The overall theme of the conference is “Difference, Diversity, Diffraction: Confronting Hegemonies and Dispossessions”, which refers to a topic central to Gender Studies: the social construction of difference and inequality on the one hand, and the recognition of marginalised experiences and subject positions on the other. In the face of growing right-wing populist movements, anti-feminist and anti-queer backlash, forced migration, austerity and climate change, these concerns take on renewed relevance. The subtitle “Confronting Hegemonies and Dispossessions” is a call to reflect on, challenge and defy the hierarchies, subjugations and deprivations that are linked to structural differentiations and to find affirmative ways of dealing with difference , diversity and diffraction. The conference is committed to promoting a feminist anti-racist accessible space for all genders.

10th European Feminist Research Conference: 12-15 September 2018, Goettingen, Germany

Argument

The overall theme of the conference is "Difference, Diversity, Diffraction: Confronting Hegemonies and Dispossessions", which refers to a topic central to Gender Studies: the social construction of difference and inequality on the one hand, and the recognition of marginalised experiences and subject positions on the other. In the face of growing right-wing populist movements, anti-feminist and anti-queer backlash, forced migration, austerity and climate change, these concerns take on renewed relevance. The subtitle 'Confronting Hegemonies and Dispossessions' is a call to reflect on, challenge and defy the hierarchies, subjugations and deprivations that are linked to structural differentiations and to find affirmative ways of dealing with difference , diversity and diffraction. The conference is committed to promoting a feminist anti-racist accessible space for all genders.

We invite contributions from any discipline and are open to a diverse array of feminist, gender and queer approaches. There are eleven thematic streams with individual Call for Papers, which can be found by clicking on the following links.

We kindly ask you to submit your abstract to one of the following streams:

1.  Remembering/Representing/Signifying
2.  Destructing/Reconciling/Transforming
3.  Teaching/Learning/Facilitating
4.  Legislating/Politicising/Institutionalising
5.  Networking/Solidarising/Bridging
6.  Playing/Watching/Observing
7.  Embodying/Performing/Affecting
8.  Investigating/Analysing/Measuring
9.  Healing/Coping/Caring
10.  Believing/Moralising/Reasoning
11.  Working/Struggling/Organizing

Timeline and submission guidelines

The deadline for abstract submission is 12 February 2018. Notification of acceptance will be sent to corresponding authors in early March 2018.

There is no conference fee. At Gender and FG Gender also offer several travel and accommodation grants for members of either association. Applications for grants must be submitted separately here.

For more information and to submit your abstract, please visit our website: https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/cfp/573020.html

The 10th EFRC is a joint endeavour of At Gender (The European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation), FG Gender (German Gender Studies Association) and the Georg-August-University Göttingen.

Streams Coordinators and CfPs

1. Remembering/Representing/Signifying

Coordinators:

• Barbara Schaff, University of Göttingen, Germany, bschaff@gwdg.de

• Maki Kimura, University College London, UK, maki.kimura@ucl.ac.uk
• Biljana Oklopčić, University of Osijek, Croatia, biljana.oklopcic@gmail.com
• Helena Wahlström Henriksson, Uppsala University, Sweden, helena.henriksson@gender.uu.se

This stream aims at promoting a transdisciplinary discussion of the relationship between gender and memory. Memories emerge and signify social frameworks; they are represented in literature and art and are embedded in social practices. Memories are signified and mediated as well as ‘affected’ and embodied, thus shaping our cultural consciousness in multiple ways. This stream hopes to address the inter-relatedness of gender and memory and raise questions regarding how the category of gender figures in the construction, representation and signification of memory. A basic assumption is that gendered signification is always variable, dependent on changing historical, social and cultural contexts. We are particularly interested in investigations of how gendered cultural configurations, tropes, images and practices operate, circulate and change over time due to shifting ideological settings.

