Political Representation at the Intersection: How Should we Search for a New Framework?

This research was initially prompted by a simple consideration: if we accept that political representation today is suffering from what is called a ‘democratic deficit’, in addition to which there has been a considerable rise in Islamophobia and xenophobic sentiments post-Brexit, why then are Muslim women and others from ethnic minority backgrounds increasingly eager to enter the public arena and engage with state institutions as representatives not only in Britain but across Europe? Whether such inclusion in political parties and government at both a local and national level should be regarded as an act of tokenism, or even an example of co-optation, has been subject to debate, particularly in the media. What emerges on the ground, however, is ‘the need for voices to be heard’ and ‘to make a difference’ for these women’s communities and constituencies. From a theoretical perspective, however, these women’s participation cannot be accounted for within current models of representation. A new framework is therefore needed to fully capture their political agency and subjectivity. Within the context of governments and nation-states the idea of representation, a making present again of something or someone that is absent, should not ignore the question of who is included and excluded in the polis. For groups that have been ‘otherised’, this newly found inclusion becomes inimitably tied to the visibility of their difference. This then leads to a primarily methodological question: how can the multiplicity of identities that individuals draw on in the course of their life be highlighted and how should this be accounted for and analysed when discussing political representation, while also taking into account the existence of highly unequal institutional power structures? In this presentation I aim to explore such questions in more detail through the specific experiences of Muslim women in British political institutions.