On 13th March 2025, CCINDLE partner Dr Marta Rawłuszko from the University of Warsaw was invited to deliver a keynote address to the fifth Emma Goldman Awards at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. Marta’s speech, entitled ‘Feminist Futures’, explored how feminist activists in Poland envision the future. The speech is replicated below in full:
At the end of 2024, I concluded a study – a part of the CCINDLE project coordinated by Mieke Verloo – dedicated to contemporary feminist activism in Poland. Together with my team from the University of Warsaw, we interviewed over 50 individuals. Our focus was on three main areas of struggle: access to abortion, support for refugees trapped on the Polish-Belarusian border, and the rights of queer people. One of the key topics of our conversations was the question of the future. We were interested in understanding how those who are actively involved in feminist mobilizations think about what lies ahead.
Today, I will share some preliminary conclusions emerging from this material. These are few and obviously selected observations which are closely anchored in Polish context. That is why, before I discuss the activists’ perspectives on the future, I will first briefly introduce and problematize the context of the struggles we examined.
Illegitimate care
First, abortion. Since 2020, Poland has had one of the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in Europe. Abortion is only allowed in two cases: when the health and life of a person are at risk, and when the pregnancy results from a crime. In reality, even in these circumstances, people face significant barriers to get abortion from public providers. In recent years, this led to deaths of women in hospitals.
According to the Polish law terminating one’s own pregnancy is not a crime, no matter whether the procedure is made in Poland or abroad. Criminalization concerns assisting in abortion and providing abortion. Under these repressive conditions, which sharply isolate people who want to terminate their pregnancies, feminists are the only ones who ensure access to the procedure.
They provide reliable information about how to terminate a pregnancy, where to buy abortion pills, and how to use them to carry out self-managed abortion at home. They share practical knowledge about what happens during abortion and about the options available for terminating pregnancy abroad. They fight against abortion stigma, misinformation and warn against fraudulent websites, which do not sell abortion pills, but after receiving money, send paracetamol. Activists back funding for abortions when individuals lack money, they help women to organize travel for abortion in Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, or the Netherlands. What they mainly do is about communication, staying in touch, and offering emotional support: whether on phone or messaging app, it is about answering all questions and concerns, alleviate fear, dispel anxieties, and offer congratulations once the procedure is complete.
In the case of activism at the Polish-Belarusian border, the scenery is completely different. Activists are operating in the borderlands of eastern Poland. There, as a result of orchestrated actions by the regime of Lukashenko, thousands of people from the Global South have been arriving, seeking refuge and a chance for a dignified life in Europe. Migrants cross the eastern border of the EU in an irregular manner and continue their journey westward. The area in which they find themselves is a dense, primeval forest, in some places under strict environmental protection. It is filled with hundreds of fallen trees, wetlands, swamps, and rivers, which are extremely difficult to cross and where it is incredibly easy to get lost. While Belarusian border guards force people toward the Polish side, the Polish guards attempts to catch them and pushback onto Belarusian territory. For over three years, the area has been officially declared under a state of emergency, and operations of humanitarian organizations have been completely restricted.
In this case, the work of activists, some of whom are simply residents of the region, primarily involves assisting people who have gotten lost in the forest or become too weak to continue their journey. People get frozen, wet, dehydrated, they suffer from fractures, joint dislocations, cuts, bruises, malnutrition or food poisoning, hypothermia and extreme exhaustion. The interventions are mainly about searching and finding people in the forest and delivering medical first aid on a spot and providing essential things, such as hot food, dry shoes and clothes, phones, and a lot of water. All of these actions are carried out in hiding.
The third case concerns the rights of queer people, who are in Poland among the social groups most at risk of stigmatization, exclusion, and violence in everyday life. Trans- and non-binary inclusive health care is rare and hardly available, requiring significant financial resources. Queer activism primarily focuses on mutual aid and community-organizing, providing all kinds of necessary support and empowerment to LGBTQ+ people. It involves debunking myths and fake news on transitioning, translating up-to-date academic sources on hormone intake or gender-affirming therapy, giving guidance on taking injections safely, providing psychological support, sharing own experiences of transition, recommending trusted sources of information and reliable health services. It is also about crowdfunding and making transitions financially accessible.