We invite proposals from all disciplinary and methodological perspectives that investigate the work that representations of gender and memory do in various contexts, local and global: witnessing and mediating history/histories, performing memorial practices, producing sites of memory or changing significations and representations of memory.

Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

• Gendered memory and mediated representations
• Gendered language of trauma and loss
• The signification / resignification of gendered cultural configurations, tropes and images
• Fetishised femininity/masculinity and memory
• Feminist and/or queer theorizing of public memory discourses and practices
• Dominant and marginalised gendered memory discourses
• Embodied memory practices
• Gender in public history and popular history
• Queer sites of memory / Countermonuments and gender
• Gendered practices of war commemoration
• Gendered politics of memorials and memorial/heritage sites
• Gendered representations of colonial legacies
• Global memory and gender significations

2. Destructing/Reconciling/Transforming

• Stefanie Boulila, University of Göttingen, Germany, sboulil@uni-goettingen.de
• Angéla Kóczé, Central European University, Hungary, koczea@ceu.edu
• Angelica Persarini, University of Leeds, UK, angelica.pesarini@gmail.com
• Elisabeth Tuider, University of Kassel, Germany, tuider@uni-kassel.de

Gender-, diversity- and queer-studies have a longstanding history of contesting the impartiality of mainstream knowledge production and social structures and processes, as well as the normativity of politics and economy as a way of interrogating imbalanced logics of power and naming inequalities, exclusions and marginalisations. As a contested and reflexive interdisciplinary and diverse field, gender studies have at times also failed to take into account intersectional, anti-racist or queer approaches. As a consequence, certain streams and experiences have been excluded and deemed outside the realm of ‘feminist knowledge’ and practice. Michel Foucault defines these as ‘subjugated knowledges’, namely forms of knowledge considered ‘inadequate to their task or insufficiently elaborated: naive knowledges, located low down on the hierarchy, beneath the required level of cognition or scientificity’ (Foucault, 1980: 82).

The aim of this panel is to explore how these ‘alternative’ knowledges/epistemologies, these ‘other’ practices, movements and politics destruct, reconcile and transform social processes, conflicts, war and post-war conflicts, and knowledge production as well as how such marginalised and misfitting knowledges, practices and politics are embodied and situated.

In this respect, we are particularly interested in theoretical and empirical papers engaging with ‘alternative’ and ‘radical’ epistemologies that counter single-issue feminist claims. This includes an exploration of knowledges and practices that may counterbalance mainstream history and approaches that may bridge the gap between activism and research and activism and theory as well as the gap between different gender approaches, feminisms and politics. We particularly welcome papers that engage with the political economies of knowledge production and with questions of who benefits from certain kinds of knowledges and practices and how critical approaches are co-opted and resisted. We also invite papers on the topic of solidarity. We especially, but not exclusively, encourage contributions from critical race perspectives, postcolonial studies, queer studies, disability studies, oral histories of women* and mad studies.

3. Teaching/Learning/Facilitating

Coordinators:

• Aggeliki Sifaki, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, A.S.Sifaki@uu.nl
• Anna Gkiouleka, University of York, UK, a.gkiouleka@york.ac.uk
• Line Henriksen, Linköping University, Sweden - currently based in Copenhagen, Denmark, lin.henriksen@gmail.com
• Edyta Just, Linköping University, Sweden, edytajust@gmail.com

Teaching and learning are entangled processes taking place within specific systems of power. Organised across different levels from kindergarten classrooms to academia and from activist communities to national ministries, teaching and learning have historically been associated with the (re)production of intersecting social hierarchies (i.e., sexism, racism, classism) but also with moments of social transformation. What are the catalysts and facilitators that transform teaching and learning from paths of conformity into empowering tools ? The idea of connection emerges as an answer to that question: connections between teachers and students; teaching/learning and materialities of bodies; teaching aims and outcomes; teaching and political praxis; disciplines and knowledges; theories taught and learnt in class and individual embodied and embedded experiences inside and outside university/ school corridors. It is the (im)possibility of such connections -- shaped within established academic and non-academic hegemonies and communicated through both personal or technical language and non-verbal communication -- that seems to set the threshold for a transformational educational process. This panel invites scholars but also those involved in educational processes at a community level to reflect on teaching/learning through the prism of connections and strange, unexpected and unlikely connections (or lack thereof). Paper themes may include, but are not restricted to, possibilities for connections and resistance, teaching/learning challenges for feminist teachers/students today, building feminist alliances across different educational contexts, and the emotional labour involved in building connections within the educational process.

