Introduction

The 2008 economic crisis and subsequent austerity measures represent a contradictory moment for minority women in France and Britain. On the one hand, the ‘crisis’ is not necessarily a new experience for these women. In pre-crisis France and Britain, minority women were already in precarious social and economic circumstances (Emejulu 2008; Bassel 2012). Regardless of their educational outcomes, minority women were – and continue to be – more likely to be unemployed, underemployed or over-concentrated in low-skilled, low-paid, insecure employment (Emejulu 2008; Seguino 2010; Women's Budget Group 2010). A striking feature of the crisis is that more privileged groups are now starting to experience the routine crises and precarity that minority women have long had to negotiate. On the other hand, however, crisis and austerity do represent an important change in the material circumstances of minority women. Due to the asymmetrical impacts of austerity, minority women are disproportionately disadvantaged by cuts to public spending thus sharpening and deepening their existing inequalities (Theodoropoulou and Watt 2011; APPG 2012; Emejulu and Bassel 2013).

Despite minority women's routinised experiences of inequality, they are not passive objects at the mercy of economic restructurings and particular policy priorities. Minority women, often operating in hostile contexts among ostensible allies, are organising and mobilising in innovative ways to advance their intersectional social justice claims (Bassel and Emejulu 2014; Emejulu and Bassel 2013; Emejulu and Bassel 2015). Building on our cross-national research project Minority Women's Activism in Tough Times, this book examines minority women's experiences of, and activism within, the austerity regimes of France and Britain. Through in-depth case studies of the particular dynamics of austerity and activism in Scotland, England and France, we explore how activists operate in this moment of political and economic uncertainty and practice a ‘politics of survival’ (Hill Collins 2000).

In this introductory chapter, we discuss the three national contexts in which our research project was based, highlighting the particular citizenship regimes of each country and the implications for our minority women activists (see Table 1.1 at the end of this chapter for a summary of case characteristics). We then move on to provide further details about the research, detailing our methods, sampling, participant characteristics and coding and analysis frame. We define the key terms that we will be using throughout this book.