Decolonial dialogues: COVID-19 and migrant women's remembrance as resistance

ABSTRACT

This contribution presents a text-journey documenting decolonial moments experienced during COVID-19 with other migrant women from Pakistan residing in the Netherlands. It explores women’s negotiations of epistemic disregard experienced during integration, by means of Urdu language proverbs that arose during our conversations. Through remembrance, the presence of relationalities and multiple temporalities [Vazquez (2009). Modernity coloniality and visibility: The politics of time. Sociological Research Online, 14(4), 109–115] are expressed in knowledge practices we have brought from Pakistan. This raises crucial questions: How do relational and temporal dimensions (in)form migrant women’s practices and struggles? In what ways do migrant women defy modern knowledges and follow their ancestral ways of knowing, being, and doing? In addressing these questions, a decolonial approach is used to create (alternative) spaces, for those bodies that are relational and are sites of memory and temporality. Maria Lugones’ [(1987). Playfulness, “world”-travelling, and loving perception. Hypatia, 2(2), 3–19] concept of world traveling and Rolando Vazquez’s [(2009). Modernity coloniality and visibility: The politics of time. Sociological Research Online, 14(4), 109–115; Vazquez, R. (October 2015). Relational temporalities: From modernity to the decolonial. Unpublished manuscript] concepts of plural temporalities and relationality are used as a framework to understand remembrance as resistance to dominant world views.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• Decolonial feminism
• decoloniality
• epistemic disregard
• migrant women
• resistance

Introduction

duur ke dhool suhane¹

‘This was my mother’s first advice when I decided to move to the Netherlands’. While teaching me to cook samosas with her mother’s recipe in an online cooking session during COVID-19, Farah baji**² shared the above-mentioned quote and continued,

And upon departure from Lahore my mother advised me to retain ‘our own ways’ saying ‘Kawa chala hans ki chaal, apni bhi bhool gaya³’. These two quotes have stayed with me here as my two guiding principles. I live with and by them.

She shared stories about her struggles and I sensed her maintaining a deep connection with her mother, homeland, and with past times. She added, ‘I know Pakistani families that leave “Pakistan” behind – they leave our culture, our norms, our smells, our feelings, our forefathers for all that glitters here but is “not” gold’. I felt the concern for maintaining relations but I also sensed her inhabiting in-between times-places-memories.

The conversation shows an encounter between what migrant women are required to do and what they actually want to do – who they are required to be versus who they are. The crucial question is how they feel about this obligation and how do they respond to it?

This article, though complete on its own, is also part of my doctoral project focused on understanding Pakistani migrant women’s negotiations towards the disregard of their knowledges during integration into the Dutch society and the urgency of responding to COVID-19. Resonating with the aims of this special issue, the contribution attempts to unmute everyday stories of migrants during COVID-19 by engaging with concrete practices and experiences of migrant women situated at the margins of society.

Following decolonial epistemological approach, having conversations while cooking traditional food has been a collective, conscious and political choice, and represents the allegory of cooking as a performance of social and cultural resistance by us – the migrant women. It implies a wider social and cultural context for this research in multiple ways that Mill's study (as cited in Ghorashi 2018, p. 192) outlines is a wider sociological imagination formed by connecting everyday personal realities with larger social realities. It relates to what Gloria Wekker (2016, p. 19) calls ‘cultural archives’, that for her ‘foreground the memories, the knowledge, and affect with regard to race that were deposited within metropolitan populations, and the power relations embedded within them’. This research uncovers the interplay of migrant women’s cultural associations, embodied knowings and memories, enacted in cooking as the performance of resistance against power relations and disregard they encounter in the society at multiple levels. Additionally, kitchens, discussed in detail in another chapter of this research trajectory, provided the ‘reflective spaces that unsettle the normalized hierarchical structures of othering’ (Ghorashi, 2018) for this decolonial encounter.

The contribution offers collective reflections organized following modernity/coloniality/decoloniality moments (Vazquez, 2015). In the next section of this paper, the first moment (modernity) is presented as a journey with the migrant women where key illustrations of the impositions of modern institutional logics as experienced by women are pointed at. The second section looks into coloniality as a moment of disregards, erasures (invisibilities), and silencings of other-than-modern logics, ways, and knowledges. Attention is given to what is presented as beneficial and what is invisibilized as traditional, and non-productive. However, elements of sections 1 and 2 are discussed as connected and entangled, as two sides of the same coin – modernity/coloniality.

