Re-imagineering the Common in Precarious Times

ABSTRACT

The paper explores movements for social transformation in precarious times of austerity, dispossessed commons and narrow nationalism; movements counterpoised to an exhausted neoliberalism on the one hand, and a neoconservative xenophobic populism on the other. Applying ‘rainbow coalition’ as generic concept it points at contours of a globally extended countermovement for social transformation, traversing ‘race’, class and gender, driven by reimaginings of the commons and indicating how they could be repossessed and democratically ruled; that is ‘reimagineered’). A multisited enquiry explores how actors express their claims as activist citizens under varying conditions and constellations, and if/how discourses and practices from different locations and at different scales inform each other. It interrogates whether there may be an actual equivalence of outlook, objective and strategy of ostensibly homologous contending movements which develop under varying local, national and regional circumstances in contemporary communities riveted by schisms of class, ‘race’/ethnicity and gender, occupied by the ‘migration’ issue and challenged by popular demands for social sustainability. The paper contributes to social theory by linking questions posed by critics of ‘post-politics’ concerning contingences of pluralist democracy and revitalised politics of civil society, to precarity studies focused on globalisation and the changing conditions of citizenship, labour and livelihoods.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiculturalism
• precarity/precariat
• diversity
• race
• class
• globalisation
• neoliberalism
• social movements
• social transformations

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on Contributors

Carl-Ulrik Schierup is a professor at the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society (REMESO), Linköping University. He has a disciplinary background in Social Anthropology and Sociology. He has published on issues of international migration and ethnic relations, globalisation, nationalism, multiculturalism, citizenship, working-life and labour relations. He co-authored the Book Migration, Citizenship and the European Welfare State (Oxford University Press, 2006) together with Stephen Castles and Peo Hansen. Among his recent works is the coedited (with Martin Bak Jørgensn) volume Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences (Brill 2017).

Aleksandra Ålund is a professor at REMESO, The Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society at Linköping University. She has published widely on in Swedish, English and other languages on international migration and ethnicity, identity, culture, gender, youth and social movements. Her latest publications address issues of democracy and urban justice movements and include Reimaginieering the Nation, Essays on Teenty-First- Century Sweden. (Co-edited with Carl-Ulrik Schierup and Anders Neergaard). (Peter Lang, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Forte [2006–1524] and Svenska Forskningsrådet Formas [250–2013–1547].