4. Legislating/Politicising/Institutionalising

Coordinators:

• Christine Quinan, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, C.L.Quinan@uu.nl
• Giovanna Vingelli, University of Calabria, Italy, giovanna.vingelli@unical.it
• Tatjana Zimenkova, Technical University of Dortmund, Germany, tatiana.zimenkova@tu-dortmund.de
• Verena Molitor, University of Bielefeld, Germany, verena.molitor@uni-bielefeld.de
• Alexander Kondakov, European University at St. Petersburg, Russia, akondakov@eu.spb.ru

Scholars have long debated the effects of institutionalisation on the prospect of achieving social change. While many of the social movements that flourished in the 1960s and 1970s were initially characterised by protest activity against the state and against dominant norms, feminist and queer movements have over time also become partially institutionalised through their inclusion in legislation, policies, and practices, both at national and international levels. Yet as institutional channels are increasingly contested, new forms of mobilization are emerging that are less institutionalized and activate change in different ways. In line with a wave of global protests, more radical agendas linked to gender, body and sexuality have emerged and intensified. Much of this takes place in an era of austerity and/or deepening economic inequalities as well as social tensions around race, gender, class, religion, and citizenship status. In this respect, it remains necessary to simultaneously question the concept of ‘institutionalisation’ and what effects it may have on different groups, movements and academic fields.

This conference stream aims to bring together the latest research – both empirical and theoretical – that both uses and develops gendered analyses of institutions, legislation and politics. We aim to discuss future research agendas in a variety of settings, contexts, and disciplines (e.g., Gender Studies, Critical Race Studies, Disability Studies, Queer Studies, History, Sociology, Political Science, Education, Literature, Ethnology, Media Studies, Cultural Studies).

We welcome papers that address a range of topics, including: (de)institutionalisation of feminist and queer movements, their discourses and practices; the agency of feminist and queer activists as actors in institutional change and institution-building; practices, policies and discourses of gender-mainstreaming; the opportunities and perils generated by the institutionalisation; feminist and queer reflections on diverse international practices, such as politics, activism and advocacy; growing mobilisation and counter-mobilisation on issues of race, reproductive justice, migration, religion, peace movements, and post-conflict reconstruction; feminist agendas, conservative threats and backlashes; and feminist and queer trajectories in the context of state-organized capitalism and neoliberal frameworks.

5. CFP Stream “Networking/Solidarising/Bridging”

Coordinators:

• Betül Yarar, University of Bremen, Germany, betyarar@gmail.com
• Pia Laskar, The Royal Armoury Museum and the Swedish History Museum, Stockholm, Sweden, Pia.Laskar@lsh.se
• Sabine Hess, University of Göttingen, Germany, shess@uni-goettingen.de
• Christine Klapeer, University of Göttingen, Germany, christine.klapeer@uni-goettingen.de

