabitants situated in the Alps, in south-eastern France. It is
the capital of the Isère département which is itself part of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region (see
Fig. 1).2 The city has a particularly vibrant civil society, with a wide network of organizations that
provide support to migrants. In 2016, the network Migrants in Isère [Migrants en Isère] was
created, federating 18 associations and organized the ‘General Estates of migrations’ [États
généraux des migrations3] which formulated a series of propositions about hospitality and
integration directed to the local representatives (Méténier, 2019). If the municipality is welcoming
towards migrants and asylum seekers, it is not the case of the Isère department, which is often
accused by NGOs of restricting migrants’ right, particularly migrant youth and unaccompanied
minors (Le Cimade, 2017). It has been reminded several times of its obligation to protect minors
by the Council of State and even convicted by the administrative court of Grenoble (Tribunal
administratif de Grenoble, 2017; Escudié, 2019).
The municipality, led by a left-wing mayor from the Green party since 2014, for example created
a platform to coordinate the support to migrants, and is also part of a network of French cities called
“Welcoming cities and territories” (Unevillepourtous.fr, 2020). The Migrants’ Hub [Plateforme
Migrants] is also an important tool put in place in 2015 by the municipality in coordination with
civil society actors to gather offers of support like French classes, donations, accommodation and
legal support (Braud, Fischer and Gatelier, 2018). However, the mayor has also been criticized in
2 As of 2020, France is divided in territorial collectivities into three levels, 18 Régions [regions], 101 Départements
[departments] and 34 970 Communes [municipalities] (Vie-publique.fr, 2019).
3The name “Etats généraux” was given to this event in reference to the assembly of the people that presented their
grievances to the king Louis XVI in 1798 and that led later to the French Revolution.
12the spring of 2020 for not having supported migrant young adults during the lockdown with
accommodation and not allowing them to demonstrate after the lockdown was over, invoking
sanitary reasons (Bourgon, 2020; Fourgeaud, 2020).
Données cartographiques © 2020 Google.
Figure 1: the Isère department
In 2015, contrary to many places in Europe, the city did not face a massive arrival of asylum
seekers, mostly because they were “not choosing France” (Lapperousaz, 2015). However,
according to a report from the regional prefect, between 2016 and 2017 the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
region has seen an increase of 35% of the number of asylum applications, with a 52% increase in
Grenoble (Secrétaire général pour les affaires régionales Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, 2018). Asylum
seekers indeed constitute an important part of migrants who are helped and supported by the civil
society in their application for protection but also accommodation, since the reception centers are
overcrowded and they often have to wait several months before getting a spot in a center (Braud,
2018). As of 2019, there was an estimated lack of 1700 spots for accommodation of asylum seekers
in the Grenoble area only (Ligue de l’enseignement de l’Isère, 2019).
In late 2019, early 2020, the support to migrants, asylum seekers, refugees and foreigners in general
was at the heart of the preoccupations of many activists and civil society actors. In the neighboring
13mountains and valleys too, many collectives and organizations were created, especially to provide
accommodation for asylum seekers because of the lack of free spots in state accommodation
facilities (Braud, Fischer and Gatelier, 2018). Fourteen collectives provide accommodation within
families and citizens’ homes, connected with the NGO Welcome asylum seekers [Accueil
Demandeurs d’Asile, ADA] that proceeds to the referrals of people in need of accommodation.
Even more collectives of this type exist in Isère, including networks of accommodation in parishes
and individuals hosting independently (Méténier, 2019).
2.3 The Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown
This research has been conducted during a very specific time: the spring of 2020, during which the
global pandemic of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) hit Europe. The outbreak reached France at
the end of January 2020, and two months later a full national lockdown and the state of health
emergency were declared on March 23, 2020 (Direction de l'information légale et administrative
(Premier ministre), 2020). The Government later communicated the concrete measures entailed by
the lockdown, that were quite strict: all shops that were not selling necessities had to close. It also
meant that going out of home was forbidden except for the following reasons: buying necessities
like food and medicine, going to work if working from home was not possible4, going to a medical
consultation, helping vulnerable people or childcare, exercising briefly around the home. In order
to be able to control this, people had to carry identity papers and a signed sworn statement
stipulating the reason(s) for leaving home, risking a fine in case of breaching one of those
conditions. On May 11, 2020, the lockdown ended and restrictions were lifted progressively
throughout the following months (Gouvernement.fr, 2020b).
