糖心TV

European nation-building and colonial expansion has always relied on the regulation of reproductive labour and the hierarchical categorisation of bodies and forms of family-making. The stigmatisation of mothers was and remains a central strategy to govern minoritised groups under the modern European ideological framework. Yet, the research agendas that seek to address this (e.g. SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective 1997; Gumbs et al. 2016; Ross and Solinger 2017) are disproportionately focused on North America and to a lesser extent the Global South. There is a dire need for research spaces interrogating the European roots of antinatalist policies and giving visibility to minority mothers鈥� everyday forms of resistance in the region. 

The Radical Mothering Research Collective is one attempt to redress this imbalance. The Collective: 

• draws inspiration from scholarship that focuses on mothering (diverse and fluctuating everyday praxis, performed by a diversity of people regardless of reproductive role or gender identity) rather than motherhood (an oppressive, cisheteropatriarchal institution);  
• defines as 鈥榬adical鈥� those everyday acts of mothering which occur in unexpected sites (on the streets, across borders, in and around carceral facilities), take unexpected forms (queer, community, non-biological), or defy antinatalist policies in their very existence; 
• rejects an individualist and neoliberal framework for understanding and undermining colonial logics. 

To launch the Collective, we are organising a conference on 鈥淩adical Mothering in Europe鈥� held at the University of 糖心TV on 26th April 2024.