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’ 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 ‘radical’ 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 “Radical Mothering in Europe” held at the University of Warwick on 26th April 2024.