Even before the full lockdown, NGOs were already warning about the very worrying situation of
migrant populations regarding the pandemic (Forum Réfugiés, 2020; Cook, 2020). Once the
lockdown was put into place, European countries took different measures regarding migrants and
asylum seekers. In Portugal, the state decided to grant migrants who had an ongoing residency
application the same rights as its residents (Del Barrio, 2020). However, in most European
countries, migrants ended up in limbo, especially people in irregular situation that were – already
before the outbreak of the pandemic – highly dependent on NGOs and charities’ help (ECRE,
4This mostly included people working in the medical field as well as in food stores and pharmacies, but also tobacco
shops, garbage collectors, postal workers. When in this case, workers also had to carry a certificate from their
employers (Ministère de l'Intérieur, 2020a).
142020). If solidarity with migrants was needed before, the threat of the global pandemic made it
even more urgent. Yet, the situation made it also more complicated to implement it concretely –
for example, rescue at sea had to stop (ibid).
In France, the validity of residence permits and asylum application certificates was extended for
180 days for those whose expiration date was between March 16, 2020 and May 15, 2020
(Ministère de l'Intérieur, 2020b). The registration of new applications for asylum was temporarily
suspended, at the exception of registration of vulnerable people, while identifying those who had
the intention to apply for asylum. However, on April 30, 2020, the Council of State ordered the
Ministry of Interior to re-establish the registration of asylum seekers in the Paris area (Conseil
d’Etat, 2020). The declaration of the state of emergency suspended time limits for a range of
appeals (Delbos, 2020). When it comes to the accommodation of asylum seekers, it was mostly a
situation of status quo, where spots in accommodation facilities were already limited.
For solidarity organizations, the consequences of the lockdown were important, as much as the
pandemic itself. Partly because most of the help activities had to stop, but also, amongst other
reasons, because many of their volunteers being retired people and part of at-risk groups, had to
stop helping. As a consequence, calls to volunteers were made through the mainstream and social
media, and platforms were created to allow people to register themselves as available for
volunteering (Delpierre, 2020).5 In these circumstances, charity organizations had to adapt to
continue providing help to vulnerable populations, including migrants. In the Isère department and
its chief city Grenoble, while some charities were still allowed to exercise their activities, most of
the support they used to provide had to stop, like legal aid (La Cimade, 2020) or language activities.
At the same time, some of them were reinforced like food distributions (Solidarités Grenoble, 2020)
or accommodation of migrants in families (Diaconat Protestant de Grenoble, 2020). Providing
accommodation for migrants that were living in the streets was indeed an urgent challenge
(Chesnais, 2020). Most of the organizations tried in some ways to continue exercising solidarity
with migrants and vulnerable people, be it through physical actions or virtual help (Beyrie, 2020).
Advocacy also increased with NGOs writing open letters to the President or to local authorities
asking them to take stronger measures to protect asylum seekers and migrants (Carretero, 2020).
5 From these platforms, some examples are at the national level Jeveuxaider.gouv.fr together with the “civic reserve”
[Réserve civique] Covid-19, created by the government but also initiatives from the civil society like Covid-entraide
France and commentaider.fr. At the local level, many cities and departments had their own platforms and networks,
like “Grenoble voisins, voisines.”
15The end of the lockdown was also problematic because it put many migrants in highly difficult
situation, especially asylum seekers and young adults. In Isère, organizations supporting migrants
voiced criticism about the slowness to re-open the administration in charge of processing
applications for residence permit. It especially contrasted with the emergency faced by migrants
whose time limits for applying started to run again – from May 24, 2020 for appealing against
rejection of asylum and June 24, 2020 for applying for asylum, both having a time limit after which
they were not valid anymore (GISTI, 2020).
163) Previous research
In this section, I present the state of the research on the topic at heart in this thesis: volunteering
and help to others in the framework of solidarity. After a review of the research on volunteering
(3.1) and solidarity action with migrants (3.2), I turn to the specific aspects of solidarity during the
Covid-19 ‘crisis’ of 2020 (3.4). Finally, this section allows me to position myself in the field (3.4).
3.1 Volunteering and motives for helping
This thesis is interested in people involved in solidarity action with migrants. However, helping
has been studied for a long time, by several disciplines, and with diverse methods and conclusions.
