Activist burnout in No Borders: The case of a highly diverse movement

Abstract

Activist burnout is a common threat to activists’ personal sustainability and to a movement's effectiveness. Compared to related fields such as humanitarian aid or social work we know relatively little about mental health risks in activists or how a specific activist environment may contribute to mental health outcomes. This study examines the case of the No Borders movement in Europe, a grassroots movement fighting for migrant rights. The movement's groups are highly diverse in terms of nationality, ethnicity, culture, and religion because they are composed of refugees, migrants, and local populations. Following the vulnerability-stress-model, the article asks: which specific stressors occur in the No Borders movement? The analysis is exploratory and based on ethnographic research and qualitative interviews (N = 26). Situational Analysis (SitA) shows that: a) activists have to navigate a complex environment in which radical grassroots activism meets humanitarian emergencies, and b) in dealing with diversity and intergroup conflicts they are under pressure to live up to their political ideals. These insights led to the identification of three stressors: prefigurative betrayal, inadequate expectations, and split of life-worlds. Understanding these stressors can contribute to informing preventive measures in No Borders and in other migrant or antiracist movements.

Introduction

Get some… rest AND recreation – let go, have a laugh, dance, do some martial arts, get into the countryside, make love, eat well – do whatever you need to feel good and remind yourself that life is worth living. And if/when those little/loud voices creep into your thoughts allowing guilt in, acknowledge it, smile at it and tell it to mind its own business. You are in this for the long haul and need to look after yourself, and you will be back in the fray soon enough if you look after yourself.

(Activist Trauma Support, n.d.)

The above quote comes from a leaflet aimed at activists who advocate for “No Borders”, the rights of refugees and other migrants,¹ and the freedom of movement for all people. The leaflet addresses No Borders activists who, in 2016, engaged in the so-called “Jungle of Calais”, an informal camp settlement of people who wanted to cross from France to the UK. Activists there found themselves confronted with overwhelming human suffering and violent behavior from state au­thorities trying to destroy the camp. No Borders practices often take place in such “situation[s] which [are] simply traumatizing” (King, 2016, p. 347, emphasis in original). Thus, the authors of the leaflet address a widespread problem in their groups: burnout and other mental health issues, which can interfere with someone's ability to work. Facing emergencies, activists push their limits, but they often lose momentum. On top of this, the No Borders groups are highly diverse with regard to nationality, ethnicity, religion, or racialized identity and frequently deal with intercultural conflicts or discrimination inside their own lines.

Unfortunately, the leaflet's advice conveys a sense of being somewhat powerless. The recommendation of self-care strategies reveals the lacking structured mental health support within the informal activist networks. In fact, as my years of research in this field suggest, awareness of mental health challenges in the No Borders movement is usually rare and support structures remain scarce. Indeed, studies on other social movements suggest that activist burnout is a major threat to the sustainability of activist or social movement organizations, eventually playing a role in the effectiveness of a movement (Chen & Gorski, 2015; Gorski, 2018; Plyler, 2009). Still, mental health remains a niche topic in social movement studies and psychological disciplines have not systematically engaged with it, when compared to research on humanitarian or social work. To my knowledge, to date, there is no published research examining the mental health of refugees as activists and limited study of mental health in activism around displacement in general.

This study therefore aimed to examine how specific activist environments contribute to burnout and identify which specific stressors occur in the No Borders movement. Data are drawn from multi-site qualitative research conducted between 2015 and 2018 in Europe, focusing on Germany and Greece. Ethnographic data and interviews were analyzed using interpretative grounded theory tools for situational analysis (Clarke et al., 2018). The aim of this article is both theory-generating and explorative.

In the following sections, I define the term activist burnout, review relevant research, and describe the methods applied in this study. Then, I provide an analytical description of the No Borders movement and its history. Lastly, I describe the stressors derived from the data, propose a visual representation of their influence on burnout and discuss strengths and limitations of the analysis.

The findings may be useful to practitioners as they can inform preventive measures. They can also be relevant to scholars exploring issues of mental health in diverse social movements, as the study deepens the understanding of how activist burnout can emerge and unfold in specific activist contexts.

Framework

Defining activist burnout

Activism is emotional work revolving around “passionate politics” (Goodwin et al., 2001). It involves the whole range of human emotions from love and passion to guilt and shame. Studies show the essential roles of anger, fear, or sadness, as well as joy and excitement to mobilize or demoralize people for social struggle (Ford & Feinberg, 2020; Milan, 2018; Rodgers, 2010; Steinhilper, 2019). Emotions inform political identities (Berezin, 2001), and emotional, relational ties (e.g., friendship) create trust and foster people's commitment to the largely informal networks, characteristic of most social movements (Polletta, 2002, p. 149). Emotional and relational ties between activists provide a strong base for solidarity with marginalized people such as asylum seekers (Hinger et al., 2018; Rosenberger & Winkler, 2014). As Wettlaufer (2015, p. 21f.) pointed out, activism is “not just a job”. Rather, she notes, it is usually a vocation intimately linked to an individual's identity and social network. This intimacy can exacerbate mental strain and harm. Activists often want to “keep going” (Cox, n.d.), and may not be able to do so due to mental strain, which produces stress and suffering.

