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Feminist strikes in Spain: open-ended (re)configurations of feminist activisms towards societal change

Tipo de publicación
thesis
Autor
Cuerpo
The 2018 and 2019 feminist strikes in Spain were multitudinous: at least hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest on March 8 and around five millions workers went on partial or 24-hour labor strikes both years. Inspired by previous mobilizations in Latin America and Europe, feminist activists (re)claimed and (re)imagined a classic repertoire of contention: they called for labor, student, care and consumption strikes. The strikes were conceived, organized and performed by national and local-level networks of activists who joined efforts to debate, enact and connect through contentious practices. The feminist strikes were groundbreaking for feminist movements at least in Spain if not in Europe, considering its transnational spillover with feminist strikes taking place in Germany, Portugal, Belgium and France, among others. The feminist strikes in Spain did not lead to the formation of 'a' new social movement in itself, but they cannot be reduced to a one-day public campaign. This is a case of women on the move: organizing strikes led to the very (unfinished) agentic process of (re)shaping alliances, political practices and political projects that put into question the taken-for-granted, the status-quo, the unsaid or the absent across intersecting dimensions of race, class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality to (re)imagine the future in a context of systemic crisis. Which (re)configurations of feminist activisms did the journey towards the feminist strikes propel? How did these groups (re)signified ‘strike’? Which contradictions, dilemmas or conflicts emerge from these disputes for different ways to understand feminism activisms and feminist contentious practices? To answer these questions, I conducted an extensive two-year fieldwork in Barcelona following meetings, events and protests, and analyzed material from semi-structured interviews, participant observation, documents and newspaper articles. Supervisors: Arnau Monterde & Ricardo Fabrino. Thesis will be published foreseeably in 2023
Año
2019
Proyecto