From theses disciplines, one can cite psychology, social psychology, political sciences, sociology
but also philosophy.
Havard Duclos and Nicours (2005a) studied volunteering and investigated the reasons for people
to get involved in solidarity organizations. They argued that altruism and willingness to commit in
helping others is not something that is naturally part of our personality, but that it is the product of
one’s personal history and of the charity organization itself. In a second research (Havard Duclos
and Nicours, 2005b), they identified four motives to get involved: (1) be useful, (2) be in line with
one’s own story, (3) feel in harmony with one’s previous engagements, and finally (4) social and
material retributions. Brodiez (2009) investigated the evolution of the profiles and motives of
activists from Emmaüs.6 She found that religious beliefs continued being part of the motives over
time, even with the decrease of the role of religion in the organization and in the society.
Importantly, primary (childhood) and secondary (adulthood) socializations played a great role in
the factors of involvement, as well as values and personal networks. Indeed, socialization is often
found to be crucial for one’s commitment in helping. Religious socialization was frequently
brought up in the research on volunteering (Havard Duclos and Nicours, 2005; D’Halluin, 2010;
Czerny, 2019; Gerbier-Aublanc, 2018b; Brodiez, 2009). The values promoted by monotheisms –
in the cases evoked, Christianism – are often used by citizens to justify their actions. Of course,
other kinds of socializations are also important; Gerbier-Aublanc mentions “political, intellectual,
artistic or religious socialization” (2018a: 92).
6 Emmaüs is a solidarity organization that was founded in 1954 in France by a Catholic priest, l’Abbé Pierre. Its
particularity is that it is constituted of “communities.” In 1971, it developed into an international network, still with
the goal to fight poverty, exclusion and homelessness (Emmaus-france.org, 2020).
173.2 Solidarity in France and Europe with migrants since 2015
Although it did not start in 2015, the phenomenon of people helping migrants by getting involved
in actions of solidarity is topical and has known a peak in Europe (Feischmidt, Pries and Cantat,
2018). This movement happened in traditional associations,7 but also via grassroots groups that
self-organized through social media to help migrants with food and clothes distribution, language
classes, accommodation, social integration, legal aid… (Barone, 2018; Herrmann, 2020; Bourgois
and Lièvre, 2019; Mouzon, 2017; Giliberti, 2018; Masson Diez, 2018; Vertongen, 2018; Bernàt,
Kertész and Tóth, 2016).
Masson Diez (2018) studied several forms of organized solidarity with migrants in France in the
aftermath of summer 2015, observing the spontaneous drive to help people sleeping in the streets
‘down their block.’ Street camps in Paris played a role in the “moral shock” that led many citizens
to help (Masson Diez, 2018: 178) in a will to “go from emotion to action” after seeing people in
need (ibid: 170). For her, these encounters made it impossible for people to deny the reality of the
situation and to ‘bear’ the sight of these people directly down one’s building without doing
anything. According to Masson Diez (2018), the role of the personal network and acquaintances
was also an important element for people to get involved. Knowing someone who is involved can
facilitate the decision, as it is also found by Ruiz (2017) in her study of volunteers helping migrants
in Swiss Romandie.
For those who did not directly witness the migrants’ difficult situation, media coverage has been
identified as a strong trigger for solidarity movements with migrants in Europe after 2015. The
picture of the dead body stranded on a Turkish beach of Alan Kurdi, a Syrian-Kurdish boy,
particularly was seen as a such by many (Masson Diez, 2018; Fekete, 2018; Braud, Fischer and
Gatelier, 2018; Gerbier-Aublanc, 2018a, 2018b).
Stock (2017) studied integration of newcomers in Germany and volunteer effort after 2015.
Reviewing the literature, she highlighted the opposition between two views on the surge of
volunteers to help asylum seekers. First, some academics said that it was a welcoming culture and
a new political movement against Europe’s handling of migration, defending foreigners’ claims to
rights. Others identified the movement as a product of the states’ will to outsource their social
7“Association” is the most common name given to NGOs in French. It is a form of organisation that can be created
by anyone (it does not have to be professional) and whose status and activities are regulated by a law adopted in
1901 (Associations.gouv.fr, 2005).
18services and sees refugees in need of help as passive receivers. In this view, the main drivers of the
volunteering effort were the perceived vulnerability of the migrants and self-individual fulfilment.
