Ciao,
as you probably know on the 2nd-4th of October there will be the Transnational Social Strike meeting in Poznan. On the website you will find the call and all the useful information towards the meeting: http://www.transnational-strike.info/
Here is the link to the facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/644630522338560/
I would like to invite you to take part in the workshop we are there organizing with other groups (you can find the introductory text and the list of organizing groups below) on internal and external mobility that is meant also as a follow-up of the discussion started in Frankfurt on the 19th of March. Starting from the assumption that mobility is the main feature of contemporary labor, we would like to discuss both how the government of mobility is working in order to limit and worsen the working and living conditions of millions of people that are moving throughout Europe, and the possibilities of organizing transnationally and striking against this state of being. This discussion has to keep together, in our view, the mobility of internal and external migrant and the "refugee emergency" of the last weeks and has the aim of finding common discourses and claims inside the framework of organization offered by the transnational strike process. If you are interested in co-organizing or taking part in the workshop, please write to me,
All the best,
Paola - Precarious Dis-connections
as you probably know on the 2nd-4th of October there will be the Transnational Social Strike meeting in Poznan. On the website you will find the call and all the useful information towards the meeting: http://www.transnational-strike.info/
Here is the link to the facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/644630522338560/
I would like to invite you to take part in the workshop we are there organizing with other groups (you can find the introductory text and the list of organizing groups below) on internal and external mobility that is meant also as a follow-up of the discussion started in Frankfurt on the 19th of March. Starting from the assumption that mobility is the main feature of contemporary labor, we would like to discuss both how the government of mobility is working in order to limit and worsen the working and living conditions of millions of people that are moving throughout Europe, and the possibilities of organizing transnationally and striking against this state of being. This discussion has to keep together, in our view, the mobility of internal and external migrant and the "refugee emergency" of the last weeks and has the aim of finding common discourses and claims inside the framework of organization offered by the transnational strike process. If you are interested in co-organizing or taking part in the workshop, please write to me,
All the best,
Paola - Precarious Dis-connections
Migrant labor, the government of mobility and the transnational strike
organized by: Berlin Migrant Strikers (Germany), Precarious Dis-connections (Italy), Syrena Collective (Poland), No One is Illegal (Germany), Dinamo Press (Italy)
The proposed workshop starts from the assumption that mobility is the main feature of contemporary labor. Taking to the full the opportunities offered by mobility, precarious, migrant and industrial workers create a continuous tension inside the European space, challenging both the border regime and the capitalistic command imposed through wage and the international division of labor. In front of this process, the European Union and its States are reacting by developing a «government of mobility», that is a set of institutional, economical and geopolitical practices that, while fostering movements that are favorable to profit and in line with the regional organization of production, oppose the aspirations of millions of internal and external migrants. Deeming them as a disposable labor-force, the government of mobility hinders their ability to effectively choose where to go and where to live. While institutional racism is also used as a tool to manage the crisis, turning uncertainty into fear and producing violence, the condition of extra-European migrants is now shared by millions of other European workers who, especially through welfare cuts, are experiencing the partial and temporary inclusion and the consequent exploitation to which the migrants are subjected on a daily basis.
Through this lens we can also try to frame the governance of the «refugees emergency» of the last weeks. The oscillation between the brutal repression at the borders and the rhetoric of the hospitality proclaimed by Merkel deeply symbolizes the European government of the labor force of the last years.
By one side there are the closed borders, the discourse against the social tourism within Europe, the continuous attack to the worker's contractual power and to the experiences of conflicting self-organization together with the systematic dismantling of social protections. By the other side the mechanism of differential selection of the «useful» and productive migrants and the use of the migration fluxes as a tool to lower the working conditions and the salaries of large sectors of the labor market.
The declaration of the German government about the availability to host half million refugees per year have to be read in combination with the declaration of the administrator of the Mercedes that promptly launched a campaign of recruitment in the center for refugees to select the qualified workers and insert them in the productive system at lower cost.
In this frame, several struggles are taking place throughout the European union. Migrants are materially challenging the European government of mobility by crossing borders and finding ways to gain space and time. Beside the manifold demonstrations against the border regime, the strike has started to be regarded as a way of accumulating the power necessary to fight against the political conditions of exploitation and the government of mobility. Groups and collectives of internal and external migrants are now starting to communicate and coordinate in order to foster this transnational project.
Only a social alliance between the exploited subjects (precarious, industrial workers and internal and external migrants) can try to deconstruct and fight the cruelty of the border regime and the social massacre happening inside the borders, before that xenophobic and nationalist options further develop.
This workshop aims to further discuss the possibilities of building a shared political discourse and common claims and of organizing on a transnational level starting from the accumulated experiences.
We therefore propose to organize this three-hours workshop according to three main issues:
1. The government of mobility: how is mobility and the measures approved and practiced to govern it restructuring the European space?
2. Internal migrations: what are the experiences of organization of internal migrants up to date, their limits and the tools that can be further developed?
3. Refugees crisis and European exploitation of the emergency
4. Mobility of labor and transnational strike: what are the tools and strategies which could provide a basis for connecting the struggles against the border regime and against the exploitation of migrant labor? How can we imagine to practically build a political communication on the issue of mobility and labor in the months to come?