Description
Against the backdrop of Europe’s refugee crisis, this paper draws attention to women forcibly displaced by conflict as emergent objects of European security policy, but also as security actors. We challenge dominant representations of these ‘subaltern’ women as passive or voiceless by showing that they shape security policy in two ways. First, their physical presence in Europe and at its borders, in a state of visible and tangible insecurity, troubles Europe’s sense of self as a global leader in the field of women’s rights. Second, supported by civil society organizations, displaced women have spoken at the highest levels of security policy-making to demand a better inclusion and protection of women displaced by conflict. These security performances (embodied and spoken) suggest that some subaltern women do speak security, although their audibility remains in question. In dialogue with Gayatri Spivak and Gloria Anzaldua, we explore this question through a content and discourse analysis of policy and activism on Women, Peace and Security at the United Nations and in European policy. The globalizing Women, Peace and Security framework has, since 2000, successfully constructed the conflict-affected woman as an active agent, thus opening space for women displaced by conflict to speak with authority in security forums. While these women have thus unsettled the logics of coloniality underlying European policy towards refugees, we find that European policy-makers’ responses to their security performances reinforce colonial logics.
