Contextualising Feminisms in the Nordic Region: Neoliberalism, Nationalism, and Decolonial Critique

In understanding feminism as a floating signifier, the chapter seeks to explore how feminism as an idea, a project, and a community of belonging is produced and given meaning to by actors inside and outside of feminisms, but also, how feminism is acted upon in different contexts in the region. The chapter outlines the book’s contribution to the studying of the intersections between feminism, neoliberalism, and ethno-nationalism. In order to understand the rapid rise of right-wing populism and increasingly aggressive anti-immigration online campaigns that capitalise on racist and exclusionary nationalism, it is important to contextualise them in the long histories of racial and colonial power relations embedded in the Nordic societies. The chapter makes the link between antiracism and decolonising critiques of feminisms, as well as linking the struggles of migrant and refugee persons to those of indigenous activists, placing these in the sitelines of changing hegemonic forms of feminism throughout the region.