Notes
for the Precair Forum
12 february,
Amsterdam
We are both from Nextgenderation Brussels. We would like to shortly introduce the idea of a Care Strike, which was launched by Precarias a la deriva from Madrid, and where we stand with Nextgenderation Brussels on the notion of precarity.
Maybe first a quick word about Nextgenderation: Nextgenderation is a loose European network of students, activists and researchers engaged in feminist theory and politics and how these intersect with anti-racist, postcolonial, migrant, lesbian, queer and anti-capitalist struggles. This network functions mainly through a mailing list on which more or less 300 people are subscribed. For more local and ‘real live’ actions and interventions, local chapters exist, which Nextgenderation Brussels is an example of.
I should start by saying that both of us are really new to Nextgenderation Brussels, and more importantly, also that Nextgenderation Brussels has only very recently began to organise themselves around the notion of precarity. So I would like to start by giving a rough background of our involvement and interest in precarity.
Of all the recent mobilisations and initiatives around precarity, especially two are of great importance and inspiration for us.
1/ The first one is the Precarity@bordercrossers.net. Feminism, precarity and migration workshop where one of us went to. This workshop took place 3 and 4 December in Berlin and was organised by several women’s migrant networks (Respect, Maiz and Hamburg Research Group). Precarity was investigated here through several axes of power, namely gender, ethnicity and conditions of migration. The aim of this workshop was to collect knowledge and strategies of political mobilisations around precarity from feminist and migrant perspectives. And also to find ways to coordinate and support each other European-wise. At the centre were discussions about notions of precarity: how do we define precarity and how do we bring the very different forms of precarity together?
2/ It was also in Berlin where Precarias a la deriva first introduced their idea for a Care Strike, which brings me to our second source of inspiration. Precarias a la deriva, which means precarious women workers adrift, is a collective project of investigation and action, and arose from La Eskalera Karakola, the feminist squat and social centre in Madrid, where some of us went last December. Precarias a la deriva started as a response to the general strike in Spain in 2002. they were dissatisfied with this strike for several reasons: for not taking up the experience and the unjust division of domestic work and care, almost entirely done by women in the ‘non-productive’ sphere, for the marginalization of those in types of work which are generally lumped together as ‘precarious’ and for not taking into consideration precarious, flexible, invisible or undervalued work, specifically that of women and/or migrants. As a response to their dissatisfaction, they started a picket survey. They started talking to women marching in the strike, asking questions like: do you strike? Why? Under which conditions do you work? Which tools do you have to confront situations that seems unjust to you? Etc. This experience led them to the idea to start an ongoing research project, with the intention to map the territory of new kinds of work, create networks to break solitude and to find a language to talk about what is happening to them. Concretely this resulted in a video- and book-project in which a group of feminists in Madrid organise a self-investigation about work and precarious working and living conditions. They start documenting close friends, spreading to female friends of friends, until eventually they have mapped a lot of types of so-called precarious work. Their research brought them to care in several ways: care as work which is not or badly paid work and which is gendered (female and often sexualised) and which is ethnically marked (non-white, migrant) and the necessity to build alternative care-networks.
The idea for a Care Strike is meant to make visible all the care-work which is informal, invisible and not or badly paid. A 1st of May where notions of precarity are at the centre, but precarity analysed through gender and ethnicity power-structures. As being said in Berlin: “ethnicity, gender and being a migrant matters to precarity”. It is meant to make visible and reveal ‘who cares’ in this society.
The Precarias a la Deriva project was an inspiration for us to embark on a similar investigation of our own. Fueled by the idea of a ‘care strike’ on the 1st of May, we thus invited some friends and befriended organisations to a first meeting (two weeks ago) where we launched the idea. Our next meeting will be next week. Some of us, in NextGenderation, would like to work with video, as Precarias did: record stories of friends, relatives or even strangers that we meet on the street. Others might take the idea of a ‘care strike’ and ‘precarity’ into different directions. As you can see, we are only at the very beginning of what we hope can become a thorough investigation into what precariousness and precarization means or can mean to us, to our friends, our friends’ friends and people beyond that circle. It would thus be impossible to already come up with answers or conclusions.
