Sara R. Farris

In the Name of Women's Rights. The Rise of Femonationalism

This book examines the demands for womens rights from an unlikely collection of right-wing nationalist political parties, neoliberals, and some feminist theorists and policy makers. Focusing on contemporary France, Italy, and the Netherlands, Farris labels this exploitation and co-optation of feminist themes by anti-Islam and xenophobic campaigns as “femonationalism.” She shows that by characterizing Muslim males as dangerous to western societies and as oppressors of women, and by emphasizing the need to rescue Muslim and migrant women, these groups use gender equality to justify their racist rhetoric and policies. This practice also serves an economic function. Farris analyzes how neoliberal civic integration policies and feminist groups funnel Muslim and non-western migrant women into the segregating domestic and caregiving industries, all the while claiming to promote their emancipation. In the Name of Womens Rights documents the links between racism, feminism, and the ways in which non-western women are instrumentalized for a variety of political and economic purposes.

Migrants' Regular Army of Labour: Gender Dimensions of the Impact of the Global Economic Crisis on Migrant Labor in Western Europe

The purpose of this article is to remedy the lack of explanatory endeavours concerning the positive performance of female migrant workers during the recent economic crisis in Western Europe. This phenomenon both interrogates the established association between economic downturns and their negative impact on migrant labour in low-skilled jobs and enriches the theory of the reserve army of labour, which has been applied to understanding the fragile status of migrant workers in Western economies. Secondary analysis of Labor Force Survey (LFS) and OECD data concerning the impact of the crisis on migrant labour shows that women employed in the care-domestic sector have been affected significantly less than men employed in manufacture and constructions. To explain this evidence, the article proposes a theoretical framework that draws on key concepts and debates in different strands of sociology: the increasing demand for paid care-domestic work due to the ageing population and the growth of native-born womens rates of activity; the commodification of care and the state management of migration; the affectivity and spatial fixity of care-domestic labour. All these factors contribute to configure female migrant labour, mostly employed in the reproductive sector, as a ‘regular’ rather than a reserve army of labour.

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.

An 'Ideal Type' Called Orientalism: Selective Affinities between Edward Said and Max Weber

Edward Saids Orientalism was first published in 1978. In this work, Said demolished the myths of the Orient that had been made famous by colonial literature as well as by European social sciences, revealing the intrinsically Eurocentric nature of discourses on the non-European ‘Other’. Though this influential work has been often praised, criticized and compared at the most disparate levels, there has not yet been an attempt to analyse the Orientalism that Said denounced in comparison to one of its principal sources of inspiration and diffusion, namely, Max Weber. This neglect in the literature is even more significant insofar as Said himself referred to Weber as a central theorist in the family portrait of Orientalists, due to his historical comparisons between different religions and also to his refinement of the methodological basis of a stereotypical Orientalist discourse by means of the concept of an ideal type. This essay explores in detail the Said-Weber relation. In particular, it analyses the numerous analogies between the analytical structure of the two authors: from their epistemological ambivalence on the relation between realism-constructivism, to the relationship with Foucault and Marx and the employment of a cultural-political nexus underlying their analysis of the relations of dominion between the Orient and the Occident. The essay demonstrates that despite their apparent irreconcilability, the theoretical structures of Saids and Webers arguments are less different than is often supposed.

Die politische Ökonomie des Femonationalismus

In recent years nationalist-xenophobic parties but also neo-liberal governments across Europe have increasingly deployed notions related to gender equality in order to depict male Muslim citizens – and male non-Western migrants more in general – as unable to respect women’s rights. Recent discourses about multiculturalism and integration have correspondingly been strongly marked by demands for migrants to adapt to Western culture and values; one of the essential items in such a list of values being gender equality. The mobilization and instrumentalisation of the notion of gender and women’s emancipation, thus, constitutes one of the most important aspects that characterize the current political conjuncture. Furthermore, this mobilization has divided feminist intellectuals and activists in particular, leading to a strongdichotomization. In orderto address the „discursive formation” that brings together the heterogeneous anti-Islam and anti-(male)immigrant concerns of nationalist parties, of some feminists and of neo-liberal governments under the idea of gender equality, I propose to employ the term „Femonationalism“. Furthermore, the aim of this article is to account for the various attempts to employ „gender“ in contemporarydiscussionsofmigrants’ and particularly Muslims’ integration with a „political-economic” perspective. In doing so, I hope to open a discussion about a dimension, i. e. the political-economic one, which has been either overlooked or insufficiently analysed.

‘Subaltern victims’ or ‘useful resources’? Migrant women in the Lega Nord ideology and politics

This chapter focuses on how the Italian party of the Northern League mobilizes the issue of gender equality to legitimize its anti-immigration claims. By drawing on two qualitative studies of this populist radical right party, we shed light on the ‘double standard’ which the party applies to migrant men and women within its discourse and politics. We also show how this ‘double standard’ is negotiated by female activists. We argue that this is linked to the familistic system that the party supports. Within such a system migrant women play a key role as paid providers of social reproductive work. Combining ethnographic and documentary data, the chapter thus connects the issue of the gendered anti-immigration politics with recent debates on gendered migration and on the international division of care work.

Religion as the Source of the Self. Max Weber’s Hypothesis

Amidst the recent resurgence of interest in religion as one of the main ‘sources of the self’, Max Weber’s argument in the Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie can make an important contribution. The importance of individuation 1 to the rise of capitalism in Weber’s account has usually been related to the process of autonomisation of the individual from the ‘community of blood’ that took place in the Jewish-Christian tradition in the West. The author argues that Weber in fact proposed a much more sophisticated reconstruction of the processes of individuation than is commonly supposed. By means of a comparative reconstruction of the relation between religion, individual and society in several cultural contexts, Weber proposed a complex analysis of different processes of individuation, in which the notion of ‘personality’ plays a crucial role.

Workerism's Inimical Incursions: On Mario Tronti's Weberianism

This article considers the engagement of Mario Tronti - one of the leading figures of classical Italian workerism [operaismo] - with the thought of Max Weber. Weber constituted one of Tronti’s most important cattivi maestri. By analysing Weber’s influence upon Tronti’s development, this article aims to show the ways in which this encounter affected his Marxism and political theory in general. In particular, during the period of the debate in Italian Marxism about the thesis of the autonomy of the political, Tronti increasingly adopted Weberian terminology and theoretical points of reference. Ultimately, the article argues that Tronti’s heretical method led him to incorporate and to re-propose theoretical and political problematics that are characteristic of bourgeois political theory: namely, the dyad administration/charisma, and a teleological and anthropological approach to history. Focusing upon this heterodox encounter therefore enables us to understand one of the trajectories of the transformation of Marxism that occurred during its recurrent rendezvous with the ‘Marx of the bourgeoisie’.

Identità sociale e pregiudizio

The operative definition of the concept of social identity (Tajfel), has emphasized three dimensions: social identity (spatial/ideological belonging); social identification (belonging to groups); ideological/religious identity. Strong social identities are shown to be associated with representation of immigrants and ideological vision marked by prejudice, thus confirming the theory