The third section delves into concrete examples of resistance and delinking that we practiced as migrant women living in the Netherlands during Covid-19. What is insignificant for them and how do they practice resistance against it, if at all? This section offers some tentative answers to these questions. Finally, collaborative learnings are outlined in the last section.

Where we are: contextualization

The study is situated in the present-day EU ‘migration crisis’ and states’ responses towards migrants, particularly during the times of COVID-19, while being attentive to the global influences, a long history of imperialism, and the presence of coloniality that manifests in many aspects of integration processes in the Netherlands. This paper brings Pakistani migrant women’s experiences of disregard in the context of the integration process, paying particular attention to the complexities and nuances of women’s experiences, while avoiding analysis through binary lens and generalizations that reproduce normative constructions about The Netherlands and Pakistan.

With around four centuries of imperial interventions across the globe, colonialism is deeply rooted in Dutch history (Weiner & Carmona Baez, 2018, p. ix). Most Dutch scholars discuss it as something that happened over there, far away, not for very long, and for little consequence for Dutch society today (Small as cited in Weiner & Carmona Baez, 2018 p. x). Critical scholars note this as a willful act of forgetting (Horton and Kardux, as cited in Weiner & Carmona Baez, 2018, p. x), ‘Dutch aphasia (Bijl, as cited in Weiner & Carmona Baez, 2018, p. x), and ‘White Innocence’ (Wekker, 2016).

The colonial legacy, with a particular Dutch flavour (Wekker, 2016), is evident in the othering discourse that is based on ‘the social and cultural construction of a fundamental ontological distinction between the west and the non-west (Prasad & Prasad, as cited in Ghorashi, 2018, p. 185). Weiner and Carmona Baez (2018: x) discuss the existing colonial legacies – “coloniality” as ‘directly linked to the Dutch historical and contemporary commitment to pillarization or “verzuiling”’, a system starting in the late 1800s as, ‘difference resulting from the cacophony of immigrant traders’ that continues to allow and expect each group in Dutch society to organize their own ‘pillar’ based on religion, race, ethnicity and so on (Weiner & Carmona Baez, 2018, p. x). These legacies of ‘categorizing’ and ‘othering’ as organizing principles of the society result in the ‘migrants’ as being another ‘separate’ pillar in the Dutch society.

Migrants, comprising a total population of 17.47 million (24.6 percent of the total population) (CBS, 2021), are considered as ‘allochtonous’ translated as ‘coming from elsewhere’. The Dutch terms autochtoon and allochtoon, indicating white native Dutch and people of colour respectively, are ‘constructed realities’ (Wekker, 2016, p. 23). The term migrant has a largely undesirable connotation implying fundamental differences and hierarchies that (Ghorashi, 2018, pp. 186, 187) reflects ‘Dutch sense of superiority over the “migrant other”’, and she refers to it as ‘categorical thinking’, meaning, ‘there has been a strict form of imagined belonging that creates otherness between the Dutch and the migrant others’ in terms of alleged sociocultural and socioeconomic traits.

Moreover, there exists a critical link between sociocultural and socioeconomic ‘othering’ of migrants and expectations and obligations for integration. Unable to enact an authentic (white) Dutchness in terms of appearance, language, and religion, migrants of colour face deep-rooted challenges during integration (Wekker, 2016). Essed (2002, p. 207) outlines this system of multiple forms of racist practices as, ‘a triangle of mutually dependent processes: the marginalization of those identified as racially or ethnically different; the problemitization of other cultures and identities; and symbolic or physical repression of (potential) resistance through humiliation or violence’. Consequently, Essed states (as cited in Wekker 2016, p. 7) those who cannot or will not be assimilated are segregated.

Hence, ‘Belonging to the Dutch nation demands that those features that the collective imaginary considers non-Dutch […] are shed as fast as possible and that one tries to assimilate’ (Wekker, 2016, p. 7). The ideals of integration and recently assimilation require the ‘weakly adjusted’ (Wekker, 2016, p. 9) to follow or mimic the Dutch norms such as to eat ‘potatoes instead of rice’ (Wekker, 2016). In this way, coloniality is manifested as the ‘otherness’ that implies social, cultural, and economic ‘hierarchies’ and proclaiming migrants as ‘lacking’ and needing ‘development’ for integration in the Netherlands (Wekker, 2016).

