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Lea Vajsova: There is a boom of feminist organizations in Bulgaria after the debate on the ratification of the Istanbul Convention

Note from Lefteast Editors. We repost Vladimir Mitev’s interview with sociologist and left feminist activist Lea Vajsova, which originally appeared at Crossbordertalk on 13 February 2023. We saw the conservative insistence on the “traditional Christian family” around the Istanbul Convention debate as a metaphor behind which a process of re-traditionalisation was taking place as an […]

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All posts ELMO Series: Transnational migration in CEE from intersectional perspectives of race, gender, class and citizenship

Where Have Eastern Europeans Gone? Made-in-Italy Agribusiness, Mobility Control and the Great Resignation

This article is part of the multilingual ELMO series Transnational migration in CEE from intersectional perspectives of race, gender, class and citizenship. Recent limitations to the freedom of movement imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19 led farmers’ organisations (as well as other employers’) across Europe to sound the alarm, lamenting the sudden dearth of workers […]

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The Same Old European Deal: Countering the Myth of Green Capitalism in Bulgaria

Editorial note: This text is a contribution to the Berliner Gazette’s “After Extractivism” text series, and was originally published in English on Mediapart; the German version is available on Berliner Gazette. You can find more contents on the English-language “After Extractivism” website. Have a look here: https://after-extractivism.berlinergazette.de In April 2022, the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water […]

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A (Personal) Tale of Two Socialisms

Note from LeftEast editors: In conjuncture with Allegralab we publish this video and transcript of LeftEast collective member Mariya Ivancheva’s talk from the annual conference “Why the World Needs Anthropologists” of the Applied Anthropology Network (AAN) of European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). WWAN took place in Prague in September 2021, under the topic “Mobilizing the Planet.” Earlier […]

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How Capitalism Erases the Human Costs of Post-1989 Transitions

Note from LeftEast editors: We reprint this article, which appeared in the Black Box East section of the Berliner Gazette in German on December 2, 2021.  After the post-1989 shock therapies imposed on “communist” regimes forced countless workers to move to Greece, where they became essential to the country’s economy, Troika’s austerity measures imposed on Greece at […]

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All posts FeminEasts Interviews

Fighting Back against the Patriarchal Backlash in Bulgaria. Interview with Kalina Drenska (LevFem, Bulgaria)

The EU recovery plan is reinforcing an idea of welfare and economic reconstruction which reproduces patriarchal and racist hierarchies and exploitation, while some EU member states like Italy and Greece are already promoting measures – like divorce regulations and child allowances laws – that materially make Istanbul Convention void of any meaning. But women have not been silent in these months and are organizing their counterattack. During the last E.A.S.T. public assembly we started to discuss the multifaceted dimensions of these patriarchal attacks and the struggles we can build together towards a big transnational mobilization. This interview with Kalina Drenska, member of E.A.S.T. and LevFem (Bulgaria) is the first of a series of texts that wants to start from Istanbul Convention to explore ongoing fights against violence against women and lgbtqi+ people, in their connections with the struggles against racist and exploitative policies. Kalina talks about the stratified political meanings attributed in Bulgaria to Istanbul Convention and shows the links between attacks on women and lgbtqi+ people and the policies of cutbacks that lead many women to find better living and working conditions abroad. Furthermore, she unveils the hard pathways that feminist struggles must take – in Bulgaria and beyond – to overturn isolation and accumulate power on the transnational level.

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[E.A.S.T.] Stop the Fascist Attacks against LGBTQI+ People in Bulgaria!

Note from LeftEast editors: Towards the transnational mobilization on July 1st against the attack on the Istanbul Convention and the patriarchal backlash that is hitting women and LGBT+ people all around the world, we republish a text which first appeared on the website of the platform Transnational Social Strike (TSS). The text, written by Stoyo Tetevenski, member […]

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From the Pandemic to a Sea of Ignorance: On Bulgaria’s Neoliberal Educational Reform

Note from LeftEast editors: We publish this article in collaboration with the regional portal Bilten, where it originally appeared in Croatian. The correlation between educational and social inequalities in Bulgaria has long been at the center of public debate. However, rarely do we hear reform proposals beyond the existing neoliberal educational model based on competition, decentralization […]

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Bulgarian elections of 2021: repackaging the same old (TV) story

Bulgaria held inconclusive general elections on April 4, 2021. The hitherto center-right ruling party GERB won them but with a result preventing it from forming a government. A nascent anti-GERB coalition is shaping up in Parliament, led by “There is such a people”: a new formation headed by a famous Bulgarian TV host.

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All posts FeminEasts

(Post)pandemic struggles in social reproduction: Women’s labour before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bulgaria

Note from the LeftEast editors: The present text, which we co-publish together with TSS, is part of a series of publications and webinars on the topics of social reproduction, (women’s) labor, and migration in East-Central Europe and beyond. The video from the webinar (Post)pandemic struggles in social reproduction, where this text was first presented, can be seen here(in […]