Articles

When covering the invasion of Crimea and the war in Donbas, what motivated Nataliya Gumenyuk was her conviction that journalism could influence events. But now that geopolitics rules the day, she feels powerless.

Unpaid housework – forgotten by Marx, championed by the 1970s feminist Wages for Housework Campaign – has become a point of pandemic contention for working mothers. And care workers, mostly underpaid women with families, are facing the worst. Could vaccine mandates that sidestep the autonomy of workers’ bodies therefore be a stage too far?

How can decentralized art initiatives imagine a future for Europe? And whose future is being imagined there? The European Pavilion looks to create a space that transcends the confines of exclusivist tradition.

A pluralist mainstream requires a flourishing media ecosystem outside it. The mainstream has important democratic roles, but catalysing change is not one of them.

Prison was a central pillar of communism and an experience shared by generations of eastern Europeans. The USA today can also be described as a carceral society, its prison system the expression of a ‘new Jim Crow’. What does the comparison mean for the definition of the ‘political prisoner’? A conversation.

From introducing feminist literature on the pages of a semi-pornographic magazine to challenging the self-image of the socialist state of Yugoslavia: journalist and novelist Slavenka Drakulić has broken ground in many fields in her native tongue even before rising to international renown.

A bill on Animal Welfare is currently making its way through the UK parliament. If passed, non-human vertebrates would be recognized as sentient. But would this mean that animals have the same or similar rights to humans?

A common currency, a single passport and a European anthem: all were originally the ideas of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. But though the founder of the pan-Europa movement was ahead of his time in many ways, impatience with institution-building meant his concrete achievements remained limited.

Coup attempt or assertion of supremacy? It is still not clear what has happened in Kazakhstan. Whatever the case, the hijacking of the demonstrations has severely damaged prospects for the country’s democratization.

Unlike their nineteenth-century precursors, anti-European intellectuals in Russia today are neither engaged in dialogue with the West, nor do they realize that their ideas about European decline are themselves derivative.

Contracting COVID-19 in the UK over Christmas was far from joyous. While politicians, favouring business over health, were betting on Omicron’s mild symptoms leading to few hospitalizations, especially for the vaccinated, the isolated and sick were negotiating a procedural nightmare of defunct privatized healthcare provision.

Almost two years after the onset of the pandemic, young people in Europe are reflecting on the impact it has had on their lives and questioning what it will mean for their future prospects.

Europe is facing a demographic crisis, resulting in suffocating labour shortages, and yet incoming migration is more and more rejected in mainstream politics. Can the EU come to terms with this great contradiction without an implosion?

Reappropriating stereotypes sends out a powerful message. And women of colour are putting themselves in a strong position, turning abusive rap into emancipation, overcoming issues of gender, class and race.

The findings of the recent inquiry into paedophilia in the French Catholic Church exceeded the worst expectations. But despite the shock and anger among Catholics and the wider public, the deep-seated conservatism within the Church is resisting the recommended reforms.

Black Europeans, faulty vaccines, dying seas and politics in football: here are the Top10 articles from Eurozine in the second pandemic year.