Redefining the Agenda for Social Justice: Voices from Europe and Asia

By Francine Mestrum and Meena Menon

The book relates three years of history of social movements from Asia and Europe who work on social justice, as a rough overview. The work for the book is mainly done on the ground, day after day, working in villages and cities, with people and their organisations, organising resistance and preparing alternatives. It is based on the fact that European and Asian concerns are identical, in spite of divergent levels of development and wealth, and that the existing international initiatives, such as the ILO’s social protection floors, or the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals are perfectly compatible with neoliberal policies.

The book goes beyond and sees social commons as a strategic tool for transforming societies. It is basically a project for the sustainability of life, of humans, of societies, and of nature. The book describes the ideas at the basis of the work in different sectors. It is not about the practice of social policies but about the ideas and discourses that can inthe end shape the political practices. In sum, this book, presents a new social paradigm. It concretely shows how social justice and environmental justice do go hand in hand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Apr 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9789813365711

Book preview

Book cover of Redefining the Agenda for Social Justice

Francine Mestrum and Meena Menon

Redefining the Agenda for Social Justice

Voices from Europe and Asia

1st ed. 2021

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Logo of the publisher

Francine Mestrum

Brussels, Belgium

Meena Menon

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

ISBN 978-981-33-6570-4e-ISBN 978-981-33-6571-1

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6571-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021

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Acknowledgments

This book would not have been possible without all the enabling and facilitating work of the Asia-Europe People’s Forum. Coordinating the work of different thematic clusters and organising the People’s Forums themselves, Andy Rutherford, Kris Vanslambrouck, Kathy Bernaerts, Tina Ebro allowed us to focus on our specific topic of social justice. We also thank the European Commission and its Directorate General for Development Cooperation for the funds made available for this work.

More particularly we want to thank all speakers and organisations who participated in our conferences and contributed to a better understanding of what social justice can mean and how, in spite of diverging histories and development levels, concerns and ambitions are very similar in Europe and Asia.

A special word of thanks goes to Professor Anuradha Chenoy and Bishnu Singh for their editing work and to Jen Derillo for the beautiful posters.

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Why Social Justice?​ 11

The Recent History of Welfare States 12

Neoliberal Globalisation and Its Setbacks 16

Political Backlash 21

Social Justice, Income and Redistribution 22

Universalism 24

Our Objectives 24

3 Global Charter for Universal Social Protection Rights:​ For All and by All 29

Global Charter for Universal Social Protection Rights by All, for All 34

4 From Social Protection to Social Commons 39

Rethinking Social Protection 40

The Social Commons:​ What?​ 44

Walking Along New Paths 51

The Sun of the Future 53

5 Assuring Affordable, Accessible and Quality Public Services for All:​ Health, Education, Water, Transport and Energy 57

From Health to Transport to Energy 61

Water 62

Transport 64

Energy 65

Education 66

Alternatives 68

Conclusion 72

6 Labour 75

Asia, Europe and … China 79

Productive Transformation 82

What About Reproduction?​ 84

How the Global Charter Can Help 87

7 The Right to the City and the Right to Housing 89

Housing Is Part of Social Protection 89

Informality for Profit 90

Universal Health Care and Social Protection 90

Housing Is Integral to Social Protection 92

Housing as Asset 93

Public, Social and Affordable Housing 94

Housing-Related Services 95

The Question of Land for Housing 96

Goals of the SDGs 96

Conclusion 97

8 Global Voices:​ The Way Forward 99

Annexes 107

List of Boxes

Box 1.​1 Social Policies Are Crucial for Bringing About Change 9

Box 2.​1 Social Protection Rhetorics Versus Exclusionary Socio-Economic Policies 19

Box 3.​1 Working with the Charter 32

Box 4.​1 Social Commons Are International 41

Box 4.​2 Totalising Metanarratives Occlude the Economic Alternatives 44

Box 4.​3 Commons Mean Conflict 46

Box 4.​4 The Commons Are Part of a New Politics 50

Box 4.​5 Let Us Talk Politics 51

Box 5.​1 The Illusion of PPPs 59

Box 6.​1 Why Social Justice and Peace are Interlinked 76

Box 6.​2 A Rights-Based Social Protection Floor for India?​ 80

Box 6.​3 What Are the Transformative Elements in a Rights-Based Social Protection?​ 87

