Intersectionality, Austerity and Activism: Minority Groups and the Economic Crisis

Abstract

Through an intersectional lens, this panel considers the asymmetrical effects of the 2008 economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures on different minority groups in Europe and the United States. The dominant political and media representations of the crisis, which focus on the struggles of the economically privileged (Strolovitch 2013), marginalise and exclude minority groups’ experiences of persistent economic and social insecurity from the public imagination. By recentering minority groups in this narrative, this panel seeks to understand both the diversity of minority groups’ precarity and the different models of grassroots activism and advocacy for social and economic justice in these uncertain times.