Building an Anti Racist Feminist Political Science in Europe

Section Chairs Toni Haastrup (Stirling University, UK), Angéla Kóczé (Central European University Hungary/Austria), Anya Topolski (Radboud University, Netherlands), Mieke Verloo (Radboud University, Netherlands), Rosalind Cavaghan (Independent Scholar, UK). This section aims to move the practices and conversations around race and racism in the ECPG community forward, so that we problematise Whiteness and racism in academic research, and at all levels of the academy and political science, spanning EU-wide levels, organisations like the ECPR and the ECPG, down to day to day practice in individual universities. We do realize this will require more than one conference section, however a spark to begin collective, critically reflection on institutional racism is urgently needed. As feminists and social scientists, we have a moral duty to build an anti-racist discipline (Tudor 2018). We will seek contributions to the section that engage with the following broad themes: • Whiteness – its operation as a specific form of racism in the organisation of ‘mainstream’ and feminist politics and the academy, including methodological whiteness; • Institutional racism in academia -its overt and covert operation, policies seeking to tackle it, their shortcomings and successes; • Allyship and inter-racial trust - how can the responsibility of all scholars be boosted to ensure that racism is challenged, and that political and scholarly agendas are not dominated by privileged white actors? What harms need to be acknowledged, witnessed, validated and remedied? • Decolonizing the university – what initiatives are underway in different European countries and /or other contexts, what works? When and why? • Differential racialization in the European context – how do different forms of racism such as anti-blackness, islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-Roma (antizyganism or antigypsism) discrimination operate across different settings in European countries? • Intersectionality – its uses, misuses, dilutions and competing formulations in feminist research; • Post-colonial and decolonial approaches in European feminist political science – how do colonial legacies continue to shape political processes, categories and experiences of different people? How best can we understand these? This section proposal starts from an observation that white academics often look to minoritized scholars to challenge racism (Doharty et al 2020). This overlooks the resource constraints experienced by minoritized researchers, the personal costs of repeatedly challenging racism from a minoritized position, and the resources available to white academics to challenge racism (Bhopal and Pitkin 2020; Carby 1997; Eddo-Lodge 2017; Wright, Haastrup, and Guerrina 2020). Secondly, we note the negative impacts of restrictive understandings of ‘politics’ in feminist political science (Begum and Saini 2019; Emejulu and Bassel 2017). We believe a wider disciplinary engagement greatly contributes to problematizing and challenging racism, methodological whiteness and justifications of colonialism in our disciplinary community (Kocze 2018; Bhambra 2017; Wekker 2016; Topolski 2018). Our section aims to provide a space to focus on and tackle these shortcomings, acknowledge and witness associated harms and to foster the development of an anti-racist feminist political science in Europe. We will encourage panel proposals to explore the benefits of formats that differ from the classic ‘panel of draft peer reviewed journal articles’. Presentations leading to traditional academic outputs are also welcome. We recognize that all discussions need to be carefully facilitated and that proper time should be given to uncover structural problems and work through them. Examples/suggestions of non-traditional formats that could be used include: • Generating an ECPG Action Plan for challenging institutional racism and Whiteness – a workshop on ECPG’s location in European academic professional structures upholding whiteness and actions to challenge it. What should ECPG do to challenge racism and whiteness? What kind of allyship is lacking? • Making absences visible – this could for example include (anonymous) testimonies of racism from minoritized scholars who have either decided not to return to ECPG or who feel an obligation to remain silent about their experiences of racism, in order to be accepted at ECPG, or in feminist academic circles more broadly. • Generate ideas on how to remedy absences - we would encourage contributions discussing/analysing actions to remedy these absences. • Network and talent incubator providing a protected supportive space specifically for minoritized researchers as a counterpoint to ongoing racism in academic (e.g. teaching/funding/reviewing) organisations, including direct support for minoritized researchers at all levels of the academic hierarchy. • Fishbowl discussion, World Cafe discussions or other formats beyond the classic panel/paper format. We seek to balance the need for white scholars to acknowledge and dismantle racial hierarchies and ignorance in the academy with the obvious need to include and center the expertise, knowledge and voices of variously minoritized people. As such, we will not accept all white panels. References Begum, Neema, and Rima Saini. 2019. ‘Decolonising the Curriculum’. Political Studies Review 17 (2): 196–201. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929918808459. Bhambra, Gurminder K. 2017. ‘Brexit, Trump, and “Methodological Whiteness”: On the Misrecognition of Race and Class’. British Journal of Sociology 68: 214–32. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12317. Bhopal, Kalwant, and Clare Pitkin. 2020. ‘“Same Old Story, Just a Different Policy”: Race and Policy Making in Higher Education in the UK’. Race Ethnicity and Education 23 (4): 530–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2020.1718082. Carby, Hazel. 1997. ‘White Women Listen! Black Feminism and the Boundaries of Sisterhood’. In Black British Feminism, edited by Heidi Safia Mirza, 100–128. Routledge. Doharty, Nadena, Manuel Madriaga, and Remi Joseph-Salisbury. 2020. ‘The University Went to “Decolonise” and All They Brought Back Was Lousy Diversity Double-Speak! Critical Race Counter-Stories from Faculty of Colour in “Decolonial” Times’. Educational Philosophy and Theory 0 (0): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2020.1769601. Eddo-Lodge, Reni. 2017. Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Emejulu, Akwugo, and Leah Bassel. 2017. ‘Whose Crisis Counts? Minority Women, Austerity and Activism in France and Britain’. In Gender and the Economic Crisis in Europe: Politics, Institutions and Intersectionality, edited by Johanna Kantola and Emanuela Lombardo, 185–208. Palgrave Macmillan. Kocze, Angela. 2018. ‘Transgressing Borders: Challenging Racist and Sexist Epistemology’. In Roma Activism: REimagining Power and Knowledge. Berghahn Books. 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