Brennende Hemden und antipatriarchale Aporien

Abstract

As in other Western countries asylum, refugees and deportations had become burning issues in Switzerland by the mid to late 1980s. The article analyses the attempt by radical left and feminist activists to overcome their “horror of social work” and fight against deportations on their own revolutionary terms. This meant that activists wanted to avoid the case-by-case approach of voluntary work to refugee solidarity. The attempt to build a new “International Red Aid” failed because the two central premises of acting politically as well as in partnership with the refugees collided. While the Swiss activists aimed to challenge the state and legality as such, the refugees’ first priority was to obtain legal residence.