Imaginaries of Europe

Abstract

This article explores some of the ways in which ideas about and attempts to construct a European identity and sense of belonging inscribe an imaginary of Europe that is exclusionary and elitist. It suggests that the symbolic figure of ‘the immigrant woman’ is a container category that simultaneously signifies the non-European and tests and destabilizes claims to Europe's essential characteristics. It also argues that traces of this imaginary of Europe can be found in feminist scholarship on global care chains and that the spatial category of ‘the domestic’ is the invisible seam that ties this scholarship to the hegemonic imaginary of Europe.