In their study of accommodation of asylum seekers in Grenoble, Braud, Fischer and Gatelier (2018)
argued that the state, confronted to a lack of accommodation spots, saw the opportunity to use the
networks and associations that emerged spontaneously at the local level for accommodating asylum
seekers and refugees. It provided funding and pushed for hosting families to help asylum seekers
with language learning, or finding a job... However, it used this in a utilitarian perspective and did
not try to generalize it. For the authors, the state was afraid to lose control over a pro-migration
movement that would show an idealized picture of what integration could be, which would be in
contradiction with the restrictive migration policies it was putting into place. Snyder and Omoto
(2008: 28) had a less critical approach to governments and institutions “utilizing volunteers to fill
gaps in services” but also observed this phenomenon, considering that “volunteerism is itself a
policy topic but also a tool for policy and policy implementation.”
Herrmann (2020) found that the commitment in the help to refugees in 2015 and 2016 by volunteers
in Germany “was seen as a basic principled response, rather than a question of specific interests or
political agendas.” Volunteers also “thought it took a specific personal disposition to want to help
– one that others may not have.” (ibid: 214). These two findings raise the question of the drivers of
the commitment, that my thesis aims at answering, drawing on Herrmann’s research but with
different results.
3.3 Solidarity during the Covid-19 crisis
The impact of the lockdown and the pandemic on migration, migrants and solidarity has interested
researchers, also for its unique occurrence. Some have written about the impact on migrants’ rights
(Parrot, 2020) and on mobility (Dumont, 2020). However, the short time frame – of the lockdowns
in Europe in spring 2020 and of the timeline of this thesis – has limited the amount of research that
can be included about this topic. Yet, resources like webinars were particularly useful and I could
review some of them. In Denmark, researchers from the University of Copenhagen quickly started
to investigate volunteering efforts during the pandemic (Sociology.ku.dk, 2020). One of the
scholars leading the research, Jonas Toubøl (2020), explained in a webinar that in Denmark, around
half of the population helped others some way or another and that help was primarily organized in
informal networks rather than formal organizations. One other interesting preliminary finding was
that risk and trust perceptions were highly heterogeneous among the people involved. In Toronto,
19an organization providing social support to refugees had to adapt to the lockdown, as explained by
its co-directors in another webinar (Hill and Lusztyk, 2020). Going through the adaptation of the
activities and the impact on volunteers, they explained that many new volunteers also signed up.
One of them also noted
I think some volunteers are really also finding a sense of purpose and community in this
work when they may be facing losses in other areas of their life, whether it’s loss of
employment, or frustration and not being able to connect with family members in person.
In that sense, the situation of crisis can itself be a motive for getting involved or staying involved.
3.4 Contribution of the thesis
The studies presented in this section have investigated motives for helping and solidarity with
migrants. In Germany, Herrmann (2020: 206) examined “why previously unsupportive strata of
society came out volunteering for refugees in 2015” and tried to find the “motives and triggers that
brought them to volunteering.”. Triggers are external factors that make a person deciding to
commit. They are more direct than the internal factors, that can be understood as more long term,
deep factors, what Herrmann calls “values.” I align myself with this argument in this thesis, since
I identify different types of drivers of the commitment of people helping migrants in Grenoble that
I divide between internal (motives) and external (triggers). However, I demonstrate in this study
that both triggers and motives are necessary for a person to decide to commit.
This multidisciplinary approach contributes to the field of migration studies on solidarity with
migrants through the analysis of the participants’ understanding of their commitment. In combining
sociology, political science and social psychology, I show the intertwining of the different types of
factors (internal and external) of solidarity action. Those factors have been identified by research
as having an impact, but the fact that their combination plays a role has never been studied before.
Finally, the research provides helpful insights for actors involved in the support to migrants, trying
to draw some lessons from the ‘crises’, and help prepare better for this kind of unique situation, be
it a global pandemic or a new ‘refugee crisis’. Civil society organizations struggle sometimes to
get some perspective on the work they do and the way they use volunteers since they are often
working in a fast-paced environment (Snyder and Omoto, 2008). Investigating why people help
and how their engagement is shaped also gives an insight on how to recruit volunteers, how to
make people interested in helping. In that sense, this thesis is also a societal contribution.
