The impact of local geographies on migrant women's activism: A comparative study of Manchester and Sheffield

Abstract

This thesis explores the impact of local geographies on migrant women's activism in Manchester and Sheffield. It draws on participant observation with migrant support organizations, and interviews with migrant women, and with citizens involved in migrant support activities, in both cities. I examine how national discourses and policies around immigration and citizenship interact with local policies and 'place-based narratives' around belonging and identity, and how these are materially experienced by migrant women in their day-to-day lives. In particular, I discuss how migrant women act to make claims to citizenship and to resist marginalization, and how the local context in Manchester and Sheffield offers certain opportunities, and imposes certain constraints. I argue that UK immigration and citizenship policy is underpinned by a domopolitical discourse that constructs the 'national home' as the purview of autonomous and economically productive 'neoliberal citizens'. Migrants are required to demonstrate the qualities of neoliberal citizenship in order to settle in the UK. This neoliberal discourse of citizenship also informs, and is informed by, older racialized and gendered constructions of citizenship and belonging. The resultant policies and discourses around citizenship work to exclude certain groups of migrant women from formal and substantive citizenship both directly and indirectly. While immigration and citizenship policy in the UK is set by the national government, many policies, for example, around housing, are implemented by city councils. Moreover, it is at the local scale that migrant women form activist groups, gather resources, and seek out allies, in order to resist exclusion and make claims to citizenship. Local policies and place-based identities can provide opportunities and resources for migrant women in their activism. These policies and identities have been transformed in recent decades by neoliberal urban restructuring. 'Actually-existing neoliberalism' in both Manchester and Sheffield has resulted in certain opportunities for migrant women, but also imposed constraints, and in many cases, aggravated migrant women's exclusion. I use Engin Isin's concept of 'activist citizenship' to explore how women in both cities, in making claims to citizenship, are also able to disrupt dominant, neoliberal, racialized, and gendered discourses of belonging. However, activism that centres around claims to citizenship is often limited, as it does not challenge the exclusionary nature of the concept. Moreover, the limited Political Opportunity Structure available to migrant women, and the high stakes nature of their struggles, encourages short-term planning and compromise. Drawing on Anne McNevin's (2013) work, I argue that migrant women's activism both resists and reinscribes dominant constructions of citizenship and belonging, but that nonetheless, migrant women's activism still has transformative potential.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2016
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	Bridget Byrne (Supervisor) & Jonathan Darling (Supervisor)