Sara de Jong

Intersectionalizing European politics: bridging gender and ethnicity

This Dialogues section brings together research from two hitherto separate interdisciplinary strands of European scholarship on politics: Gender Studies, and Migration and Ethnic Studies. Combining theories, concepts, methods, and findings, the papers demonstrate what each field can learn from the other. By exploring various forms of citizenship and representation of ethnic minorities in Western Europe, this section addresses the key contributions of Gender Studies and Migration and Ethnic Studies: intersectionality and the critique of methodological nationalism, respectively. Intersectionality challenges scholars to cross gender with other categories such as ethnicity. Methodological nationalism refers to the naturalization of national categories; critics dispute the assumption that the nation/state/society is the natural social and political form of contemporary politics. Both approaches are far from mainstream in political science, and despite their potential they are rarely combined. This essay argues that central future challenges for political science are (1) to mainstream intersectional analysis; (2) to be critical of the construction of taken-for-granted categories and the way such “fixed” categories result from our focus on nation-states; and (3) to develop new mix-method toolkits to make this exercise feasible.

Constructive Complicity Enacted? The Reflections of Women NGO and IGO Workers on their Practices

Feminists have faced and are still facing a similar critique as NGOs and development organisations, namely, that they draw on predominantly Western, middle-class values and constructs in their work. The notions of reflexivity as used in feminist theory and the notion of constructive complicity as introduced in postcolonial theory are both responses to the need to find ways to operate productively and responsibly within unequal power structures. This paper will explore the parallels between this reflexivity and acknowledgement of complicity. It will consider whether and if so, how reflexivity and constructive complicity can be translated into NGO practices using material collected from interviews with women located in the global North who work for organisations that seek to support women in and from the global South.Feminists have faced and are still facing a similar critique as NGOs and development organisations, namely, that they draw on predominantly Western, middle-class values and constructs in their work. The notions of reflexivity as used in feminist theory and the notion of constructive complicity as introduced in postcolonial theory are both responses to the need to find ways to operate productively and responsibly within unequal power structures. This paper will explore the parallels between this reflexivity and acknowledgement of complicity. It will consider whether and if so, how reflexivity and constructive complicity can be translated into NGO practices using material collected from interviews with women located in the global North who work for organisations that seek to support women in and from the global South.

Converging logics? Managing migration and managing diversity

ABSTRACTMigration management and diversity management are recognised as central paradigms in the context of migration and plural societies. A review of scholarly literature analysing the discourses and practices of migration and diversity management reveal that the two phenomena have been studied in isolation and that research on diversity management has predominantly been published in organisation and management literature rather than being integrated in the field of ethnic and migration studies. This article argues that it is relevant and fruitful to study migration management and diversity management in conjunction, since there are significant thematic and logical convergences, and to incorporate diversity management in the study of migration in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the entanglement of migration and diversity management. Based on a synthesis of scholarship and analysis of European reports, the article proposes to recognise three main convergences between the logic of migration mana...ABSTRACT Migration management and diversity management are recognised as central paradigms in the context of migration and plural societies. A review of scholarly literature analysing the discourses and practices of migration and diversity management reveal that the two phenomena have been studied in isolation and that research on diversity management has predominantly been published in organisation and management literature rather than being integrated in the field of ethnic and migration studies. This article argues that it is relevant and fruitful to study migration management and diversity management in conjunction, since there are significant thematic and logical convergences, and to incorporate diversity management in the study of migration in order to obtain a deeper understanding of the entanglement of migration and diversity management. Based on a synthesis of scholarship and analysis of European reports, the article proposes to recognise three main convergences between the logic of migration management and diversity management: the presentation of migration and plurality as the ‘new’ norm; optimisation; and technocracy. Finally, I suggest directions for a shared research agenda, and, drawing on the prominence of a Foucauldian governmentality framework in critical studies of migration and diversity management, present this as a potentially useful point of departure.

Discontinuous intersections: second-generation immigrant girls in transition from school to work

This article provides a theoretical framework for analysing discrimination against second-generation immigrant girls in education and the labour market by proposing an intersectional approach. Drawing upon selected elements of the findings of our Neskak Gora Project – a qualitative research conducted between 2009 and 2011 in Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK and funded by the EC Daphne III Programme – we show that the intersection of class, gender and ‘race’/ethnicity, which is at play at the structural, institutional and discursive levels of systems of intersectional discrimination, works in variable ways. While gendered educational structures seem partly to benefit female immigrant youth at school, gendered disadvantages are experienced particularly in the transition to the labour market. This highlights the necessary acknowledgement of the ‘discontinuity’ of axes of inequality that are manifested in different ways, according to specific contexts, institutional settings and moments of the individuals life cycle.

