Good Neighbouring: A Travelling Practice

Abstract

In this opinion piece for the journal's Current Affairs column, Stephen Kemmis and Emily Cole examine contemporary US immigration enforcement practices and the emergence of responses to them. Responding to widespread narratives of political polarisation and division, they conceptualise the issue in terms of a contested field of evolving practices. While recent policy shifts toward detention and deportation have generated forms of policing that are widely challenged and resisted, they have also prompted the emergence and expansion of practices of care, protection, and solidarity among US citizens. Focusing in particular on developments in Minnesota, Kemmis and Cole show how traditions of ‘good neighbouring’ are being reworked into new forms of collective action and resistance. The piece highlights how distributed learning across social ensembles sustains these transformations, revealing the tensions and consequences of changing government policy, and pointing to the enduring potential and capacity for humane and solidaristic forms of practice.