This stream deals with the rich genealogies of feminist, Women of Colour, and queer activist and scholarly work on collective action and (transnational) organizing to (re)consider historical and contemporary challenges and manifestations of networking, solidarising and bridging. While new forms of solidarity, coalition building and networking seem to be much needed due to the contemporary political and economic climate and the mechanisms of current gender regimes, solidarity and unity are, however one of the most debated topics within feminist and queer movements and research. Feminists of Color, lesbian, queer and trans* people, women and queers with disabilities, working class and activists outside the western centers have confronted various practices and epistemologies of exclusion and marginalization "in the name" of sisterhood, solidarity and unity. Decolonial scholars have particulararly emphasised that perspectives on solidarity, priorities and organising differs due to geopolitical differences and whether or not we live under authoritarian regimes, welfare states, or neoliberal, and/or illiberal ones. At a time when feminist and queer agendas have become instrumentalised and co-opted in order to push divisive and harmful agendas along racialised, national and classed lines, it is of uttermost importance to discuss possibilities and contestations of (transnational) feminist and queer solidarities networking.

The stream welcomes contributions from different disciplines and encourages diversity in feminist/gender/queer approaches. Possible paper topics include (but are not limited to):

• Theoretical discussions of the (im)possibilities and challenges of feminist and queer solidarity and coalition building in homonationalist/femonationalist times.
• Empirical case studies of (transnational) feminist and queer networking, bridging and (attempts to, strategies of) solidarity in action in an unequal world/under unequal conditions.
• Intersectional reflections on conflict, friction and barriers to (transnational) collective work and organizing with regard to inequalities, asymmetries and practices of othering related to racism, classism, ableisms, sexism, homo-, trans* and interphobia,
• The re-appearance and prevalence of questions of (legitimate) identity, community, "sisterhood", commonness.
• Cultural and symbolic manifestations and representations of networking, solidarising and bridiging (e.g. in literature and art, through symboles or spectacles).
• The effects and implications of a professionalisation in (transnational) feminist and queer networking (e.g. in NGOs, state politics or supra- and international institutions such as the World Bank, IMF).
• Comparison of current instances of solidarity and networking and different (theoretical, ethical, political) conceptualisations and of historical dittos.

6. Playing/Watching/Observing

Coordinators

• Irina Gradinari,University of Hagen, Germany, irina.gradinari@fernuni-hagen.de
• Sarah Elsuni, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Germany, elsuni.sarah@fb4.fra-uas.de

The conference raises the general question how feminist practices can confront hegemonies and mechanisms of dispossessions, and in which ways they sometimes also contribute to them and uphold them. This conference-stream focuses on exploring the triadic interconnections between playing, watching and observing, whereby all of them can also be analysed as separate topics. What they have in common is the idea that virtuality and mediality have exceeded the computer, and that televisuality has become entangled with reality itself. The stream therefore deals with the interfaces between ‘reality’, media technologies and (fictional and non-fictional) formats and asks for contributions which critically reflect, for example, on the development of new “augmented reality” computer games, new approaches in games studies or the implications of playing strategies and computer technologies for the military, politics or advertisings. Another focus lies on popular culture and visuality, on interconnections between identities and media genres, aesthetic traditions, structures of the gaze and affective processes caused by films and series, but also between different media. Furthermore, the stream deals with the increasingly ubiquitous securitization of society and, in this context, with the changing perception and representation of the self as well as of the other. Furthermore, we are interested in studies on everyday communication (chats, smartphones, social media etc.) and their influences on the formation of identities, new forms of sexuality and body culture and, in a broader sense, in research on media change and its implication for the construction of meaning and the conversion of social structures. How are societies and identities affected by global data communication ? Is data processing gendered and racialized, or are we already cyborgs, as Donna Haraway tried to convince us in her earlier science visions ? And if so, which new categories of differences may have emerged ? Are new media technologies capable of modifying ‘classical’ forms of social differences ? How can this media-technological expansion be theorized, and what does it mean for subjectivity, state forms and national politics ?

