{"id":8240,"date":"2017-07-20T10:35:49","date_gmt":"2017-07-20T08:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/?p=8240"},"modified":"2017-07-20T10:57:07","modified_gmt":"2017-07-20T08:57:07","slug":"what-is-femonationalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openasia.org\/en\/2017\/07\/what-is-femonationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is \u2018Femonationalism\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Human Wrongs Watch<\/a><\/p>\n

By Niki Seth-Smith*<\/p>\n

13 July 2017 \u2013 openDemocracy* \u2014 Academic Sara Farris talks about the \u2018instrumentalisation\u2019 of migrant women in Europe by right-wing nationalists \u2013 and neoliberals.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nSara Farris recently published a provocative book entitled In the name of women\u2019s rights: the rise of femonationalism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In it, she examines how right-wing nationalists, neoliberals, and some feminists and women\u2019s equality agencies, all invoke women\u2019s rights to stigmatise Muslim men and advance their own political objectives.<\/p>\n

She argues that there is an important political-economic dimension to this seemingly paradoxical intersection.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a timely \u2013 but complex \u2013 book including case studies from France, Italy and the Netherlands.<\/p>\n

I called Farris, who is currently senior lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London, to dig further into some of the questions that her book raises.<\/p>\n

This is an edited transcript of our conversation.<\/p>\n

NSS: In your book, you talk about feminists and \u2018femocrats\u2019 (female bureaucrats) \u201cbetraying their emancipatory politics\u201d and \u201cinvoking women\u2019s rights to stigmatise Muslim men\u201d to advance their political objectives. Is this a knowing betrayal, or is the work of these women being exploited?<\/p>\n

SF: On one hand we have right-wing nationalists exploiting and mobilising issues of gender equality, particularly in campaigns against Muslims. These are right-wing leaders like France\u2019s Front National leader Marine Le Pen \u2013 she doesn\u2019t really care about women\u2019s rights, it\u2019s obviously just a way to stigmatise Muslims. This is one of the faces of \u2018femonationalism\u2019: nationalists instrumentalising feminism.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, it also describes how some feminists \u2013 and I really want to stress some feminists, a minority \u2013 are increasingly attacking Islam as a religion, claiming that it is a religion that oppresses women.<\/p>\n

NSS: Let\u2019s take the example of the \u2018burkini ban\u2019 in France, which your book considers. Who were the feminists that supported that ban, and do you see them as \u2018femonationalist\u2019 figures?<\/p>\n

SF: Several feminists supported the veil bans, and the burkini ban \u2013 I\u2019m thinking of very well-known feminist intellectuals like Elizabeth Badinter, as well as the ex-minister for women\u2019s affairs, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem.<\/p>\n

Farris book_0
\nDuke University Press, 2017.
\nShe was a representative of the centre-left, a socialist, and she even suggested that the ban go further than public schools, that they might have to look at the workplace too.<\/p>\n

Many prominent feminists and \u2018femocrats\u2019 have supported these laws, and this has strengthened anti-Islam positions in the name of women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

NSS: You ask whether there is a \u201cnew unholy alliance\u201d between right-wing nationalists, feminists, \u2018femocrats,\u2019 and neoliberals. But the story of white women \u2018saving\u2019 brown women from brown men is not new. How do you see the history of these trends?<\/p>\n

SF: I should clarify: I question in the book whether this is really an \u201cunholy alliance\u201d and I choose instead to use the term \u201cconvergence\u201d as it better describes the fluidity, the fact that people and political figures from very different political projects are converging in this space, and there are a lot of contradictions in this space.<\/p>\n

NSS: \u201cAlliance\u201d would suggest that this is a conscious re-grouping?<\/p>\n

SF: Exactly, and I don\u2019t think it is.<\/p>\n

There is also nothing particularly \u2018new\u2019 about what\u2019s going on. We have plenty of examples of imperialists and colonialists claiming that they were bringing \u2018civilisation\u2019 to \u2018uncivilised countries\u2019, including women\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n

In Algeria in the 1950s the French military developed this obsession with unveiling Muslim women. Some feminists also supported these colonial enterprises in the name of women\u2019s rights. What has been remarkable since 9\/11, is the increased popularity of the idea that women\u2019s rights are at stake when it comes to Muslim communities in particular.<\/p>\n

NSS: But, without generalising, women in many Muslim countries face limits and threats to their rights. Not to mention, in today\u2019s context, the rise of ISIS. Couldn\u2019t this explain the increasing focus on these areas?<\/p>\n

SF: I\u2019m not convinced. One of the justifications for invading Afghanistan was precisely to liberate women, and that was before ISIS and the events unfolding after 9\/11.<\/p>\n

NSS: Is there a relationship between your book and Terrorist assemblages: homonationalism in queer times by academic Jaspir Puar? It argued a decade ago that dynamics of sexuality, race, gender, nation, class, and ethnicity are realigning in relation to contemporary forces of securitisation, counterterrorism, and nationalism.<\/p>\n

SF: Puar\u2019s book was a source of inspiration. She was very acute in portraying this phenomenon of some representatives of the LGBT community in the US supporting American nationalism, especially after 9\/11, and supporting anti-Islam campaigns, under the idea that Muslims are against gay rights.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not looking at gay rights, I\u2019m focused on women\u2019s rights, but Puar opened up a very important conversation. I\u2019m also putting emphasis on the political-economic foundations of femonationalism.<\/p>\n

