Transversal Community-Building

This article addresses the transversal dimensions of community-building in the European migration context that are responses to refugees’ inadequate access to rights and resources. The main argument is that women-led community-building underlines how women refugees and women volunteers supporting refugees engage their agency to foster dialogue, collaboration, and solidarity across power imbalances and social differences. We refer to these processes as “transversal community-building.” The article analyzes two empirical examples of this form of community-building in Paphos, Cyprus: Learning Refuge and Women's Arabic Culture Club. It emphasizes how women refugees and volunteers enact solidarity across different legal statuses and different class, ethnic, and national backgrounds and within and beyond the boundaries of civil society organizations. The article contributes to the conceptual understanding of the term community-building from the lens of transversalism and offers an empirically grounded view of the making of transversal community-building in the migration context of Paphos, Cyprus.