The Struggle for Public Water in Italy

On 9 October, I gave the paper ‘Sic Vos Non Vobis’ – ‘For You, But Not Yours’: The struggle for public water in Italy at the Department of Political Economy, University of Sydney . The paper is about the Italian Water Movements Forum (Forum), a broad alliance of trade unions, social movements, development NGOs and environmental groups, and its successful mobilisation for a referendum against the privatisation of water in June 2011 (see also Road to Victory). Trade unions and other social movements find it often difficult to co-operate due to their different histories and institutional structures, as argued in an article on the European Social Forum. In this blog post, I will analyse how the Italian Water Movements Forum was able to bring together such a wide range of different groups into a successful campaign.

Fighting against water privatisation in Italy: Road to Victory!

Against the background of the global and Eurozone financial crises as well as austerity sweeping across Europe, the pressure on privatising public services is immense. The story of the Italian water movement, a broad alliance of social movements and trade unions, which successfully mobilized for a referendum against the privatization of water in June 2011, is a story of hope for alliances involved in resisting privatization elsewhere. From 25 March to 8 April, I conducted a series of interviews with members of this movement. In this post, I will report on the emergence and ultimate success of this movement in the referendum.

How to explain the Swiss vote against the Free Movement of Workers

On 8 February 2009, almost 60 percent of Swiss voters supported the extension of the bilateral EU-Switzerland agreement on the free movement of workers to workers from Romania and Bulgaria. In this guest post, Roland Erne argues that this clear endorsement of the free movement of Romanian and Bulgarian workers in the Swiss labour market is noteworthy because the Swiss People Party (SVP) at the time conducted an overtly xenophobic campaign against it, depicting Romanian and Bulgarian workers as black ravens that were pecking on a map of Switzerland. Whereas xenophobic inclinations may be a recurrent feature of humanity, xenophobia can hardly explain the sudden shift of Swiss voters against the free movement of all EU workers in the referendum of 9 February 2014; notably after a referendum campaign in which the SVP – for once – avoided the use of xenophobic stereotypes on its major campaign poster.