Box 8.​1 Democracy as the Foundation for the Protection of Rights 99

Box 8.​2 Social Justice and Democracy 103

About the authors

Francine Mestrum

has a PhD in social sciences and worked at the European institutions and several Belgian universities. Her research concerns the social dimension of globalisation, poverty, inequality, social protection, public services and gender. She is an active member of the International Council of the World Social Forum and co-coordinating the social justice cluster in the Asia Europe People’s Forum. She is the author of several books (in Dutch, French and English) on development, poverty, inequality and social commons. She is the founder of the global network of Global Social Justice and currently works on a project for social commons (www.​socialcommons.​eu).

Meena Menon

is an activist, a researcher and a writer. Meena worked as a full-time organizer with a left party for 20 years. She was a Vice President at GKSS union (Mill Workers Action Committee), then the India country coordinator with Asian policy think tank Focus on the Global South. She did a brief stint as a consultant with UNDP. She was part of the core organizing team of the World Social Forum process in India. Until recently she worked as a Senior Consultant with Action Aid in India. She is now an independent consultant working on issues of labour, urbanization, housing, and new politics. She is a co-author of the book, One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices – The Mill Workers of Girangaon – An Oral History.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021

F. Mestrum, M. MenonRedefining the Agenda for Social Justicehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-33-6571-1_1

1. Introduction

Francine Mestrum¹   and Meena Menon²

(1)

Brussels, Belgium

(2)

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Keywords

AEPFSocial justiceSocial movements

This book is meant to give hope. It relates three years of history of social movements from Asia and Europe who work on social justice. Obviously, it can only give a rough overview, because this work mainly is done on the ground, day after day, working in villages and cities, with people and their movements, organising resistance and shaping alternatives.

Much has been done these past years to counter neoliberal globalisation, from the Battle of Seattle in 1999 to the World Social Forums, the European and South Asia Social Forums, the Arab Spring, the many short-lived movements in Europe (Indignado’s, Occupy’s, Nuits Debout and Gilets Jaunes) and the many less well-known movements in India, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia and others. In the autumn of 2019, it seemed as if people from all over the world finally made their voice heard: from Santiago de Chile to Quito, from Algiers to Baghdad, from Paris to Barcelona, from Hong Kong to Manila. Their demands: stop neoliberal austerity and make social justice possible.

It sometimes looks as if it is all in vain. The world has not changed, neoliberalism still prevails, now worsened with the emergence of elected right-wing authoritarian regimes, in Europe as well as in Asia. Today, many movements are looking inwards, working at the local level, and forget they can and should cooperate with others and across borders. The local work is tremendously important, but it is not enough. Because we share the same problems, we are interdependent and jointly we are stronger. Our opponents are very well organised transnationally, social movements are not. Even if the level of development in Asia and Europe is very different and the consequences of colonialism have not disappeared, people’s concerns are similar and social movements can only win by meeting and talking and learning from each other.

In times of the coronavirus it is crystal clear that solid and public health systems should be at the core of the social protection systems that we need and want, linked to democracy and environmental preservation, guaranteeing food sovereignty in a context of just trade. The endeavour of the social justice cluster goes beyond a claim for health. Our plea is for a totally new approach, linking health and social protection to all other elements social movements are fighting for and linking also to the new thinking on commons and on participatory approaches. We not only repeat, then, the old claims for protection and solidarity, we also renew the arguments in favour of them. In this way, we believe this is a truly innovative approach.

It is precisely what the social justice cluster of the Asia Europe People’s Forum has been doing. We claim to have some first successes. We adopted a global charter for social protection rights, we clarified our thinking on commons, public services, labour and housing. We met and we talked and found agreements. Each time, these were wonderful moments of mobilisation and motivation, they gave the courage to go on. We talked to members of parliaments and we submitted our demands to the formal ASEM (Asia Europe Meetings) summit of ministers.