Moreover, as a development intervention for migrants, integration prescribe particular knowledges and skills as norms of Dutch society while disregarding professional qualifications, work experiences, and everyday knowledges acquired in home countries as invalid. A mandatory requirement for integration is passing the Dutch language, culture and labour market exam – ‘Inburgering’ where Dutch ‘norms and values’ are imposed onto the migrants – the ‘buitenlanders’ meaning ‘outsiders’. These interventions are presented as neutral and for the benefit of migrants and refugees. However, this research uncovers its invisible dynamics such as discrimination and disregard, as experienced and narrated by migrant women.

Against this backdrop of ‘pillarization’ and the ‘othering’, migrant women from Pakistan, comprising 45 percent of 25,938 migrants of Pakistani descent in the Netherlands (CBS, 2021), face multiple forms of discrimination on the basis of projected differences in ethnicity, race, culture, and religion as found in studies by Moghissi & Ghorashi and Mansouri & Marotta (as cited in Ghorashi, 2018 , p. 185). The present pandemic added to their predicament, and this contribution explores how challenges of integration intersect with COVID-19 restrictions. Moreover, the stories of women are situated in this context but also in the background of their past, origin, and home country where resistance against colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy widely prevails.

Embarking on this journey: conceptual and methodological underpinnings

The analysis builds on the premise that lived experiences and stories cannot be understood with the same logic used to invisiblize, disregard, and erase them – modern Eurocentric logic based on universalist notions (Escobar, 2008; Santos, 2016). Therefore, feminist decolonial thought is applied to conceptualize the women’s negotiations of epistemic disregard – what counts and what is discounted as knowledge, by whom, and why (e.g. Motta, 2018; Rutazibwa, 2018).

This is methodologically done via qualitative research following decolonial and collaborative research methods and involves life storytelling, dialogs, and in-depth conversations, with a focus on listening to the stories of each other. Motta’s (2018, pp. 31–32) alternative epistemological approach, based on experimentation with ‘deep listening to … our own bodies, shared sacred stories, … and co-create musical or poetic expression of our experience’ helped understand women’s negotiations. Importantly, as Icaza and de Jong (2018, p. xxviii) outline Solano's recommendations towards decolonizing ‘knowledges and learnings’ as an ‘act of working together, in the dialogs as equals’, facilitated horizontal collaboration for this research. In this way, the study questioned the hierarchical relations in the modern episteme and engaged in collaborative approaches to knowledge generation (Rutazibwa, 2018).

Empirically, the research aims to explain what exactly is being negotiated and how by Pakistani migrant women during the integration process, particularly during restrictions of COVID-19. To understand this, I operationalize two key concepts offered by decolonial thought: relational temporalities (Ghorashi, 2018; Vazquez, 2015) and resistance (Icaza, 2010, 2016; Icaza & de Jong, 2018; Lugones, 1987), which I explain in the later sections.

Significantly, while in the Netherlands, we, as migrant women from Pakistan, share our experiences, feelings, and realities of life, which Lugones (1987) defines as travelling to the worlds of each other. During the times of Covid-19 restrictions, this journey, as an opportunity to share and connect, has also contributed to our hopes and healings. Moreover, instead of ‘I’ the term ‘we’ is used denoting collective efforts towards this understanding. For the sake of clarity, I sometimes switch from ‘we’ to ‘migrant women’.

What we perceived: the delusions of modernity

In a popular Pakistani television serial, Jabbar (2014) outlines the reasons for migration:

Different reasons brought them to this country they call their new home; better life, economic prosperity, hopes, and dreams. Some of them are here because of their elders (who migrated here) and others for (‘perceived’) better future for their children. (Jabbar, 2014)

This indicates perceptions of success, progress, and happiness – vistas of modernity (Vazquez, 2020). Migrants are made to believe life in Western countries is better than in their own, and they follow this ‘projected’ illusion. The question is: what does settling down in a host country entail, how are perceived opportunities realized, and what are the challenges during this course? This section outlines impositions, of legal obligations but also social norms, as mandatory requirements for integration as experienced by the migrant women.

