Category Archives: Blog
Ramesh Sunam: The Precariousness of Migrant Workers in Japan amidst COVID-19
Ramesh Sunam, Waseda University, Tokyo Suraj (name changed), arrived a year ago from Nepal to study at a Japanese language institute in Nagoya, Japan. He was working part-time at a convenient shop to make a living. Unfortunately, Suraj’s situation has changed in the last two months following the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19). In March, […]
Andrea Tollardo: No return to old normalities: Reflections on a time of passage in locked down Italy
At the end of February, the center of Italian capital encountered an unexpected problem. Not an unforeseeable one, but one that was not previously thought possible in the highly integrated European tertiary hub of Lombardy. Some weeks of contradictory official announcements passed by. Local and central governments, experts, and politicians first closed the few institutions […]
Sandro Mezzadra: Politics of struggles in the time of pandemic
A prolonged wait at the pharmacy, a long queue before entering a supermarket. Experiences like this, today increasingly common, can help us to see how the spreading of Coronavirus is transforming our society. Yet, more precisely, the global pandemic, and the measures put in place by the Italian government to attempt to counteract it, are […]
Mario Schmidt: “In Pipeline, Panic is Unnecessary” – How Poor Nairobians Deal with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic
Mario Schmidt, University of Cologne Mototaxi drivers wearing face masks, supermarkets obliging customers to wash their hands before entering, hawkers selling indigenous vegetables as prophylactics against COVID-19, and strangers running away from me shouting “Corona, Corona, Corona” only to smile and break out in laughter—these are all strategies that inhabitants of Pipeline, one of Nairobi’s […]
Mariya Ivancheva: The casualization, digitalization, and outsourcing of academic labour: a wake-up call for trade unions
Mariya Ivancheva, University of Liverpool The UK higher education sector has seen decades of escalating injustices that academic trade unions need to confront head-on. As one of the biggest, most visible public higher education systems in the world, the UK is ahead of the curve in a global process of commercialization of higher education. The […]
William Suárez-Gómez and Ismael García-Colón: Puerto Rico: Resistance in the world’s oldest colony
In July 2019, Puerto Rico was in turmoil. An organic movement asking for the resignation of Governor Ricardo Rosselló emerged throughout this US colonial territory. After 12 days of mass protests, the governor resigned on 24 July. The international media portrayed his resignation as a successful and peaceful outcome. This is the first time that […]
Ståle Knudsen: Debts and the end for infrastructure fetishism in Turkey
The immense new Istanbul Airport, additional spectacular bridges over the straights, the Marmaray metro/train tunnel under the Bosporus, high-speed trains, highways, extension of the Istanbul metro network, energy projects. These were highlights in a campaign video for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) candidate Binali Yıldırım in the rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election in […]
Evan Smith: Love milkshakes, hate racism: A short history of throwing food at the Far Right
An earlier version of this article first appeared on Hatful of History. In the last month, milkshakes have been lobbed at several far-right candidates in the European elections campaign across the United Kingdom. First it was former English Defence League (EDL) leader Tommy Robinson, then UKIP’s misogynist YouTuber Carl Benjamin, and now Nigel Farage as […]
Stephen Campbell: Touring Myanmar’s leftist history
For more by the author, see his article “Putting-Out’s Return: Informalization and Differential Subsumption in Thailand’s Garment Sector” in Focaal, freely available to all readers until 22 May 2019. Opening his 1990 political history, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Burma, the Bangkok-based journalist Bertil Lintner summarized the then recent end to […]
Tereza Kuldova: Think before you “heart” it: NZ street gangs guarding mosques in the aftermath of terror a PR stunt
Over the past two days, my Facebook feed has been flooded with shares of articles featuring New Zealand patched street gangs and outlaw motorcycle clubs—Mongrel Mob, Black Power, King Cobras—acting in solidarity with the Muslim community and the 50 victims of the recent terrorist attack, be it by performing the traditional haka or promising to […]