In Germany, citizens of the EU enjoy freedom of movement and nevertheless – or just for that reason – their attendance is considered a problem. Especially those from the newer member states are badly affected by racism, systematically excluded from social rights and claims to social wages, faced with housing shortage and poor working conditions. At the same time, different types of self-organization and solidarity networks exist. They organize counselling and support.
In the public debate about EU migration, various processes with social significance overlap:
precarization of employment in the low-pay sector, increasing homelessness, transformation of the welfare state to a workfare state, rising nationalism and racism, and, last but not least, an economization of migration policies. However, there are only few research projects on EU-migration and the struggles and movements of EU-migrants, and often they don’t know of each other.
With this workshop we want to offer a space to come together and exchange experiences. We would like to focus on several questions:
How is EU-migration governed under the terms of free movement? How do towns and cities
intervene in that process? Which conflicts occur as a result of a recomposition of workforces at the shop-floor level (e.g. in the meat industry)? With which forms of racism are EU-migrants confronted? Why are almost half of the people living on the streets of major German cities EU-migrants? What role does social policy have in the government of EU migration, and especially welfare-to-work schemes? How do social and anti-racist movements react? What kinds of struggles or attempts of organization are known in the field of EU-migration?
We invite people working on EU-migration in or outside of academia to contribute experiences, analysis, perspectives and issues to the workshop. If you would like to present an ongoing or completed research project, please contact us until March 30, 2018, in order to allow for better planning.
EU-Bürger*innen genießen in Deutschland zwar Freizügigkeit und trotzdem – oder auch gerade deswegen – wird ihre Präsenz als Problem wahrgenommen. Insbesondere Menschen aus den neueren Beitrittsländern werden in der Bundesrepublik mit einem massiven Rassismus konfrontiert, systematisch von sozialen Rechten und Ansprüchen auf Sozialeinkommen ausgeschlossen, mit Wohnungsnot und miserablen Arbeitsbedingungen konfrontiert. Gleichzeitig existieren unterschiedliche Formen von Selbstorganisation sowie solidarische Netzwerke, die Beratung und Unterstützung organisieren.
In den Auseinandersetzungen um EU-Migration verschränken sich insofern verschiedene Prozesse von gesamtgesellschaftlicher Bedeutung: u.a. die Prekarisierung von Arbeit im Niedriglohnsektor, der Anstieg der Obdachlosigkeit, die Transformation des Sozialstaats, der Aufstieg (neuer) nationalistischer/rassistischer Kräfte und die Ökonomisierung der Migrationspolitik.
Dieser Workshop soll die Gelegenheit bieten, sich kennenzulernen und in Austausch zu treten. Verschiedene Fragen zeichnen sich bereits ab: Wie wird unter den Bedingungen der Freizügigkeit Migration regiert und welche Rolle spielen die Städte dabei? Zu welchen Neuzusammensetzungen und Auseinandersetzungen kommt es auf betrieblicher Ebene (z.B. in der Fleischindustrie)? Wie artikuliert sich Rassismus in Bezug auf EU-Migrantinnen? Wieso sind etwa die Hälfte der Personen, die in deutschen Metropolen auf der Straße leben, EU-Migrantinnen? Welche Rolle spielt (aktivierende) Sozialpolitik im Regieren von EU-Migration? Wie reagieren soziale, antirassistische Bewegungen? Welche Kämpfe und Organisierungsversuche gibt es im Feld der EU-Migration? Wir laden Personen, die sich in- oder außerhalb der Universität mit Fragen zu EU-Migration beschäftigen ein, Erfahrungen, Analysen, Perspektiven und Fragestellungen in diesen Workshop einzubringen.
Kontakt: peter.birke@uni-goettingen.de, lisa.riedner@uni-goettingen.de
In Germany, citizens of the EU enjoy freedom of movement and nevertheless – or just for that reason – their attendance is considered a problem. Especially those from the newer member states are badly affected by racism, systematically excluded from social rights and claims to social wages, faced with housing shortage and poor working conditions. At the same time, different types of self-organization and solidarity networks exist. They organize counselling and support.