During the course of settling down, many women shared that they feel they are required to be ‘someone else’. As Fatima** shared, ‘Here, people neglect our experiences, our knowledges, and potential contributions in our particular fields’. There is a certain uneasiness expressed in this statement, the feeling of being an ‘outsider’ and being ‘disregarded’ when women like Fatima feel their contributions are discounted and they are ‘expected’ to do something else. This additional layer necessitates attention: how are the impositions experienced, felt and negotiated?

‘Have we got the gold we desired? How could we? “duur ke dhol suhane⁴!”’. We were cooking ‘biryani⁵’ and Mahjabeen* shared this quote adding,

I felt strong contempt in her tone when my Dutch neighbour asked me why do I keep my window blinds down. In Pakistan it is our practice to put the curtains down as soon as the sun goes down. Here, I am expected to follow the Dutch ways of being and doing, even when they are contradictory to our practices.

Sana** and I felt the despair in Mahjabeen’s tone, felt travelling to her world (Lugones, 1987), and instantly related to our own experiences. Sana added,

Many times I encountered a clash between my world within and the realm I faced outside in this society. For example: I am expected to always bike and to do it happily. This has not been our way of doing things

Here, Sana referred to her own understandings, worlds of meanings, and perspectives being in contrast to the westernized ways of being. On many occasions, women shared that they feel compelled to follow the prescribed manners that differ widely from our ways of being which are communal and relational. On the one hand, the struggle to fulfil the expectations of integration is evident. On the other hand, the difference in our ways of being and in expected ways to qualify for ‘inburgering’, as discussed above, is clearly visible to us (migrant women). In these examples, there are instances of imposition manifested at times in subtle ways and others as more painful experiences. These lived realities signify integration is experienced as an encounter: something that Vazquez refers to as the clash between different types of societies, different types of subjectivities, ways of being in the world (Vazquez, 2015, p. 7).

As COVID-19 restrictions reduced in the summer of 2020, we met again and resumed digging deeper into our query relating COVID-19 restrictions to impositions during integration. At Farah Baji’s house, while cooking ‘kebabs’⁶, we had a discussion on what is imposed on migrants by modernity and lauded as beneficial for them, and what is being silenced, invisibilized, and erased as being traditional. This generated many concrete examples and stories. Noor*, a women-rights activist noted:

Centuries ago, our knowledge of cotton production and weaving was pronounced as archaic and abandoned, only to flourish the industrial setup in the UK. And today, our (professional and everyday) knowledges and skills are being discounted in order to impose ways of doing things of the host countries. In this way they establish and maintain their superiority, power and control. We had different ancestors (and different ancestral knowledges) and following social justice claims, the host nations need to accept this diversity’.

Then, we discussed if we are living in colonial times today? Kitchen filled with the energy of our laughter, but I also sensed condemnation, remorse, and resistance. Yes! In myriad ways, we face similar mechanisms of control and imposition in modern times, was the mutual agreement and then stories continued till late after dinner as we strived for a deeper understanding.

Impositions, existing in myriad forms, are structurally rooted but also institutionally enforced. As Meena** shared her frustration,

I am struggling to find ways to pass on our ancestral values to my next generation. My daughter called the police when I emphasized, she should respect her teachers and should not use harsh and direct language with them. This is what constitutes our core value system – respect for elders.

She sighed and added, ‘My daughter is made to believe that our ways and approach is old-style. Letting go of respect is presented as the right thing to do’. I sensed mixed feelings of helplessness and yet determination to retain ways of being that are alien in the foreign land. This encounter signifies controlling practices, where imposition is cemented via modern institutional mechanisms. This is not all, there is another deeper layer of concern here, erasure of ancestral knowledges, and ways of being that is worrying Meena. I discuss this further in the following section.

What we encountered: the experiences of coloniality

‘I want to help people during these challenging times of COVID-19 and I am qualified and experienced to do so, but I cannot’. Anum*, a qualified medical doctor with 8 years of professional experience in Pakistan, recounts her moments of struggle in the Netherlands, ‘I miss my time treating patients and seeing them get well’. She paused for a while and I felt her reliving those memories. Then added,

I tried to get equivalence,⁷ here in the Netherlands, of my medical degree in order to contribute to the profession I love. I realized the standards and requirements are set only to discourage people like us – the migrants, to perform and to prosper.

