Caring subjects: migrant women and the third sector in England and Scotland

We situate racialized migrant mothers as political actors in the landscape of austerity in England and Scotland. We explore the possibilities of a politics around caring work. We ask: What “caring subjects” are possible, under austerity? A “politics of care” can challenge the dichotomy between private caring and public citizenship practices. However, we argue that the shift from a “culture of care” to a “culture of cuts” poses significant challenges to this politics in third sector spaces, particularly when processes of racialization are brought to the fore. We move beyond “reductionist economism” to explore how the current economic crisis is also one of social relations. The re-privatization of caring and reproductive work generates new forms of subjectivity and social reproduction. Within the supposed “monolith” of neoliberalism, a multiplicity of subjectivities are engendered which open some spaces for resistance and subversion.