preparations	the workshop	outcomes	texts

The NextGENDERation network is a European network of (about 150) students in the field of women's studies and feminist theory (both in academic contexts and outside of the academia). We are very concerned with the production of critical knowlede that enables the transformation of the world we live in. We want to participate to the ESF with following concerns, to be discussed in our workshop:

• The neoliberalisation of (higher) education in Europe. Commercial and labour market interests are increasingly putting pressure on and shaping our institutions of (higher) education. We believe that knowledge - its production and transmission - should be socially relevant and able to transform the world we live in. How can we make our institutions of (higher) education into centers of critical thinking and resistance? How can the critical knowledge generated by the social movements transform our institutions of (higher) education?
  
• We recognise that the production and transmission of critical knowledge is happening in different locations, in different ways and in different speeds. Within the (different) spaces of Women's Studies and of feminist movements movements in Europe, we notice a reluctance or a delay in taking on insights and analyses that come out of migrant and refugee movements, or the movement of globalised resistance against neoliberal capitalism. We desire feminist theories and practices that are more infused with the critical knowledge generated by transnational struggle (of for instance the World Women's March). How can we work towards a repolitisation of the feminist movements and women's studies we have in Europe, in solidarity with women activists around the world?
  
• Within the movement of globalised resistance, we notice a real lack of feminist perspectives and analyses. Orthodox anti-capitalism is NOT going to do away with sexist and racist power relations - we know that from our long histories of struggle. Our starting point is that power relations are interwoven: sexual difference intersects with ethnicity, with class, with sexuality, with geo-political location, with age, with ability, etc. This knowledge has been generated (in different ways) within various feminist, migrant, post-colonial movements and needs to be taken seriously in the current globalised resistance or "movement of movements" in order not to reproduce existing inequalities, in order for an other world to be truly possible. How can we infuse the current globalised resistance with feministm anti-racist and postcolonial politics?

In the workshop, these areas of concern will be shortly introduced by scholars/activists working on these issues, and then discuss them in smaller groups. The aim of the workshop is to make some "missing links" between different sites of (potential) resistance visible, and to create new alliances that enable us to make such crucial links in our future work and struggles.

NG@ESF:
Rutvica Andrijasevic
Sarah Bracke
Cristina Gamberi
Anna Rappazzo