Resisting state-sanctioned precarity: social reproduction and anti-austerity organizing in Berlin

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the consequences of changes in social reproduction for anticapitalist social movements, specifically in the context of a neoliberalizing welfare state. I build on ethnographic fieldwork with the anticapitalist activist group Basta!, based in Berlin, which organizes unemployed people and precarious workers. I argue that the Agenda 2010 labor market reforms in Germany have created a crisis of care by threatening social reproduction, resulting in the emphasis on care practices in these activist groups. I position the work of the movement in the general social reproduction of an increasingly precarious society, highlighting the resilience that a focus on care practices can offer. However, I also discuss the potential risk of reinforcing the status quo through this strategy. Theoretically, the article contributes to a feminist elaboration of the political economy approach by examining how macrostructural developments shape everyday social practices that sustain movements. I note a macro bias and a production bias in the literature, which has resulted in gendered blind spots. Thus, the focus on social movements’ approach to the care crisis reveals ways of combining the political economy approach with those in the literature on gender and social movements. Overall, the article offers insights into the ways in which anticapitalist movements organize around reproduction in the context of neoliberal reforms and highlights the importance of care practices in sustaining resistance to precarity.