Subsequently, the term activist burnout was coined to describe what occurs “when activists are forced to disengage involuntarily from their activism due to the accumulative effects of activism-related stressors” (Gorski & Erakat, 2019, pp. 364–365). Activist burnout is not a clinical diagnosis but serves as an umbrella term under which activists and scholars discuss phenomena of mental health they consider connected to engaging in social struggles. These include, for instance, depression and fatigue.

The use of the term burnout emphasizes its contextual component: the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies burnout as an “occupational syndrome” instead of a medical condition which means that for a burnout to be diagnosed as such, it must be identified as resulting from “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” (World Health Organization [WHO], 2019a). Burnout symptoms are largely indistinguishable from those of depression. Symptoms of the latter usually present themselves differently according to both culture (Kanazawa et al., 2007) or subculture (Ter Bogt et al., 2021). However, several specific burnout characteristics exist and include a) persistent exhaustion, b) cynicism and other negative feelings toward one's job, and c) a decrease in professional efficacy (Maslach et al., 2009; WHO, 2019a). Additionally, emotional symptoms involve tiredness, difficulty enjoying things one used to like, sadness, shame, or guilt. Behavioral side effects may include crying, withdrawal, aggression, changes in sexual behavior, or substance abuse. People suffering from serious burnout lose the ability to “function” as they experience loss of concentration and of hope, and may develop suicidal ideation.

While burnout usually refers to mental illness in a professional context, this article refers to mental illness in social movements influenced by specific stressors in that particular environment. My assumption is that the characteristics and symptoms of general burnout apply here as well. The next task is identifying predictive stressors.

Activist environments and stress

The WHO (2019b) emphasizes that employers and organizations have responsibility to support individuals with mental disorders. This can also be applied to activist environments. Similarly, scholars noted the importance of social movement culture and organizational factors impacting emotions or inciting burnout (Cox, n.d.; Kemper, 2001). Nevertheless, emotional strains in the activist world are often framed as something to self-manage. For example, Barker et al. (2008, p. 423) recommend mindfulness for “aware activists”. Straining situations, as they are often encountered in activism, however, may make it difficult to “be aware”. Gorski et al. (2019, p. 377) suggest that this push towards self-management can result in blaming activists for experiencing burnout in risky or poorly structured settings. This burden is further increased by individualized self-care activities.

Clinical and behavioral psychology commonly use the “vulnerability-stress” model to understand mental health outcomes. This model understands individual mental health as the interaction of personal and situational predispositions (e.g., genetics, social, and family background) with environmental stressors coming from life experiences (e.g., bullying, discrimination, death of loved ones, or displacement) (Quaedflieg & Smeets, 2012; Zubin & Spring, 1977). Awareness of psychosocial stressors people are exposed to in a particular activist environment and regular activist activities helps understanding mental health outcomes.

Literature review: Stressors in activism around forced migration

Activist burnout stressors

Case studies identified several stressors in activist activity, which seem to apply to different fields within activism. They can be categorized as interpersonal, organizational, and structural. The first category, interpersonal stressors (also “within-movement” stressors), refers to relational conflicts between activists: activists may be stressed due to disrespectful or violent behavior within the movement, fueled, for example, by political conviction and the idea that there is only one right form of activism (Gomes, 1992; Plyler, 2009). Intergenerational tensions may also lead to a lack of knowledge transfer that burdens activists (Plyler, 2009).

Moreover, activists with marginalized identities are subject to different interpersonal stressors than more privileged ones: Gorski (2018). showed that white activists were protected from having to cope with everyday racism which accelerated burnout in non-white activists. In racial justice groups, activists of color partly attributed their burnout to racist behavior of white fellow activists (Gorski & Erakat, 2019, pp. 18–19). Experiences of exclusion and discrimination based on race or sexuality among activists can harm their mental health and lead to activists dropping out of the group (Vaccaro & Mena, 2011).

Organizational stressors make up the second category, which includes practices and cultures in movement groups and organizations. Movement organizations promoting “selflessness” or “martyrdom” often push individuals into disregarding their boundaries, resulting in exhaustion (Chen & Gorski, 2015; Gorski et al., 2019; Wettlaufer, 2015). Nah (2020) points out that many of these cultural “feeling rules” are gendered. The norm of “martyrdom” has been well studied in professionalized social-justice-activism (Avula et al., 2019; Rodgers, 2010); these results are generalizable to a limited extent to informal, horizontal structures (such as those of the No Borders movements). Nevertheless, it is known that these structures may have their own “tyranny” of elitism and favoritism (Freeman, 1972–73; Polletta, 2002). Interpersonal stressors feed into the organizational level as the ability to rely on fellow activists’ support makes a difference in how personal burnout is perceived and whether it leads to disengagement from the organization (Klandermans, 2009, p. 133f.).

