The next Critical European Studies Workshop, organised by the Critical Political Economy Research Network, will take place on 10-11 May 2019 in Lviv, Ukraine.

Details below, and on the Critical European Studies Workshop website:

CES Workshop 2019
Lviv, Ukraine
10-11 May 2019

Organising team: Christakis Georgiou, Daniel Keil, Aliona Lyasheva, Ana Podvršič, Yuliya Yurchenko

Synopsis: The frontiers and the state of the European – quo vadis?

Fifteen years since EU’s biggest enlargement being celebrated as a movement towards unification of European countries under the same vision for the future we see the region falling to the right wing rhetoric amidst the talks of disintegration. Increasing economic unevenness, Brexit, revision of the free movement of labour while deeper economic integration inside the EU and of the Union with its “outside” e.g. the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Areas, complex role in the refugee crisis, are seemingly contradictory; in many cases contrary to the founding principles and declared mission. Escalating geopolitical confrontations along Europe’s geographic boundary pose questions about the state of the region, its future and its self-appointed – yet often reluctant to take responsibility – hegemon, the EU. The armed conflict and economic crises in Ukraine, Transnistria, Abkhasia – unresolved; the climate change action despite the new elaborate frameworks – toothless; labour mobility is riddled with problems; human rights framework – impotent when applied to non-EU citizens; ‘wealth through growth’ is accumulated by translational capital while subsidized by the taxpayer, unwaged labour and increasingly low waged labour, backed by sweatshops, refugee labour camps and like conditions of migrant labour in global supply chains; responsibility for the unresolved economic recession – shouldered by the region’s most vulnerable. In this workshop we will discuss a number of those burning questions focusing on understanding the causes of the existing problems, assessing their frontiers and the frontier of struggles, the ongoing and the ones to come.

The workshop is open to all scholars and activists interested in critical perspectives on European issues, and is held free of charge.

Programme:

May 10

12:00-13:00 Round of Introductions

13:00-15:00 Session 1:  What is Europe beyond EU-N? Europe and beyond, geopolitics and epistemology

Core text: Stathis Kouvelakis: Borderland. New Left Review 110, March-April 2018.

Commentators: Angela Wigger, Niko Huke, Joachim Becker, Nataliya Rumyantseva, Ivo Georgiev (RLS), Aliona Liasheva

15:00-15:30 Refreshments break

15:30-17:30  Session 2: Fascicisation and crisis of ‘cosmopolitanism’

Core text:  Joachim Becker and Koen Smet, The Socio-Economic Programmes and Praxis of the Nationalist Right in the EU: the Core-Periphery Divide, Paper for the 24th Annual Conference on Alternative Economic Policy in Europe “10 Years into the crisis –What prospects for a popular political economy in Europe?”, Helsinki , 27-29 September 2018

Commentators: Volodymyr Ishchenko, Vika Mulyavka, Owen Worth, Ruth Cain, Yuliya Yurchenko, Daniel Keil

17:30-18:00 Refreshments break

18:00-19:30 Roundtable: left politics and activism in Ukraine

Speakers: Social Movement reps, women, human rights  and LBTQI activists, Ukrainian Christian Youth, trade union activists in Ukraine, Ecological Platform (local Lviv left/anarchist group)

20:00 Dinner 

May 11

10:00-12.00 Session 3: The crisis of work: we work more, we earn less, we pray for robots?

Core text: Moore, P. V. (2018). Tracking Affective Labour for Agility in the Quantified Workplace. Body & Society, 24(3), 39–67.

Commentators: Gunjan Sondhi, Oksana Dutchak, David Bailey, Nina Potarskaya, Artem Tidva, Christakis Georgiou

12.00-12.15 Break

12.15-14.15 Session 4: European division of labour and growth regimes

Core text: Angela Wigger (2019) The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives, Globalizations, 16:3, 353-369

Commentators: Johannes Jaeger, Claude Serfati, Phoebe Moore, Denis Pilash, Julia Eder, Artem Tidva

14.15-15.30 Break

15.30-17.30 Session 5: Towards the ecological catastrophe or an opportunity to change the course? Rebalancing labour, state, and capital in climate politics

Core text: Joel Wainwright & Geoff Mann (2015), Climate Leviathan, Antipode, 45 (1), 1-22.

Commentators: Judith Dellheim, Richard Lane, Christina Plank, a representative from the EcoPlatform (Lviv)

17.30-18.00 Closing