Submissions will open in the fall of 2024, with a deadline of December 16, 2024.

Inclusive Solidarities: Reimagining Boundaries in Divided Times

Solidarity is a central value practiced across social and labor movements and a key principle underpinning social democracies. It is also a term with many meanings, referring to the cohesion of groups, the development of social policy and welfare states, or the goals and tactics of labor and social movement organizations. Solidarity in all its forms involves an act of political and social imagination – to identify who one is willing to act in solidarity with, or who are the members of one’s ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1983). How community is defined, and how the boundaries around that community are drawn or imagined, have implications for who is included and excluded in collective action to redistribute power and resources, to demand rights, and to fight oppression. 

The theme of this year’s SASE meeting recognizes the importance of re-imagining the boundaries that define commitments to and practices of inclusive solidarity, at a time when the most visible trends are toward intensified divisions. Tens of thousands of lives have been lost in wars, invasions, and violent conflicts over the past year alone. Climate change is fueling displacement and famine, while attempts to mitigate carbon emissions encourage organizing for and against policies to reform farming, manufacturing, and energy production. Far right political parties have experienced growing support, with recent major election wins in Europe and Latin America – and a rising share of the popular vote in many countries world-wide. And multinational companies and their investors continue to adapt to a post-COVID global economy through pursuing particularistic interests within and across national boundaries, from opposing proposed regulation of AI and platform work to challenging the right to strike as a critical dimension of the ILO’s fundamental right to freedom of association. 

While there are many examples of developments that are driving up inequality, precarity, and exclusion, these are also increasingly contested by creative movements that seek to build worker and citizen power based on more inclusive and participatory forms of solidarity. These take different forms, from a recent wave of labor organizing and strikes in the US to increasingly global racial and gender justice movements to international campaigns to improve labor and environmental practices across global supply chains. They share a commitment to building more democratic, just, and sustainable institutions and practices that strengthen worker and citizen voice and constrain capital’s ability to exit these institutions. 

The task of both identifying the challenges to solidarity and studying its changing forms, practices, and impact raises a number of questions for researchers and practitioners. How do individuals, organizations, and states confront divisive ideologies and political movements? What role do foundational social, political, and economic stratifications and established institutions play in exacerbating these divisions? And which institutions (old or new) serve as resources for bridging them? In what ways do multinational companies and financial actors benefit from these trends, and how do they adapt their own strategies in response to the changing scale and scope of regulation? In what ways are labor and social movements responding? How do they overcome or transform potential identity-based fragmentation to build more inclusive, intersectional forms of solidarity? And under what conditions do they succeed – in reembedding capital in ways that tie it to more solidaristic social commitments or in transforming capitalist ownership and power relations? What role do nation-states and political parties play in fostering inclusion or exacerbating divisions – and in encouraging alternative strategic choices by different stakeholder groups? 

The location of our meeting in Montréal, Canada, is ideal for investigating these questions. Québec’s history is marked by frequent re-imaginings of the boundaries defining solidarity and the practices that underpin it – from European colonization, the displacement of Indigenous Peoples, and centuries of religious or cultural and nationalist conflict; to the ‘Quiet Revolution’ of the 1960s that established a more inclusive welfare state and industrial relations institutions. Québec is known for its progressive policies supporting women’s rights, migrant integration, and Indigenous self-government; for the strength and creativity of its labor movement; for efforts to embed capital through worker investment funds and public investment; and for ongoing conflicts over citizenship rights and political self-determination. In short, it is both a model for re-imagining more inclusive approaches to solidarity, while also typifying the many contradictions that mark the path to drawing and re-drawing boundaries around different imagined communities. 

The 2025 SASE Annual Meeting welcomes submissions that engage with and beyond these themes — in our association’s tradition of multi-scalar, multi-disciplinary research that subjects a broad range of socio-economic developments and paradigms to critical analysis. We look forward to bringing together a diverse community of international scholars to join our SASE community in Montréal. 

President: Virginia Doellgast