Lucy Jackson

Ways of Seeing: Sexism the Forgotten Prejudice?

Recent developments in feminism, charted in Gender, Place and Culture over the past 21 years, have stressed the relational, differentiated and contested nature of gender. This has led to the rejection of the unified category women, and with this the right for feminism to make claims on behalf of all women. This paper argues that an unintended consequence of this development in ways of thinking about gender is that patriarchy as a form of power relations has become relatively neglected. It draws on research from a European Research Council project (including biographical interviews and case studies of a gym and workplace) to demonstrate that while the development of equality legislation has contained the public expression of the most blatant forms of gender prejudice, sexism persists and is manifest in subtle ways. As a consequence, it can be difficult to name and challenge with the effect that patriarchy as a power structure which systematically (re)produces gender inequalities,is obscured by its ordinariness. Rather, sexism appears only to be ‘seen’ when it affords the instantiation of other forms of prejudice, such as Islamophobia. As such, we argue that Gender, Place and Culture has a responsibility going forward to make sexism as a particular form of prejudice more visible, while also exposing the complexity and fluidity of its intersectional relationship to other forms of oppression and social categories.

‘Big Brother welcomes you’: exploring innovative methods for research with children and young people outside of the home and school environments

This article discusses some of the challenges involved in conducting research with children and young people outside of the home and school environments. We respond to the need to develop new child-centred research techniques which move beyond existing power relations among children and adults by anchoring our approach in the idea of mystery. The paper reports on research utilising a mixed-method design which includes one new technique – the Big Brother diary room. We discuss the unpredictable nature of the fieldwork, reflect on the ‘messiness’ of the research process, and critically evaluate our own research design.

Mapping the meaning of ‘difference’ in Europe: A social topography of prejudice

This paper draws on original empirical research to investigate popular understandings of prejudice in two national contexts: Poland and the United Kingdom. The paper demonstrates how common-sense meanings of prejudice are inflected by the specific histories and geographies of each place: framed in terms of ‘distance’ (Poland) and ‘proximity’ (United Kingdom), respectively. Yet, by treating these national contexts as nodes and linking them analytically the paper also exposes a connectedness in these definitions which brings into relief the common processes that produce prejudice. The paper then explores how inter-linkages between the United Kingdom and Poland within the wider context of the European Union are producing – and circulating through the emerging international currency of ‘political correctness’ – a common critique of equality legislation and a belief that popular concerns about the way national contexts are perceived to be changing as a consequence of super mobility and super diversity are being silenced. This raises a real risk that in the context of European austerity and associated levels of socioeconomic insecurity, negative attitudes and conservative values may begin to be represented as popular normative standards which transcend national contexts to justify harsher political responses towards minorities. As such, the paper concludes by making a case for prejudice reduction strategies to receive much greater priority in both national and European contexts.

Rethinking concepts of the strange and the stranger

Abstract In this paper, we analyse debates regarding the strange and the stranger. In critiquing these debates in geography and the social sciences, we argue that the stranger as a term is often taken for granted and implies assumed knowledge. In deconstructing ‘the stranger’ in the complexities of the modern world, defined by hyper-mobility, super-diversity and increased contact with ‘strangers’, we question the way in which such definitions might lead us to new distinctions allowing us to think beyond the stranger as a figure in isolation to something more relational and complex in nature. In so doing, we flesh out a way in which the geographies of encounter and thinking across difference might build on these theoretical considerations to further knowledge across and beyond difference as identity category, social construct and lived materiality.

The Multiple Voices of Belonging: Migrant Identities and Community Practice in South Wales

The Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) argues that inclusion begins on day one of arrival in the UK and that successful inclusion is closely related to the standard of reception procedures and peoples experience (2006). However, this paper argues that inclusion for migrants within Wales is a complex mixture both of belonging and of exclusion and is at once national, local, and multiple in its formation. This paper moves beyond statistics on belonging and community by attaching a more nuanced and detailed understanding of the everyday situation of belonging and community for migrants living in Wales. By highlighting the way in which belonging is multiscalar, operating in and through the everyday, and is influenced and driven by individual circumstance and context I demonstrate the complexities of this term. This paper draws on in-depth qualitative research conducted in South Wales to outline how migrants in this context attest to and negotiate multiple senses of belonging. In telling their stories, this paper offers new directions in how we approach the nature of belonging for migrant groups by drawing on the practice and performance of everyday life.

Intimate citizenship? Rethinking the politics and experience of citizenship as emotional in Wales and Singapore

Conversations around, and conceptions of, citizenship have changed over time. Assumed initially as a mark of membership, of belonging to a political community (Marshall 1950), the essence of what it means to be a citizen and what the contractual ties of citizenship are have evolved over time. This evolution has been encouraged by processes of migration and increasing mobility. More recently, our ability to traverse geographical and political boundaries has meant that notions of borders and boundaries, of who belongs where and why, have also been subject to dramatic changes. This article investigates the impact of such mobility on the individual lived experience of migrant women who, as a group, have been traditionally excluded from more formal political arenas, and asks questions of what citizenship means for them. Though I do not contest the very political fact of citizenship as status, this article challenges the way in which the nature of this status is assumed or implied for all. This article therefore argues that citizenship itself is a much more fluid concept, incorporating the emotional and lived experience of individuals and that it is in these emotional accounts through which citizenship, and its extended rights and political capabilities, must be understood through a sense of everyday, grounded and personal politics.