Thirdly, structural (also “external”) stressors refer to the impact of societal and political contexts of social movements on an individual activist's mental health. Maslach and Gomes (2006, p. 43) argue that activism cultivates awareness of overwhelmingly large social problems societies often do not acknowledge, which “can lead to feelings of pressure and isolation that easily feed into burnout”. Structural stressors can manifest in interpersonal conflicts. Maslach and Gomes (2006, p. 47), for instance, suggest that a mismatch between guiding values and actual practices creates cynicism in activists. Especially the reproduction of conditions that the movement aims to fight against (e.g., sexism, racism) are perceived to hasten burnout (Gorski & Erakat, 2019; Gorski et al., 2019; Plyler, 2009).

Repression was often found to impact activists’ mental health (Jones, 2007). It is a structural stressor, which may include police violence, surveillance, or group infiltration by the police or another security institution when inflicted by political or state bodies (Earl, 2013). Repression is often discussed as hindering movement participation and its impact on mental health has only recently begun to be discussed (Nah, 2020). In democratic societies such as the EU, repression targets radical activism more often than the more politically centered activism with the aim of discouraging radical activities. Conversely, this seems to radicalize activism tactics further (Earl, 2013). As No Borders movements are considered radical, this also applies to them. Lastly, all the activist burnout stressors discussed above can perpetuate mental harm by being experienced as traumatic.²

Stressors around forced migration and humanitarian work

In No Borders activism, the demands of political activism are stressful, as are the effects of forced displacement. The so-called “refugee experience” (Stein, 1981) is marked not only by high rates of psychological disorders stemming from stress of forced displacement and experiencing violent conflicts, but also from “post-migration” stress, which includes limited educational or working prospects, insecure prospects of permanent residence, and inadequate accommodation, for example, in refugee camps (Li et al., 2016). Positive expectations about the post-arrival living situation in the host country that are unmet have been found to have significant negative effects on the mental health of recently arrived refugees (Allinson & Berle, 2022).

However, not only refugees are affected by such environmental stressors: aid and humanitarian workers deal with heavy workloads and a high occurrence of traumatic events as well (Snelling, 2018; Young et al., 2018). Therefore, they are at a higher risk of burning out (WHO, 2019b). Those who live and work with traumatized populations can experience secondary traumatic stress up to the point of developing post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms themselves (Jenkins & Baird, 2002; Rizkalla & Segal, 2019; Shah et al., 2007; Strohmeier & Scholte, 2015). Lack of recognition of (positive) impacts of great efforts by highly motivated humanitarian workers is associated with a higher likelihood of burnout (Jachens et al., 2019).

Methods, ethics, and positionality

This article draws upon the author's larger qualitative study of migrant solidarity. Data was collected between 2015 and 2018 using a multi-sited ethnographic approach (Marcus, 1995) in urban areas of Germany and Greece and the transnational networks between them.³ Data were collected through participant observation in activist projects in mostly urban areas where many No Borders groups were active and from 29 individuals invited to participate in issue-centered interviews (Witzel & Reiter, 2012) in Hamburg, Leipzig, Athens, and on Lesvos island. Interviewees were selected because they held positions of responsibility in the No Borders projects and the selection was purposefully balanced in terms of whether they had lived experience related to displacement or not.

Research ethics played a crucial role in this study as it involved many vulnerable people and sensitive information about their lives or activist actions. Interviewees received thorough verbal information about the research goals and backgrounds. They were anonymized and free to opt out of the interviews or withdraw their information at any point. Verbal consent was recorded as part of the interview instead of using written agreements which were initially rejected by different activists, especially those in illegalized situations who have had bad experiences with signing documents. During the interviews I did not insist on knowing sensitive topics involving illegalized cross-border mobility or surviving strategies, and when mentioned they were excluded from analysis to not harm the individuals or communities. The study did not pass through a formal ethics board, as it was not mandatory and uncommon in German sociology at the time of data collection.⁴ There were, however, extensive ethical discussions with peer-researchers and some research participants around dependencies, participation, and safety. I received participant feedback on the paper's draft from two research participants and made adjustments accordingly.

Interviews lasted between 20 to 210 minutes and were conducted in English, German or Spanish, and Farsi. When necessary, native speakers inside the activist circles supported translation and transcription with the consent of the respective interviewee. During the interviews, without having been prompted, 24 participants mentioned their own or a second person's experience of mental harm and their symptoms (e.g., being too tired to keep going). The interviews which mentioned these issues around mental health were recoded and reexamined with the focus on mental health for this article. Interviewees held diverse positionalities and perspectives, identifying as refugees (n = 9), Western citizens (n = 10), or both (n = 5). Gender was unbalanced, with 19 interviewees identifying as male and only five as female. Two expert interviews with mental health aid practitioners in the field supplemented the analysis (both Western citizens and male). Thus, in total, 26 interviews were analyzed. Most activists in the field were in their 20s or early 30s and accordingly the interviewees’ age ranged between 23–50 years. Minors were excluded due to ethical reasons.

Furthermore, I made participatory observations during which I cooked in squatted kitchens, taught German and English in community centers, or helped mobilizing for protests. These observations facilitated understanding activists’ everyday experiences and meaning making, which enriched the interpretation of the interviews.

