Citizen Activism and Mediterranean Identity ― Beyond Eurocentrism

This book explores the commonalities between the struggles of the last years around the Mediterranean and tries to find the cultural roots of this season of protests and activism against repression and a growing systemic crisis. Who are their main characters? How has mobility of ideas and persons contributed to it? Why has the Mediterranean become the cradle of civil resistance? And how can one make sure that what has begun bears fruit? The author discusses how a strategic action of social movements and activists from both Europe and the Arab world can build the basis for a grassroots project for integration between the two shores, where mobility is at the core: on the one hand, mobility of ideas, activists, men and women of culture and other key-players, and trans-national strategizing; on the other hand, challenging the paradigms of visa policies and striving for a space of safe human mobility as one of the steps of a grassroots Mediterranean citizens project. Providing argument to a new theory of social mobilization, this book will be of interest to scholars of European and Arab politics as well as to political activists in the region.