Rethinking Europe, (anti-)austerity and political behaviour

Leah Bassel and Akwugo Emejulu’s Minority Women and Austerity offers an important and much needed contribution to discussions on austerity, social movements, race and gender in Europe. Centring their analysis of the interplay between the 2008 economic crisis and activism in Europe on minority women and using a critical race studies and a black feminist epistemological framework, they make a bold epistemological move since, as the authors extensively demonstrate, European political racelessness renders intersectional claims and activism invisible, inaudible and illegitimate, while dominant social movement theories tend to ignore important forms of collective action that minority women develop. Thanks to their epistemological and analytical framework, their qualitative study, although limited to three national contexts, offers a lot of room for thinking both generalization and differentiation across and beyond their case-studies. Bassel and Emejulu’s work will thus certainly be inspiring for scholars working on similar issues in other European countries

Austerity · Collective action · Intersectionality · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Social movement · Sociology · Gender Studies · Law · Social Policy and Reform Studies