Building Alliances: Greek and Migrant Women in the Anti-racist Movement in Athens

Abstract

In this chapter, I explore the development of the political relationship between Greek and migrant women activists in the context of the anti-racist movement in Athens. During the 2000s the anti-racist movement contributed significantly to the politicization of migration and the engagement of public opinion and politicians with the adverse conditions that, as a rule, migrants face in Greece. Nevertheless, this politicization was established in terms that up to a certain point —because of their totalizing, reifying and pathologizing/victimizing character—excluded migrants themselves, and most notably migrant women, from substantial and equal participation: anti-racist discourses failed to register migrants’ own ‘voice’ and agency in official anti-racist narratives, and migrants’ practical and theoretical contribution to the anti-racist movement was narrowly circumscribed. Attempting a feminist intervention, together with other Greek and migrant women activists we organized a ‘gender and migration’ initiative with the aim of making migrant women’s experiences and problems more central and publicly visible. I explore the tensions and contradictions of this experience, which illustrate poignantly how intersecting racialized and gendered relations of power between Greek and migrant women implicitly produce new exclusions, even as they explicitly try to fight racism. Therefore, I argue that, on the one hand, the political relationship between Greek and migrant women developed asymmetrically and turned into one of regulated political representation and patronage; on the other hand, I argue that working towards a feminist politics of alliance requires challenging negotiations and personal confrontations with racialized, classed and ethnicized privilege.

This article is based on research I carried out for my Ph.D. on “The politics of gender and ­migration in an antiracist group in Athens” at Manchester Metropolitan University, March 2010.