The double crisis of governability and governmentality of neo-liberal globalisation has brought with it the rise of huge local and global social, economic and political inequalities as well as different kinds of identity politics, both on the Right and on the Left, as defensive strategies. In this presentation I shall discuss some of the manifestations of these strategies and their effects on contemporary politics of belonging. In particular, I shall focus on the role of everyday bordering in these strategies and the growing necropolitics – the dehumanization of ‘the Other’ and their entitlement to life - as one of their outcomes. The presentation will end with a brief discussion of the kind of the politics of care which will be necessary – although not sufficient – to face up to and change this necropolitical paradigm.
The Keynote Lecture is part of the conference “Facing Inequalities – Strategies for Change”.
Nira Yuval-Davis is Professor Emeritus, Honorary Director of the Research Centre on Migration, Refugees and Belonging (CMRB) at the University of East London. A diasporic Israeli socialist feminist, Nira has been active in different forums against racism and sexism in Israel and other settler colonial societies as well as in the UK and Europe. Among other activities she has been the President of the Research Committee 05 (on Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnic Relations) of the International Sociological Association, founder member of Women Against Fundamentalism, the international research network on Women In Militarized Conflict Zones and Social Scientists Against the Hostile Environment.
Nira Yuval-Davis has won the 2018 International Sociological Association Distinguished Award for Excellence in Research and Practice. The article she has written with G. Wemyss and K. Cassidy on ‘Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Reorientation of British Immigration Legislation’, Sociology, 52(2), has won the 2019 Sage Sociology Award for Excellence and Innovation. Among her books Woman-Nation-State, 1989, Racialized Boundaries, 1992, Unsettling Settler Societies, 1995, Gender and Nation, 1997, The Warning Signs of Fundamentalism, 2004, The Politics of Belonging: Intersectional Contestations, 2011, Women Against Fundamentalism, 2014 and Bordering, 2019. She is currently developing her recent article in Sociology on Antisemitism as Racism into a book. Her works have been translated into more than ten languages.
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