The Playing/Watching/Observing stream thus asks for papers that might engage with such broader topics. Proposals can be submitted on the following themes:

• Game Studies: history, technological development, theories and their critical revision

• Military and science technologies and feminist criticism

• Security society, surveillance, and their influence on identities, bodies and social and symbolic differences
• Feminist, gender and queer film studies
• Studies on popular culture
• New structures of the gaze
• Sexuality, the body and digital media
• Daily communication, virtualisation and politics of differences
• Media technologies and national states, national identities, border politics

7. Embodying/Performing/Affecting stream

Coordinators:

• Kateřina Kolářová, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic, cakaba@seznam.cz
• Inka Greusing, Technical University of Berlin, Germany, greusing@kgw.tu-berlin.de
• Stephan Trinkaus, University of Cologne, Germany, s.trinkaus@gmx.net
• Sibel Yardimci, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey, sibelyardimci@gmail.com

The theme of the conference asks us to think about ways in which feminist practices confront hegemonies and mechanisms of dispossessions, as well as about the ways in which they can in fact contribute to them and uphold them. This conference-stream focuses on exploring the triadic interconnections between affect/matter/performativity. Building off of the earlier theorisations of the political, contextual and performative nature of the ‘matter’, recent feminist scholarship elaborates these interconnections vis-à-vis material forms of racialised, sexualised, disability-, class- and religion-specific forms of empowerment as well as dispossessions and abandonment.

This stream is interested in exploring the ways in which the many recent theorisations of performativity, matter and materiality for example in works of new materialism, affect theory, post-humanism and animal studies, debility and disability studies, critical race theory and decoloniality reconceptualised the notions of normative violence, hegemony and of the political at large. We are also particularly interested in contributions that follow tensions embedded in the matter, the material conditions of oppression on the one hand, and the openings for resistance and change on the other, and discuss the many ways in which performing inhabits such ambivalent positions.

The Embodying/Performing/Affecting stream thus seeks papers and panelists that might engage with such broad questions as the following:

• How do recent theorisations of performativity, matter and materiality through new materialism, affect theory, post-humanism, debility and decoloniality change the horizons of ‘the political’ and imaginaries of the resistance ?
• How do bodies, bodily movements and immobilities, bodily in/capacities become repositories of structural violence, how do they bear witness to the structural hurt and how do they materialise the complex and paradoxical ways of resisting and confronting these violent structures ?
• Whose bodies are made vulnerable in the fight for broader social justice and in the acts of confronting the hegemony ?
• How do affects register the political horizons, how do they allow us to register the implicit, the inarticulable, the as yet-unspoken and how they can be used in imagining and forming/articulating the politics of resistance, alliances and bridges between political projects and positions ?
• What platforms for articulating forms of critique, of witnessing and reaching across ‘differences’ do performative arts offer ? What alternative forms of protest and political critique can be fostered through performative art ?
• How do multiple biomedical technologies (surgery, toxicity and chemical substances etc.) work to re-produce normative expectations about dis/ability, race, gender and sexuality and how can they used to subvert or appropriate them ?

8. Investigating/Analysing/Measuring

Coordinators:

Corinna Onnen, University of Vechta, Germany, corinna.onnen@uni-vechta.de

Mia Liinason, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, mia.liinason@gu.se

Sabine Grenz, University of Vienna, sabine.grenz@univie.ac.at

Heike Kahlert, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, heike.kahlert@rub.de

Boka En, University of Vienna, Austria, boka.en@univie.ac.at

Hannah Fitsch, Technical University Berlin, Germany, hannah.fitsch@tu-berlin.de

Nina Jakoby, University of Zurich, Switzerland, nina.jakoby@uzh.ch‎;

Anna Orlikowski, University of Vechta, Germany, anna.orlikowski@uni-vechta.de

While scholars from almost all academic disciplines have contributed to feminist research, and while gender studies has variously been depicted as an inter-, trans-, or post-disciplinary field of knowledge, feminist research is generally characterised by scholarly practices that, in various ways, challenge academic conventions and boundaries – including those established within gender studies itself. This stream invites submissions – papers, panels, and other formats – that engage with this legacy as well as its multiple and possible pasts, presents and futures.

