Social organising, resistance and a collective politics of care in the aftermath of COVID19
Chair(s): Masaya Llavaneras Blanco (DAWN, Huron University College), Damien Gock (DAWN, Western Sydney University)
This roundtable addresses the following conference question: What have we learned from earlier examples of solidarity to help us forge a different and better future? It focuses on case studies of DAWN's new edited volume “Pandemic Policies and Resistance Southern Feminist Critiques in Times of Covid-19” (Bloomsbury, July 2025) that center social organizing, migrants communities of care, informal workers, people living in poverty, domestic workers and other subaltern folks. Social movements played a key role in responding to the global crisis, especially in addressing the harms caused by inadequate government policies that left many vulnerable. These movements focused on supporting marginalized groups and developing alternative forms of collective organizing. The intersection of collective care and political mobilization is central to the struggles discussed, offering a transformative political agenda in a world of increasing authoritarianism and austerity. These movements challenge exclusions based on labor, location, and citizenship, promoting social and political rights for migrants and recognizing the value of care and unpaid work. Their actions include labor organizing, solidarity between movements, and engagement with the state.
Presentations of the Symposium
Building a Care System in Argentina: Transformative Potential and Persistent Challenges
Cecilia Fraga1, Corina Rodriguez2
1CIEPP, Argentina, 2DAWN; CIEPP/CONICET Argentina
This reflection is based on the work that went into creating a National Care system in Argentina. It highlights opportunities for feminist policy transformation through processes such as the creation of the new Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity, and the Territorial Parliaments of Care. Rooted in years of collective mobilization by feminist movements, these policy processes were catalysed and shaped by the pandemic. In highlighting the historical overload of care placed on women and LGBTI+ people, as well as the dramatic changes in the Argentinean political system, our reflection sheds light on the contextual and community dynamics of care as a rich aspect of political and social organizing, as well as the challenges of the current context.
Organizing from the Heart: Migrant Domestic Workers’ Resistance in Malaysia during the Covid-19
Liva Sreedharan, Yen Ne Foo
Independent
This reflection centers how migrant domestic workers in Malaysia successfully entered into dialogue with the Malaysian state demanding their right to social protection at the height of the COVID19 pandemic. Despite prevailing anti-migrant conditions, and amid rising authoritarianism and growing criminalization of migration, MDWs collaborated with civil society organizations and trade unions in innovative ways, relying on digital access and organizing. As a result, their organizations grew despite the global crisis. Most significantly, even though their labour conditions continue to be precarious, MDWs successfully mobilized for inclusion into the national social security scheme for the first time in its history. This victory opens the door to regulation of Malaysia’s labour sector and demonstrates that there is transformative potential in new and hands-on forms of political mobilization.
Are we still in this together? From a period of Shared Global Precarity to a New Era of Structural Violence and Localised Crises
Masaya Llavaneras Blanco1, Damien Gock2
1DAWN, Huron University, 2DAWN, Western Sydney University
Why does it matter to write about the pandemic period, now that it is mostly framed as a rare period followed by pretence of being back to normal? While we acknowledge that the pandemic was experienced differently depending on location, class, gender, ability, citizenship status, etc., we believe that it was a rare period of shared precarity in which most of the world experienced a significant halt in normalcy. We are moving back into a context of multiple localised (yet interlinked) crises, in which relatively spared centres of global power adopt an out of sight out of mind approach. In this context of normalised structural violence, the pandemic represents an important point of reference to understanding how life and death, access to health and everyday livelihoods are interdependent transnational processes. Second, contrary to the aspiration of some of having returned to the previous status quo, we find ourselves in a new one characterised by the normalisation of emboldened authoritarian practices and biopolitical control, increasing nationalist rhetoric and disregard for multilateral governance spaces, all of which was further enabled and exacerbated by the pandemic period. Third, despite the serious implications of the latter (or, even more so, because of them), we see special value in examining the practices of radical care and collective organising across differences among marginalized communities, migrants, non-migrants, workers, and others that emerged in the context of the pandemic.
