Art and Culture as Resistance: Challenging the European Border Regime at the NO BORDERS_NO LAGERS Festival

This paper explores how art and culture function as meaningful tools of resistance against exclusionary border regimes, using the NO BORDERS_NO LAGERS festival, which took place in August 2024 at Oranienplatz in Berlin, as a case study. The festival was organised by the feminist activist group Women in Exile & Friends and aimed to challenge dominant narratives, amplify marginalised voices, celebrate diversity and promote community through the power of art and culture. Using qualitative methods, including participant observation and group interviews, we examine how the festival’s artistic and cultural activities resist the European border regime (EBR). We argue that the festival’s activities not only offer counter- narratives to the systemic isolation, erasure and marginalisation imposed by the EBR, but also actively imagine and promote alternative forms of belonging rooted in care, warmth and togetherness. In doing so, the festival’s activities affirm the political significance of coming together and expressing identities and emotions through art and culture. Our study contributes to geographical and feminist research on migration, borders, art and resistance, highlighting the importance and potential of embodied practices in challenging exclusionary border re- gimes and creating a more just future.