Antisemitism is a form of racism – or is it?

The article discusses relationships between racism and antisemitism. It focuses on three major contestations which have taken place during the post WW2 era(s) regarding the ways racism, antisemitism and the relationships between them should be analysed. The first examines the different academic disciplinary approaches from which racism and antisemitism need to be studied. The second concerns the relationship between antisemitism, racism and modernity, introducing the notion of ‘new antisemitism’ which has become entangled in this contestation. The third examines how understanding racism and antisemitism relates to the theory and politics of intersectionality. The article argues against exclusionary constructions of racism resulting from different forms of identity politics. It calls for an inclusive definition of racism in which vernacular and specific forms of racism can be contextualised and analysed within an encompassing de-centered non-Eurocentric definition of racism. Within such an analytical framework, antisemitism should be seen as a form of racism

Talking about Bordering

In the summer of 2019 as the UK was in the midst of heated Brexit debates and Theresa May’s minority government clung on to power, Professor Louise Ryan interviewed Professor Nira Yuval-Davis about her recent book Bordering (Yuval-Davis, Wemyss and Cassidy 2019). Although things have changed in some significant ways since that interview, for example Boris Johnson has now replaced Theresa May as Prime Minister, and won a landslide election victory in December, 2019, and the controversial Brexit Bill was passed by the British Parliament, many of the issues about borders and bordering remain extremely relevant today. The current pandemic has not only revealed Britain’s dependence on migrant workers, especially in health and social care, but also exposed health inequalities among migrants and ethnic minorities. As the post-Brexit immigration landscape begins to emerge, the analysis of Nira Yuval Davis remains as pertinent as ever

Those Who Belong and Those Who Don’t: Physical and Mental Borders in Europe

Europe promotes migration and mobility but new or ‘different’ Europeans are still stigmatised and marginalised in our societies. Today, neither refugee status nor citizenship can tear down the mental borders between people who inhabit the same cities or neighbourhoods. Sociology professor Nira Yuval-Davis writes about the meaning of borders, and how they make us differentiate between ‘us’ and ‘the other’ in our daily lives

Situated Intersectionality and Social Inequality

In this article1 I introduce and discuss some of the ways situated intersectional analysis can help to describe – and even explain – different kinds of social, economic, political and personal inequalities. As I have been working on intersectionality for many years – both before and after the issues discussed under this term were to be so labelled, I shall focus primarily on my own version rather than conduct a review of the literature. The paper starts by discussing the ways sociological studies traditionally describe inequality focusing on issues of class. It then introduces intersectionality as a theoretical framework that can encompass different kinds of inequalities, simultaneously (ontologically), but enmeshed (concretely). The latter part of the article examines the ways different kinds of systemic domains provide multiple grounds for the production and reproduction of these inequalities. (1An earlier version of this paper was presented at an ISA plenary in Yokohama, Summer 2014.

Two Roads to Public Sociology

Nira Yuval-Davis , an Israeli dissident, has been a long-standing defender of human rights: a founder member of Women Against Fundamentalism, and the international research network of Women in Militarized Conflict Zones, a consultant to different divisions of the United Nations as well as to various NGOs, including Amnesty International. Known internationally for her research on gender, racism, and religious fundamentalism, her books include Racialized Boundaries , Gender and Nation , The Politics of Belonging , Women against Fundamentalism . She is Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London. In this essay she conducts an internal conversation with the renowned Israeli sociologist, now deceased, Baruch Kimmerling, on the different roads to public sociology

Glocal London: the Double Crisis of Governability and Governmentality

In a conference called ‘London: City of Paradox’ we need to examine the different ways in which London is a ‘glocal city’, as so many of the issues discussed in this conference are specific to London and/or the UK but, at the same time, are also a reflection of much wider global phenomena. As Saskia Sassen (2012) writes in her paper, global cities are the frontier battle zone in the contemporary world and London probably more so than many others, especially in the year of the Olympics spectacle. Recent election results across Europe have seen growing disenchantment with incumbent governments which have been perceived as being unable or unwilling to deal with the financial crisis while also maintaining the living standards of ordinary people. Meanwhile in many countries a series of scandals in the banking sector has led to increasing but as yet unavailing calls for a major overhaul of the industry which I take to be symptomatic of a crisis of faith in financial institutions. This paper reflects on the overall context in which these events are taking place, and the ways in which they are related to each other. My argument is that these phenomena are signs of neoliberalism’s systemic, multi-faceted, global political and economic crisis, a crisis that is central to relationships between states and societies and to constructions of subjectivity; and that we are seeing a related crisis of both governability and governmentality. In the limited space available here I can only outline this crisis in general terms before going on to focus briefly on some of its implications for political action. But I hope that analysing events within this context will be suggestive, and point others towards undertaking similar investigations. My focus here will be on the implications of this double crisis for the growth of the global phenomenon of autochthonic political projects of belonging, both locally and globally; and also for the simultaneous growth of libertarian activist citizenship movements of resistance

