Gender and class in Athens under austerity

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernd Belina
• Subject Area: Human Geography
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 503478638

This project will provide an inclusive, multi-perspective and timely account of the crisis in Athens, Greece, from the mid-2010s until today based on stories of women who have organized collectively against implemented austerity measures. This account will be inclusive in that it incorporates both gender and class relations; multi-perspective in that it combines a movements, urban and everyday-life perspective; and timely in that it focuses on the processes that constitute gender and class under austerity in Athens, Greece, today. Since 2010, Greek society has faced a severe crisis, which was met with austerity-based structural-adjustment programs. The aggressive internal devaluation process and continuous recession that ensued have challenged all aspects of social reproduction in Greek society and its geographies. The vast and rapid changes taking place have nourished discontent, sparked contesting mobilizations and bred forms of collective organizing in and through space. Departing from this constellation, the project is situated within scholarly debates on crisis, austerity and social movements in Greece and Athens as well as theoretical debates on gender and class in human geography and beyond and. The project identifies and analyzes the ways in which gender and class became relevant in self-organizing during austerity in two case studies: the struggle of the 595 Cleaners of the Ministry of Finance, and the Residents’ Committee of Exarcheia. Rich empirical material on both case studies was collected in 2015-16 in twelve narrative interviews, one year of participant observations and in the form of published materials. In a first round of theory-guided interpretation, we identified four reoccurring dimensions of struggle – space, time, solidarity and emotions - that reveal the unity between production and social reproduction that will serve as axes of in-depth interpretation (work package 1). In all four dimensions, processes of austerity-led dispossession against attempts for appropriation by the movements took place during the crisis. In that context, as women struggled to regain control over their lives, gender and class relations were challenged and transformed. The in-depth interpretation will use a discourse analysis methodology, coding methods and the software MAXQDA. Drawing on feminist methodologies, this in-depth interpretation will be followed by consultation and “member reflection” with the original informants and with members of civil society, using interviews, group discussions and workshops (work package 2). We will conclude with a final interpretation and dissemination of findings in academia and beyond (work package 3). One particular way the latter will be achieved is by producing a documentary.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants