Learning across cases, learning beyond ‘cases’

In this chapter we take a step back to think across the three cases, and ‘beyond’ them. In Section 1, we reflect on our cases in order to avoid the analytical straightjacket of national ‘models’ that can obscure similarities as much as they also elucidate differences. In Section 2, we move ‘beyond’ these cases in the sense of thinking about the internationalist and autonomous dimensions of intersectional and minority women-led organising that we see in the creative, subversive and influential voices and actions of new actors and movements in both France and Britain.

Enterprising activism

In this chapter, we explore how the changing politics of the third sector under austerity problematises minority women’s intersectional social justice claims in Scotland, England and France. We begin by exploring the ‘governable terrain’ of the third sector in each country since the 1990s. As the principle of a ‘welfare mix’ becomes normalised in each country, the reality of having different welfare providers vying for state contracts seems to prompt isomorphic changes whereby third sector organisations refashion themselves in the image of the private sector as a necessity for survival. We then move on to discuss the impact these changes in the third sector are having on minority women’s activism. We analyse how the idea of enterprise has become entrenched within these organisations and how an enterprise culture is problematically reshaping the ways in which organisations think about their mission, practices and programmes of work—especially in relation to minority women. We conclude with a discussion about what the marketisation of the third sector means for minority women. We argue that political racelessness is enacted through enterprise as minority women’s interests are de-politicised and de-prioritised through the transformation of the third sector.

Conclusion: warning signs

In this chapter we sound a further alarm as the European racial contract becomes more explicitly hateful and gains mainstream legitimacy and acceptability, with profound implications for minority women. We consider the ‘burkini ban’ and mass surveillance of Muslim citizens in France, the spike of racism in post-Brexit referendum Britain, the hollow promise of resurgent Scottish nationalism, and the ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe. We argue that against this backdrop, minority women are once again pathologically present but politically absent. What politics of survival lies on the horizon? Rather than prescribing the way forward we insist on political attentiveness to the struggles unfolding in new, creative and subversive ways led by minority women at some times and in some places on their own terms.

Theorising and resisting ‘political racelessness’ in Europe

In this chapter we examine the construction of political racelessness (Goldberg 2006) in Europe and how it is reproduced and legitimised in ways that violently erase and exclude minority women and their interests from the European polity. We begin this chapter with a discussion of why political racelessness is a central feature of postcolonial amnesia in Europe. We move on to discuss how political racelessness is achieved and defended in Europe through the cultivation of ‘white ignorance’ and ‘white innocence’ (Mills 2007; Wekker 2016). We then turn to examine how the white European left—despite a long tradition of anti-racist and anti-fascist resistance—perpetuates political racelessness at the expense of minority groups and minority women in particular. We conclude with a discussion about how we might theorise minority women’s activism in a context of white ignorance in Europe.

Taking minority women’s activism seriously

In this introductory chapter, we discuss the three national contexts in which our research project was based, highlighting the particular citizenship regimes of each country and the implications for our minority women activists. We then move on to provide further details about the research, detailing our methods, sampling, participant characteristics and coding and analysis frame. We define the key terms that we will be using throughout this book. Finally, we conclude with an overview of how the 2008 economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures impacted on minority and migrant women in France and Britain.

The politics of survival

In this chapter we explore minority women’s strategies for survival in informal spaces: self help groups, DIY networks and grassroots community organisations, as well as our participants’ personal narratives of and reflections on coping within neoliberal third sector organisations. Throughout this book ‘activism’ is defined broadly in order to capture the diverse ways in which minority women assert themselves as political agents. We argue that minority women’s activism is either misrecognised or erased by the white left. Given this hostility to a politics that is organised on the basis of race, gender and legal status, this problematises the solidarity work that minority women activists seek to build with their white counterparts as well as ignoring the political dimensions of selfcare. We centre the activism of minority women and note that it is often connected to third sector spaces and should not be dismissed as ‘inauthentic’ for this reason. We conclude by demanding that this politics of survival be recognised as a first step toward solidarity and alliances.

Whose crisis counts?

In this chapter we examine in detail minority women’s institutionalised precarity in pre and post crisis France, England and Scotland. Even though minority women experience systemic social and economic inequalities, too often their experiences are erased or devalued by social movement allies and policymakers alike. This is political racelessness enacted through both political discourse and empirical data gathering and analysis. We argue that minority women experience a paradox of misrecognition—they are simultaneously invisible and hypervisible in the constructions of poverty, the crisis and austertiy. Using an intersectional framework, we will demonstrate how minority women, a heterogeneous group, experience systematic discrimination and multidimensional inequalities based on their race, class, gender and legal status. In this chapter we focus specifically on minority women’s experiences in the labour market as access to the labour market and the quality of available work is a key determinant of poverty and inequality. We also explore the particular ways in which minority women are either rendered invisible or hypervisible in key social policies meant to address their routinised inequalities.