We are particularly interested in critical engagements with the conditions of and changes in knowledge production, evaluation and dissemination – historically, socially, culturally, geographically and/or politically. This includes perspectives on the institutionalisation of gender studies, feminist epistemologies and methodologies, feminist research on and critiques of science (including the humanities and social sciences), as well as forms of knowledge and knowledge transfer within and between feminist research and activism. We also invite contributions that reflect on theories, concepts, method(ologie)s, research designs and strategies.

Possible questions include: How are knowledge claims legitimated ? What is seen as proper knowledge ? Where, when and under what circumstances is knowledge recognised as knowledge ? How are institutional and epistemological questions intertwined ? What links and differences exist between feminist and non-feminist knowledge practices ? How can we contribute to the production of emancipatory knowledge ?

We especially welcome approaches that consider additional axes of power, such as decolonial, queer and intersectional analyses. Additionally, we invite contributions that discuss the role of critical engagements with knowledge production, evaluation and dissemination in contemporary Europe, as well as ones that reflect on how such critical engagements can provide us with hopes and strategies for the future.

9. Healing/Coping/Caring

Coordinators

• Bettina Wahrig, Braunschweig University of Technology, Germany, b.wahrig@tu-braunschweig.de
• Chia Longman, Ghent University, Belgium, Chia.Longman@UGent.be
• Marianne Schmidbaur, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany, schmidbaur@soz.uni-frankfurt.de
• Barbara Orland, University of Basel, Switzerland, barbara.orland@unibas.ch

In 1970, the Boston women’s health collective published a book that was later republished under the now-famous title Our Bodies, Ourselves. This became a turning point in the women’s health movement. The book was noteworthy in that it covered such a range of health and sexuality issues, including sexual orientation, birth control, pregnancy, violence and abuse, menopause and ageing. Transnationally, it has been one of the most important books since the second wave feminist movement. It aimed at empowering and coping with constraints on different levels, not only within the public space of professional institutions but also within private spaces of self-help and mutual support. In the meantime, some of the issues the book raised have transformed mainstream discourses in health politics, such as global claims on reproductive rights and national and transnational guidelines for the inclusion of women in preclinical and clinical tests. However, gender inequality has remained a global and regional marker of difference/exclusion in the fields of health and care. Inadequate access to both physical and mental healthcare is still very much related to gender, race, class and other intersectionally connected categories of inequality.

However, the political character of the feminist health movement has transformed gender itself. Feminist inquiries bring into focus Transgender Studies, Food Studies, Disability Studies, Biopolitics and other fields that relate to questions of caring, coping, healing and well-being within intersectional and transnational perspectives. Seemingly, technologies of reproduction are becoming commonplace in the Global North and are simultaneously creating megastructures of economic disparity. They are creating global networks of caring and reproducing, with striking similarities when compared to animal breeding. Care in its broad sense is also connected to gender, ethnic, geographical and racial disparities. We welcome papers that address concepts and practices of healing, coping and caring in a broad range of settings and contexts and invite scholars from a variety of disciplines (e.g., History, Medicine, Health Care (physical and mental), Disability Studies, Sociology, Political Science, Psychology, Philosophy, Education, Literature, Ethnology/Anthropology, Media Studies, Religion and Spirituality) to discuss their research in a lively feminist environment.

10. Believing/Moralising/Reasoning

Coordinators:

• Serawit B. Debele, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany, debele@mmg.mpg.de
• Katarina Lončarević, University of Belgrade, Serbia, katarina.loncarevic@fpn.bg.ac.rs
• C. Laura Lovin, University of Strathclyde, UK, carmenlaura.lovin@strath.ac.uk
• Adriana Zaharijević, University of Belgrade, Serbia, zaharijevic@instifdt.bg.ac.rs

