Workshop: Care on the move. Strategies, organization and struggles for social reproduction. Organized by Sarah Uhlmann and Mike Laufenberg

The fact that care work (caring, nurturing, supporting, educating, etc.) and social infrastructures (of healthcare, childcare, education, housing, etc.) are necessary prerequisites for the social reproduction of individuals and society has increasingly become a premise in research, public opinion and politics. Gender studies and feminist theory have focused on the issue of care since their beginnings, with two aspects being particularly emphasized: On the one hand, the gendered division of labor is problematized, which places a large part of the necessary care work on women - whether unpaid in the household and family, or paid in the constantly growing health and service economy. On the other hand, it is shown that capitalist growth logics stand in the way of a needs-centred care logic and undermine the foundations for a socially and gender-equitable organization of care work and social reproduction. Against this backdrop - most recently catalyzed by the corona crisis - demands for a restructuring of the economy, society and everyday life based on people's needs are increasing. This is not least intended to take account of the fact that human life is fundamentally determined by vulnerability, the need for care and mutual dependency.

While research-based demands for a care-centred society are becoming louder, it often remains unclear how and by whom these can be implemented and realized under the given social power relations. The workshop is based on the observation that although care research has continued to gain in importance in the context of heightened crises, it should be further strengthened with regard to two aspects: Firstly, it is important to address questions of care even more systematically within the framework of the overall social conditions of social reproduction. Secondly, care research should counteract tendencies to forget about movements by incorporating important findings from social movement and protest research. Historically, the old and new social movements - from the labour movement to women's and disability movements, decolonial and anti-racist struggles to the LGBTIQ movement and urban and housing policy movements - have intervened in many places in the dominant forms and organizational modes of social reproduction and thus inscribed themselves in the transformation of care regimes and everyday care relationships. With regard to current social and ecological crises, there is thus a research desideratum for the present in the intersection of care, social reproduction and social movement research.

The planned workshop aims to address and work on this research gap by focusing on questions of how care comes into motion and is transformed by movements. It is therefore of interest what significance care has within and for movements, and which practices, strategies and organizational approaches are pursued in current struggles in order to bring about an emancipatory transformation of social reproduction relations. The workshop will also focus on areas and aspects that tend to be neglected in gender research focusing on the gendered division of labour - for example, questions about the socialization of social infrastructures such as healthcare, housing and education, or care struggles in the context of highly marginalized and precarious living conditions, such as in refugee shelters, prisons, camps and peripheral districts and (border) regions. In doing so, the workshop also aims to address a common problem that is not only frequently found in movement initiatives, but also in social movement and care research: the focus on just one topic area.

on just one subject area. Against this background, one aim of the workshop is to initiate and advance analyses that take a comparative look at different movements for an emancipatory transformation of social reproduction relations and identify points of connection.

We welcome theoretical-conceptual and/or empirical contributions from various disciplines and fields of research (social and political sciences, anthropology, critical geography, gender studies, racism and migration studies, queer and trans studies, etc.) that deal with the connection between social reproduction, care and social movement research. In addition to contributions that relate to the German-speaking context, we particularly welcome submissions that focus on inter- or transnational perspectives. One or more of the following questions can be at the center of this:

• What is the significance of care within social movements, i.e. as a practice for their reproduction, as an element of organizing and alliance work?
• What strategies do social movements develop to assert care-related demands? (e.g. strikes and other forms of industrial action, direct action, occupations, petitions, petitions, media work). What forms of strategic, organizational or institutional power do the initiatives have? What social, political or legal means are used?
• What are successful, promising, failed or doomed-to-fail strategies and movement approaches? In which areas, sectors and local contexts were/are social care movements successful, and in which not? What are the reasons for this?
• - What is the relationship between realpolitik and utopian approaches in struggles for a care-centered society? What does this mean for the practical level?
• - What appropriations of care movements and struggles can be identified historically and currently? How do movements respond to this?
• - What lines of connection, but possibly also points of friction, exist between different approaches, strategies and movements in the areas of care and social reproduction?
• - Which conceptual differentiations between care and social reproduction are necessary or obstructive for an analysis of social struggles?
• - Which research methods and attitudes are used in movement-oriented care research (e.g. participatory and activist research)? What are their potentials and limitations?

The workshop will take place on May 23/24, 2024 at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered. The workshop is designed as an authors' workshop for a joint publication. For this reason, the first text versions of the contributions should already be available for the workshop, which will be circulated among the participants in advance.

The deadline for submissions is in the past

Mike Laufenberg (mike.laufenberg@uni-jena.de) and Sarah Uhlmann (sarah.uhlmann@uni-kassel.de)