Dokumentationen
The Workshop
While the European migration and border regime shows its most violent face at its external borders, over the past years the right to free movement within the European Union has become more and more contested. The figure of the 'poverty migrant' has been in the midst of EU-wide conflicts around (de-)Europeanisation and a subject of moral panic for local politics, where EU migrants are often racialised in urban security spectacles. In Germany, the new policy field of ‘poverty migration from south-eastern Europe’ problematised mobile EU citizens in precarious living and working conditions as unwanted migrants. The German government excluded ‘economically inactive’ EU citizens from social services and waged a war against so-called ‘benefit fraud’. Meanwhile, many EU citizens continue to navigate ever more insecure working situations and livelihoods - often through transnational practices and participation in highly fragmented social worlds.
The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has shed some light on the hyper-exploitative practices that migrants - predominantly from Eastern Europe - face in the meat industry, on asparagus farms and in private households. While this led to legal initiatives such as the ban of subcontracting in the meat industry, media coverage amplified narratives of victimisation and need in which migrant workers figured as passive victims that are not considered as part of German society. In competing accounts, their bodies have been pathologised as bringing infection while their mobility has been scandalised as economically opportunistic and morally reprehensible. In reality, migrants need to negotiate multiple positionalities and intersecting attachments, not only as workers, but also as carers, affective beings, homemakers, etc. - which can often produce conflicting or hard to reconcile obligations and aspirations.
Intra-EU migration remains a relatively under-explored topic in academia. Scholars have voiced the need for developing new theoretical approaches and conceptual standpoints, however, current efforts to shed light on the controversies surrounding intra-EU regimes of migration, labour and social reproduction continue to be separated by disciplinary boundaries, conceptual and methodological demarcations, as well as language competencies.
The aim of this workshop is to create space for an intellectual exchange and the production of new theoretical and discursive avenues around intra-European regimes of migration, labour and social reproduction. The specific focus is on conflicts around Union citizenship and the European right to free movement as part of a highly stratified and contested system of legal statuses and practices. We would also like to explore the possibilities around going beyond this one-time encounter and putting together a lasting platform by picking up on existing and emerging networks.
Framework
As a framework for the workshop we suggest the following (but not exhaustive) set of questions:
- What is the current state of research on intra-EU migration regimes when it comes to shifts in research questions, methodologies, theoretical frameworks, etc? What is the value of drawing on recent debates in border, postsocialist, postcolonial and critical race studies, social reproduction theory and/or intersectional and feminist approaches for understanding the asymmetrical power relations that mark today's mobilities within the EU?
- With intra-EU migration as an analytical lens, what can we learn about current societal dynamics, such as the precarisation of labour, the fragmentation of social security, the proliferation of racialised and ethnicised categories of difference but also new forms of resistance and emancipatory struggles?
- What changes have occurred in the organisation of mobility, labour and social reproduction in the context of coalescing recent crises and their economic, social and health effects (2008 economic recession, Covid-19 health and economic crisis, etc.)?
Program
FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT?
Intra-EU Regimes of Migration, Labour and Social Reproduction
24 September 2021
9:15-18:00 ECT
www.eumignet.de
09:15-09:50
Opening & Introduction
10:00-11:30
POLITICS, IMAGINARIES AND INTERSECTING INEQUALITIES BETWEEN EAST & WEST
Chair: Polina Manolova
- The racialization of ‘Eastern Europeans’: the (re)making of a category and structural inequalities in Europe | Aleksandra Lewicki
- Precarious teachers and superstar engineers: coloniality and gendered precarisation in post-2008 Italian migration | Simone Varriale
- The politics of emigration: a research agenda on the political impact and differentiated politicization of emigration in the EU | Manès Weisskircher, Mariana S. Mendes, Julia Rone, Anna Kyriazi
- East-East migrations? Trans-(semi)peripheral mobility in post-socialist EU | Milena Blahuta
11:30-11:45 Break
11:45-13:15
SOCIAL REPRODUCTION IN CRISIS: SOCIO-SPATIAL ARTICULATIONS AND STRATEGIES
Chair: Gabriella Alberti
- State ‘fixes’ and migrant responses to the crisis of social reproduction | Mark Bergfeld
- Bulgarian mobile families between subordination and empowerment | Jana Fingarova
- Overcrowding in Magdeburg, urban and housing regimes | Miriam Nessler
- Approaches of inclusion and exclusion to EU migrants in need for assistance: results from an empirical study in Hamburg | Vessela Kovacheva
13:15-14:15 Lunch Break
14:15-15:45
LABOUR STRUGGLES: CONTESTED GEOGRAPHIES OF IN SITU AND DIGITAL WORK
Chair: Lisa Riedner
- Digital labour, mobility and social Reproduction: crowdwork in/between Germany and Romania | Mira Wallis
- Migration and labor unrest in the German meat industry | Peter Birke
- Reproducing conditional presence: internal borders in the dormitory labour regime | Hanna Schling
15:45-16:00 Break
16:00-17:00
MAPPING THE FIELD & IDEAS FOR FUTURE COLLABORATIONS
Participating Initiatives and Networks include:
- BEMA (Berliner Beratungszentrum für Migration and Gute Arbeit) activities for empowerment and enforcement of labor rights of EU citizens in Germany | Irina Lazarova
- Conference on the consequences of emigration for sending countries | Julia Rone
- Research network on migrant labour intermediaries and infrastructures in Central and Eastern Europe | Hannah Schling & Olena Fedyuk
- Network “Europe in Movement” | Lisa Riedner
- Podcast project ‘Radio Migrant: Voices from South-East Europe’ | Polina Manolova
All participants are welcome to present existing initiatives and discuss ideas for future collaboration!
17:00-18:00
GENERAL DISCUSSION & WRAP UP
The workshop will take place online and will be recorded (subject to participants agreement). The workshop is co-organized by University of Augsburg and University of Tübingen.