Sisters in the “Hostile Environment”: A Womanist Theological Analysis of Brexit

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article builds upon Anthony Reddie's Theologising Brexit by offering a womanist perspective in response to his postcolonial and liberationist critique. In keeping with the framing of Reddie's argument I begin with history, by drawing on feminist historians which demonstrate that British enslavement, colonialism and mission should be understood as gendered as well as racialised forms of oppression in Africa and the Caribbean. In the second section, I critique Britain's “hostile environment” policies and Brexit as continuations of Britain's White supremacist and masculinist colonial past by centring the experiences of the “Zambrano carers”: predominantly single Black mothers left destitute by the UK government, and Black and Brown Muslim women who have borne the brunt of Islamophobic violence. In the final section I look to Hagar in Delores Williams's Sisters in the Wilderness to theologise Brexit with these women who are marginalised and dehumanised in contemporary British society.KEYWORDS: TheologywomanismBrexitcolonialismpolitics Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Reddie, Theologising Brexit.2 Thomas, “Womanist Theology, Epistemology”.3 Phillips, The Womanist Reader, xxiv.4 I take Stuart Hall’s definition post-colonial as: “an era when everything still takes place in the slipstream of colonialism and hence bears the inscription of the disturbances that colonisation set in motion,” Hall, The Fateful Triangle, 101.5 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness.6 Reddie, Theologising Brexit, 67.7 Carby, “White Women Listen”, 223.8 Olupona, City of 201 Gods, 15, 106; Olajubu, Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere, 22.9 Olajubu, Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere, 24; Olupona, City of 201 Gods, 107, 208.10 Olupona, City of 201 Gods, 107.11 Federici, “Women, Land Struggles”.12 Allen, “Aba Riots or the Igbo Women's War?”.13 Ibid., 20.14 Ibid., 20.15 Ibid., 11, 12.16 Hastings, The Church in Africa, 1450–1950, 178.17 Ibid.18 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 122.19 Hastings, The Church in Africa, 178.20 Anum, Mission in Chains, 73–5.21 Levecq, “Jacobus Capitein”, 160–1.22 Hastings, The Church in Africa, 177.23 For a discussion of the prohibition of marriage in America’s “slave codes” see DuCille, “Blacks of the Marrying Kind”, 25–9.24 DuCille, “Blacks of the Marrying Kind,” 41–3.25 Hastings, The Church in Africa, 198.26 Hall, White, Male and Middle Class, 157.27 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 122.28 Hall, White, Male and Middle Class, 169.29 Home Office. “Derivative Rights of Residence – Ruiz Zambrano Cases”.30 Solanke, “The Impact of Brexit on Black Women,” 148.31 Solanke, “The Impact of Brexit on Black Women, Children and Citizenship,” 151.32 Ibid., 147.33 Hall, White, Male and Middle Class, 169.34 Solanke, “The Impact of Brexit,” 151.35 Cummings, “Ain’t no Black in the (Brexit) Union Jack?” 594.36 Meer, “Racialization and Religion,” 389.37 Kundnani, The End of Tolerance, 128.38 Awan and Zempi, “‘You All Look the Same’,” 585–602.39 Swami et al., “To Brexit or Not to Brexit,” 156–79.40 Tell MAMA, Gendered Anti-Muslim Hatred and Islamophobia, 3.41 Zempi, “Veiled Muslim Women’s Responses,” 96–111; Tell MAMA, Gendered Anti-Muslim Hatred, 3.42 Awan and Zempi, “Impacts of Anti-Muslim Hate Crime,” 37.43 Sivanandan, “Poverty is the New Black,” 2.44 Rzepnikowska, “Racism and xenophobia,” 63.45 Ibid., 65.46 Ibid., 70.47 Ibid., 68–71.48 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 15–31.49 Riffat Hassan, “Islamic Hagar and Her Family”, in Hagar, Sarah and Their Children, Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, eds (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 149-170.50 Ibid., 2–3.51 Ibid., 18.52 Ibid., 19.53 Genesis 16:9 (All scripture references are taken from the NIV).54 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 20.55 Ibid., 16–7.56 Genesis 21:9–10.57 Genesis 21:18–21; Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 28–9.58 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 30.Additional informationNotes on contributorsSelina R. StoneDr Selina Stone is the Postdoctoral Research Associate in Theological Education at Durham University. She is the author of The Spirit and the Body: Towards a Womanist Pentecostal Social Justice Ethic (Brill/Schöningh, 2023) and a collection of wide-ranging journal articles, chapters and book reviews.