‘I felt this disregard of my knowledge and experience more during this pandemic’, she added. During the pandemic, Anum started working as a medical artist and now produces medical-art-based paintings. Her coping strategy indicates ways in which migrants, considered non-modern and lacking in the Dutch society, adopt new approaches to find their ways, defying the hegemonic binary constructions of migrants being non-modern against modern Dutch society. Besides the hegemonic monolithic presentation of ‘allochtonous’ as ‘non-modern’, such cases depict the coexistence of modern and non-modern practices as migrants negotiate everyday lives in the host country.

Thus, the qualifications and experience gained from migrants’ home countries are often not accepted in the host country (Bagley & Abubaker, 2017; Butt, 2007; Essed, 2002). This dismissal affects migrants' lives in all aspects, raising questions: do the institutional mechanisms that disregard migrants’ knowledges, qualifications, and strengths imply domination, control, and subjugation, and in what (in/visible) forms? With these questions, we proceed to more stories of disregard and silence of other-than-modern logics.

There was clarity but discomfort in Fehmina**’s voice as she shared,

Do not look for the sun in a country of clouds. Here, it would be difficult to get the job of a receptionist or waiter for a practicing doctor in Pakistan. So, we do whatever work is possible for us. Our work is not portrayed as it actually is (positive projection). On the contrary, it is downgraded and seen as inferior and less worthy. No matter what we do, it will never be ‘good enough’.

Fehmina points to the way migrants are marginalized and ‘seldom included as full-fledged members of Dutch society who are valued for their contributions’ (Ghorashi, 2020, p. 4).

These lived experiences of disregard illustrate feelings of uneasiness. Butt (2007, p. 302) highlights that many Pakistani immigrants in the Netherlands were working in professions that they would have otherwise found to be below their status in their home country. Documenting discrimination in the Dutch labour market Ghorashi (2018) and Bagley and Abubaker’s (2017, p. 8) outline Muslim (minorities) are less successful than their Dutch counterparts in their efforts to seek employment. Ghorashi points to it as, ‘the pervasiveness of the normalized colonial lens of othering, with its fixations on difference and lack’ (2018, p. 195) constituting the primary reason for discrimination.

The above cases of downward employability are manifestation of coloniality in present times, that Wekker (2016, p. 3) calls ‘cultural archives’ thus ‘constructing blacks (read “non-White immigrants”) as inferior, intellectually backward, lazy, sexually insatiable, and always available; that is … white self as superior and full of entitlement’. In fact, this marginalization is ideologically rooted in associating the migrants ‘with problems: less intelligent, language deficiency’ (Essed, 2002, p. 207) and so on. Similar to what Fehmina concludes, we – the migrants will never be ‘good enough’. Consequently, this visibilizes practices of control of what migrants as ‘buitenlanders’ can/not do. Decolonial thought helps delve beyond this and uncovers what it refers to as ‘erasure’ of what is previously known – qualifications, experiences, and knowledge of medical doctors in these cases, as the logic of coloniality.

Delinking – unmuting resistances and plural temporalities

Aag mangan aayi, ghar ki malkan ban baithi⁸

My grandfather used to share this proverb before starting many bedtime stories. Literally translated as, ‘she came to beg for live fire and became the owner of the house’, it refers to the British colonization of the Indo-Pak subcontinent that started in seventeenth century (Brown, 2010) and came to a political end in 1947. My grandfather shared stories of his lived experiences during colonization with feelings that I was then unable to comprehend. Also, to amuse us, he would mime my grandmother and how she refused the British ways of doing things and forbid the use of English language words in their everyday conversations in the early 1900s.

In the sections above, Sana’s experiences are similar to my grandmother’s practices of refusing imperial ways – both resisting colonial legacies. As Farah Baji shared,

Kawa chala hans ki chaal, apni bhi bhool gaya

Farah baji, like many of us live by this age-old Urdu saying translated as, ‘the crow walks the swan’s walk and forgets his own’, cautioning one to maintain one’s own ways – of being-knowing-doing. Noor added to our discussion:

It’s crucial to understand: it’s not merely about ‘knowing’ (quotes, ways) and ‘embodying’; it is about remembering, and it is about practicing. The system here, following hegemonic neoliberal approach, demands an individualistic way of life requiring focus to be limited to individual progress and monetary gains. But we must retain our ways – the relational, communal and collective ways.

