Translocal Solidarities – Building transversal Networks in Europe and beyond

Event Series April 2022 – October 2022

Part I: Corporate Landlords – Research & Action

22 – 24 April 2022, International Workshop, Bochum

Financial market actors such as the private equity firm Blackstone or the real estate company Vonovia play a crucial role in housing provision all over Europe. Their interest in increasing share value contradicts the broad majorities interest in affordable housing. Therefore, the financialization of housing were brought into focus by social movements. Housing movements first and foremost struggle at the local level and under local conditions. Keeping up with their opponents, however, they strive to organize at transnational scale. The workshop aims at a) analyzing the business strategy of financialized landlords and putting them into political context; and b) analyzing social movements strategies in transnational organizing.

For further information please contact Peter Bescherer (peter.bescherer@uni-jena.de)

Rita Silva from Lisbon contributed a report about the workshop: https://www.move-projekt.de/city/corporate-landlords-research-and-action/

Part II: Channeling the forces of reproduction

4th, 11 and 18 May 2022

The three sessions are a cooperation with the Common Ecologies School. They set out to channel radical forces of care for the earth, by learning from&with feminist, agrarian, ecological and labour struggles. It’s a space of sharing experiences, concepts, and alliances, rooted in practice. We look to forge new common notions – earthcare labour, feminist and anti-racist social syndicalisms, agroecology, popular peasant feminisms and ecofeminism for example. These help us address why&how socio-ecological transformation and climate justice must pass through thinking earth and care together. We need Earthcare to avert the sectioning off of ‘nature’ from (agri)culture, to build and repair soils, defend communities and territories, align the struggle against exploitation of with the struggle against the exploitation of the land, to grow food commons as spaces of solidarity and resilience, and fight segregation by borders and capitalist migration regimes. This course will provide a space for learning and networking across different places and struggles – talking about the knowledges, alliances and strategies we need – and draws on Spanish, English and German language contexts.

For further information and registration please click here

Anti-racist and feminist social syndicalisms: struggles across agricultural fields and domestic care work in Spain

4th May 2022, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. (CET), online (Zoom)

With Pastora Filigrana.

This session is based on the new book “Del Campo a los Cuidados: el Sindicalismo Feminista y Antiracista que viene” which explores the potentials and challenges of feminist organizing across different spheres of social reproduction. Pastora will tell of feminist and anti-racist struggles emerging across agricultural workers and domestic care worker’s organizing in Spain. We’ll talk about how these fight for social rights and build solidarities and alliances where unions fail, constituting new forms of biosyndicalism that place life at the centre of politics. From such alliances, conceptualizations, and strategies we can learn ways out of the deadlocks of precarization and violence against women, gender-diverse people and migrants. We’re excited to provide a first and unpublished English translation of Pastora’s text – published via the new Laboratoria feminist research network – as part of this course.

Pastora Filigrana is a lawyer specialising in labour and union law, and immigration law. She is a member of the Andalusian Men’s and Women’s Workers Union (SAT) as well as of the Red Antidiscriminatoria Gitana, and has recently published Del Campo a Los Cuidados (La Laboratoria and Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, 2021) and El pueblo gitano contra el sistema-mundo. Reflexiones desde una militancia feminista y anticapitalista (Akal, 2020).

A video documentation of the session is availabe on the video channel of Common Ecologies:

Learning from feminist & anti-racist organizing in industrial agriculture

11 May 2022, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. (CET), online (Zoom)

With Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha (ES), Sezonieri (AT) and Widerstand am Tellerrand (CH)

This session brings together three vibrant feminist campaigns for agricultural worker’s rights, in ES/AT/CH. They fight for the rights of workers, be they seasonal/day labourers, local or migrant, undocumented or regularized. We’ll hear about regimes of importing agricultural workforces to the EU, the exploitation and sexual abuse that women face as they work in the fields, and the stories of feminist solidarity and mutual aid that led to three powerful campaigns. Discussing alliances within the broader labour movement and ecological struggles, we’ll also discuss how agricultural workers campaigns link with movements of food sovereignty, agroecology, feminism and climate justice, exploring common horizons and demands. This session translates across contexts and experiences in Spain, Austria and Switzerland, looking towards translocal solidarity and building broader support.

Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha is a collective of women strawberry pickers from Spain and beyond, organizing in the agri-industry fields of Huelva, Spain. https://jornalerasenlucha.org/ Hear also our Earthcare fieldcast episode with them.
Sezonieri is a campaign for the rights of seasonal agricultural workers in Austria, a common initiative of the PRO-GE union, the Nyéléni forum for food sovereignty, the UNDOK alliance for union-based support of undocumented workers and other platforms for migrant, global and labour solidarity. https://www.sezonieri.at/ Hear also our Earthcare fieldcast episode with them.
Widerstand am Tellerrand is a Swiss-based campaign for the rights of migrant agricultural workers and for solidarity-based agriculture. https://www.widerstand-am-tellerrand.ch/ Hear also our Earthcare fieldcast episode with them.

A video documentation of the session is availabe on the video channel of Common Ecologies:

The Popular and Peasant Feminisms of La Via Campesina: global feminist perspectives on agroecology and the need to join struggles

18 May 2022, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. (CET), online (Zoom)

In this session we hear from some of the editors of the new publication on Popular and Peasant Feminisms of La Via Campesina, just out as report and graphic book. We speak about the global struggle to put women at the forefront of agroecological change, the kinds of processes this has implied within La Via Campesina, and how emerging horizons of ecology, earthcare, and ecofeminism need to look to and ally with peasant farmers for transformation. This is not just a matter of who feeds the world – we’ll hear about peasant’s and women’s key role in global food production – but also of how we must transform landscapes, territories, and soils in a just and sustainable way to face climate crisis. Hint: this is not done by separating nature from agriculture, but by struggling over land and property, to transform our mode of production.

