Thinking with Bevereley Skeggs - Stockholms universitet

Discovering politics of emotion in suburbanfeminismIn recognizing the difficulties that frame the work againstdiscrimination, segregation and racism in Sweden gendermainstreaming and anti-discrimination work usually takedifferent paths. This, in spite of growing racism, homophobiaand anti-feminism, requires civil society, administrators andthe scientific community to be more unified. To articulatethese actors I have proposed some form of transversal politicsstudied within the frame of a research project conducted inthe multicultural community of Fittja (Botkyrka municipalityin the metropolitan region of Stockholm). To advance thiswork I have developed a perspective based on participatoryresearch that turned into transversal research (Velasquez2005b, 2007a).From the interaction among municipal officials, women’snetworks and researchers, I realised two fundamental aspectsin the discussion on transversal politics. The first one was tobecome involved in the local community. Transversal politicshas been highlighted as a perspective to build feminist alliancesto overcome global patriarchal structures, but case studies onmicropolitics related to that discourse are still few. Both theway in which women performed diversity as well as the searchfor community among them are subject to a series of conditionsthat frame what I will call suburban feminism.The second contribution was about how women in Fittjatried to overcome the conditions that frame their politicalunderrepresentation in the context of a multicultural suburb in theSwedish welfare state. I tried to show how women practice whatfeminist scholars, like Cynthia Cockburn, Nira Yuval Davis andPatricia Hill Collins, call ‘rooting’ to analyse their subordinatecondition, advancing dialogues where the use of affections andfeelings is fundamental. These affections have been importantfor the women in Fittja to make what these feminist scholars call98