Suchergebnisse

This article examines the lack of solidarity between the Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. and the anti-authoritarian uprising in Belarus in 2020. Specifically, I explore how distant geographies and feminist communities can relate to each other and thus challenge the rise of right-wing conservatism, white supremacy, and neoliberal authoritarianism. This article relies on auto-ethnography and the exploration of public media, political essays, and scholarly contributions discussing the meanings of the BLM and Belarusian protests. Through critical self-reflection and by deploying the concepts of 'exile' and 'transnational feminist solidarity,' this article suggests a possibility for alternative transnational feminist connections attentive to the complexities of global power relations and uneven east/west interconnections. Rethinking the current possibilities for solidarities may lead to seeing how the uprising in Belarus and the BLM protests have points of connection on the grounds of state-sanctioned violence, neoliberal enclosures, suppression of political dissent, and their racialized/colonial roots. However, forging transnational solidarities also requires a certain work of reflection on how political protests may uphold global racial/colonial logic and overshadow racial violence. Therefore, in this article, I foreground how post-Soviet vulnerability may help disrupt the status quo or the privilege of whiteness instead of reinforcing it.

The article constructs children's rights as a social institution relevant to the multifunctional nature of the contemporary child. In line with the interpretivist approach, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is viewed as a soft law, which requires the pluralization of practices towards international regulations. The juxtaposition of two key approaches to the UNCRC, the double status of the child and the dilemma of public versus private, frames the investigation of the current issues in Russia and Belarus through the discourses operating around children's rights. The comparison highlights the common shortcomings and the peculiarities, clarifying the possible strategies for refining the implementation of children's rights in post-Soviet countries.