Tag Archives: politics

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Mariya Ivancheva: The casualization, digitalization, and outsourcing of academic labour: a wake-up call for trade unions

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Mariya Ivancheva, University of Liverpool

The UK higher education sector has seen decades of escalating injustices that academic trade unions need to confront head-on. As one of the biggest, most visible public higher education systems in the world, the UK is ahead of the curve in a global process of commercialization of higher education. The main academic workers’ trade union, University College Union (UCU), has been on strike for 22 days in total over two periods since November 2019 with demands to end casualization, increase pay, and abolish gender and minority pay gaps. Yet, the strike also coincided with the outbreak of coronavirus, which has pushed universities around the world into online teaching. In light of these unfolding development, this article reviews increasingly established injustices in UK higher education and shows the links between casualization, digitalization, and outsourcing of academic labour.

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William Suárez-Gómez and Ismael García-Colón: Puerto Rico: Resistance in the world’s oldest colony

In July 2019, Puerto Rico was in turmoil. An organic movement asking for the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló emerged throughout this US colonial territory. After 12 days of mass protests, the governor resigned on 24 July. The international media portrayed his resignation as a successful and peaceful outcome. This is the first time that protests and the will of Puerto Ricans removed an elected governor from office. Yet, his resignation may only be the beginning of an uphill battle against those who benefit from corruption and austerity.

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Evan Smith: Love milkshakes, hate racism: A short history of throwing food at the Far Right

An earlier version of this article first appeared on Hatful of History.

In the last month, milkshakes have been lobbed at several far-right candidates in the European elections campaign across the United Kingdom. First it was former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson, then UKIP’s misogynist YouTuber Carl Benjamin, and now Nigel Farage as he was out campaigning in Newcastle for his new Brexit Party. When Farage visited Edinburgh, the local police advised McDonald’s not to sell milkshakes, and there has been further news that Farage refused to step off his tour bus after being threatened with further milkshakings.

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Stephen Campbell: Touring Myanmar’s leftist history

For more by the author, see his article “Putting-Out’s Return: Informalization and Differential Subsumption in Thailand’s Garment Sector” in Focaal, freely available to all readers until 22 May 2019.

Opening his 1990 political history, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma, the Bangkok-based journalist Bertil Lintner summarized the then recent end to the party’s 40-year insurrection: “It’s cessation was not the outcome of a successful government offensive or of a generous amnesty policy, but of an all-out mutiny within the rank-and-file” (1990: 1). The party, by then deeply invested in the Golden Triangle’s heroin economy, had long since lost the level of popular support it had once achieved for advocating the interests of workers and peasants, and for its role in fighting Japan’s World War II fascist occupation and Britain’s postwar efforts to reassert colonial rule. Meanwhile, the military-backed Burma Socialist Programme Party, which since the 1962 military coup had ruled the country as sole legal political party, itself imploded in the face of mass anti-government protests in 1988. In any case, the party had long ago eviscerated its meager socialist credentials, as when it dispatched soldiers to massacre workers participating in the 1974 general strike. To this day, discussion of leftist politics in Myanmar is overdetermined by these inglorious historical facts, which mark the declining years of socialism and communism in the country.

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Luisa Steur: A Women’s Wall against the fascist menace in Kerala? Some less-comfortable observations

On New Year’s Day, the world was treated to the spectacle of a 640-kilometer-long “Women’s Wall” in Kerala (South India). This human chain of more than five million women stretched the length of the state, making a spectacular statement for the “renaissance values” of women’s equity and rational thinking. Progressive organizations linked to Kerala’s Communist government organized the demonstration to counter the hate-filled Hindu protests that had been ongoing since 28 September 2018, when the Supreme Court of India ruled that the Sabarimala temple’s ban on women of menstruating age was unconstitutional and had to be lifted. Implementation of this court order had so far been sabotaged by the militant protests of orthodox Hindus, fueled by the BJP (the Hindu nationalist party).

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Agnieszka Pasieka: Who is afraid of fascists? The Polish independence march and the rise of the (far?) right

“Polish leaders marched with the far right” was perhaps the most common description of the massive demonstration that took place in Warsaw on National Independence Day, 11 November. Press worldwide expressed astonishment and indignation over the fact that the Polish president, accompanied by politicians from the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party, decided to partake in a highly controversial, and explicitly nationalist, event.

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Victor Albert: Brazil’s Homeless Workers’ Movement is an assertive social work organization

On 21 October, Jair Bolsonaro, the now president-elect of Brazil, made an announcement via his smartphone that was transmitted to crowds of supporters gathered in São Paulo: “Criminals of the MST [Landless Workers’ Movement], criminals of the MTST [Homeless Workers’ Movement], your actions will be classified as terrorism.” This was delivered as part of a broader threat made to the Left (Mollona 2018)—singling out Fernando Haddad, his Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores) opponent in the presidential race, who he promised could “rot in jail” together with the currently imprisoned former President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva—which would be “cleansed” after he assumed presidential office.

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Cemile Gizem Dinçer and Eda Sevinin: Migration, activist research, and the politics of location: An interview with Nicholas De Genova (part 2)

The second part of this interview with Nicholas De Genova moves into an analysis of the so-called refugee crisis since 2015 and possibilities for militant academic research that challenges the increasingly hard-right consensus in Europe and beyond.

The first part is published here and traces De Genova’s intellectual biography, the question of militant research, his work on migration in the United States, and his recent shift to research in Europe and collaborations with the European, especially Italian, school of autonomy of migration research.

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Cemile Gizem Dinçer and Eda Sevinin: Migration, activist research, and the politics of location: An interview with Nicholas De Genova (part 1)

In Turkey, especially after the Syrians’ arrival following 2011, the field of migration studies has more or less confined itself to mainstream discussions such as integration, social cohesion, data collection, and so on. At this point, the work of Nicholas De Genova and the wider literature on the autonomy of migration open up a new horizon for discussing migration. De Genova has had a decisive influence in shaping our approach to migration and borders. We hope that this interview, conducted in Istanbul when Nicholas attended the conference “Migration, Social Transformation and Differential Inclusion in Turkey,” will be read across Turkey and make his work accessible to students, activists, and everyone interested in migration. We had a long conversation on topics ranging from the recent “refugee crisis” and alternative ways to think about migration and politics, activism, and academia in general.

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Flávio Eiró: On Bolsonaro: Brazilian democracy at risk

Picture a street handcraft market in a touristic village called Porto de Galinhas in Pernambuco, Northeast Region of Brazil. A few days before the second round of the 2018 presidential elections on 28 October, I observed the following conversation on the market.

“You can vote for him, don’t worry, he won’t kill gay people,” says a local 50-year-old addressing a couple of openly gay, young, black men wearing tight shorts and colorful shirts. They reply: “Yes, he will, Bolsonaro will kill gay people.” While the young men walk away, the Bolsonaro supporter keeps trying to convince them, half-laughing, half-serious, stating that his candidate is not as bad as some people have been arguing. “No, he won’t . . .” he says, “and don’t worry, because if he does kill gays, the environmental agency will come after him—after all, they are animals under risk of extinction!”

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