Attitudes towards the ‘stranger’: negotiating encounters with difference in the UK and Poland

Abstract Due to recent intensification in international mobility in Europe, its citizens are exposed to a much wider range of lifestyles and competing attitudes towards difference. Individuals are, therefore, increasingly likely to encounter ‘strangers’ and are, therefore, required to negotiate discontinuities and contradictions between the values that are transmitted through different sites. In response, the article explores the concept of the ‘stranger’ through original data collected in the UK and Poland. The article highlights that the construction of who is a stranger depends on national historical contexts, core values and related visions of the society. The UK and Poland have very different histories and experiences with social diversity, impacting on the ways in which individuals negotiate strange encounters. In both countries, the ‘stranger’ is often seen in a negative way and in relation to the minority groups that are perceived to be visibly different, distinct or ‘unknown’ in contemporary times. In Poland, this is now largely articulated through sexual prejudice (homophobia), whilst in the UK, attitudes towards the ‘stranger’ are largely conveyed through religious prejudice (Islamophobia). As such, the article offers a means of understanding how encounters with difference ‘produce’ strangers in different contexts.

‘They kick you because they are not able to kick the ball’ : normative conceptions of sex difference and the politics of exclusion in mixed-sex football

Abstract This study explores the role of normative conceptions of sex difference through a case study of an anti-discrimination football tournament in Warsaw, Poland. The tournament has a variety of anti-discriminatory aims, including anti-racism, anti-homophobia and anti-sexism, where sport is a way to overcome difference and stereotypes. We found that especially efforts to realize anti-sexism through football encountered barriers and normative conceptions of gender in this traditionally segregated sport were in many cases reaffirmed. Male participant’s reactions to the presence of female players often contained surprise and concern, and sex difference was seen as an unavoidable, biological fact which hindered play. We explore participants’ reactions to the gender-mixing rule, as well as the existence of normative conceptions of sex difference that lead to exclusionary practices concerning females in the context of mixed-sex football. We analyse these practices and explore whether participants declare a change of attitude over time.

Performing "Moral Resistance"? Pro-Life and Pro-Choice Activism in Public Space

This article focuses on acts of resistance regarding reproductive politics in contemporary Britain. Drawing on empirical research this article investigates grassroots activism around a complex moral, social, and political problem. This article therefore focuses on a site of resistance in everyday urban environments, investigating the practice and performance involved. Identifying specifically the territory(ies) and territorialities of these specific sites of resistance, this article looks at how opposing groups negotiate conflict in public space in territorial, as well as habitual, ways. Second, the article focuses on questions around the impact, distinction, and novelty both in the immediate and long term of these acts of resistance for those in public space. Here, then, the focus shifts to the reactions to this particular form of protest and questions the “acceptability” of specific resistances in the public imaginary.

Families Apart: Migrant Mothers and the Conflicts of Labor and Love

In this book, Pratt seeks to provide a narrative account of hidden aspects of the migration process. She discusses the affect and emotions that circulate among migrant families as they strive to maintain intimacy across great distances and looks in depth at the way in which affect and emotion are sold. Pratt argues that debates about temporary migration are incomplete, as she admits that previously, for her, “Canadian domestic workers came to life somewhere during their flight across the Pacific Ocean” (p. xxiii). This book therefore brings to the fore the very issues often hidden in debates of temporary migration, focusing on aspects such as the pain and trauma of family separation, the enterprise involved, the choices involved in leaving loved ones behind and the emotional impact that waiting over long distances (both geographically and temporally) has on both migrant mother and children. The accounts presented in the book, however, are not just to ‘tell a story’; Pratt actively promotes a new space of politics and political action for women in this situation. In doing so, she reflects on contemporary state policy and the ineffective dimensions and illegalities of the process of migrant domestic work. Narrating her action research with the Live-In Caregiver Program and the Philippine Women Centre, Pratt demonstrates innovative ways forward for research into labour migration. Within this, she challenges the dominant discourses of ‘being heard’ and calls for the emotional responsibility of all those involved in this process. In order to illustrate this mobilisation, Pratt counter-topographically traces the origins of the story through her narrative on acting out attachments, addressing a third site of invisibility within the story that lies outside the borders of the Canadian state. The book aims to emotionalise politics and activism around the LCP in Canada. Pratt is not only successful in achieving this, but also by presenting her research in new and interesting ways, Pratt is able to engage emotionally with her readers. Rife with narrative, the book provides a challenge to the dominant discourses of migrant workers within geographical research, wherein individual voices are frequently left out and only re-presented by the author; here, Pratt presents the messy, fleshy and embodied emotions present within those immersed in these situations and is therefore able to draw out an affective dimension, promoting a commitment to the agency and autonomy to those involved. Through emotionalising narratives of migration, and by working closely with Space and Polity, Vol. 16, No. 2, 253–255, August 2012