P_WR

Precarity_WebRing

A WebRing for Communication and Militant Research on Precarity

This is the presentation of a WebRing for Communication and Militant Research on Precarity, a project involved in the EuroMayDay mobilisations. This presentation describes the main ideas, contents, and steps of the project. In the last page, you will find a "node card", useful to build up the map of militant groups and precarity struggles. Participate in setting up P_WR! Fill in the "node card" and send it to: thering@listas.sindominio.net

Intro

The WebRing for Communication and Militant Research on Precarity is an open platform and an evolving network connecting militant research on precarity and activism already involved in the EuroMayDay mobilisations. The Precarity WebRing brings together web sites and blogs on labour conflicts and life struggles around precarity, in order to outline a space for debate, research and political action. This could open possibilities to construct common practices, concepts and notions, and to develop militant research projects “with” (instead of “on”) precarious subjects and their/our struggles. The project intends to produce and share knowledge, experiences and materials, to collect information and practices about collectives and conflicts, and to spread news, analyses and investigations. This would help to establish militant co-research projects in a different way to academic or traditional workers’ movement's research. Militant co-research is simultaneously the production of knowledge, subjectivity, cooperation and political self-organization. It is an investigation “for” and “inside” political actions and social conflicts.

P_WR is a way to construct a map of precarious living and working conditions in Europe in order to visualize and intensify the density of militant groups, struggles and political actions. This map will be presented on the graphic interface of the P_WR internet website and will consist of different intertwining layers, built step by step.

The first step

The first step for the implementation of the precarity map attempts to visualise in a first layer the EuroMayDay networks, i.e. all those groups linked to the building of a precarious 1st May as a process of European political recomposition from below that takes precarity as the terrain of battle: activist initiatives, militant research groups, social centres, blogs etc. Here, the EuroMayDay galaxy is understood in its broader sense, including those groups and social initiatives which locate themselves on its edges. Each group/initiative could be a node on the map, linking to its website or activities, situated on its geographical localization, connected to other groups with which it collaborates.

At the same time, this first layer on the map doesn't aim to "represent" the EuroMayDay (for this we already have www.euromayday.org), nor to be exhaustive, but to allow a visualization of different initiatives involved, their practices, their discourses and imagination, their demands and ongoing battles so that linkages among them/us can be intensified and self-organisation of the internal dynamics and challenges can be promoted. In this sense, this layer is conceived as an open on-line process, emerging gradually through the involvement of different networks and connectors.

The main device for the construction of such a layer is a "node card" (see below) which will be passed-by through the EuroMayDay networks and filled-in by as many groups as possible. This process of passing-by and filling-in should not only rely on e-lists but also on face-to-face contact (especially in the case of territorialized networks). It could serve as a tool for increasing the density of connections and getting to know the networks in which we inscribe ourselves.

The second step

While the first step in the construction of the graphic interface of the P_WR attempts to bring together and visualize various activist and militant research groups on precarity, the target of the second step could be the visualisation of the social conflict around precarity itself. Here the virtual network of activists and militant researchers could develop and add four additional layers on the P_WR map. In this second step the maps of the P_WR interface will become more and more virtual. And by this they will become more and more real because they will deliver a close and self-organised look into the sites, spaces, articulations and multiplicities of everyday struggles around precarity. The target of the second step is to create a socio-wiki of precarity.

The four layers which could be added to the P_WR map during the second step are:

1. Precarious subjectivities

This layer could picture the groupings and social actors which oppose precarity and neoliberal socioeconomic policies across Europe. The formation of precarious subjectivities is not only emerging on the sites of labour struggles in different sectors and groups, such as intermittent, affective, part-time, temporary, freelance, casual, immaterial, contract, seasonal, informal workers but also traverses everyday life across Europe: migration and mobility, gender politics, queer politics, politics of embodiment and health, housing, access and distribution of knowledge.

2. The European regime of power on precarity

This layer attempts to picture the regime of power across Europe and the different political actors participating in controlling social movement and political initiatives against precarity, such as the various governmental organisations on national and European level, traditional trade unions, corporate agents of neoliberal globalization and MNCs, employment agencies and institutions of public policies.

3. Collective public spaces

This layer attempts to create new visions and new versions of conventional city maps and public spaces from the perspective of the collectives involved in the social conflict of precarity. It attempts to picture alternative possibilities to live and move in urban environments. This layer could deliver maps of collaborative engagements and practices which re-appropriate the publics in the city, its streets, its institutions, communal spaces, workplaces, neighbourhoods.

4. Theoretical discourse

This last layer attempts to map the various theoretical discourses on precarity. The target of this layer is to primarily multiply, invigorate, and publicise theory production of militant research and activism. But it also could map dominant discourses on precarity which contribute to the proliferation of control and oppression. This layer can forge a complex conceptual system which sustains the contemporary discourse on precarity.

The third step

Departing from the previous visualization of the social conflict around precarity on the layer of the militant research and activist initiatives (step one) and on the layers of subjectivity, power, publics, theory (step two), this third step could open a way to elaborate common strategies, concepts, projects, and actions of militant political struggles. The P_WR wants to be more than a virtual platform for content-sharing around activism and research. It wants to become a tool for amplifying the impact of social struggles, for maximizing the interconnectedness of various precarious subjectivities, for initiating self-managed transnational social spaces beyond neoliberal integration and nationalist or eurocentric governmentalities. This third step wants to contribute to the wider EuroMayDay mobilisations and to our everyday confrontations in order to bring the social conflict around living labour and precarity into the heart of the political struggles today.

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Annex

PRECARITY WEBRING -- THE NODE CARD

Return you card to the Editorial Board of P_WR: thering@listas.sindominio.net

*Group name (in original language):

*Short description (including brief history):

*Type of group (e.g. assembly of several groups, trade union, magazine/alter media, social centre, militant research group, immigrant support group, queer action group etc.):

*Issues addressed (e.g. migration, call centres, care, universities etc.):

*Repertoire of practices (e.g. direct action, information & assistance, support, performances etc.):

*Initiatives and open political processes:

*Struggles you are involved or you know in our city (if possible, including contact):

*Networks in which the group is participating and/or links with other groups:

*Brief explanation of involvement in the MayDay mobilizations:

*Research developed (in case you have any, present the issues and method):

*Contact e-mail:

*Website and/or weblog:

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If you are interested in participating in setting up the Precarity WebRing come to the P_WR group discussion during the EuroMayDay meeting in Milan, 17-18-19 February 2006. Check also http://www.maythering.tk/