Gender and Ethnicity in Contemporary Europe

Contemporary Europe is in the midst of a cultural and social crisis. Debates over how European societies should respond to their changing ethnic profile lie at the heart of this crisis, whilst the issues raised have been given sharper focus by nationalist political parties espousing an anti-immigration agenda. This book examines the relationship between gender and ethnicity in Europe, viewed from within an immigration framework. To date, much of the research on Europe has treated gender and ethnicity in isolation. The contributors to this collection rectify this. They make the links between these two areas thus giving ethnic minority women greater visibility within the European context. They consider the relationship between gender and ethnicity from a number of thematic perspectives including the feminization of migration, political mobilization by ethnic minority women, women and Islam and the formation of identity. The case studies examine Islamic cultures in Italy, Turkish identity in Germany, the political experience of South Asian women in the UK, migrant women in Spain, challenges to the social reputation of Muslim women in the Netherlands, evolving perceptions in Post-Communist Russia and political activism in France. The book also considers white women's identity and questions whether or not a service caste, drawn from contemporary migrant women, is emerging in today's Europe. Throughout, we learn about the new and different forms of 'Europeanness' that these women are forging.