Within the Euromayday-process a new proposal just circulate: to create a ring of european precarity websites of research/action projects. The project, obviously, is free and "in progress": the document is only a mean to diffuse the proposal and to open it to multiplicity and different european subjects, groups and network. Clearly, when we speak of research, we are not talking about accademic or sociological inquiry, but about a political and militant research, finalized to action of struggle and action of precarious.
Notes for the configuration of a trans-european site for the comunication and cooperative research on precariousness, creation of subjectivity and new conflicts
The attempt is that to shape a space to gather propositions, to trace a political map, to have a rating of the subjects, but moreover a place for the creation of subjectivity and political action around the Gordian knot of "precariousness/unstableness of life".
This subject is implied in the process of co-ordination of the European MayDays and should be analyzed from the point of view of its relationship with capitalistic power for what it may concern working processes, working regulations, sources of income, control of mobility, the very thin visibility of unions and politics.
Recently, inside the movements, a new interest rose around inquiry and research as political instrument. This is mainly due to a double change in paradigm: the context has changed because of a new productivity, social changes, kinds of jobs: the so called shift from 'fordism' to 'post-fordism', though so often oversimplified. On the othe hand we had a real change; the breaking up of the global movement that overthrew the traditional ways of political action and has forced everyone to verify the 'classics' about organization and political action. This process threw new light on the old 'tool' of inquiry.
Research and inquiry then, not only as tools of production of actual political knowledge, but also as tools of continuous self-organization of the "collectives" conveying around the problem of precariousness. Nowadays much of the research (on migration, communication, precariousness, training etc.) became concrete in different ways, nevertheless it remains a difficult task to spread it out from a peculiar territory to concur to common paths of circulation.
A number of inquiries investigate the changes in productivity and in the new subject of actual contemporary jobs. This kind of research often runs into the same problems of the latest social conflicts. It is as difficult to find jobs and acceptable standard of life as it is to realize good communication nets, efficient ways of political action, a part, of course, the obsolete mechanism of representation.
European Mayday establishes the opening of a new shared space capable of innovations in political activity and strong self-representation in the matters of precariousness, putting both on a unavoidable European plan. We consider this the privileged ambit where all the current experience concerning the mentioned subjects can meet and concur to the birth of a new net among the already existent inquiry experiences (with a necessary transnational ambition!).
This net can easily became a site where to gather all the issues proposed and all the ongoing activities. The net could be supported by a mailing list or by a forum to allow communication and discussion, having in mind a common and open type of administration of the experience.
The net is not meant to be a single unifying political formula. the groups or subjects participating cooperate for a free exchange of projects and experiences. In order to "hybridize" different realities the co-ordination of the site (that has a merely technical intent to avoid any whatsoever risk of 'centralization') should take place on a linguistic basis rather than a territorial one. In principle this net might have the ambition to become a place of shared discussion, action, research. It should therefore be shaped as follows: - a map of the subjects that are actually conducting inquiries or research - few section to collect the subjects (either written, audios or videos) ready or in progress where they should combine with all the available information, with the circulation of appointments and proposition and so on, so that the site should result dynamic and with different levels of reading - a place to propose common and comparative inquiries at a trans-national level.
A possible immediate start for this proposal could be the creation of a preliminary site, a "ring" shaped one, that links all the forms, blogs, web sites that in Europe deal with the subject of "precariousness" and makes available all the relevant documentation of each of them. We are thinking of sites as http://www.thistuesday.org/, http://www.chainworkers.org/, http://www.loslunesalsol.net/, http://www.sindominio.net/karakola/precarias.htm, http://www.stop-precarite.org/, http://pap.ouvaton.org/ http://www.labournet.de/ .just to mention a few.
Within this very first concrete start of co-operation in terms of "ring" or "portal" it may rise the dimension of agglomeration and simultaneousness that are the prerequisites of a shared argument for the analysis of the proposition and of the political space. One of the problems is to get out of the fragmentation with no relapse in dangerous principles of "unity" that do not belong to the multiple items of precariousness. The goal is to try to have a form of reticular self-organization about mobility, personal experience, communication, struggle, away from politics and unionism of the past.