Feminist research in various disciplines and feminist theory as a heterogeneous research field have held ambiguous positions in relation to the theoretical mainstream. Being the 'other', being at the margin, being subjugated but rebellious knowledges, feminist theories have always challenged dominant research paradigms and epistemic, political and moral horizons. Keeping in mind the most important contributions of feminist research – extending the domain of research topics, moving beyond mainstream methodologies, establishing new methods, contextualizing so-called 'abstract' concepts, categories and discourses, and encouraging cross-cultural gender-sensitive feminist research – the stream Believing/Moralising/Reasoning will explore recent feminist forms of research into epistemic, moral and political norms by focusing on the following themes:

•  feminist knowledge 'production' in an era of neoliberalism within and outside the EU;
•  new terrains of feminist research and theory as rebellion against hegemonic dominant (conservative) discourses; how do such feminist studies and knowledge challenge dominant research paradigms?
•  feminist contributions to repositioning political, public and policy debates around the dispossessions and precariousness of contemporary migrants and refugees;
•  feminists in search of transnational modes of politics and knowledge 'production' against neoliberal hegemony;
•  changing of political and moral discourses in the wake of neoconservativism in Europe;
•  the question of whether the fields of gender studies and feminist knowledge production are still considered 'subjugated' knowledges within academic discourses, as well as how these processes of knowledge 'production' manifest themselves in neoliberal university settings
•  the inclusion of affective experiences in feminist research: contemporary topics, (un)anticipated knowledge effects, and political potentials;
•  from the personal-subjective to historical and geopolitical contextualization in believing/moralising/reasoning;
•  feminist reasoning about secular and non-secular truths;
•  post-truth societies and the relationship between believing and reasoning in post-truth societies;
•  challenging monolithic views on religion through feminist scholarship on religious practices, women, gender, equality, and social justice;
•  everyday religion and feminist methodologies: the roles and functions of everyday religious belief and spirituality in people’s lives;
•  conservative and fundamentalist forms of religion: gender, sexualities, family, morality, cultural difference formations and contestation on the contemporary religio-political scene.

11. Working/Struggling/Organizing

Coordinators:

• Andrea Bührmann, University of Göttingen, Germany, andrea.buehrmann@uni-goettingen.de
• Astrid Biele Mefebue, University of Göttingen, Germany, astrid.biele@sowi.uni-goettingen.de
• Laura Fantone, UC Berkeley, United States, lfantone@berkeley.edu
• Encarnación Gutiérrez Rodríguez, University of Giessen, Germany, e.gutierrez-rodriguez@sowi.uni-giessen.de

This stream considers perspectives on belonging and othering specifically in the working contexts of heterogeneous and globalized societies. It is grounded in a concept of ‘work’ in its broadest sense, reconciling meanings of work as (self-) employment, reproductive labour and civic engagement. The overall question posed is how social categorisation leads to different outcomes of economic and social participation based on different backgrounds and due to existing and reproduced power relations (suppression, privilegisation and discrimination as linked, for example, to institutional racism and in- and exclusion within gendered/racialized heteronormative work cultures).

The notion of ‘organising’ refers to how individuals in ‘a modern world’ (due to processes of individualisation) are pushed to organise themselves, whether through mobility and migration, self-employment or self-organisation, including reconciling ‘work and life’ through labour unions. This take on ‘organising’ also refers to how individuals are organised by organisations (enterprises, NGOs), through, for example, gendered/racialized organisations, antidiscrimination practices and diversity management.

The notion of ‘struggling’ refers to challenges and activities on an individual or organised level to realise and promote social and economic participation independent of belonging or ascription to specific dimensions of diversity, such as race, class, gender, sexual orientation, family status, dis/ability, religion and age.

Taking into account an intersectional perspective and assuming power relations as systems of oppressions and granted privileges, this stream welcomes contributions that deal with:

(1) how individuals are influenced through their social positioning/the social categories to which they are ascribed in contexts of work and organisation and how they struggle with them;

(2) the role of (working) organisations with reference to how relationships and contexts of in- and exclusion are created within them.