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‘We are the European family’ : unsettling the role of family in belonging, race, nation and the European project

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Jones, Hannah (2020) ‘We are the European family’ : unsettling the role of family in belonging, race, nation and the European project. Open Arts Journal (8). pp. 15-28. doi:10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2020s01

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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2020s01

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Abstract

In the Brexit referendum debates and their aftermath, one popular call to solidarity within the EU came from artist Wolfgang Tillmans, who released a series of posters with slogans intended to rally voters to support remaining in the EU. This article takes one of those slogans – ‘It’s a question of where you feel you belong. We are the European family’ – as a starting point to examine the openings and closures made available through calls to (trans)national solidarity on the basis of family. Drawing on critical autobiography, historical anthropology and analysis of trends in bordering and race politics, the article points to multi-layered and colonially inflected histories of ‘family’ in relation to national and continental belonging. Beginning with the sense of uncertainty over belonging and connection stirred up by Brexit, the essay acknowledges the comfort found by some in the seeming security of family. However, the article then engages with alternative realities of ‘The European Family’ – families separated by border controls, racialised as defective or oppressed by heteronormative patriarchy – and unsettles the problematic of ‘European’ in ‘The European Family’. The paper identifies how empirical and metaphorical family relate to (trans)national belonging and citizenship. Bringing Tillmans’ posters into conversation with some of Gillian Wearing’s work on family and place, the conclusion offers some possibilities for thinking family/nation while retaining ambiguity, resistance and potential and resisting the closure of normative ideas, in favour of a more empirically grounded engagement with how ‘real families’ relate to and through nation.

Item Type: Journal Article
Subjects: H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Divisions: Faculty of Social Sciences > Sociology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): Transnationalism -- Social aspects
Journal or Publication Title: Open Arts Journal
Publisher: The Open University
ISSN: 2050-3679
Official Date: August 2020
Dates:
DateEvent
August 2020Published
15 June 2020Accepted
Number: 8
Page Range: pp. 15-28
DOI: 10.5456/issn.2050-3679/2020s01
Status: Peer Reviewed
Publication Status: Published
Access rights to Published version: Open Access

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