Intersectional Border(ing)s

This special issue of Political Geography marks a contribution to the fields of feminist geopolitics and border studies by bringing together a series of papers, which use approaches based on Yuval-Davis’ ‘situated intersectionality’ (2015) to explore everyday bordering within and without contemporary Europe. The special issue is comprised of work undertaken by colleagues from across Europe and beyond as part of work package 9 ‘Borders, Intersectionality and the Everyday’ of the EUBorderscapes project (2012-2016). We term our approach to studying borders, borderscapes and bordering processes as ‘situated intersectional bordering’. The main contribution of this approach is that borders and borderings are understood as dialogical constructs and that if we are to understand how they are being made and re-made we must attempt to explore them through the situated gazes of differentially positioned social actors. We therefore suggest a holistic approach to understanding border(ing)s, which is embedded in everyday life. Through the study of the multi-layered complexities of everyday borderings we can ‘approach the truth’ (Hill-Collins, 1990)

Anti-Jewish and Anti-Muslim Racisms and the Question of Palestine/Israel

An introduction to the online discussion paper series, 'Anti-Jewish and Anti-Muslim Racisms and the Question of Palestine/Israel', sponsored by the Centre for Research on Migration Refugees and Belonging (CMRB), University of East London; the Runnymede Trust; and the Centre for Palestine Studies, London Middle East Institute, SOAS

Press discourses on ecological crises in the UK, Israel, and Hungary

This article explores the relationships between political projects of belonging and approaches to environmental and climate ecological crises via comparing centre-right and centre-left newspapers in the UK, Israel and Hungary. Our theoretical framework draws on Nira Yuval-Davis's work on the politics of belonging as a way of understanding and framing the different political projects that accompany reporting on ecological issues. Focusing on selected national and international case studies on these issues at the centre of public debate during the last two decades, the paper explores and compares these relationships by examining the eco-relational, spatial, temporal and normative framing dimensions of the political projects of belonging as expressed in these articles. The findings of the analysis show that, despite different cultural and historical contexts, the most significant dividing line is not among countries but between the different political projects of belonging of the newspapers. This can be seen even when dealing with country-specific, rather than international, case studies. Overall, centre-right newspapers tend to focus on narrow nationalist interests concerning the climate crisis and do not produce discourses of urgency to resolve the crisis except when reporting on major international political agendas. They are also more inclined to focus on the economic aspects of such efforts and how they would affect the “people”. The centre-left press, on the other hand, tends to prioritise ecological issues much more; it has wider global and planetary interdependent constructions of belonging and engages in the production of discourses of urgency in an attempt to solve the crisis and avoid future catastrophes. However, even in the centre-left press, especially in the UK, a tendency to remain within a western-centric perspective was observed

Introduction to Women Against Fundamentalism: Stories of Dissent and Solidarity

Th is book celebrates – while also acknowledging the huge challenges it faces – a particular kind of feminism, one that has been concerned with challenging both fundamentalism and racism. It consists of the autobiographical political narratives of feminist activists of diff erent ethnic and religious backgrounds who have been members of Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF), a feminist anti-racist and antifundamentalist organisation that was established in London in 1989, at the heart of the Salman Rushdie aff air. Political narratives have been described as ‘stories people tell about how the world works’, the ways in which they explain the engines of political change, and as refl ections on the role people see themselves and their group playing in their ongoing struggles.1 And the contributors to this book off er just such narratives – they talk about the trajectories of their lives, and how they see themselves and the groups to which they belong in relation to the wider political struggles in which they have been involved. WAF women have shared solidarity and trust, based on common political values, but, as can be seen from the chapters of this book, their perspectives – as well as their personal/ political histories – have also diff ered.2 Th is variety of voices is signifi - cant not only for these women as individuals but also for WAF as a political organisation. In this introduction we highlight what we as editors perceive to be the most important issues for WAF’s activism throughout its history. However, the book has been constructed in such a way that reading all the chapters will itself provide a more pluralistic and contested fl avour of WAF’s politics. Th is introduction outlines the rationale for the book, introduces WAF and its political context, explains the book’s theoretical and methodological framework, and explores some of the themes that have emerged from the activists’ stories