Understanding how the talk about resilience is connected to racism.

What is it about?

The article conceptualises how the seemingly neutral concept of resilience is entangled with racism, in order to introduce a special issue that empirically interrogates how discourses of resilience reproduce racialised orders. In general, resilience is often perceived as an enabler of resistance and an antidote to racism. However, this article draws attention to the ways in which resilience can be mobilised to create and maintain racist social and political structures and relations. Examples of sites where resilience is cultivated include Finnish security policy, military thinking in the US, post-Covid European Union, the international labour markets of highly skilled African jobseekers and global social justice activism. The paper offers three perspectives for understanding the entwinement between resilience and racism: how it furthers inequality, how it affects the body and the mind, and how it can be refused.

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The article highlights the importance of paying critical attention to what is actually being done when resilience is evoked discursively. It is therefore crucial to ask: from whom is resilience expected? What kinds of consequences does the demand for resilience have for different individuals and groups? All of us should be asking these questions when encountering the currently so common word ‘resilience’. As the article makes visible, the expectation of being resilient is not equally shared but those in less privileged positions are often those required to enhance their resilience. Accordingly, cultivating, building or demanding resilience is not a neutral act but an exercise of power. The article calls for a multidimensional approach to resilience to make unequal and racialised power hierarchies visible in all their guises. It is equally important to recognise the empowering facets of resilience in struggles for justice.