This dissertation, by Maribel Casas-Cortes, centers on the shifting cultures of labor within the European Union due to economic flexibilization, new patterns of feminine work and transformations in immigration. I analyze how civil society efforts are engaging these overlapping processes through the practice of activist research. These grassroots projects design, conduct and distribute their own research, influencing public debates and everyday understandings of labor. The study focuses on contemporary european movements engaging transforming notions and practices of work: mainly, the increasing “precarization” of labor conditions and everyday life; and the effects generating what these movements call a “care crisis” with reference to changes in social reproduction. I focus on Spanish feminist organizations as exemplary of alternative development models stemming from social movements.

This dissertation, by Sebastian Cobarrubias explores how cartographic and geographic methods are being utilized as tools by social movements for new ends. In particular, I focus on social movements based in Spain that are developing cartographies of the conflicting territories of the European Union and its construction. The activist mapping projects engaged in this dissertation are understood as a form of ‘other’ cartography: a form of social movement-based knowledge deploying the traditional research tool of cartography to new ends. Cartography, often labeled an instrument of fixation to facilitate appropriation of territory by established power structures, becomes a counter tool for anti-systemic movements. My work examines how social movements employ spatial and cartographic knowledges in order to analyze and transform existing spaces and prefigure alternative ones. This basic tenet of the thesis splits into two types of argument: conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, I answer why these activist cartographies matter, socially and intellectually, and how they fit into a broader historical moment. The empirical argument follows by examining the procedures and venues used by mapping movements and how activist cartography is developing in Spain and Europe.