Mainstream(ing) Has Never Run Clean, Perhaps Never Can: Gender in the Main/Stream of Development

It might be a daunting task in general to respond to Maitrayee Mukhopadhyay’s insightful and influential article about the limited effects of gender mainstreaming in development. However, this assignment is especially formidable given the fact that her article, with the beautiful evocative title ‘Mainstreaming Gender or “Streaming” Gender Away: Feminists Marooned in the Development Business’, stood at the beginning of an extensive and rich debate that has unfolded over the last ten years since the article’s publication in 2004. Concerns about the failure of gender mainstreaming to have the radical transformative impact it had been anticipated to offer post-Beijing have been expressed in numerous writings (Debusscher 2012; Lang 2009; Moser and Moser 2005; Parpart 2014; Walby 2005b) and in special issues dedicated to the topic (Feminist Legal Studies 2002; Gender and Development 2005; International Feminist Journal of Politics 2005; Social Politics 2005). Contributions to this debate have not limited themselves to diagnosing the (symptoms of the) problem and lamenting the dilution of gender mainstreaming once operationalized in NGOs and institutions, but consequently also discuss the possible reasons for its lack of success as well as potential solutions to make gender mainstreaming more effective.

The co-optation of feminisms: a research agenda

ABSTRACT This article introduces the thematic section “The co-optation of feminisms: a research agenda,” which brings together contributions that discuss the appropriation, dilution and reinterpretation of feminist discourses, and practices by nonfeminist actors for their purposes. Recognizing the myriad ways in which feminist scholars and activists have shared their concerns with co-optation within their respective subfields, we propose that it is productive to develop a more substantive research agenda around co-optation. In the first section, we seek to contribute to this by synthesizing the scattered literature on co-optation in various feminist subfields. Subsequently, we present a selection of studies on co-optation published outside feminist studies in order to identify concepts and empirical insights that are instructive for developing a feminist research agenda on co-optation. This forms the basis for a set of guiding questions that we propose could be helpful in analyzing co-optation. The article finally presents the contributions to this thematic section and discusses what each article adds to our understanding and conceptualization of co-optation.

Cultural Brokers in Post-colonial Migration Regimes

This chapter argues that there are significant continuities between gendered and racialised cultural brokers, which emerged in the colonial era as mediators between settlers/colonisers and indigenous peoples, and contemporary subjects within post-colonial migration regimes. I present and analyse a range of illustrative examples from an on-going research project on how cultural brokers are mobilised in the governance of migration and integration in Austria. I argue that contemporary cultural brokers facilitate the sedimentation of normative integration orders and can be instrumentalised to demarcate boundaries between ‘Self’ and cultural ‘Other.’ The chapter subsequently explores the possibilities for contestation from the location of the cultural broker. I suggest that a counter-hegemonic reading reveals that cultural brokers can employ their ‘double vision’ to shift their anticipated roles and manipulate interpretations.

Brokerage and transnationalism: present and past intermediaries, social mobility, and mixed loyalties

ABSTRACT This article brings two distinct sets of literatures in dialogue with one another: ethnohistorical studies on cultural brokerage and mediation in colonial/settler societies and studies of contemporary transnational activities. The article argues that this is productive because it throws into sharper relief three significant areas of contention that are a common thread of many empirical transnational studies, but are rarely of central concern. For each of these three identified aspects, respectively, the desire for mediation, social mobility, and mixed loyalties, it traces the historical resonance with cultural brokerage and shows how ethnohistorical research can complicate current transnational studies. It thereby challenges transnational scholarship’s focus on the newness of transnational exchange and demonstrates how ethnohistorical findings on brokers and mediators can aid the development of the research agenda of transnational studies.This article brings two distinct sets of literatures in dialogue with one another: ethnohistorical studies on cultural brokerage and mediation in colonial/settler societies and studies of contemporary transnational activities. The article argues that this is productive because it throws into sharper relief three significant areas of contention that are a common thread of many empirical transnational studies, but are rarely of central concern. For each of these three identified aspects, respectively, the desire for mediation, social mobility, and mixed loyalties, it traces the historical resonance with cultural brokerage and shows how ethnohistorical research can complicate current transnational studies. It thereby challenges transnational scholarship’s focus on the newness of transnational exchange and demonstrates how ethnohistorical findings on brokers and mediators can aid the development of the research agenda of transnational studies.

Managing Migration with Stories? The IOM “i am a migrant” Campaign

This article offers an analysis of the aim, audience, form and content of the “i am a migrant” campaign of the International Organisation of Migration (IOM). We suggest that the campaign directs public opinion in Western ‘host countries’. We furthermore propose that the campaign’s website as a platform for migrants’ voices is not antithetical to the mission of the IOM to manage migration according to a logic of productivity and rationality, but rather a logical extension of it. We show that the migrant narratives presented not only confirm, but also disrupt the assumed naturalness of migrants’ strong ties with their countries of origin, frequently underpinning established policy on the migration-development nexus.

Relocating subalternity: scattered speculations on the conundrum of a concept

ABSTRACT This article introduces the special issue ‘Relocating Subalternity: Scattered Speculations on the Conundrum of a Concept’, in which we take Spivak’s particular invocation of (gendered) subalternity and its scholarly reception as a point of departure to confront the ‘foreclosure’ of subalternity. While the gesture of (re)locating inevitably triggers a tense dialectic between the attempt to define contingent empirical loci and subalternity’s resistance to be empirically circumscribed, we suggest that relocating the subaltern from her (non)place may provide constructive avenues for performing a productive ‘ab-use’ of the notion of subalternity. The engagement with the notion of subalternity that this issue encourages suggests that one should claim the heuristic epistemological and political value of the category of subalternity against every conceptual attempt to dilute its aporetic specificity, as well as against any simplistic effort to shorten the distances between the subaltern and its possible interlocutors in the name of too-easy transnational alliances.