Data was analyzed via SitA, the interpretative version of grounded theory (Clarke et al., 2018; Gauditz et al., 2023). SitA derives theoretical concepts from empirical data. It was a methodological fit, as it understands human interaction through its situatedness, in this case, the context of (inter-)personal experiences of stress. I used abductive methods of coding and mapping, utilizing Atlas.ti 7.0 and MS Word tables. Participant feedback to the analysis was given by several interviewees and during a 2-hour workshop in one activist project.

My own positionality is that of a cis-gendered white woman in her early 30s. Like most of my family, I was born and raised in Germany and hold a German passport. Negotiating the unequal power dynamic this privileged background created with marginalized research participants was a recurring topic. I further participated in an ethnographical supervision group to identify problematic (e.g., discriminatory) data interpretations. I had been engaged with No Borders groups since 2009. I struggled with depression and an eating disorder at various points of my life. These experiences helped me explore mental health issues in the research field.

Description of the No Borders movement

In order to understand activist burnout in No Borders, some knowledge of the movement itself is needed. In the following section, I describe its history, regular activities, routines, and ideological framework.

History and actions of No Borders

No Borders refers to a movement with anarchist roots enacted by those fighting for everyone's freedom of movement (King, 2016). Today, this freedom of movement is restricted by modern capitalist states and nationalist exclusions. In the 1990s, a unified reform of EU asylum policies after the Cold War brought about new restrictions for migrants (Kasparek, 2019, p. 18ff.). The No Borders movement emerged as a critique to these restrictions, organizing grassroots protests against deportation or border controls. Activists coined the slogan “No one is illegal” and connected antiracist and leftist or anarchist groups (No Border Network, 2004; Nyers, 2010). No Borders networks expanded all over Europe, with mobilizations also reaching North America (Anderson et al., 2012; Walters, 2006). During 2015–2018, the European refugee crisis led to increased solidarity with refugees and other migrants in most EU states, a context in which the mobilization of No Borders movements grew as well (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Protesters during a demonstration campaigning under the slogan “Time’s Up” on September 30 in Athens 2017. Photo taken by the author.

The movement is organized in largely informal, transnational networks and activists act in local and flexible structures. Protest forms have an affinity with autonomous movements and include militant actions (e.g., cutting fences, preventing an airplane to take off). Demonstrations or campaigns regularly engage with policymakers but direct social actions are vital to everyday activism. They include providing food and healthcare, and squatting of buildings to arrange for shelter and community spaces. Such direct social actions aim at transforming society by directly supporting people who were, or are, on the move (Zamponi, 2017, 2018). Regular activities involve ample planning and debating of strategies or practical support. Communication via social media is common.

Diversity in No Borders

Movement groups are highly diverse with regard to nationality, ethnicity, culture, and religion. This can be ascribed to the fact that they include refugees, local populations, and other migrants. The groups are usually a mix of refugee activists (e.g., from Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Nigeria) and Western European citizen activists (e.g., from Germany, Greece, France, or the UK) who support them. The borders they want to abolish refer to nation states’ borders as well as interpersonal divisions imposed by racism, colonialism, or sexism. Thus, activists try to work together as equals: they embrace anti-hierarchical, organizational practices such as consensus-based decision-making, and/or put significant effort into multilingualism (Gauditz, 2017). This effort to embody egalitarian ideals in their organizational structures and daily practices is called prefigurative politics and it is a strategic feature of a number of grassroots movements proliferating in the 1990s aiming at working against inequalities (Cornish et al., 2016; Maeckelbergh, 2011; Polletta & Hoban, 2016).

These mixed No Borders groups and networks are a vital resource of knowledge and constitute a practical support for marginalized, displaced people. They provide possibilities to meet other activists and build alliances. It should be noted that many of the activists and volunteers active in support groups have been affected by the refugee experience themselves. Hence, even though the activities that different activists engage in may be the same, different activists in a group are exposed to (partly) different stressors on their emotional and mental health.

Humanitarianism action and grassroots activism: Conflicts and necessity

No Borders practices have been described as often taking place “in situation[s] which [are] simply traumatizing” (King, 2016, p. 347, emphasis in original). An extreme statement, which my own ethnographic fieldwork helped me understand better. In No Borders, issues regarding survival must be addressed at the same time as political goals are pursued. Demands of political grassroots activism are combined with humanitarian emergencies and police repression.

No Borders activism takes place in intense situations where livelihoods and the physical integrity of many people are at risk as they have no place to live or they have to live in camps and are not allowed to work, and with limited access to medical aid. Imagine this fictional but realistic example: a man in his 30s with a heart condition flees Afghanistan. He lives in a camp, hardly receives medical attention, let alone surgery, which is not covered by health insurance. He is not able to pay for medical bills as he is not allowed to work. Hope for a better future fades as he has no access to education. He only has access to language classes offered by volunteers on an irregular basis. When he receives a deportation notice, he develops panic attacks and insomnia. Nightmares already haunt him from encounters with border police and violent security guards. He starts to sleep on the sofa of a friend he met during protests so the police will not find him.

