Nira Yuval-Davis

Intersectionality and Feminist Politics

This article explores various analytical issues involved in conceptualizing the interrelationships of gender, class, race and ethnicity and other social divisions. It compares the debate on these issues that took place in Britain in the 1980s and around the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism. It examines issues such as the relative helpfulness of additive or mutually constitutive models of intersectional social divisions; the different analytical levels at which social divisions need to be studied, their ontological base and their relations to each other. The final section of the article attempts critically to assess a specific intersectional methodological approach for engaging in aid and human rights work in the South.

Belonging and the politics of belonging

My aim in this chapter is to outline an analytical framework for the study of belonging and the politics of belonging. It is important to differentiate between the two. Belonging is about emotional attachment, about feeling ‘at home’ and, as Michael Ignatieff (2001) points out, about feeling ‘safe’. In the aftermath of 7/7, the 2005 bombings in London, such a definition takes on a new, if problematic, poignancy. Belonging tends to be naturalised, and becomes articulated and politicised only when it is threatened in some way. The politics of belonging comprises specific political projects aimed at constructing belonging in particular ways, to particular collectivities that are, at the same time, themselves being constructed by these projects in very particular ways. An analytical differentiation between belonging and the politics of belonging is, therefore, crucial for any critical political discourse on nationalism, racism or other contemporary politics of belonging (see Yuval-Davis 2011). In this chapter, there is only space to outline some of the central features of such an analytical framework.

Women, Citizenship and Difference

The article discusses some of the major issues which need to be examined in a gendered reading of citizenship. However, its basic claim is that a comparative study of citizenship should consider the issue of womens citizenship not only by contrast to that of men, but also in relation to womens affiliation to dominant or subordinate groups, their ethnicity, origin and urban or rural residence. It should also take into consideration global and transnational positionings of these citizenships. The article challenges the gender-blind and Westocentric character of many of the most hegemonic theorizations of citizenship, focusing in particular on the questions of membership in ‘the community’, group rights and social difference and the ways binaries of public/private and active/passive have been constructed to differentiate between different kinds of citizenships. The article argues that in order to be able to analyse adequately peoples citizenship, especially in this era of ethnicization on the one hand and globalization on the other hand, and with the rapid pace at which relationships between states and their civil societies are changing, citizenship should best be analysed as a multi-tiered construct which applies, at the same time to peoples membership in sub-, cross- and supra-national collectivities as well as in states.

The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations

Introduction: Framing the Questions The Citizenship Question: Of the State and Beyond The National Question: From the Indigenous to the Diasporic The Religious Question: The Sacred, the Cultural and the Political The Cosmopolitan Question: Situating the Human and Human Rights The Caring Question: The Emotional and the Political Concluding Remarks

Secure borders and safe haven and the gendered politics of belonging: Beyond social cohesion

This article focuses on contemporary gendered politics of migration and belonging in Britain. The article starts with an examination of migration and the construction of boundaries in Europe and, more specifically, the gendered implications of recent immigration policies (labour, family, asylum) and the gendered nature of the notion of “secure borders” as well as that of “safe haven” in the UK White Paper. In particular, we address and problematize notions of belonging and “social cohesion” which occupy a central conceptual plank in this construction and consider how this relates to wider debates in contemporary Britain. Our concluding remarks raise central issues of debate with which the struggles against racism and feminism should engage. We stress the importance of intersectionality to such an analysis.

Intersectionality, Citizenship and Contemporary Politics of Belonging

Abstract The paper examines the effects of intersecting social divisions on constructions of multi‐layered citizenships and the politics of belonging in contemporary Britain. It starts with conceptual clarifications of the notions of citizenship, belonging and intersectionality and then turns to examine contemporary politics of belonging in contemporary Britain, focusing on the current debate on the ‘death of multiculturalism’ and on ‘social cohesion’. It illustrates how the use of civic and democratic values as signifiers of belonging can end up as exclusionary, rather than inclusionary in that discourse.

Women and the biological reproduction of “the nation”

Abstract This article examines the ways women affect and are affected by national and ethnic processes in relation to womens role as biological reproducers of the nation. In particular, the article examines three hegemonic discourses in relation to national reproduction — the “people as power” discourse, the eugenist discourse, and the Malthusian discourse — and the ways they construct women. In its conclusion, the article starts to draw some connections between womens roles as biological reproducers of the nation and their rights as women and as citizens.

Theorizing identity: beyond the 'us' and 'them' dichotomy.

ABSTRACT Yuval-Davis discusses three interconnected questions relating to identity. She first examines whether and in what ways the notion of identity should be theorized, on the one hand, and empirically researched, on the other, focusing on the opposing views of Stuart Hall and Robin Williams. She then examines the contested question of what is identity, positioning it in relation to notions of belonging and the politics of belonging, and in relation to several influential schools of thought, especially those that construct identity as a mode of narrative, as a mode of performativity or as a dialogical practice. Her third interrelated question concerns the boundaries of identity and the relationship between self and non-self. She explores both social psychological and psychoanalytical approaches to that question, and deals with questions such as reflexivity, identifications and forced identities. The last part of the article explores several types of relationships between self and non-self, such as: ‘me’ and ‘us’; ‘me/us’ and ‘them’; ‘me’ and other ‘others’; ‘me’ and the transversal ‘us/them’. Yuval-Daviss basic argument here is that dichotomous notions of identity and difference, when theorizing boundaries of individual and collective identities, are more misleading than explanatory.

Imagined boundaries and borders: A gendered gaze

The article explores various ways collectivity boundaries and territorial borders, as well as the act of crossing them, are experienced and imagined, particularly by women. In doing so, the article draws on autobiographical material collected by email from women in about 25 different countries.

Participatory Theatre as a Research Methodology: Identity, Performance and Social Action Among Refugees

The paper is based on the ESRC research project: ‘Identity, Performance and Social Action: Community Theatre Among Refugees’ which is part of the research programme on ‘Identities and Social Action’. After describing the project, the paper examines the methodological specificities and different stages of Playback and Forum Theatre. The latter includes image work, character building, scenes and interventions. It argues that overall participatory theatre, techniques as sociological research methods, provide different kinds of data and information than other methods – embodied, dialogical and illustrative. The paper ends by examining the circumstances in which the use of these techniques as research methodology are be beneficial. It also calls for an overall wider use of these techniques in sociological research, especially to study narratives of identity of marginalised groups, as well as to illustrate perceptions and experiences of social positionings and power relations in and outside community groupings. Using participatory theatre as a research tool, therefore, can be considered as one form of action research.