Research

This conference paper is an step in the ongoing effort to link theory to real life experience, practice and cases,  providing solutions to the migrant crisis. In theory, Ulrich Beck's world risk society, cosmopolitan solidarity and new reflexivity about late modernity, together with other approaches argued and built by interviewees themselves, provide the basis to focus on real examples of collective action in both developed and developing countries. The goal is to contribute to the theory of agency and of geographies of care, to build the concept of "reflexive agency". Paper presented at the EADI ISS 2021 Conference, Seed Panel 89 "Migrant struggles for social justice".

Many countries are facing repeated cycles of violence (World Bank, 2011; Walter, 2010), with more than 68 million people forcibly displaced worldwide. In a quest for sustainable peace, a growing interest can be observed regarding how civil society and business can bring about peace. Cooperatives blend association and enterprise with significant potential for peace (MacPherson and Paz 2015; Joy and MacPherson 2007). As bottom-up initiatives, they provide solutions focused at the local level offering learning and practicing nonviolent interaction (Wanyama 2014; Sentama 2009; Havers 2007) and providing decent jobs and livelihoods (Date-Bah ed. 2003). The key word being supply, they are mainly seen as post-conflict community-based organizations (CBOs) that provide for basic human needs, gather labour, demobilize soldiers, and restart agriculture and services. Field observations, however, lend to a broader idea of how cooperatives contribute to positive peacebuilding by increasing trust and agency, raising empowerment, equality and empathy, while managing resources through a renewed notion of the commons (Ostrom 1990), even though challenges come as development takes place. Food security linked to SDG 2 can and need to be enhanced on this basis. The sample of visited cooperatives calls for further research.

Keywords: Cooperatives, Peacebuilding, Rwanda, sustainable development, sustainable livelihoods