Mapping the Contradictions: Exploring Minority Women Activists’ Solidarity Work in France and Britain

Building on our cross-national comparative research project ‘Minority Women’s Activism in Tough Times’—which explores minority women’s activism in contexts of austerity in Scotland, England and France—this paper examines the strategies and tactics minority women activists use to build solidarity and advance their intersectional social justice claims. From our findings, we explore how minority women are ‘normatively absent and pathologically present’ (Mirza 2015) in both the political constructions of austerity and in anti-austerity activist spaces. In particular, we demonstrate the contradictory terrain by which our activist women seek to build solidarity with ostensible ‘allies’ in policymaking, in non-governmental organisations and in militant activist networks. From our participants’ experiences we question the feasibility of genuinely intersectional solidarity work due to the inability to name race and take minority women activists seriously as active political agents.