Recasting solidarity during the COVID-19 pandemic: a case study

The practices of social movements during the pandemic show how severe limitations on political and social organization have been turned into opportunities by increasing the focus on social justice and care-based initiatives, building trust and solidarity. This case study explores how the urban militants of the anti-military occupation movement A Foras (Out) maintained visibility during the pandemic. Besides calling attention to the unethical growth of military spending concurrent with the lack of investment in public health during the COVID-19 crisis, the movement engaged in mutualistic action against pandemic-related issues, such as isolation, and social exclusion. We examine ethnographically this hybridized mobilization, which is grounded on the significance of solidarity, community, and the nature of public life. By making social inequality, exclusion and isolation more visible, mutualistic practices act in the social justice arena as a 'purposive orientation'. This case study offers an example of a grassroots social movement renewing its space of knowledge production by widening its agency and reconfiguring care as an action for political change, adding to the notion of caring democracy by giving rise to a mutualist initiative based on horizontality and potential reciprocity. The article provides an up-to-date understanding of how imaginaries and care practices activated around solidarity, security, and safety are recasting society in southern Europe in the wake of COVID-19. It contributes to the debate around caring democracy in social movements studies by rethinking the significance of caring infrastructures and, ultimately, the meaning of solidarity and trust.