When the state protects me not, I shall keep my sister safe. Social reproductive role of feminist movements under the realities of a polycrisis.

The aim of our paper is to discuss the theoretical and political consequences of applying social reproduction theory (SRT) to studying contemporary feminist and queer mobilisations. We want to make the connection between socio-political conditions of polycrisis and the increasing, social reproductive role of the movements, manifested in collective practices of providing basic, but sometimes also highly specialized, welfare. Our empirical case focuses on feminist and queer activism in Poland, between 2018-2022. We draw our data from more than 628 feminist groups and organizations, relying on quantitative and qualitative methods, including group interviews and text analysis. By focusing on Poland, we want to “bring the Second World in” and discuss the relevance of SRT from the perspective of a particular location: a former state-socialist country. We argue that the situation in contemporary Poland is a good manifestation of a polycrisis, where regional position of European peripheral economy with low labor costs, and low levels of unionization, came together with the rule of authoritarian, nationalist-conservative government with openly hostile, anti-gender and anti-LGBTQ agenda (2015-2023). As a result, the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in 2020 served as a political playground for the introduction of an almost total ban on abortion. The ongoing crisis also includes severe humanitarian conditions on the Polish-Belarussian border, where Black and Brown refugees are being brutally pushed-back through the border, and where support towards them is criminalized. These structures of violence against racialized people can be contrasted with massive support towards more than 1 million of Ukrainian refugees coming to Poland after the Russian invasion in 2022. We propose to understand these intertwined processes and structures as local determinants for escalation of social reproductive needs. The latter are highly differentiated across the population, they may rise unexpectedly and simultaneously, and are impacted by different institutional set-ups. In such a context, feminist mobilizations include public forms of contention, but also unfold towards provision of medical and social services to the most precarious groups, including emergency and life-saving responses. The paper uses SRT to show how feminist movements: provide their labor powers to 1) reproduce life itself, 2) reduce labor productivity (ex. abortion) and 3) fight against social oppression of racism, transphobia and misogyny intertwined with capitalist exploitation.