This example illustrates a situation in which activist support is vitally needed to survive and stabilize. The support in vital areas can provide the base for political activism as Babatunde (informants’ names are anonymized throughout), a 30-year-old man from Nigeria from a self-organized group of displaced asylum seekers, explained to me:

It always depends. Because, like I said before [the group] got this accommodation support, humanitarian [aid], that also may give us the ability to be active politically. … So, you can see that they work together.

In such situations, activists sometimes try to replace the work of humanitarian and emergency relief actors, while also often having to cooperate with them (e.g., United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees [UNHCR], Red Cross, or national asylum organizations). However, there is a certain discord between political activists and humanitarian agencies. Humanitarian actors are usually defined by their aim of adopting a neutral stance toward the political conflicts within which they act. Projects are often short-term due to funding logistics (e.g., Krause, 2014), whereas political activists aim at political transformation and look for medium- or long-term solutions to secure people's livelihoods, for example, a working permit to sustain a living instead of short-term housing provided by an NGO. In fact, the passive, inhumane conditions in asylum institutions (Agamben, 2005) are something displaced people often protest against, when they demand access to political and human rights (e.g., Moulin, 2012). This view, that transformation is needed, is also reflected in a statement of interview participant Giorgos. He organized therapeutic aid in the Aegean Islands, where the “Moria” registration camp is notorious for its terrible living conditions. Giorgos said: “There is no use to offer therapy in Moria. Psychotherapy there, is to free people from these living conditions. You need to abolish Moria”.

In the face of this conflicting reality, the practices of No Borders must respond to competing social logics. In emergencies, activism can rarely be planned in terms of political strategy. At that moment, circumstances tend to call for humanitarian measures such as social kitchens or the provision of housing (e.g., through squatting). In such instances, No Borders activists aim at implementing egalitarian, politicized practices such as consensus decision-making or bottom-up education, creating spaces where everyone can participate as an active individual, as I describe in more detail elsewhere (Gauditz, 2017, 2022). In this way, the practices of No Borders create a socio-political sphere marked by ambiguity due to the different demands of both humanitarian and political activism.

Informality and care structures

Activists have developed their own practices of horizontal, self-organized grassroots support and direct social action to deal with precarious situations. Activist groups operating within this framework have flexible, informal structures, largely based on personal knowledge and friendly relationships. This can be regarded a strength but may also lead to unstable structures.

Typically, activist groups reject financial support from political parties as well as state agencies in order to remain independent, and rather rely on donations from individuals or foundations. This renders group income uncertain, thus, individuals usually rely on other sources of income, which means they often have to balance (legal or illegalized) paid labor and activism.

Additionally, informality of horizontally organized group structures usually also means that the scope of individual and collective obligations may be undefined or ill-defined. This includes the fact that people usually choose for themselves how many working hours they invest in activism and no supervisor coordinates assignments where emotional resilience is considered a qualification for a particular job. Then, faced with constant emergencies, activists easily take on too much responsibility. At the same time, this situation renders the creation of stable and effective mental health care structures complicated. In several years of data collection, I sometimes encountered care structures such as supervision or activities to increase well-being, like excursions or therapeutic art sessions. However, wherever I saw them they were offered on an irregular basis and without future sustainable funding.

Jacqueline, a young Black woman born in Germany who had a precarious legal status herself, used to engage full-time in an activist counseling center for refugees. She reflected: “you know there's this emotional attachment. […] You take this home with you. It somehow is your responsibility and uhm that's why I found it so wrenching”. Jacqueline's time resources became more limited as she enrolled in university and continued to face her own legal battles. She then joined another project that was more hierarchical in structure, which gave her the opportunity to hold fewer responsibilities.⁶

No Borders stressors

Until now, I described No Borders as a social movement and presented specifics around diversity, grassroots structures, political idealism, and the ambiguous overlap with the field of humanitarian work. These specifics include particular challenges for activists. Based on the insights gained from my qualitative research, I derived three stressors. They either add to stressors already known in activism and humanitarian work, or present variants, as I will discuss in the next sections.

Prefigurative betrayal

As mentioned above, prefiguration refers to everyday political and organizational practices which embody the political goals the movement strives for; it is usually a strategic practice to implement antihierarchical ideals (Maeckelbergh, 2011). In the case of No Borders, the goal is equality between people who are subject to inequalities due to legal status and who aim to work together as equals in mixed activist groups.

The stressor “Prefigurative Betrayal” refers to the frustration and arising anger when other activists fail to live up to the groups’ radical egalitarian ideals. In No Borders, it often refers to the reproduction of discrimination—especially racism—or the lack of recognition of suffering due to (post-) migratory conditions. Being neglected by other activists who supposedly share the same goals and should be trustworthy is perceived as betrayal and fuels conflicts.

