Pro-social Activism: First Evidence from the Protests for Migrants’ Rights in Sicily

In recent times, the European Union’s migration policies have only encouraged phenomena such as social exclusion and marginality due to which migrants find themselves in a situation of inequality regarding most of the rights that native citizens enjoy (Landau, 2019). This has encouraged the rise of pro-social associationism networks (Boccacin, 2012), which enact specific forms of pro-social activism that seem to emerge from the overlapping of phenomena such as humanitarian volunteering and political activism (Rochester et al., 2010; Bartolotta, 2015). Moreover, these forms of activism seem to recall practices of civil disobedience that present a different configuration than in the past in that they are oriented towards sociality, affectivity, compassion and empathy (Casadei, 2008). The aim of this chapter is to analyse pro-social activism through case studies of some pro-migrant networks present in Sicily, within which short unstructured interview campaigns were conducted targeting board members.