What we can share with you at this point already are the doubts and questions we have at the start of this project, which allowed us to define a few points that to us seem crucial to take into account when embarking on an investigation into precariousness or into the process of precarization. It is not like we are starting from nothing of course: the Precarias project already gave us some important clues and hypotheses to start off with.
First of all. For us, the idea that we are taking our own lives as starting points, is very important to avoid starting off from generalized notions and theories that might make us overlook how precariousness touches upon all of us in many different ways. Like the Precarias collective, one of the first questions we asked ourselves is “can we use ‘precariousness’ as a common name for our diverse and singular situations?” This question even led some of us to doubt whether we - who are still speaking from relatively priviledged positions - are in fact entitled to even speak about precarity, while there are people out there who seem to be affected by it in much more devastating ways.
Another reaction at the meeting where we introduced the idea of a ‘care strike’ was that there is a difference between those who ‘choose’ precarious work and those who don’t have that choice. Choice, of course, is a tricky concept. We all make ‘choices’ within a framework of changing conditions that we did not choose. So, although the meaning of ‘free choice’ is relative, we can still see that many Fillipino women - for instance - migrate to Western countries to work as nurses or to care for children in massive numbers, consciously choosing a better life and future for them and their children. We could argue that, in a way, the terrible state of the economy in their country does not leave them much ‘choice’, but we nevertheless believe that it would be false to divide people into ‘victims’ of precarization on one side and ‘those who - more or less - asked for it’ on the other side.
It is not productive to start off from such categories, because after all, it seems like - in an age of globalisation - there is an increasing tendency towards ‘precarization’ and this tendency affects us all. So although the conditions of the lives of migrant domestic workers deserve to be made visible and deserve to be investigated, we would argue that issues of precarity should be put into broader perspectives. Diverse conditions of precarity cannot become embodied by migrant domestic workers. This is why we prioritize the idea of taking ourselves as starting points: it allows us to not only look at the lives of others, but to look at our own positions in relation to the positions of others, thus allowing for self-reflexivity. So, keeping in mind divisions and axis of power that are always present, we believe the following question (from an article of the Precarias collective) is more productive than simplified categorizations as a starting point for any investigation into precarity: “How can we both see common names and recognize singularities, make alliances and comprehend difference?”
Another notion that seems important for us to take as a starting point is the notion (articulated at the workshop in Berlin) that 'etnicity, gender and being a migrant matters to precarity'. It does not seem productive to us, as we see happening here and there, to talk about a ‘precariat’ as a replacement or variation on ‘proletariat’. Why? Because this term tends to flatten out differences with regard to gender, ethnicity, etc. From a feminist angle, there are many things to take into account, many questions that arise: how is precarity gendered? But also: where does the women’s movement go from here, now that it seems that the Western ideal of gaining emancipation through paid work seems not to decrease the demand for women as carers but seems to impose some of the care-load on other women’s shoulders? To understand how and why some processes (like the mobilisation of women from the south or the east towards the west) are taking place, it is clear that a feminist approach is needed.
Concretely: what will we do with these first impressions and all those questions? The idea of doing some sort of field investigation appeals to us very much, as does the idea of a ‘care strike’ on the first of May that was launched by Precarias a la Deriva. Rather than really striking, which would be impossible because you can literaly not stop caring, we see a ‘care strike’ as making visible the conditions of precarity, in which care always seems to play a crucial role. The idea of a care strike does not yet have a concrete form though. We were thinking of projecting video portraits of people who tell their stories in public spaces, of playing out certain scenes in public places or in demonstrations on the 1st of May. We are considering going to Liège (Luik) that day, as some other groups in Flanders decided to do.
Diny & Sara