During fieldwork, conflict arose when different life experiences were not acknowledged and needs were not met. Katharina, a German white woman, was involved in organizing an international conference on migrant rights and described the atmosphere after it ended: at the event, migrant women staged a protest because they did not feel adequately represented. Many Western citizens and male refugees felt insulted:

A few people fought a lot, right? … the follow-up meetings were shaped by these stark conflicts: men against women, supporters, activists, and refugees. Everyone was exhausted and demoralized. Everyone felt “Wow, what we organized was important, but damn, now all problems are on the table”.⁷

Unfortunately, achieving truly egalitarian cooperation within the No Borders movement is a rather impossible undertaking, as people are exposed to very unequal living conditions. Lacking equalization of inequalities implies stress in itself. For example, working tasks were often distributed in a way which left refugees with less responsibility (e.g., over schedules or finances), which effectively pushed them out of decision-making positions. Egalitarian political values were then perceived as insincere. On one occasion, a South Asian activist who reacted angrily and emotionally to such a dynamic was advised to be more “diplomatic”. By doing so, his critique of racism and inequality within the movement was effectively dismissed. English-speaking activists adopted the term “bullshit” to call out other activists for such discriminatory behavior.

Intercultural misunderstandings often aggravated these conflicts when sensitivity and patience were needed most. The informally organized projects, however, were usually overwhelmed with acknowledging and handling the effects of diverse stressors and mental strains, which sometimes led to people feeling neglected or betrayed. Ahmud, for instance, a man from Pakistan, experienced violence at the hands of a mentally ill person. When that person was not excluded from the group, Ahmud questioned the entire egalitarian, democratic decision-making process:

You have taken the charge to keep people safe, to keep them in nice friendly environment. At the same time you are helping the abuser… by not punishing him but helping him in different ways, psychologically. But… you are leaving the victim alone… That's why I was questioning their authority, their legality, their ability to take some kind of decision, I mean… What is the criteria?

Anger over “bullshit” was not limited to marginalized people. French, white activist Pej became very frustrated with the violence and ego-clashes he witnessed in Greek anarchist groups who defended a migrant squat. They had armed clashes with other groups or drug dealers to keep them out of their territories thereby creating a retraumatizing environment for those who had fled war, often including children. Pej told me:

Coming to Greece I wanted to understand the local structures. … Then I understood the structures, and I realized [how] fucking fucked up it was ((laughs)). And then, I got very frustrated and left for two months of holiday.

So, living up to political ideals can lead to exhaustion and people leaving activism. Boris, for example, a German citizen with roots in former Yugoslavia, found it too arduous to live up to politicized expectations while trying to help people in need: “It's like walking on eggshells”, he declared and added that he would stay away from political engagement in the future.

Inadequate expectations

As explained above, the No Borders’ activist environment moves between humanitarian and political action. In order to resist deportations, organize shelters, or to provide legal assistance, activists must either cooperate with or work around various humanitarian NGOs and institutions of the European asylum system. Individual activists thus have to deal with different demands, requirements and logics in their daily work. Hence, unexpected challenges and misunderstandings are inevitable.

The stressor “Inadequate Expectations” is important in No Borders because inexperienced people expect either the challenges of political activism or those of humanitarian aid work. I found that people who are new to No Borders groups are either a) people with a political agenda, b) people with a humanitarian attitude, or c) people who are not interested in the political ideologies behind activism but engage because they need the support. All three groups have different expectations, which are inadequate to some degree. With many details of different social worlds to consider, people usually have (explicit or implicit) expectations concerning their initial engagement that correspond to only one of these worlds.

On the one hand, people with a political approach are usually willing to face militant conflict or police repression, but want to bring about change in return. They are stressed when no significant change or progress is possible due to the sheer scale of the problems caused by survival crises. As Pej recalled:

This group stopped because everybody was kind of burned out. I was kind of frustrated … It's quite like constant firefighting, so that we were not going anywhere, we were like all the time dealing with emergency situations… it was exhausting.

One the other hand, people with a more humanitarian, sometimes apolitical mindset, are often expected to swiftly come and help during a war-induced crisis which is expected to end soon. They can be overwhelmed, shocked or just unprepared to see political continuities of repression or xenophobia shaping that reality. Several people experienced politization through conflicts with the police or representatives of asylum administrations. As Mohammed, a Syrian student involved with squatting in Athens, tensely stated: “About European Union. … I think that with the refugee crisis we really saw the real face of this criminal organization”.

Last but not least, those in need of support to protect their freedom of movement (usually refugees) differed greatly in how much they welcomed political action or trusted the humanitarian system. For example, an Irani, Samiak, deliberately sought out militant projects in which he felt empowered and that he perceived as safer environments than humanitarian asylum structures. He had fled political persecution and was happy to find shelter in a political squat, as he trusted them to fight ISIS members or Iranian spies he had seen infiltrating a refugee camp in Turkey. Abdul, from Afghanistan, however, became skeptical of political activists because he witnessed disturbing violence by a Greek anarchist group. Having fled Taliban persecution, he desired care and courteousness and did not want to deal with European police. Out of necessity, he occupied houses and acted as a translator. After having been granted asylum in Germany, a few years later, he only occasionally participated in protests for the rights of refugees and is in training to become a tax consultant.

Inadequate expectations are stressful as people are blindsided by difficult situations and are left exhausted and disillusioned. Choosing the best strategy to deal with political conflicts is also a challenging task within activist collectives. Consequently, they grapple with different, often conflicting organizational demands, needs, and logics, while trying to find solutions to existential emergencies and other challenging problems. Activists who have been involved in No Borders projects for some time are usually aware of these complexities. However, the prevailing informality of the movement groups makes it difficult for people to share this knowledge and clarify expectations in advance.