Yolanda del Carmen Areas Blas is national coordinator of the Movimiento de Mujeres del Campo de la Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo ATC-Nicaragua, and is part the women’s cluster of CLOC-La Via Campesina, with more than 20 years experience working with women peasants in Nicaragua.

A video documentation of the session is availabe on the video channel of Common Ecologies:

Part III: Feminist Alliances – potentials of transtranslocal solidarity and democracy

24 May and 18 October 2022

The sessions explore possible transnational connections of local queer-feminist struggles by continuing a Europe-wide exchange about alliance building, solidarity relations and political spaces. During this exchange we discuss moments of exclusion, marginalization and questions of representation queer-feminist initiatives are facing. Moreover, we elaborate moments of participation and solidarity in local and translocal alliances. By this we illuminate the preconditions of local and transnational networking and solidarity.

The sessions will be held online (Zoom). To register please contact Gisela Mackenroth (gisela-wiebke.mackenroth@uni-jena.de)

Feminist cross-movement-alliances – connecting local and translocal experiences

24 May 2022, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. (CEST)

During the discussion we will be gathering different local and translocal experiences with cross-movement alliances driven by queer-feminist initiatives.

First, the activists invited from Bulgaria, Spain, Switzerland and France will be bringing in reports on queer-feminist interventions in social struggles within their local contexts. We will be talking about queer-feminist protest against neoliberal reforms of social services, as well as queer-feminist initiatives for social housing and opposition against nationalist, right wing politics. By this, we are bringing in touch different local feminist experiences with cross-movement alliances. Second, we will be getting to know the transnational feminist network “Essential Autonomous Struggles Transnational” (EAST). EAST will be sharing their observation of different local struggles, performed by migrants and care workers during the pandemic in Europe. We will be learning more about EAST’s queer-feminist approach to connect social struggles of migrants, care workers, women and LGBTQI-communities on a transnational level.

On this basis we will be reflecting about queer-feminist interventions in cross-movement alliances: How are queer-feminist initiatives involved in cross movement-alliances? How are they changing perspectives and strategies in such alliances? What tensions and problems are they facing? And how can they in turn develop such alliances? We will be amplifying the discussion by approaching a transnational level. For this purpose, we will discuss similarities of the various local struggles and elaborate transnational aspects of local action and strategies: How are local struggles changing by transnational connections? To what extent are transnational queer-feminist networks able to develop cross-movement alliances, which means to connect various social issues and movements? What preconditions are needed in order to elaborate such transnational connections?

With: Kalina Drenska (LevFem, E.A.S.T., Sofia/Bulgaria), Nous Toustes Grenoble (France), Maka Suarez (PAH, Spain), Susy Greuter (Feminist Strike Basel, Switzerland, Hände weg von unserer Rente)

Zoom Link: https://uni-jena-de.zoom.us/j/67967022696 (Kenncode: networks)

We are providing a video documentation of the discussion on feminist cross-movement alliances: https://www.move-projekt.de/city/recording-of-the-discussion-feminist-cross-movement-alliances/

Local Political Spaces and Translocal Solidarity – Feminist and Aesthetic Interventions

18 October 2022, 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. – online

During the event we will be getting to know different forms of aesthetic feminist action. Coming from a review of her feminist performances, the queer-feminist collective Dziewuchy Berlin will be contributing a critical discussion of claims of transnational solidarity in Europe – both in feminist movements as well as in society. Based on her own activist artistic work of many years Dziewuchy will be outlining aspects of equal transnational relations of solidarity. A French collective that is sticking feminist collages will be presenting their literary documental interventions in public space. We will be learning how the Colleuses make power relations in these spaces become visible and thus negotiable. The Croatian artist Tina Keserovic will be reporting about her recent public performances in Zagreb. During these projects Tina has been working on building connections between postcolonial and feminist prespectives in order to challenge local nationalism and its European connections. Moreover, Tina will be contributing experiences with building translocal networks that are crossing artistic and activist’s fields. The political scientist Isabell Lorey will be commenting on the different projects with refence to democratic theories. During the subsequent discussion we will be developing connections between the various aesthetic and activist strategies that are locally and translocally working on and eking out new political spaces and possibilities of political articulation. By this we will be illuminating forms of equal representation and solidarity coming from aesthetic feminist action.

The discussion is linked to two essays by Dziewuchy and by the Collages Féministes Marseille:

Global Scream! Polish Protest Art in Berlin by Anna Krenz

The World of the Colleureuses by Collages Féministes Marseille

Feel invited to read in advance the essays, available in English, French, German and Polish. The essays will be commented by Isabell Lorey. Our discussion during the online event will refer on them.

With: Anna Krenz (Dziewuchy, Berlin/Germany), Collages Féministes (Marseille, France), Tina Keserovic (Zagreb/Croatia), Isabell Lorey (Academy of Media Arts, Cologne/Germany)

Zoom link:

https://uni-jena-de.zoom.us/j/63626845453

Meeting-ID: 636 2684 5453
Kenncode: 006310