One may think this is all far away from the daily struggles on the ground, from the work of grassroots movements. It is not. We, at the social justice cluster of AEPF, believe that struggles are necessary at all levels, from the grassroots to the national level, from there to the continental and the global level. Not one level can be ignored or neglected. As we also need action at the level of words and the level of things. From discourses to strikes and vice versa. The major challenge is to find the right articulation between all levels and all practices.

No, indeed, there is no system change yet. But we are getting ready, and the crisis of the coronavirus has highlighted the urgent need for solid healthcare systems. We can build on this and we are making progress. We stated what we wanted, in common agreement, and we pointed to the links with the other sectors of AEPF, such as peace, democracy, environment, trade and food sovereignty. This narrative is only the beginning of a new story for system change.

Before explaining what exactly we did and how we did it, a brief presentation of ourselves might be useful.

The Asia Europe Peoples’ Forum (AEPF) is a broad and dynamic network of progressive and major civil society organisations and trade unions, including people’s movements, non-government organisations and issue-based campaign networks across Asia and Europe.

For the past 20 years, the AEPF has remained the only continuing civil society inter-regional network connecting people’s movements and advancing their voices in ASEM (Asia Europe Meeting). It has facilitated the immediate and future collaborations among civil society groups in Asia and with Europe-based organisations to promote people-centred alternatives being built from below.

Since its formation in 1996, it has organised people’s forums parallel to the Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) summits. The AEPF has made a substantive contribution to putting the imperatives of a people-centred regional integration on the agenda of civil society in Asia and in Europe—addressing issues of regional democratisation, especially on the centrality of citizens’ participation.

People’s Forums are organised every two years, in Europe and Asia alternately. The last gathering was in September 2019 in Ghent, Belgium. The one before was in Ulaan Baator, Mongolia in 2016. This is the place where our story begins.

In-between the People’s Forums, AEPF has Thematic Circles that hold events and campaigns on several critical issues: Just Trade and Corporate Accountability, Social Justice, Climate Justice, Food and Resource Justice, Peace and Security and Democratisation and Human Rights. Through the Thematic Circles, AEPF develops people-centred alternatives and promotes collaborative advocacies among its networks comprised of workers (formal, informal and migrant), fisherfolk, peasants, women, elderly, researchers and academics, campaigners and parliamentarians across Asia and Europe.

These circles and networks engage in research, capacity-building and advocacy/campaigns activities at the national, regional and inter-regional levels, and also carry out learning/advocacy visits to European and Asian ASEM member countries.

Our overall objective is the

deepening, broadening and strengthening of citizens’ organisations’ capacity to dialogue and engage with local and national level decision-makers in ASEM member countries and appropriate regional and sub-regional bodies on just, equal and inclusive social and economic initiatives/policies/alternatives.

Our Key Objectives are

1.

Promoting, consolidating and strengthening the AEPF’s engagement with ASEM governments/leaders and related regional bodies and enabling people’s voices to be shared and heard.

2.

Enabling strengthened links with/between movements/networks/forums across Asia and Europe reinforcing the EU CSOs participation and representativeness in the AEPF, and the participation of a growing number of movements, networks, forums and organisations in different AEPF activities.

3.

Strengthening the permanent activities of the AEPF, as a continuous network supporting the important role of civil society in Asia and Europe in contributing to more just, equal, inclusive and people-centred initiatives and, in particular strengthening the relations and exchange of good and alternative practices between EU CSOs and Asian CSOs

As part of the overall programme we have commitments·to develop and share a wide range of materials which highlight and communicate to a wide audience our visions and alternatives for a more Just, Equal and Inclusive Asia and Europe. We are bringing these together under the ‘People’s Visions’

to present our visions and alternatives to elected representatives at local, national and regional levels

to progressively bring the visions and alternatives together as part of the Agenda for ASEM Parliamentarians.

As for AEPF’s Social Justice Cluster, we work