Split between life-worlds – structures that divide

During fieldwork, activists frequently reported suffering from a disconnect between their commitment to No Borders and other areas of their lives. They also reported an inability to relax or focus on anything other than activism because they were overwhelmed and needed to process their experiences. Reconciling different areas of life is stressful, which is why this stressor is called “split between life-worlds”. No Borders activists report a split between their activist experience, or their experience as displaced people, and other areas of their lives.

The political and institutional structures that No Borders activists fight against are purposefully designed to create a distance to average everyday lives of citizens. Asylum camps, limited access to working permits or social welfare as well as restricted mobility (within and between states) create divisions constraining consistent education, labor, or seeing loved ones in other parts of the world so drastically that Suárez-Krabbe and Lindberg (2019) even suggest to view this as a form of Apartheid.

Furthermore, problems related to deportations or precarious living situations require time-consuming engagement if they are to be addressed effectively. Thus, it is often difficult to balance protests, direct social action and daily routines of a job or school. Highly routinized lives leave no room for the hours and days that effective resistance requires.

This stressor affects activists differently creating a specific dynamic in itself. Consider Anne, a white British woman, in her 30s, who had set up a community center in Athens and who told me about her visit to England one summer:

I was quite burned out and needed a break… needed to be with my old friends and family. I find my life is very split really between here and the UK… I find it really hard to leave… partly the reality that I have the freedom to leave, and lots of people I’m with don’t have that same freedom, so I usually have quite a lot of guilt and anger.

Trying to reconcile the split between activism and the safety of life with documents and privileges exhausted her. However, removing oneself from the situation also produced difficult emotions in privileged activists. The guilt associated with not feeling active enough can, in turn, fuel overwork and burnout.

Most refugees suffered additionally because they were not able to create an emotional distance between the activist setting, general human suffering, and their own problems. Having to reconcile the No Borders setting and other life-worlds would have been a welcome challenge to some whose life was severely restricted. Several refugees reported frustration over privileged activists taking days off or going on holidays without actively including the non-Western migrants (e.g., through sharing resources) because it openly demonstrated the different activists’ unequal opportunities. In one group I observed efforts to balance this by redistributing resources, for example, that refugees did not have to pay for field trips or drinks during leisure activities. However, such relief activities were irregular and hardly planned formally but were an effect of institutional learning initiated by some specific individuals and among friends. This, however could neither be taken for granted nor reinforced. The informal structures of most groups, which involve unpaid, volunteer-based engagement, limit activists’ possibilities of sustaining the same level of energy and time. It is usually accompanied by a high personnel turnover.

The split complicates processing stressful and traumatic experiences adequately because an important way to process in such events is by talking about them with people who understand and empathize. Often, this means talking to people who have experienced similar things. Jones (2007, p. 48) argues that every movement has “secret societies” of activists who “must have nightmares that only they can fully understand”. Typically, many people in one's own social circle are not part of this activist experience full of state repression, and subcultural and intercultural peculiarities. Under these circumstances, it can be difficult for activists to communicate with people outside these life-worlds because the intensity of emergency situations after displacement or the absurdity of administrative battles are hard to grasp when living a legally secured life inside the EU, as Maarten, a white German volunteer on Lesvos, reports:

It's a rollercoaster of emotions but I think you learn to deal with it here, too. You have to keep an emotional distance. If you’re not able to deal with your own problems, then you can’t work. You have to try to process. You find friends here of course but when you have your friends and your parents … then you realize that you can transport nothing to them of what happens here.

A Spanish activist, Fernando, reflected on his and his comrades’ experiences of moving abroad for activism:

The return is hard. There is a lot to work through. The return is very traumatic for a lot of comrades. Ooof (exhales), there's a massive amount of stories that are hard to deal with. And on top, a lack of finding meaning in the relationships that you have. The context is super different.

When people outside movement circles do not understand the experience, the likelihood of healing conversations decreases. This can leave activists estranged from loved ones and from support networks. Also, as the experiences of diverse activists inside the No Borders groups differ, sometimes even direct comrades cannot understand, fueling the prefigurative betrayal.

To summarize, activists try to bridge several splits both in their own life-worlds and between the life-worlds of different activists. They often have to deal with the fact that they cannot bridge them at all. Regular or institutionalized guidance around this matter inside groups hardly exists. Finding support outside of the movement's group or subculture can further be challenging because of the split itself.

Visual representation of factors influencing activist burnout

Following the vulnerability-stress model, Figure 2 gives an overview of the different elements that can lead to activist burnout in No Borders. The stressors are drawn from the literature review (activist stressors and stressors around forced displacement) and from the results of the empirical analysis of this study, as presented in the sections above. The stressors can have an additive relationship, but what applies to whom depends on the individual. Vulnerabilities and modifying influences are adapted from a textbook model of depression; they are not specific to the No Borders movement and I am not aware of research on vulnerabilities and modifying influences in social movements. Taken together, vulnerabilities, stressors, and modifying factors determine the activist burnout as a potential mental health outcome and the negative implications on individual activists and movements.