In the public debate about EU migration, various processes with social significance overlap: precarization of employment in the low-pay sector, increasing homelessness, transformation of the welfare state to a workfare state, rising nationalism and racism, and, last but not least, an economization of migration policies.
With this workshop we want to offer a space to come together and exchange experiences. We would like to focus on several questions:
How is EU-migration governed under the terms of free movement? How do towns and cities intervene in that process? Which conflicts occur as a result of a recomposition of workforces at the shop-floor level (e.g. in the meat industry)? With which forms of racism are EU-migrants confronted? Why are almost half of the people living on the streets of major German cities EU-migrants? What role does social policy have in the government of EU migration, and especially welfare-to-work schemes? How do social and anti-racist movements react? What kinds of struggles or attempts of organization are known in the field of EU-migration?
We invite people working on EU-migration in or outside of academia to contribute experiences, analysis, perspectives and issues to the workshop.
with Isabella Consolati from Precarious Disconnections in Bologna and Hagen Kopp from no one is illegal Hanau
Since its beginning, the Transnational Social Strike Platform has assumed the movements and the struggles of migrants as the cornerstone of its transnational political initiative, starting from its centrality in the continuous reconfiguration of the European space. A multinational workforce characterized by a steady mobility, by precariousness and confronted by a mobility regime with common trends is present today in Europe. Starting from this and from the individual and collective experiences of refusal and struggle that migrants practice every day, we would like to discuss how to consolidate a transnational field of struggle able to support migrants’ claim to freedom. … The politics against migrants is an essential element of the general precarisation of labour and life. … Our hypothesis is that focusing on the conditions through which migrants are now put to work and on the way in which mobility challenges this compulsion is key to understand the European mobility regime and for the insubordination against it. We are interested in discussing how the institutional interventions related to the European government of mobility are functional to create the conditions for migrants to be put to work in certain disadvantaged positions and with lower wages. And how this undermines, even with openly repressive interventions, the possibility of organizing and making a common front. And we want to discuss - at least in the second part of the workshop - how to connect transnationally our practices of self organizing and support in the manifold fields of migrant labour all over Europe and beyond.
Link to read more: https://www.transnational-strike.info/2018/02/21/nine-good-reasons-for-organizing-transnationally-on-migrants-side/
Kontakt: hagen@kein.org
In Agriculture, especially in vegetables- and fruit-growing for picking and other work mobile and temporary workers are employed since many years. For example to Germany over hundred thousand people come each year to work in agriculture. The characteristic of seasonal employment can be classified as flexible-insecure. Especially in agriculture the seasonal workers are only for short and limited time in the country where they work. There is no integration to the welfare system and society of the working country.
In consequence these mobile seasonal workers can be easily defraud of their rights. Main Problems are missing Knowledge about industrial law of the working country and in transparency of the contracts of employment and recording and payment of the working hours. Also often safety at work is a problem if standards are not carried out. A first step to change the situation is to inform the workers about their rights and were they can find further information and help. In Germany there are different project for example organized by the Faire Mobilität and unions like IG BAU.
We as ELAI are a small group founded by students of the UNI Witzenhausen. We took part at some of these information activities and also started to organize some on our own. Important for informing seasonal workers in agriculture is to go to the fields were they are working. The actions have to be local, because mostly the places were the workers stay during their employment is out of town, so that they can’t easily visit the information centers of for example Faire Mobilität. But precarious working conditions for the mobile seasonal workers in agriculture is a matter in many parts of Europe. We want to report on the latest asparagus action we made in our region. Also about an organization in Italy with the same aim, one of us visited last year we want to tell you something.
We hope to show you some perspectives to start changing the actual situation for the mobile seasonal workers in agriculture and maybe give some suggestions to get active by yourself thinking of own actions or other ways to help the workers or joining one of the planed actions.