There are over 1500 kilometers between the Brenner Pass and Idomeni. There is an history, far and close, that affects the deep distance between the core of Tirol and the stripe of land situated between the Balkans and the North-Western of the Mediterranean sea. But there is an history of borders and passages of people that connects these two places, like many others in Europe, especially in a framework in which borders have become barriers and the crosses today are new constraints.
There is not only a real frame that links in our imaginary Idomeni to the Brenner. But also a strong subjective element that produces a political continuity between the Macedonian/Greek border Overthefortress march and the last sunday Italian/Austrian border mobilitation. This element has been decided by the challenge that hundreds of marching bodies, the “no borders” like the Italian and Global press nicknamed them, launched to the European institutions.
On the April 3, at the Brenner it was not given a mediatic or political date. You write Brenner and you read Bruxelles, but also Wien, Athens, Ankara, Rome, Berlin, Frankfurt and all the other places in which decisions are taken, where the dominium of capital on life become law and where it is debated the relation between continental governance and forms, old or new, of state. “Agire contro i confini” opens a public political space, conflictual, that defines the initiative in a polarized field in which authoriry and rights, repression and freedom, conservation and change are in contrast. A field contained in the whole European space and that catch the timing of implosion of the establishment pillars of EU and of its integration process, Schengen and Maastricht.
The crisis of the management of migrant fluxes must be read in the context of the economic-financial crisis that in the last decade has completely changed the distribution of wealth, the forms of social bargain, the frame of rights and citizenship in the old continent. Firstly, welcome, as part of a broader welfare, became a businnes, with the subordination of the humanitarian right to the interests of the companies that have got the management. Secondly, the militarization of borders, the segregation of migrants along national borders and in the ghettos of our cities,that fueled the perception of the “invaded” Europe, that favor the growth of the neo-nationalist rethoric. Beyond the determination of new xenophobic and reactionary parties, this rethoric is completely useful for the neo-liberal governance because of it oriented, in ethnical terms the tensions and the social pains that crisis produced to millions of Europeans in misery.
Migratory question faced also the political crisis that the European Union is experiencing, clearly evident with the agreement of October 18 with Turkey, that delegates to the Erdogan government the dirty work of repatriation of those migrants arrived in Europe during the last months and, in general, all the management of migratory fluxes. Deliver millions of people, most of them escaped from the same war that see Turkey on the front line, in the hands of a bloody regime regarding the Kurdish people and all the internal oppositions, marks the humanitarian surrender in front of the geo-strategical interests.
The short circuit that is afecting Europe open a political space that European movements must fill in order to subtract it from the neo-soverign pushes that in the right wing, but also in some parts of the left wing, are becoming larger. The role of movements must be the reconstruction of a narration and a political practice able to reconquest rights and welfare on a transnational level. Sunday 3 April, we had the possibility to demonstrate a possibility that act in this way, that need to radicate and grow, but in the same time reveals its potentiality and its conflictual capacity. Over 1500 individuals violated that border that Austria wants to close already in the next days and did not stop when the austrian police required to dissolve the mobilization. The various souls of the demonstration went on in a compact body in front of the block of police, despite the cudgel and the pepper sprays. In addiction, the mobile border that the austrian police built to avoid the cross of the activists reclaims that the free circulation of people represents in this moment a danger for the European establishment. The mobilization at the Brenner Pass was able to face European governments with this kind of message for the constitutional frame of the future: for the first time, from below and from the left, an internal border has been violated in order to claim the freedom of movemente. Young neoliberals, from sunday, are conscious that they must not be afraid only of the reactionary boosts from the right side, that obliged them to impose constraints on the borders for not to loose the electoral consensus. A new strength, that must absolutely became movement in order to win, has appeared for an Europe without borders. And will appear again.
The continuity between Idomeni and the Brenner has not been affirmed only through the tents on railway tracks or through the orange life jackets of the #overthefortress activists. It exists a political continuity between them, that sees through the device of the borders, the paradigma of an Europe made, modeled and governed only through the interests of the élites. Banging on the rules and the architecture of the Fortress Europe it does not mean to claim the return of Schengen regime, but it means the elements to enhance the role of cooperation from below, the widespread solidarity and th redistribution of wealth as an alternative and inclusive model to the neoliberal governance.
Between Idomeni and Brenner there is a dialectict between conflict and project, that breaks the union space-timing of the single event in favor of a processual vision. It is clear that this vision does not isert itself in a framework of mass social mobilitation, but it is determined by heterogeneous subjectivities that show a large availability to conflict. A subjectivity that find stimulus from the boost of thousands of migrants on the Balkan Route that, despite the militarization, still go on with the boost and the movement along internal and external borders of the European Union. A subjectivity that from Idomeni to Brenner is able to watch even Paris, because the game at stake are the material conditions of life of million of exploited people.
The challenge represent the extension of the processes of subjectivation to the whole social body, putting into action the confederative ability that struggles are able to get, when they act in the social bonds and take life inside open and long organizational patterns. Starting from an awareness: it is still possible, even in a not so optimal frame for the movements like the italian one, to create moment of conflict with the goal to subvert radically the relation between capital and life.