204) Conceptual framework
In this section, I present the concepts and theoretical approaches that will help me analyze the
findings in section 6) and give an overview of important theories connected to solidarity that are
relevant to answer the research questions.
4.1 Solidarity
Solidarity is a broad concept that has been studied for a long time. Scholars have identified many
reasons why we act on solidarity towards others: because they look like us, because we identify
with their distress, because we share an ideology, because we are part of the same nation or because
we feel like we have common interests (Stjernø, 2009: 18). Stjernø (2009) explained that solidarity
existed before the concept was coined by research, in feudal societies in which social and family
ties led people to support and help each other, along moral norms. Solidarity also existed in the
form of “fraternity” (ibid: 26) in the Christian era, and later in France it was understood by
philosophers in the context of social unrests and revolutions as “a way to combine the idea of
individual rights and liberties with the idea of social cohesion and community” (ibid). With the
birth of Marxism, solidarity became an essential mean of the working class’s unity in its struggle
against capitalism (ibid).
According to Giugni and Passy (2002), the solidarity movement has been inspired by three
traditions: Christianism, the humanist component of the Enlightenment, and socialism. During the
two World Wars, many organizations, drawing from these three traditions, were offering relief or
assistance in the form of voluntary associations. However, for the authors, their action was not
political: “they provided assistance, but in the absence of sustained political claim-making
addressed to power holders” (ibid: 9). One had to wait until the 1960s-1970s for a new social
movement to emerge, in which organizations were still providing assistance, but whose actions
included this claim-making dimension, that is, the birth of what we now call advocacy (ibid: 10).
For the authors, “the new lines of conflict, which stem from the transformation of contemporary
society, have given birth to a new political actor.” (ibid: 11).
Banting and Kymlicka (2017: 6) focused on what they call societal solidarity, which is distinct
from “pure humanitarianism.” This distinction is made with the notion of in-group and out-group
members: “We might say that justice amongst members is egalitarian, whereas justice to strangers
is humanitarian, and social justice in this sense arguably depends on bounded solidarities” (ibid:
216). To them, solidarity is in fact a “set of attitudes and motivations” (2017: 3). They insist on the
importance of bounded solidarities, which is the necessity to connect with others, as different as
they might be from us, in order to build solidarity across different ethnic and religious backgrounds.
Miller, who wrote a chapter in the edited book by Banting and Kymlicka, goes further in
distinguishing solidarity among members of a group and solidarity with outsiders. He argues that
if solidarity is only about having common features with people, then being human should be enough
to express solidarity with everyone. In fact, it is “much narrower than this in practice” because
there has to be a “we that feels and practice solidarity” in a reciprocal manner (Miller, 2017: 63).
In that sense, for Miller but also others (Stjernø, 2009; Batson, 1995; Stürmer and Snyder, 2010)
solidarity has to be distinguished from altruism, which is “helping people in need with no
expectation of return” (Miller, 2017: 63).
4.2 The psycho-sociological approach
Another approach to the help to others comes from social psychology, in particular with the concept
of prosocial behavior. It is simply defined as the study of “actions that benefit others” (Stürmer
and Snyder, 2010: 59). One prominent scholar in this field is Daniel Batson, who wrote about the
reasons why we decide to act for public good and why we help others (1995) and identified four of
them: egoism, altruism, collectivism and principlism. Batson (1991: 6) defined altruism as “a
motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another’s welfare”. He tried to answer the
question “does altruism exist?” for a large part of his career and tried to challenge the way our
belief and scientific system as a whole has been based on the assumption of “universal egoism”
(ibid: 3). He focused on motivations of people, not the consequences of their acts, and distinguished
between intermediate and ultimate goals, the latter being the one that is important for the altruistic
hypothesis to hold. He also explained that we can have both altruistic and egoistic goals at the same
time when acting, which sometimes leads us to “motivational conflict” (ibid: 8). In addition, self-
benefits can be unintended, which means that it does not invalidate the altruism hypothesis. To take
an example, when deciding to get involved in food distributions, one often gets some self-reward
of satisfaction like a social status. These are benefits, that can be unintended, or intermediate goals.
Yet, if the person decided to get involved not in order to get social status or self-reward, but because
they want to increase the welfare of people in need of food distributions, they are still doing it for
altruistic reasons.
