Programme full

Austerity Activism: Minority Women and Intersectional Justice Claims
Emejulu, A., Bassel, L.
(University of Edinburgh)
Thursday 16 April 2015 11:00 - 12:30
PAPER SESSION 4
In this paper we draw on our ongoing work exploring the challenges and opportunities of migrant and minority
women’s grassroots activism in times of austerity in the UK and France. We build on our conceptual work which finds
similar processes at work in ostensibly opposite contexts. In both ‘difference-blind’ France and the ‘multicultural’
United Kingdom, we found that minority women’s social justice claims are (mis)recognised by institutional and social
actors (2010). Working with non-governmental organisation networks in the England, Scotland and France, we
explore how these organisations mobilise against the challenges facing minority women as well as how these women
are organising within NGOs in the context of the economic crisis. Understanding the influence of austerity measures
on activism for gender and racial justice generates valuable insights into the ‘views from below’ in relation to austerity
and fills an important knowledge gap in terms of understanding the political behaviour of minority women in public
spaces in what are considered to be ‘opposite’ contexts in their treatment of diversity.
A Perfect Storm? British Ethnic Minorities in Times of Recession and Austerity: Complementing Statistical
Evidence with Voices from the Ground
Sosenko, F.
(Heriot-Watt University)
This paper brings together available quantitative evidence on the impact of post-2008 economic recession and post-
2010 austerity programme on ethnic minorities in the UK with qualitative evidence collected for an exploratory study in
Glasgow in 2013. By using recent analyses of the cumulative impacts of austerity measures across protected
characteristics, the paper engages with the concept of intersectionality and questions the usefulness of single-aspect
Equality Impact Assessments carried out by public authorities. It also reflects on whether evidence from the past few
years calls for further refining of long-standing theories of economic functioning of minority ethnic individuals and
groups.
Race, Ethnicity and Migration 2
W709, HAMISH WOOD BUILDING
RACE AND ETHNICITY SUB-STREAM: RACISM, XENOPHOBIA AND NATIONALISM
What Impact Has UKIP Had on the Immigration Debate in the UK?
Adams, P.
(University of Greenwich)
In recent years the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) has attracted considerable media attention, has
disrupted Britain's major parties and enjoyed electoral success. By linking it's core issue of withdrawal from the
European Union to immigration UKIP has widened it's focus from what many see as a peripheral issue to an issue
which is consistently ranked at or near the top of voter's concerns. This has enabled UKIP to present to the public a
populist and nationalist agenda which constructs immigration as a threat to the economic interests and cultural identity
of the UK. This limited and narrow, but also clear and coherent, agenda has been effective in a context of widespread
economic hardship and public antipathy to the major political parties. In the process UKIP has become the major
vehicle in Britain for anti-immigration attitudes. This paper will contribute to debates on race and nation via an analysis
of UKIP's impact and its relationship to the immigration debate in the UK. UKIP's impact will be gauged via an analysis
of media reportage and political discourse. The paper will argue that UKIP has contributed to the mainstreaming of a
discourse which constructs immigration as damaging and threatening.
Defining and Contesting ‘the Collective We’: Insights from Post-terror Norway
Ezzati , R., Erdal, M.B.
(Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO)d)
In this paper we discuss how influential actors in society and in public debates perceive the definition and contestation
of unity in the aftermath of a 'critical event'. We ask how the 22 July 2011 attacks in Norway have affected collective
identities; who has the power to define the collective 'we' in Norway; and how are these definitions contested? Our
data consists of 20 semi-structured interviews with individuals in influential roles in government institutions and in the
157 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University