Migrant Women and Social Reproduction under Austerity

Abstract

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government has enacted a series of cuts to public spending, under the auspices of austerity. Underpinning these cuts is a neo-liberal model of citizenship, in which citizens are expected to be autonomous, independent and economically productive, and in which the responsibilities of citizenship outweigh the rights. This model of citizenship is characterised by a paradoxical approach to social reproduction. The Coalition government has taken a significant interest in social reproduction as a means of creating the next generation of ‘good’ neo-liberal citizens; yet, the current austerity measures involve the withdrawal of state support for social reproduction activities. Drawing on participant observation carried out with migrant women's groups in Sheffield and Manchester, as well as interviews with group members, this article demonstrates how the government's paradoxical approach to social reproduction, combined with gendered and racialised discourses of citizenship and ‘Britishness’, have led to policies that place ethnic minority migrant women in an untenable situation. The social reproduction activities of ethnic minority migrant women are the subject of intense government interest, because of the concern that they will be unable to produce ‘good’ neo-liberal citizens. In some cases, this has led to government policies clearly intended to dissuade ‘undesirable’ migrants from having children. In other cases, migrant women are expected to show their commitment to integration, both for themselves and their children, specifically by learning English, even as the government has drastically cut funding for English as a Second or Other Language (ESOL) classes. While seemingly paradoxical, this is in keeping with a racialised neo-liberal model of citizenship under which the ‘responsible’ migrant mother should be able to parent and learn English without government assistance. Nonetheless, these policies are actually self-defeating, as they prevent migrant women from exhibiting the very characteristics of neo-liberal citizenship that they are ostensibly trying to encourage.

Care in a Time of Austerity: the Electronic Monitoring of Homecare Workers’ Time

“…Accordingly, austerity exhibits a generational temporality that anticipates the future, as it takes effect in the present (Brammall, 2013;Latimer, 2013). This orientation supports a discourse in which 'good' citizenship is expressed as an individual sustainability of the self that is future-focused, in place of a prior emphasis on citizenship and individual rights that might be secured in the present moment (see Lonergan, 2015).…”

Caring subjects: migrant women and the third sector in England and Scotland

“…Many of these effects of austerity have been documented in broader studies, even noting the disproportionate impact on lone mothers (Lonergan 2015). However, these studies rarely distinguish the disproportionate impacts on racialised women for whom, as our own participants insisted, nothing is 'new' here but instead a deepening of longstanding inequalities that are invisible in 'the numbers'.…”

Heterodox Economics, Social Ethics, and Inequalities

“…One interesting conversation investigates how austerity measures (often marketed with arguably gendered claims about the need for faltering economies to “man up”!) disproportionately and negatively impact women and vulnerable populations (Ortiz and Cummins ; Pearson and Elson ; and Lonergan ). Other work uses comparative analysis to ascertain the legal and institutional bases of gender inequality (Branisa, Klasen, Ziegler, Dreschler, and Jütting ).…”