Sconvegno

From PrecarityMap

{{Card |question1=Nome del gruppo: |answer1= Sconvegno |question2=Città/area geografica: |answer2= Milan |question3=Breve descrizione del gruppo (inclusa una breve storia): |answer3= The group is a feminist collective made of six women aged around 30. Some of us are from Milan, some from other parts of Italy but are now working and living here. We first met four years ago to organise a seminar about the different meanings of being a feminist today. Since then, we have been meeting quite regularly in our homes or at our working places. Our gathering stems from our own experiences to try and understand, and possibly transform, what exists around us, in order to think and act politically. According to each of us, Sconvegno is a political space/time that our presence creates, a laboratory where emotions and experiences become a reading key to interpret the world. It’s a kind magic that makes each of us individual and collective at one time: more than the sum of all of us, and less than a separate and autonomous identity. |question4=Tipo di gruppo (per esempio rete di diversi gruppi, sindacato, rivista o altro media, centro sociale, gruppo di ricerca militante, gruppo di supporto ai migranti, gruppo si azione queer ecc.): |answer4= We are mainly a group of political reflection and analysys. We use the research methodology named "auto-inchiesta politica", because it helps us not only in observing the reality as it is, but also to investigating the ongoing transformations, and how the subjectivities involved do take part to them. As a group we have written documents, we have built national and European political relationships and, we have gone to several varied meetings. Guided by shared interests and specific objectives, we have tried to focus on the ambivalent, unclear and potential character of the issue of precariousness/flexibility, stemming from the transformation work, time and life as we daily experience it. Our objective is to collect and comprehend the strategies that – more or less consciously – we apply. In those strategies we try and identify the "cre-active" potentialities that help to face and manage discontinuities, transformations, dumping and contradictions. We have been working with many other groups and individuals, each very different with regard to age, gender, sexual preferences, nationalities and ‘race’. We have been building a network and looking for the sense and pleasure of transformation – that is of ourselves and of the world in the present time. We are involved in some Networks and collective projects at national and transnational level. |question5=Campi di azione (per esempio migrazioni, call centres, cura, università ecc.): |answer5= As feminist collective, we privilege our own experiences as an epistemological standpoint. We happen to be a group made of 4 PhD candidates out of 6 members, and therefore we have a closer insight of the University research and work environment (mainly sociological and political sciences centred). More in general, we are interested in observing the way certain new working conditions (like the type of contract, working/non-working time, knowledge working, the relationships with our colleagues or our "bosses") affect our lives.

|question6=Repertori di pratiche (per esempio azione diretta, informazione e assistenza, supporto, performances ecc.): |answer6= We are interested in the creation and promotion of strategic alliances and synergies between different feminist (but not only) groups, starting from the differences, the similarities and the common interests. During the last four years, we have been organising and co-organinsing meetings with other feminist individuals and groups (see the list below), both in Italy and in Europe. Each of us is then individually involved in other different activities and groups that vary from Afro-dancing groups to Glbtq activities, from Italian language classes for foreigners to Mayday-organisation activities… and so on. Each of us lives these experiences individually, but we unavoidably bring such experimentations, relationships and experiences within the group too, sometimes involving the others.

|question7=Iniziative e processi politici aperti: |answer7= one of the main activities we are carrying on at the moment is a research for the 2007 issue of the English "Feminist Review" focusing on contemporary Italian Feminisms and precarity. We will also take part to two meetings that will be held next July; the first on "Politics and Psicology", the second on "Activisms and Feminisms"

|question8=Lotte in cui siete coinvolti o di cui siete a conoscenza nella vostra città (se possibile, indicate i contatti): |answer8= on January the 14th, In Milan, there has been a big demonstration against the reform of the law on abortion that saw the participation of a great number of women. They gathered together before and after the demonstration and organised different groups concerning different themes (work, political participation, sexuality and so on – the website is www.usciamodalsilenzio.org) . We took part to the meetings of the group on "work and precarity". An other interesting Net in Milan and Italy is "Facciamo Breccia", against the Vatican interferences in the political life (#).

|question9=Reti di cui il gruppo fa parte e/o collegamenti con altri gruppi: |answer9=
*As mentioned, we are part of the editorial group of Feminist Review (www.feminist-review.com) together with Sexyshock (www.ecn.org/sexyshock/) and some English and Italian scholars (Nirmal Puwar and Jackie Andall as main references). We have been organising four focus groups in four different cities (Bologna, Milano and Napoli). We tried to address the issue of precarity into four main fields: precarity of sexuality, precarity of labour, precarity of migration and precarity and political actions. Each of the focus groups has involved different persons and "experts" working on such issues, directly and non, from an academic or a movement or from other points of view. The focus groups have been recorded and transcripted. Some of the people involved will be asked to write an article that will be submitted to a call for paper and eventually selected and published in the mentioned Feminist Review issue. We will be involved in the editorial work, and we will draft some of the articles to be published.

• we are part of Prec@s, which is a Network of 30something "precogs" women, mainly working in the research-university field, some of which are researchers or PhD candidates on gender studies;
• we have been participating to the European Social Forum in London. Panel: "Creating Collectivities/Doing Transnational Politics" (16th October 2004, London)
• in the last four years we took part to numerous women summer camping (Fiorelle, Laboratorio sulla precarietà del Forum delle Donne di PRC, Scuola di politica di Pontignano), feminist groups’ conferences on sexuality and precarity, as well as social and labour issues’ university conferences
• we are part of the Libera Università delle Donne of Milan (#)
• We have taken part to a cycle of meeting held at Cicip