Collective memory and amnesia: Dynamics of continuity and rupture in the Belgian Sans-papiers movement from 2010-2020

The sans-papiers movement in Belgium succeeded in politicizing the issue of migrant illegality in Belgium in the last few decades. Most notably, the collective mobilization of undocumented migrants and their supporters was a decisive factor in pressuring the Belgian government to organize collective regularization rounds in 1999 and 2009. Despite ongoing actions that echo previously used tactics like occupations, hunger strikes and demonstrations, the sans-papiers movement achieved little victories since then. The relative absence of victories since 2009 tends to be blamed on the unfavorable political climate or dwindling public support. What gets far less attention is the fact that successive self-organizations cling on to tried-and-tested action recipes without learning lessons from the past. In this paper, we draw on ethnographic data gathered by the authors at ‘SP-Belgique’ and the ‘Coordination des sans-papiers en Belgique’ in the 2010-2020 period to examine how undocumented activists draw on collective memory within the Belgian sans-papiers movement. Combining insights from the literature on undocumented activism and the cultural turn in social movements, we argue that collective amnesia, or the relative absence of institutionalized forms of collective memory transfers, helps to explain the cyclical dynamics of continuity and rupture within the movement. More in particular, we identify organizational volatility, representational oligarchy and categorical fragmentation as factors that hinder ‘collective memory transfers’ between successive and often competing self-organizations. These findings underline the need to pay more attention to collective memory transfers in order to support ongoing and future struggles for justice.