February 22, 2022

Sub-Saharan migrants transiting through Algeria: Migratory farm labor in Covid times

By Meriem Farah Hamamouce and Amine Saidani The agricultural sector in Algeria relies on the informal labor force of Sub-Saharan migrants on their way to Europe. Interviews with migrants highlight their precarious conditions of life and work, worsening during the Covid-19 health crisis.
November 26, 2020

Experiences of the Covid19 pandemic of small-scale farmers in the Draa Valley in the South-East of Morocco

By Lisa Bossenbroek, Hind Ftouhi, Abir Benfars and Nawal Taaime How do small-scale farmers and agricultural laborers in the Draa Valley, in the South-East of Morocco, experience and respond to the Covid19 crisis? Their experiences illustrate how the crisis tests their resilience and expose the vulnerability and the limited resources some rural actors have to deal with crises. 
October 27, 2020

Covid-19 pandemic and oil spills in the Ecuadorian Amazon: The confluence of two crisis

By Jacqueline Gaybor and Wendy Harcourt. How can we reframe the current planetary crisis to find ways for decisive and life-changing collective action? The Amazon region of Ecuador, at the center of two crises --Covid-19 and a major oil spill--, but also home to a long history of indigenous resistance, offers some answers.
June 11, 2020

Reflections on the Virus as an Opportunity for Radical Societal Change

By Christos Zografos. Hopeful initiatives of solidarity and commoning during the coronavirus pandemic are not enough for redressing social inequality. A post-COVID world must genuinely value care, embrace instead of devalue vulnerability, and attack the existing structures of privilege.
May 8, 2020

Life as Commons

By Stavros Stavrides  The coronavirus pandemic crisis has triggered a new wave of collective practices that gesture towards the same necessity as the “squares movement” (including the Arab Spring, the Indignados and the Occupy movements): another form of social organization is urgently needed.
May 5, 2020

A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part II

By Irene Leonardelli, Arianna Tozzi, Enid Still and Sandeep Kumar In part II of our series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India, activist-researchers Seema Kulkarni and Sneha Bhat are interviewed about their work on the frontlines of COVID-19 relief efforts for migrants and women farmers in Maharashtra. 
April 30, 2020

A pandemic of blindness: uneven experiences of rural communities under COVID-19 lockdown in India – Part I

By Enid Still, Sandeep Kumar, Irene Leonardelli and Arianna Tozzi  A two part series on the uneven experiences and everyday challenges of lockdown conditions in India. Reflections and insights from women and small-scale farmers, migrant workers and civil society activists in Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra point to a systemic blindness of the state and economic system, which fail to see, understand or respond to the struggles of the most marginalised people in the country.
April 28, 2020

Pandemic Ontologies of Isolation

By António Carvalho and Irina Velicu. The current pandemic may be seen as another confirmation that industrialization, globalization, and the rapid consumption of all resources maximize the kinetic capacity of dangerous pathogens. The war machine against ‘virulent others’ – from nature’s rebels to pathogens – has never really taken a break. Ironically, such destruction of homes or habitats forces many of us now into a privileged ‘stay at home’, an emergent ontology of isolation which reinvents biopolitics and immunopolitics. What is the human political meaning of this ontology of isolation, a passive version of the ‘for the good of mankind’?
April 20, 2020

El confinamiento de los niños en España visto desde la ciencia con la gente y la economía del cuidado

By María Jesús Beltrán. Que  se permita que los niños y niñas salgan de modo ordenado a dar una vuelta con sus padres y madres cerca de casa, como en multitud de países europeos, ha sido una triple reivindicación desde la igualdad: 1) la igualdad de clase social entre familias 2) la consideración de los niños como sujetos de derecho cuyas necesidades especiales están reguladas por leyes internacionales y 3) la igualdad desde la perspectiva de género, ya que puede aliviar esta carga de cuidados que soportan mayoritariamente las mujeres al rebajar el estrés y la frustración que conlleva el confinamiento.
April 16, 2020

Tourism, Degrowth and the COVID-19 Crisis

By Robert Fletcher, Ivan Murray Mas, Macià Blázquez-Salom & Asunción Blanco-Romero. The COVID-19 crisis shows what degrowth in the global tourism industry could look like. But it would need much more concerted planning to address the social impacts of this transition.
March 30, 2020

Coronavirus beyond Coronavirus: thresholds, biopolitics and emergencies

By Emiliano Terán Mantovani. What does the COVID-19 pandemic express, beyond itself? What is its meaning in this precise (geo) political time and what does it tell us about the particular world we face today?