south-to-south
we are a movement
an autonomous transnational collective
by and with scholars, activists, and scholar-activists
from and for the global souths
we come together
south-to-south
to question colonial/modern power, always
to think and write and collaborate
with fellow travellers
to complain and, at times, grieve
to make sense of our worlds
outside the disciplinary borders of the academy
south-to-south
we learn to unlearn
we dream of alternatives, desire other futures
we (aspire to) move in our worlds, otherwise
south-to-south
Our commitments
South/South Movement is an autonomous collective run by and with scholars, activists, and scholar-activists from and for the global souths. Beyond essentialized geographic boundaries and the realm of nation-states, we view the global souths in a pluriversal sense from the relational perspectives of peoples and places “marginalized in global hierarchies and struggling to redeem their humanity and worth” under colonial/modern death, erasure, control, exploitation, dispossession, and subordination. We mobilize the global souths as a political concept aimed at forging solidaristic ties between and among peripheries, no matter the hemisphere.
In 2020, our story began out of a shared frustration by minoritized doctoral researchers immersed in Global North academic structures and conventions that remain impervious to knowledges and lived experiences in and by the global majority. Since then, we have turned from a small group of student organizers based at a university in Central Europe into a transnational collective with participants within and outside academia and those in-between.
Our collective work is invested in questioning Eurocentric, imperialist and western-centric knowledge regimes in social and political sciences and beyond. To this end, we have engaged in actions that:
- Prioritize alternative ways of knowing. We have established different thematic research clusters focused on engaging with methodology otherwise; calling out and unsettling the persistence of colonial power; searching for pluriversal alternatives; and interrogating European Studies, among others. Through these strands, we curate reading lists, organize reading group sessions, write collaborative texts, and convene conference panels.
- Co-organize community events. We host public discussions with scholar-activists as guest speakers, bonfire-style conversations, and solidarity teach-ins.
- Build solidarities in and outside academia. We stand with and work in relationship with our communities through our solidarity series, mentorship programs, writing workshops, and conference-organizing. We co-author and co-edit knowledge rooted in struggle, advancing socially engaged research and collective political action.
In our co-organizing, we move away from the entrenched hierarchies concealed by notions of seniority and expertise that often define academic spaces. Instead, our gatherings foster collective exchange—around bonfires rather than podiums—where dialogue unfolds as a shared act of co-creation rather than instruction.
Our aspirations
Over the past five years, we have done the work of learning and unlearning, collectively as a group and individually in our own research practices. Going forward, while we will continue doing this work, we intend to underline and further put into practice the “movement” in South/South Movement. To this end, we commit ourselves to:
- Intensifying our socially engaged actions on relational and collective learning in response to the educational needs of underserved student communities in the global souths.
- Broadening our editorial and written work as a way of archiving alternative knowledge generation by our collective.
- Partnering with fellow collectives and social movements globally.
Join us as we work towards these aspirations with fellow travellers from anticolonial, antiracist, anticapitalist, anti-imperial, decolonial, feminist, indigenous, counter-Eurocentric, queer, and other alternative perspectives.
Our norms
- We stand in full and fierce solidarity with the liberation struggles of all peoples resisting colonialisms and colonialities everywhere. We reject Zionism as a settler-colonial and ethno-nationalist project, alongside all systems of racial supremacy and apartheid. We affirm a feminist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperial politics that opposes domination, dispossession, and exploitation in all their forms. We defy Cold War campist logics and oppose imperial power—Western and non-Western alike.
- We think from below and with people entangled in sites of struggle, not for the high politics of nation-states.
- In making sense of our social and political worlds, we refuse grand theories aligned with Eurocentrism and epistemic whiteness. Instead, we embrace pluriversal modes of thinking and doing from the global souths. Contrary to Western standards of what counts as “knowledge”, there is, for us, ontologically no single, universal and objective sociopolitical reality; what we know and how we know what we know are geopolitically situated.
- We are a queer and decolonial feminist space. We reject all forms of discrimination based on race, class, caste, gender, sexual orientation, heteronormativity, and patriarchal values.
- In our organizational and decision-making work, we strive to be as participatory and non-hierarchical as possible while recognizing the need for flexibility as a collective that breaks with formal top-down academic conventions.
- We are accountable to each other. We share responsibilities and respect each other’s agency as co-organizers and participants. We strive to relate with each other from a position of care and empathy.
- Coming from distinct geopolitical contexts, we encourage different perspectives and work through any divergence in views in a collegial and constructive manner. We do not shy away from, downplay, or intensify interpersonal conflicts. Neither do we let conflicts fester and get in the way of our collective work; we face them together openly as peers.
- We value our autonomy as a collective unfunded by and unaffiliated with any institutions, academic or otherwise.
- As a movement dedicated to claiming and making space for and from the global souths, we are open yet unapologetically critical. We work with fellow travellers from anywhere in the world, in the spirit of mutual respect for each other as equal partners and as fellow human beings, always reflexive and questioning of the positions we each occupy in the colonial/modern matrix of power.
- We embrace not-knowing as a starting point—remaining open to learn, unlearn, and confront our own entanglements in power, and to uncover the complicities that shape our positions, even when they are not immediately visible to us.