Figure 2.

Visual framework of activist burnout in No Borders.

Note. Visual representation of different factors possibly leading to activist burnout in a No Borders environment. Adapted from Beesdo-Baum and Wittchen's (2011) model of depressive disorders.

Discussion of results, strengths, and limitations

No Borders activists engage in a tense environment between humanitarian crisis and state repression, while at the same time trying to embody political ideals of equality. The three stressors described above have been derived from these insights and show how burnout emerges in this activist environment. These stressors largely coincide with insights from scholarship on activism, humanitarian work or forced displacement, as will be discussed in this section.

Prefigurative Betrayal: this stressor is structural as it is caused by systemic inequality and racist structures, but manifests at the interpersonal levels of activism. It is known that the reproduction of conditions a movement fights against (e.g., sexism, racism) are perceived to hasten burnout, especially if it comes from in-group members (Gorski & Erakat, 2019; Gorski et al., 2019; Plyler, 2009) and within-group betrayal has been associated with PTSD especially in marginalized groups (Gómez, 2022). “Prefigurative betrayal” adds to this literature because these dynamics have not yet been discussed in the context of prefigurative elements in a social movement or other organizations in which structures are meant to be meaningful in and of themselves. It reflects both the diversity in the movement and people's antihierarchical goals.

Inadequate Expectations: this stressor relates to the organizational level as it involves the challenge of individuals in groups moving between the differing and often conflicting demands of political activism and humanitarianism. The damage inadequate expectations can inflict on processing stressful events is not specific to movements and has been identified in refugees (Allinson & Berle, 2022) as well as humanitarian workers (Jachens et al., 2019). Finding this stressor is consistent with these studies’ results, but additionally draws attention to the contextual ambiguities which arise when trying to engage politically with the issue of forced displacement.

Split between life-worlds: this stressor is structural insofar as the political conditions prevent the activists from integrating their different experiences into their life in a healthy manner; the stress results from acting inside the same political structures that people try to change. This insight is consistent with a split, similar to the one Snelling (2018) found among emergency responders who traveled to foreign countries to work. However, in No Borders this represents a specific variant as it is not (only) spatial distances which have to be bridged, but also mobility restrictions and the impossibility of access to certain spheres of society, or to sharing these spheres.

All three stressors affect activists differently, however, this study does not differentiate between stressors according to people's positionality. Rather, I argue that (a) different positionalities cannot always be categorized separately for each person (b) that a distinctive feature of the stress dynamics in this movement is its mixed composition. The latter creates specific movement dynamics, such as the reproduction of discrimination inside groups or misunderstandings due to different expectations and possibilities.

Limitations and implications

This study's design does not distinguish between stress(ors) according to people's positionality due to reasons laid out above. Accordingly, Figure 2 cannot illustrate the relations of how these stressors affect people differently according to their positionality. It represents dynamics that can be applied to individuals in movements overall. This is an analytical strength as it contributes to understanding how stressors unfold in this specific mixed activist environment. However, it limits understanding the specific causalities between stressors and people. Further studies could investigate the following aspects.

A more intersectional analysis (including gendered aspects) of activist burnout in such a diverse movement seems fruitful, as would be an analysis focusing on the experiences of activists and humanitarian workers who have been affected by the refugee experience themselves—either as first or second generation. Generally speaking, there is a lack of descriptive analysis of burnout in activists. Such analyses would contribute to understanding the effects of burnout on activists and whether there are specific activist burnout symptoms. Finally, protective factors and positive modifiers in movements could be identified by future studies.

Conclusion

This study investigated specific stressors occurring in the No Borders movement that may contribute to burnout. Activist burnout can negatively impact both individual activists and the sustainability of the movement. The No Borders movement in Europe consists of mixed groups of refugee and migrant activists and European citizen activists. Grassroots activism creates social spaces and personal bonds between people who are subject to inequalities such as legal status and citizenship, among other factors. Trying to work together in an egalitarian way is a challenge for the activists cooperating under unequal conditions in an intense environment involving border violence and human suffering. Movement structures are largely informal, which is why care structures are hard to implement in a way that they take place regularly, structural learning is difficult, and passionate people can easily overwork themselves. This analysis shows three important stressors that occur in No Borders repeatedly. Prefigurative Betrayal refers to frustration and anger due to the reproduction of discrimination. Stress through inadequate expectations is created as individuals must deal with both different demands and logics of political activism and humanitarian work during daily activities, which most of all new activists do not expect beforehand. Thirdly, activists report a split between life-worlds of their No Borders experience and other spheres or people in their lives, leading to difficulties in healthily integrating activist experiences into their lives. How stressors affect an individual activist largely depends on individual vulnerabilities and positionality. Shared stressors can affect individual activists within one group differently, which can create conflictive dynamics in itself. Greater knowledge of these challenges can strengthen the cohesion of activist groups like No Borders.

Biography

Leslie Gauditz is a sociologist specializing in qualitative empirical research. Her work focuses social movements and in her PhD project she researched solidarity relationships between western citizens and migrants in Greece and Germany. She is currently studying protests around the Covid-19 pandemic.