This illustrates women resist the erasure of their knowledges by remembering advice that manifest in everyday practices. The ancestral knowledges we embody shape the worlds not just within us but also around us, as subsequently, the knowing is translated into becoming. The empirical angle of the research interrogates how this happens and how women keep their own ways. The understanding can be traced by engaging in nuances and crevices implicit in the following conversations.

During our collective reflection session, I deliberated on the research journey as,

The spices in my kitchen talk to me; connect me with my relations, homeland, food and past times; influence my present-day thoughts, decisions and choices; and help to heal my own wounds and sufferings as I world travel (Lugones, 1987) in this foreign land, going to work and to inburgering classes, meeting (migrant) women, feeling to be with my elders, family, and friends back home. Resembling the birds that cross oceans and continents every year and carry their experiences, knowledges such as the flying routes and destination addresses, we (migrant women) carry the past experiences and embodied knowledges as we have come to live here – and yes, they remain here with us!.

Sana shared how she followed her ancestral way of preserving food as was needed during COVID-19, ‘My late grandmother paid special attention to containers and I followed the same steps as her. I think her soul would be content that I am following her ways’. During her everyday encounters in society, Sana experiences the pressure to conform to Dutch norms that she feels are violent to her. Making the conscious choice to act according to ancestral ways for her is a means to heal from this violence. Later she added, ‘Who do you see the most following their own sartorial ways in streets of The Hague? Pakistanis!!’ And we all laughed very proudly at our acts of resistance – delinking from modernity/ coloniality.

These concrete practices in our everyday lives illustrate concern for the future and present-day urgency to integrate, but there is also attention to remembrance and connection to ancestors’ advices and ways of being. I will proceed to discuss these examples using the concepts of plural temporalities, relationality, and resistance.

There is a key dimension of time that we relate to and keep bringing up as we navigate between past, present, and future. This nonlinear temporal dimension of time becomes one such way women liberate memory as a site of struggle (Vázquez, 2009) providing the possibility for practicing resistance against epistemic disregard and enacting delinking from modern/ colonial order. Decolonial thought names this phenomenon ‘plural temporalities’ to highlight its questioning of dominant understandings of (modern/colonial) time as linear or chronological (Vazquez, 2015). In the above examples, Sana's approach to hold onto her ancestral way of preserving food depicts multiple temporalities enacted simultaneously and represents relations with the past, land, ancestors, language, and much more.

Furthermore, our conversations illustrate the significance of memory, remembrance, and relations in (in)forming women’s resistances and enacting alternatives through and as relationality (Vazquez, 2015, p. 1). Noor’s reference to the individualistic way of life presents a concrete case of how modernity established its monopoly over the real at the expense of relational worlds (Escobar as cited in Vazquez, 2015, p. 7). As drawn in Noor’s perspective, relational temporalities are not only place-based but temporal and in relation to a communal interiority, ancestrality, and memory (Vazquez, 2015). Relational practices, according to Vazquez (Vazquez, 2015, p. 16), are threatened by but also resist the present dominant Modern/Colonial mandates. Modernity is synonymous with the present but the migrant women practicing the alternative constantly travel between their presents and pasts, relations with mother, food, recipes, using herbs in the kitchen as (traditional) medicines prescribed by some wise (wo)man in their hometown. In this way, relational temporalities can be understood first, as resistance to modernity and second, as practicing alternatives – decolonial ways of being in the world.

In our responses, we as migrant women from Pakistan are living in ‘exile’, which Ghorashi (2018) following Said – refers to as the ‘condition of living in-between worlds, cultures and structures [where] exiles constantly negotiate their past and present’. Ghorashi (2018, p. 196) indicates that agency in terms of small changes practiced every day is needed as an alternative to exclusion and othering and is ‘manifested in partial and temporal movements’ of migrants in the Netherlands.

Interestingly, our decolonial dialogues reveal a connection with memory and remembrance but also uncover forms of resistance. Maria Lugones’ contribution to decolonial feminism helps explain forms of resistance enacted in our daily practices. Icaza (2010, p. 130) argues that for Lugones, resistance starts with a questioning of oppression(s) as a unitary system that is inescapable, for example, through the use of agency. In the past, my grandmother resisted the use of English language words, and today we follow our grandmothers’ recipes and ways – resisting epistemic disregard in our everyday practices. In this way we, as migrant women, are questioning that totality and inescapability of control (Icaza 2010, p. 130) embedded in expectations of integration, through ancestral ways of being, knowing and doing: ancestral food preservation, cooking practices, sartorial practices, language, and much more.

