The sudden demise of a long-running car-parts factory outside Florence was just the beginning of a different story. Protesting relentlessly and demanding a chance to rebuild from the ground up, the workers’ struggle changed the law throughout the region, and created a model for a new kind of factory.
Shepherds and their flocks are integral to the history of European culture and ecology. Now, a new generation of pastoralists – from migrants escaping underpaid care work, to science graduates looking for tangible ways to protect the planet – are rewriting patriarchal traditions to preserve it for the future.
After a Canadian mining company challenged a Zapotec community’s Indigenous identity, recalling the ancestral names of sacred landmarks helped reinvigorate their connection to the land – and defend it from extractive industries.
When foreign companies restarted mining operations that had been shuttered since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Vareš had high hopes of economic revival. But as the state fails to take a stand against pollution and deforestation, optimism has given way to nostalgia for the socially owned mines of the communist era.
Roma people are routinely excluded from jobs, housing and public services. Yet tens of billions of euros to promote Roma inclusion are vanishing into projects with no transparency or measurable impacts. Our investigation found evidence of some of this EU money being spent on displacing or demonizing Roma communities in Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechia and Italy.
In communities shaped by redlining and disinvestment, the only places to shop are often dollar stores – stocked with plastic goods that have crossed oceans on container ships and rolled across states on eighteen-wheelers. These journeys are long, carbon-heavy, and almost invisible, but their impact is felt from Suzhou to Chicago, from the global climate to the human body.
A migrant-led movement has used tactics from theatre to unionization to demand equal rights and dignity for those doing society’s most undervalued labor. They’ve appealed to the highest levels of EU justice and achieved major legal reforms. Yet perhaps their biggest triumph is an ongoing movement for social change powered by intersectional solidarity and care.
With almost a third of young Portuguese living abroad, the country’s visa options and growing recognition of foreign qualifications help keep the economy on its feet. But despite so many immigrant workers coming from Portuguese-speaking countries, their degrees still don’t have the same clout as qualifications earned in Portugal.