NSS: Indeed, your book looks at increasing demand in the west for feminised labour \u2013 childcare, elderly care, cleaning, domestic labour \u2013 and how this relates to the treatment of Muslim women migrants in particular.<\/p>\n

SF: This is one of the main contributions I tried to make, to shed light on the economic aspects of this femonationalist ideology, and of Islamophobia. The idea of migrants being job-stealers is very male. I have in mind the poster by UKIP, for example \u2013 the British white man who is begging in the street. My question was: where are the women migrants? They\u2019re not really represented in the media as job-stealers, but as obedient passive victims of their own supposedly backward cultures.<\/p>\n

In Italy, the former leader of the very racist party Northern League, Roberto Maroni, said: \u201cThere cannot be regularisation for those [migrants] who entered illegally, for those who rape women or rob a villa, but certainly we will take into account for regularisation all those situations that have a strong social impact, as in the case of migrant caregivers\u201d.<\/p>\n

These caregivers, of course, are mostly women. This is the sexualisation of racism. Women are presented as victims for whom, if properly assimilated, space can be made \u2013 whereas men are the unredeemable others.<\/p>\n

Anti-Islam feminists talk about Muslim women\u2019s emancipation, but what does this emancipation look like? They are doing jobs that lots of feminists don\u2019t want to do. The struggles of the 1970s were precisely about liberating women from household chores and domestic labour.<\/p>\n

This is the sexualisation of racism. Women are presented as victims for whom, if properly assimilated, space can be made \u2013 whereas men are the unredeemable others.<\/p>\n

NSS: Your book seems to suggest that all programmes to get women migrants into work are problematic as they \u201ctacitly encourage\u201d the adoption of \u201cwestern feminists\u2019 notion of emancipation through productive labour\u201d. But many migrant women would have worked in their countries of origin too.<\/p>\n

SF: Some people say \u2018at least they have a job\u2019. Yes, of course. And caring, cleaning and other social reproductive jobs are work and should be recognised as such. But they are often low-pay, low-status and exploitative jobs, often without contracts. As feminists, we need to put social reproduction very high on the agenda again.<\/p>\n

In the last ten, 20 years, liberal feminism has become more mainstream. We need to go back to very important issues like free universal childcare. It\u2019s important to join the battle of women\u2019s domestic labour organisations.<\/p>\n

For example there\u2019s an ongoing struggle by cleaners at the London School of Economics, many of whom are female migrant workers, fighting for recognition, against zero hours contracts.<\/p>\n

NSS: Your research also looks at the emphasis on motherhood in civic integration programmes, and how this relates to essentialist ideas around the woman as the bearer of culture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

SF: This is one of the biggest contradictions of these civic integration programmes: there\u2019s so much emphasis on teaching Muslim migrant communities women\u2019s rights, and feminist ideas, but then these programmes contain rather traditional ideas around women as fundamentally mothers.<\/p>\n

In the Netherlands, they even ask women to demonstrate that they are engaging in the process of proper motherhood \u2013 they need to take an exam, in which they answer questions about Dutch models of motherhood and parenthood.<\/p>\n

They need to bring in evidence of their efforts, for example that they went to meet their children\u2019s teacher, that they maybe did some volunteering work. There is a huge emphasis on women as the mothers of the future generation. They need to be culturally assimilated to western values in order to transmit them.<\/p>\n

NSS: What if, for fear of demonising Muslim men, or contributing to anti-Islam agendas, things swing in the opposite direction and efforts to support and empower Muslim migrant women are rolled back? Is that a risk?<\/p>\n

SF: This is a classical dilemma, when anti-sexism is played out against anti-racism. It\u2019s something Black feminists in the US wrote a lot about in the 1960s and 1970s and continue to debate: how can we denounce sexism in our communities, when we know that could then be used to attack Black men?<\/p>\n

There is no easy answer. We need to support in every way the possibility for women of any community to denounce sexism wherever it presents itself. The question we should ask is: are we really enabling this? How can we support the struggle of these women, in this context of incredibly harsh and rising Islamophobia? The struggle against racism and sexism must go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

Had enough of \u2018alternative facts\u2019 and immigrant-bashing? openDemocracy is different \u2013 join us and hear from Elif Shafak, Brian Eno, Peter Oborne, Sultan al-Qassemi, Birgitta Jonsdottir & many more on what we can do together in 2017.<\/p>\n

Click here to support openDemocracy\u2192<\/p>\n

*About the author:
\n.
\nNiki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist, editor and fiction writer, published in Al Jazeera UK, VICE UK, the London Review of Books, the London Magazine, the New Humanist and others.<\/p>\n

At openDemocracy she has been Editor at OurKingdom (now oD UK), OurBeeb, and 50.50 (Interim Editor Jan-March 2017) and has co-edited two books: \u2018Democratic Wealth: Building a Citizens\u2019 Economy\u2018 and \u2018Re-thinking the BBC: Public Media in the 21st Century\u2018. She lives in Athens, and is writing a novel.<\/p>\n

This article is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence. If you have any queries about republishing please contact us. Please check individual images for licensing details.
\n*This article was published in openDemocracy. Go to Original<\/a>.
\n**Photo: Marine Le Pen | Author: Kenji-Baptiste OIKAWA | Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
\n2017 Human Wrongs Watch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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