Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe Critical Essays on Knowledge, Inequality and Belonging

Interdisciplinary in perspective, this book explores contemporary struggles around ‘identity politics’ in Europe, offering a unique glimpse into contemporary tensions and paradoxes surrounding identities, belonging, exclusions and their deep-seated gendered, colonial and racist legacies. With a particular focus on the Nordic region, it provides insights into the ways in which people who find themselves in minoritized positions struggle against multiple injustices. Through a series of case studies documenting counter-struggles against racist, colonialist, sexist forms of discrimination and exclusion, Transforming Identities in Contemporary Europe asks how the paradigm and politics of the welfare state operate to discriminate against the most marginalized, by instating a naturalized hierarchy of human-ness. As such it will appeal to scholars across the social sciences and humanities with interests in race, gender, colonialism and postcolonialism, citizenship and belonging. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

1. Introduction: transforming identities in contemporary Europe Elisabeth L. Engebretsen and Mia Liinason 2. ‘Welcome to the most privileged, most xenophobic country in the world’. Affective figurations of white Danishnessin the making of a Danish citizen Linda Lapina 3. Educational challenges for Nordic exceptionalism: epistemic injustice in the absence of antiracist education Kris Clarke and Manteì Vertelyteì 4. Autobiographical flesh: understanding Western notions of humanity through the life and selected writings of Una Marson (1905-1965) Jéssica Nogueira Varela 5. ‘It’s our bodies, we are the experts!’: countering pathologisation, gate-keeping and Danish exceptionalism through collective trans knowledges, coalition-building and insistence Nico Miskow Friborg 6. Gayness between nation builders and money makers: from ideology to new essentialism Anna-Maria So¨rberg 7. (Not) in the name of gender equality: migrant women, empowerment, employment, and minority women’s organizations Christel Stormhøj 8. ‘Home is where the cat is’: the here-there of queer (un)belonging Ramona Dima and Simona Dumitriu 9. The poetics of climate change and politics of pain: Sámi social media activist critique of the Swedish state AkvileÌ Buitvydaite? and Elisabeth L. Engebretsen 10. Varieties of exceptionalism:a conversation Selin Cagatay, Mia Liinason and Olga Sasunkevitch

Elisabeth L. Engebretsen is a Professor in the Centre for Gender Studies, University of Stavanger, Norway. She is the author of Queer Women in Urban China: An Ethnography (2014). Mia Liinason is Professor of Gender Studies in the Department of Cultural Sciences, Lund, Sweden. She is the author of Feminist and LGBTI+ Activism across Russia, Turkey and Scandinavia. Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance (with Selin Cagatay and Olga Sasunkevich, 2022) and Equality Struggles: Women’s Movements, Neoliberal Markets and State Political Agendas in Scandinavia (2018).