Forging Plural Coalitions in Times of Polarisation: Protest for an Open Society in Germany

ABSTRACT This article analyses the ‘Unteilbar coalition for an open and plural society’ in Germany, as an emblematic case to advance scholarship on cross-movement coalition-building and intersectionality in social movement studies. We argue that migration-related polarisation and an accentuated threat of rising far-right mobilisation has provided a context for progressive social movement organisations in Germany to converge and to engage in a particular kind of boundary spanning. The organisations involved have actively constructed an intersectional variant of ‘political solidarity’ by interlocking diverse socio-political struggles – explicitly moving beyond the topic of migration. In contrast to the common understanding of heterogeneous coalitions, being both challenging and prone to fragmentation, we argue that the boundary spanning work performed during Unteilbar has resulted in the outcome of a sustainable mobilisation capacity, and a fostering of movement solidarity rooted in an ‘intersectional consciousness’.