n April 2024, Oneworld published an interview with two of the founders of Ashanti, a network of Surinamese-Dutch women activists from the 1980s. With contributions by Eline Westra, who wrote a research article on Ashanti’s intersectional critique of the Dutch welfare state.

This public roundtable at Spui25 with Anja Meulenbelt, Isra Lee, and Franca van Hooren, moderated by Eline Westra, took place on 16 April 2024. It was organized by Eline Westra in cooperation with Stichting Single Super Mom.

In this research article, Eline Westra sheds light on the social rights claims of the Surinamese-Dutch feminist organization Ashanti that was active between 1980 and 1987. Their Black feminist perspectives provide important insights into the underlying mechanisms of in- and exclusion of the Dutch welfare state, from the standpoints of Dutch citizens and families that did not necessarily fit the picture of the “imagined citizens” for whom the Dutch welfare state was built.

Public rtoundtable where Apostolos Andrikopoulos, Anne-Marie D’Aoust, Bridget Anderson and Saskia Bonjour discussed coloniality, class, and emotion in family migration politics.

Political struggles over national belonging often involve ideas on what a ‘proper’ family looks like. This article connects this important insight from the field of family migration politics to the study of postcolonial citizenship. Rather than focusing on dominant (State) perspectives, we ask: how do citizens from formerly colonised territories themselves conceptualise ‘the family’ and ‘the nation’ in the former metropole?

In this essay, Sonja Evaldsson Mellstrom discusses the place of race/ism and colonialism in European migration studies today in relation to key takeaways from the Bridging Race and Migration series.

Saskia Bonjour speaks about her research on family norms in migration politics and how that resonates with her own family history.

It all begins with an idea.

It all begins with an idea.