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- Convenors:
-
Carrie Benjamin
(University of Warwick)
Nydia Swaby (SOAS, University of London)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-D320
- Sessions:
- Friday 17 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
This panel explores how whiteness, as a hegemonic discourse, positionality, and area of academic inquiry, operates as a backdrop to national, global and academic debates around staying, moving and settling in Europe.
Long Abstract:
The rise of far-right nationalisms across Europe has produced a great deal of interest on xenophobic political movements, challenges to multiculturalism, and the impact that these discourses have on the everyday lives of migrants. However, much of the recent scholarship has focused on the racialization of migrants themselves, rather than reflecting on the wider national, historic and global contexts that have influenced the perception and reception of migrants in Europe. Behind these debates, whiteness operates as an unremarked background (Ahmed 2007), informing not only how migrants are portrayed, but contributing to the rise of right-wing xenophobic nationalisms across Europe.
We therefore invite ethnographic explorations from different European contexts that unpack the modes, methods and meanings of whiteness and white habitus (Bonilla-Silva et al 2006) and the impact this has on migrants' lives. Papers may address how whiteness operates in political campaigns, contemporary migration discourse, 'colour-blind' or 'race-blind' state policies, or coverage of or responses to terrorist attacks. We also invite multi-sited ethnographies (Lundström 2014) or contributions that move towards or challenge a global understanding of hegemonic whiteness. Finally, in order to build toward a European critical whiteness studies, we welcome contributions that probe the utility and adaptability of Anglophone academic theories of whiteness. How can whiteness theory move across borders and academic traditions, and what can ethnography contribute to its adoption or reinvention?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 17 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
This paper analyses tensions produced by decolonial feminism and a discourse of racialization in feminist and other social movements in the Basque Country which cause me to question the "whiteness" of my anthropology and the legitimacy of my feminism.
Paper long abstract:
In the Basque Country in recent years there has been a growing consciousness of racialization and with it, an increase in the mobilization of those who define themselves as "racialized" and use the term as part of their claims to fair treatment, equality and social justice.
This consciousness has brought certain issues into Basque social movements, including feminism, to which are central a questioning of "white feminism", racial blindness and an inability to perceive privilege. This questioning of the legitimacy of white Basque feminists is challenging a movement with an agenda of fighting oppression both in relation to gender and to being Basque, the language and the right to autonomy.
These tensions are producing an interesting but disconcerting debate in and out of the academy. A group of scholars from Feminist and Gender Studies in the University of the Basque Country decided in 2014 to set up an informal reading group to decolonial theory and feminism. As well as meeting once a month in an alternative bookshop, several members also work with excluded sectors of society and/or militate in anti-racist, feminist and pro-Basque groups.
I propose to examine my own part in this decolonial feminist discussion, with others who have moved into the Basque Country from other parts of the world. It is a discussion which I consider fundamental to my work as a feminist anthropologist who, while acknowledging whiteness of skin and Britishness of birth, wishes to distance herself from "white hegemonic feminism" whatever that may be.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between Islamophobia and whiteness, showing how the latter plays a central role in the process of racialisation and governmentality of Muslims in Portugal.
Paper long abstract:
The so-called "Reconquista" has been taking as the event that created Portuguese nationhood and identity. Historically, this narrative has shaped Portuguese institutions, political horizon and social imagination, and has contributed to portrait the Muslims as "invader", "foreign", "enemies", and in the last years, as "terrorists". Alongside, this national narrative naturalized, projected and perpetuated Portuguese identity as white and Christian. Based on my ethnographic data and academic literature, in this paper I explore the relationship between Islamophobia and whiteness in contemporary Portugal, showing how the latter played a central role in the process of racialisation and hierarchization of populations in colonial and post-colonial period, and how whiteness operates in public policy of surveillance and governmentality of Muslims. In a nutshell, how whiteness operates in the institutionalised practices and policies of Islamophobia and, consequently, in the Muslims' everyday in Portugal.
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores representations of women as they travel across the Middle East and Europe. In particular, it interrogates the intersections of gender performativity, mobility and space.
Paper long abstract:
Instead of concentrating on the analysis of the 'Other' - the migrants and people who live in the margins in Europe, the paper explores the production of representations of women who are in materially and socio-economically privileged positions and who thereby escape the representation of 'a traditional Muslim woman' or that of 'the victimized Other'. The paper explores intersections of gender performativity, mobility and space in the lives of privileged women. An ethnographic inquiry in Cairo and Beirut as well as globally circulating material (such as women's lifestyle magazines and online spaces) provide the basis for my research. By changing the focus from 'migrants' to 'mobile women' and hence to those who are in a position of power, the project explores how the unremarked hegemonic background defined by whiteness operates across borders (Ahmed 2007). Through an exploration of how material and discursive practices are embedded in certain spaces, and mirrored against what is considered the contemporary post-feminist landscape, I develop an analysis of hegemonic genders and sexualities.
Paper short abstract:
This paper draws on two ethnographic projects, one focusing on the experiences of Egyptian migrant parents, the other on parenting professionals, to discuss the elusiveness of race and racism in welfare encounters in Amsterdam.
Paper long abstract:
This paper draws on two ethnographic projects, one focusing on the experiences of Egyptian migrant parents, the other on parenting professionals, to discuss the elusiveness of race and racism in welfare encounters in Amsterdam. In a context in which non-white Dutch figure as burden for, or threat to Dutch society, discussions in two Amsterdam Parent and Child Teams were surprisingly devoid of racial labels, and culturalized assumptions were rarely voiced. Professional protocol and language strips parents of racial, class and other markers, referring only to generic family structures featuring 'mother', 'father', and children, 'boy age 5', 'girl of 9'. This is productive of a color-blind practice that obscures subtle racialized power dynamics between overwhelmingly white Dutch middle class female professionals and mostly poor migrant parents.
On the other side of the table, a 'racism-without-racists' (Bonilla-Silva, 2003) instilled uncertainty and doubt in the Egyptian parents. So, despite evidence of discrimination in society at large, parents found it hard to substantiate their haunting sense of discrimination and alternative explanation for low grades or harsh punishment were always at hand. And, as the burden of proof falls solely on the subjects of racism themselves, parents who sensed racism hardly brought it up, out of fear for repercussions, but also because there was never any hard evidence and so oftentimes they were not even sure themselves. Instead, parents anxiously attended to the wellbeing of their children, particularly in school contexts, in order to minimize the possibility of their children being discriminated against.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the post-socialist recalibration of European whiteness in the contemporary Euro-Atlantic bordering and integration processes in the Balkans.
Paper long abstract:
Focusing on the Balkans as a locale of multiple and overlapping territorial regimes and as an object of global governance, I look at the mobilization of memory, migration, whiteness, gender and sexuality in the sealing of the Balkan refugee passage and the simultaneous deployment of that process towards the racial rearticulation of the Balkans as Euro-Atlantic geography. Following critical, queer, and feminist traditions of geopolitical thought that call for the conceptualization of bodies and populations as key sites of global power politics , I pay attention to the ways in which racialized and gendered populations come to contest, coopt or converge with the larger security infrastructures of post-socialist Euro-Atlantic border regimes.