conricerca

from Interactivist Info Exchange

Life conditions in the neoliberal age are no longer conjugated in the third person.

A galaxy of wage-earning work atypical figures has ceased to belong exclusively to the "horror catalogues" of the labor relations´ devastation, of the social guarantees´ neoliberal breakdown. From the exclusion statement they are passing through to the joyful passions of affirmative resistance, to the exigency of guaranteing the conditions in which the "new species" can combine its productive cooperation power with new spaces for the public act and speech, with new freedom conditions for everybody, against the concentration of the workfare and forced flexibility universe that seems to be at the core of the European Constitution project´s social doctrine.

In a large number of European cities, the subjective figures of labor, social and existential precariousness are making their untimely appearance, with new presentation forms and languages, that seem to turn upside down the stigma and psychological pain of precarious existence, pushing them back as the defying of a "new political animal": that´s the way, provocatively, we can listen to the French «show intermittents» claiming for precariousness against the managers of the "city-factory" showbusiness, together with the chercheurs, that is, the scholarship holders and researchers who defend their capability of reproducing the collective intelligence under guaranteed freedom and mobility conditions.
Is it a new type of unionism? Or actually a surmounting of the former union forms and the first steps of fighting mechanisms still with no name?

In the past two years these new figures have appeared politically as an inrush that has returned new features to the conflicts related to labor and social rights: new political animals have come on the stage of european cities´ conflicts. We found them in Milan and Barcelona MayDay Parades (that did gather more than 150.000 people accross their streets), but also on the periodic conflicts of French intermittents (not only in Cannes or Avignon Festivals).

Many of us wonder about which common features have migrant workers and this new species of precariat of moving outlines and frontiers that irrupts as political subjectivity –the creative intersections capable of shaking the social conflicts outlook, stamping out the groundless pessimism that conceives the labor conflicts just as survival fights tending to become conservative ones. It´s evident that mobility problems (associated mainly to migrant people) get mixed up and involved with those regarding formation and income access and the building of cooperation networks, in order to achieve information exchange and the weaving of care networks, to be taken in and enjoy the capability of taking others in.

We are living in a regime of permanent global war: anyway, we cannot reduce it to everything that followed after 9/11; it´s not only about Afganistan and Irak wars and either about the terrible increasing intensity of the palestine-israelí conflict or the bomb attacks in Madrid in 11-M: we are facing a war that is also lived in the European mobile borders (also present within them), that is assumed by the politicians as a central issue, which means that the social or political conflict is substituted by ethnic or identity wars; passing from a fighting time to that of the "emergency" and the legislative exception, of the conversion of citizenship related or conflicting figures in victims and executioners or in present or potential terrorists in face of the sacred union of "democratic" defenders of the «war against terrorism» (in other words, the preventive neutralization of the emerging conflicts, regarded as terrorism breeding ground).

That is why we face the construction of many problems –and also their transformation in new conflict experiments; we possess notions of how to renovate the activist forms in order to, on one side, redesign the map of our own lifes subjected to the obligation of accepting the «scarce employment» to survive and, on the other side, to make this imposed precariousness in employment, in knowledge and in general life become the beginning of a new political and existential scenery of desires and practical conjectures of freedom and mobility for everyone.

From the 3rd to the 6th of December Malaga will held a meeting of all the people throughout Europe that are working, discussing and experimenting with the construction of research, organization and conflict spaces between the new labor figures and the new metropolitan life forms.

Sharing experiences and debates from each territory, presenting some of the most interesting researchs on precariousness and preparing the device MAYDAY 05 are some fundamental subjects we wish to deal with those days. Program In the meeting we will mainly focus on three working, debate and collective production spaces:

1> Tools for precariousness visibility and common spaces between migrantes and European precarious: Mayday05, 2nd of April(European day of action for the freedom of movement), common agenda,etc.

2 > Tools for experiences and analysis communication on precariousness: We will discuss the utility and option of opening a weblog designed to articulate and intensify the common work, inviting the collectives that already possess a wide experience on this ground: thistuesday.org, chainworkers, loslunesalsol.net.

3 > Tools of "biounionism" : precariousness offices, research-action initiatives, workers laboratories, etc. Anyhow the definitive program is not closed yet and so we hope to receive all your suggestions, proposals or doubts in the following e-mail addresses:

Email: nsg@otramalaga.org
toret@wewearbuildings.cc

Organizations that have confirmed their participation:
Chainworkers
Sapienza Pirata
Precarias a la Deriva
Yo Mango!
Asamblea MayDay de Barcelona
Asamblea MayDay Sur
Indymedia estrecho / madiaq
CGT
Casa de Iniciativas 1.5
Mesa del Temporero, Andalucía
Tavolo Migranti
Intermittents
Revista Contrapoder

more information (in Spanish) at
OtraMalaga