Articles

Liminal Solidarity: How Ukrainian Refugee Mothers Negotiate Situational Kinship in a Collective Reception Centre in Belgium

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Abstract

While solidarity practices among refugees have increasingly drawn scholars' interest, hardly any research has addressed the complex relationships between refugee women in the specific context of collective reception centres. At the same time, there has not been accounted for the way in which specific intersectional identities of refugee mothers shape mutual solidarity. Literature on refugee solidarity often analyses solidarity with an overdetermined political reading, which precludes the context in which solidarity emerges from being adequately researched. Based on my ethnographic research with Ukrainian refugee mothers in an emergency reception centre in Belgium, I propose a conceptualisation of solidarity that acknowledges that overlapping, intersectional identities do not automatically generate belonging. I argue for employing a situated intersectional lens (Yuval-Davis, 2015), and combining 'situational kinship' (Nelson, 2013) with 'resilient moves' (Groeninck et al., 2020) in order to grasp how the mothers’ navigating of the specific liminal and intersectional context of the reception centre, produced everyday practices of solidarity.

Keywords: Ukrainian refugee mothers, resilient moves, solidarity, situated intersectionality, situational kinship

How to Cite:

Grondelaers, H., (2024) “Liminal Solidarity: How Ukrainian Refugee Mothers Negotiate Situational Kinship in a Collective Reception Centre in Belgium”, DiGeSt - Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies 11(2), 100-114. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/digest.90130