22Bar-Tal (as cited in Guigni and Passy, 2002) adds other dimensions in his definition of altruism:
altruistic behavior (a) must benefit to other persons, (b) must be performed voluntarily, (c)
must be performed intentionally, (d) the benefit must be the goal by itself, and (e) must be
performed without expecting any external reward.
In his later work, Batson decided to follow the lead of empathy, convinced that it might prove that
altruism could actually exist. He reached a “tentative conclusion that feeling empathy for a person
in need evokes altruistic motivation to help that person” (1995: 373). Segal (2018) wrote about
more specifically social empathy. First, she defined empathy broadly as “experiencing the suffering
of others, that is, we share the distress of another” (ibid: 3). Then she distinguished between
interpersonal empathy, which is “mirroring the physiological actions of another, taking the other’s
perspective, and while doing so remembering that the experience belongs to the other and is not
our own” and social empathy which is “the ability to understand people and other social groups by
perceiving and experiencing their life situations” (ibid: 4). To her, social empathy means being
aware of the context, the history and the structural nature of inequalities. It has a political dimension
because it makes people aware of the imbalance of power between groups and is anchored in a
process of changing this state of things. Segal argued that “being socially empathic has the benefit
of helping us to feel part of the larger society, which is empowering. We feel that we can have an
impact on the world outside us, that we matter and make a difference” (ibid: 177).
Making a difference at the societal level entails for many scholars a political dimension of one’s
action of solidarity. This is why this approach will be needed too in order to frame the topic at stake
completely.
4.3 Disagreement, resistance and political solidarity
The political dimension of solidarity, and particularly in the sense of resistance and reaction to
injustice, is another interesting field for understanding the matter at stake in this thesis and the
importance of political solidarity.
Political solidarity has been theorized by Sally Scholtz (2008) amongst others. The specificities of
this kind of solidarity is the relationship to the society and the social world, that “indicates political
activism aimed at social change” (ibid: 5). She further defined the concept as “a moral relation that
marks a social movement wherein individuals have committed to positive duties in response to a
perceived injustice” (ibid: 6). This type of solidarity can be motivated by various types of reasons,
23from which she mentioned “feelings of indignation, experiences of oppression or injustice, desire
to care for others who are suffering, or even employment situations.” (ibid: 72). When it comes to
the form and scope of political solidarity, she understood it as the commitment of individuals in
collective action. However, this does not mean that solidarity in general is necessarily collective:
[t]he first characteristic is that solidarity mediates between the community and the
individual. That is, solidarity is neither individualism nor communalism but blends
elements of both. Individuals are valued for their uniqueness but solidarity is also a
community or collective (whether it be the formal state, society generally, or some
subgroup or voluntary association). (ibid: 18).
Another characteristic of political solidarity which distinguishes it from what she called social
solidarity, is the place given to “moral requirements” (ibid: 70). In social solidarity, they are
present, but secondary, whereas they are a necessary and crucial feature of political solidarity.
Featherstone (2012: 5) saw solidarity “as a relation forged through political struggle which seeks
to challenge forms of oppression.” This struggle is not, in his view, the one that has been recounted
as led by elites; he emphasized the importance of anti-colonial movements and thinkers and of a
bottom-up dynamic that is contradicting the usual theorization of internationalism. Featherstone
further argued that solidarity in its active form can only be political:
At first sight the idea that solidarity is the expression of an underlying human essence might
seem incontrovertible and appealing. Indeed, it might seem pretty miserly to argue against
a solidarity based on such firm foundations. The problem with such an account of solidarity
is that it doesn’t enable ‘movements’ or political activity any agency or role in shaping how
solidarities are constructed. (ibid: 19)
Rejecting the hypothesis according which we would be in “post-political times,” Featherstone
argued that center-left and right-wing politicians tried to created “forms of political managerialism
where conflict and contestation are eviscerated in diverse contexts” (ibid: 95). However, to him
this does not mean that political movements and struggles have lost their importance; he argued
that they are happening outside of “the narrow limits of ‘organized’ politics” (ibid).
One prominent scholar in the matter of politics is Rancière, who argued for the importance of
“dissent” for politics and democracy to exist. Rejecting the model of consensus-based systems,
Rancière theorized a model that opposed the police and the politics. The police, in the sense he
intended it, has – almost – nothing to do with officers in uniform, but was a way to designate the
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