ABSTRACT
Police intimidation of migrants and citizens acting in solidarity with them is frequent across the European Union, where states are policing citizens who help migrants in irregular legal situations as part of their fight against irregular migration and smuggling. This chapter considers the relationship between criminalization, citizenship and solidarity and scrutinizes how performing solidarity with migrants becomes an act of dissent with the potential to transform citizenship. The case of citizens acting in solidarity with migrants in the French town of Briançon is used here to analyse how citizens act in solidarity with migrants, how such solidarity becomes a form of dissent and how it gains transformative force as a form of performative citizenship. In this context, people are challenging citizenship as a bounded legal category based on national identity in favour of an active form of citizenship as a practice of collective solidarity.
