Migrant Mothers, Austerity and the Politics of Care in England and Scotland

The European Union is experiencing a double crisis of austerity and migration—with migrant women at the forefront of reimagining the practice of citizenship through a politics of care. I situate racialised migrant mothers as political actors in the landscape of austerity in England and Scotland by exploring the possibilities of a politics around caring work. A ‘politics of care’ can challenge the dichotomy between private caring and public citizenship practices (Erel 2011). However, I argue that the shift from a ‘culture of care’ to a ‘culture of cuts’ poses significant challenges to this politics in civil society spaces, particularly when processes of racialisation are brought to the fore. The re-privatization of caring and reproductive work generates new forms of subjectivity and social reproduction (Hajek and Opratko 2015). Within the supposed ‘monolith’ of neoliberalism, a multiplicity of subjectivities are engendered which open some spaces for resistance and subversion.