In all these three domains, activists engage in work that addresses fundamental human needs related to health, well-being, or simply physical survival. In other words, they sustain and reproduce life. Their work is intimately connected with the materiality of human body and relies on very ordinary, practical tasks. Dozens of people engage every day in practices I define as illegitimate care. The term refers to a specific form of social reproduction. It is life-making – building relationships and undertaking caregiving that support the preservation of human health or life of those, who, in the given political context are constructed as undesirable, dangerous, immoral, or illegal and are thus left behind or targeted by the state. Care becomes illegitimate, and consequently subject to repression and punishment, when it concerns individuals whose lives are regarded as inferior or, in the worst case, contradictory and threatening to current interests of the neoliberal nation-state.
At the moment, there are two legal cases against illegitimate care in Poland. Justyna Wydrzyńska, an activist who provided abortion pills to Anna – a woman who, experienced violence from her husband and sought to terminate her pregnancy – is facing up to three years in prison. A group of five individuals who provided humanitarian aid at the border to a nine-member family from Iraq, including seven children, are facing up to five years in prison. Both cases are under public prosecution.
In Poland, illegitimate care is primarily carried out by women and queer individuals, who stand for an absolute majority of those involved in the described struggles. Our interviewees openly call themselves as intersectional feminists: supporting abortion, Black, racialized and transgender lives are integral parts of the same ideological package. Activists are deeply aware of political mechanisms that unequally shape human vulnerability to harm and violence. Intersectionality is not merely a programmatic declaration but, above all, a practical imperative. Some individuals, especially in smaller locations, remain simultaneously engaged in multiple struggles.
One person, living in a town in western Poland, who works daily in a local LGBTQ organization, shared: “But also, if someone needs to be driven to Germany for an abortion, or if we need to organize emergency contraception pills, the border is close. The same goes for providing shelter to someone coming from the Polish-Belarusian border… So let’s say we do many things.”
Social temporalities and polyphony of crisis
Conversations with activists reveal the future as a time marked by crisis — an endangered future. Under conditions that one of the interviewees described as a “small end of the world,” the future ceases to be a smooth extension of the present. It is not simply tomorrow which comes after today, naturally evolves from today.
By contrast, it is marked by a rupture. Suddenly, the flow of events changes, breaks down and the entire future comes into question. No one knows what will happen next. The future is no longer full of possibilities but becomes a container for many things that can go wrong.
In times of crisis, the future also drastically shortens; the time horizon contracts to the next few hours or just one or a few days. Time accelerates. The future becomes urgent, determined by what is happening right now. In this brief and dense perspective, when everything is at stake, as one of our interviewees points out, it is difficult to determine whether what is being done “concerns the future or more the present.” What matters is the reaction here and now, a direct intervention in the flow of events to avoid the danger, to course correct.
Our futures are pre-conditioned and pre-structured. Because of the pressures of global capitalism, climate disaster, ableist regimes, misogyny, racism, homo- and transphobia, human vulnerabilities are distributed within our societies in an extremely unequal way. Futures at risk are not synchronised. While for many, the question of what lies ahead, may represent an intellectual challenge or social pastime (or a topic of nice evening gathering), for others, it is a matter of sheer survival.
Feminist activists see this polyphony of crises, as they are unfolding. One feminist recalls the end of February 2022 — the time when Putin’s Russia attacked Ukraine. She was traveling by train on a long-awaited holiday. The conductor walked through the carriage asking if there were any people from Ukraine, informing that those fleeing the war were exempt from buying tickets. Our interviewee recalled the thought that crossed her mind: “I am sitting here, going on holiday, and someone else is fleeing from war and doesn’t even know where to go, it is just about direction – to the West (…) they do not know what’s next.”
Resistance Beyond Hope
When asked about what awaits us in the future, most activists share that they expect no positive changes. They attribute these rather negative beliefs to political realism. They say “we are simply watching reality,” “we have no illusions.” They spontaneously refer to the EU’s migration policy, climate catastrophe, the regime of Putin, genocide in Gaza, or the election of Donald Trump, they say “the governments are not in any way on the side of the people.” Feminism does not win, patriarchy does not fall, we are far from overthrowing capitalism. Activists notice dystopian scenarios materializing before our eyes.
The issues they deal with have remained unchanged for years. Some of them bid farewell to past dreams, no longer believing they will “see any of those big changes in their lifetime.” One queer person says, “when I was 13, I thought that by the time I was 25, we would have civil partnerships and I’d be able to get married, but now I’m 33, and what? There is nothing here.” At the same time, however, all of those pessimistic activists almost immediately add: “with full awareness that everything could fall apart, I don’t give up on acting. (…) I share resignation, but I just do what I can to help myself and others.” It becomes impossible to stop when “certain things are unresolved.” Referring to ‘no future’ mode, one of the activists directly says, “I do things despite that.”
This observation is of fundamental importance as it goes against intellectual, theoretical, but also popular conventions. Fatalism or pessimism about the future — the expected catastrophe and the feeling that little can be done to avoid it — does not have to imply political withdrawal or passivity.
Our research shows that the simplified division between those who have hope and those who have lost it, does not offer sufficient explanation when it comes to political resistance. Being optimistic and having hope is not necessary to engage in feminist struggles. What is crucial is a readiness to do the labour and continue it despite all the obstacles and setbacks, despite all kind of risks and fear. The ethos of reacting to harm — refusing to remain passive in the face of injustice — and political solidarity — a sense of responsibility for fellow citizens and non-citizens or simply humans, opposing the idea that there are those among us who do not deserve our care — play a much more significant role in activating practical dissent.
Critical topographies and powerful resistance
But what is the political value of these often invisible feminist mobilizations? What kind of impact does the illegitimate care bring about? The narratives of those directly engaged paint a rather modest picture — they describe what they do as “a micro-scale,” “working behind the scenes,” or “small steps.” Their interventions are practical, tangible and often short-term.
It seems to me that these ‘self-evaluations’ come from a tacitly assumed juxtaposition with conventional imagination of what is big in politics: loud white men in suits, TV shows, camera lights, elections, legal reforms, or mediatized crowds.
But a different perspective is possible. I suggest adopting a critical topographical perspective. It views the subjects located in a given, physical space through a dense web of overlapping and intertwined physical, political, and cultural conditions. Although these interdependent elements originate from different geographic scales, they operate together, configuring particular spaces and their material, embodied effects.
For example, the critical topography of the Polish-Belarusian border includes: a) the physical landscape and the natural environment, called by migrants the “Polish jungle“; b) Polish legal regulations resulting from the state of emergency; c) the current political context of the ongoing presidential campaign in Poland; d) military threats from Russia and the ongoing war in Ukraine; e) EU neo-colonial visa regimes and racist asylum policies; lastly, g) global capitalism that drives militarism and the extraction of fossil fuels, destroys living conditions of millions in the Global South and thus creating an impetus for massive migrations.
This list is obviously not exhaustive — it is just a glimpse into how a critical topography might be mapped. Similarly, we can think about the topography of private spaces, like bathrooms, where individuals take abortion pills or hormones. I suggest this critical thinking exercise to ignite our imagination about the forces that intersectional feminists protect against on regular basis. Every abortion, every human life saved in the forest or a proud queer life, is a victory over extraordinary powers. It is a battle effectively won under conditions of extreme disparity in financial, political and symbolic capital. In the light of this perspective, feminist activism shows incredible resilience and perseverance, and it fully shines.
Its unusual strength is also reflected in numbers. Without any support from public funds, last year, abortion activists from Abortion Without Borders helped with 47,000 abortions, including organizing nearly 1,500 trips abroad for people from Poland. Since the beginning of the humanitarian crisis at the Polish-Belarusian border, assistance has been provided to over 14,000 people fleeing from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Sudan. After so-called ‘LGBT-free zones’ started emerging in Poland, queer community across the country mobilized for organizing pride marches. The number of towns where public affirmation of queer life and gay pride has become possible for at least one day a year has increased from 7 to 50. The smallest town where a pride march took place last year had fewer than 10,000 residents.
Infrastructure of Care and Resistance
And the last remark. Sociology of social movements teaches us that one of the most important things that any social movement can achieve is the creation of resources that enable future mobilizations to come and thrive. The resources involve not only material objects or money, but mostly knowledge, practical skills and tactics, social connections, and attitudes of engagement and disobedience; the courage to stand up, to go to the streets, to gather with others. Through everyday work feminist activism creates powerful social infrastructures of resistance and care, which are indispensable in times of crisis. With each single oppositional practice, the potential for future resistance grows. This is a safeguard, a lifeline thrown by dozens of anonymous activists from the present into our future.
Thank you.
Author: Marta Rawłuszko, University of Warsaw. 5th May 2025
The featured image of Marta’s speech is used courtesy of Klaus Ranger.