Moreover, as Vazquez (2015, p. 12) refers to Lugones and indicates, it is helpful to ‘see power circulating in people’s bodies and not just at the level of institutional or systemic historical places’. This means paying attention to the entanglements of bodies, subjectivities, geo and body political conditions of violence in the present modern/colonial order (Vazquez, 2015) but also to women’s responses to be disregarded. Our practices present delinking from modern/colonial ways in concrete examples: My grandfather telling us stories of violence of colonialism; Farah Baji living by her mother’s advice; Sana following her grandmother’s ways but also simultaneously resisting modern ways of food preservation. I find solace in relations with memories, with spices, and with many migrant women I prefer to work with, and this is where the resistance births and flourishes for me.

The cultivated crop: collaborative learnings

This research project has been a journey of ontological and epistemological shift as we, the research collaborators, strive to make sense of phenomena in the margins of society and residing outside the epistemic territory of modernity, through the women’s (the ‘other’) eyes by engaging with an emerging (other than mainstream) methodology (decolonial) and analysing through the relational and multitemporal lens provided by decolonial thought. It has been a collaborative learning experience, one of deep listening (Motta, 2018) and (world) travelling (Lugones, 1987) ‘with’ the women collaborators. The reflections are based on embodied knowledges and lived experiences as practiced by migrant women.

We remember, embody and bring our relations in conversations as one mentions a piece of advice from her grandma or another follows her mother’s recipe. The notion of relational temporalities (Vazquez, 2015, p. 7) helped us understand the nonlinear temporalities we inhabit and navigate while negotiating to maintain relationalities under the present demands of integrating and responding to challenges during Covid-19. Remembrance plays a role in (in)forming our responses, for example, when Sana chose to follow her grandmother’s way of food preservation and my choice to bring (some aspects of) our ancestral knowledge to the discourse.

The text-journey substantiates that coloniality is rife in the Dutch Kingdom, is institutionally entrenched to ‘ensure its continuation’, and that the Dutch pillars act as ‘a nexus of control and segregation’ (Weiner & Carmona Baez, 2018). For this study, the decolonial encounters entail de-centering our position and ‘creating space for alterity’ (Ghorashi, 2018) to bring glimpses of what is relegated to oblivion (Vazquez, 2020).

It is a contribution towards epistemic justice (Santos, 2016) visiblizing decolonial (alternative) ways of being-knowing-doing practiced by a segment of society, resisting modern colonial logics. The conversations indicate that Pakistani migrant women do not always follow expectations of integration in The Netherlands. They comply with some aspects, incorporate and introduce something, and reject many others. Like in cooking, women retain their recipes but also the food culture; that is on the one hand passed on from generations, and on the other hand maintains the relationships such as with the past, homeland, and knowledges. Our questioning of the totality of control and epistemic disregard emerged as a shared notion, one that is manifested in a myriad of concrete practices of resistance. The task ahead rests in investigating possibilities towards coexistence – where plural and many worlds can coexist.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Umbreen Salim

Umbreen Salim is a decolonial feminist, a migrant and refugee rights’ advocate, and a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, in The Netherlands. Her work is positioned in a space where decolonial thought meets the decolonial praxis. Her research is focused on the politics of knowledge surrounding migrants and refugees. In her work, she opts to collaborate with other women of color to collectively cultivate epistemically non-violent knowledges. She is also part of a migrant and refugee-led group – New Women Connectors. In her work, she brings together politics, plural forms of knowledges, the decolonial option, and healing.

Notes

1 Urdu language proverb translated as, ‘Things look shining and bright from afar’.

2 All direct quotes come from conversations with research collaborators that took place between 2016 and 2020 in Amsterdam and the Hague. All real names are indicated with *. Pseudonyms are indicated as **.

3 Urdu language proverb translated as, ‘crow walks like a swan and forgets his own walk’.

4 Urdu language proverb translated as, ‘Things look shining and bright from afar’. This refers to the illusion that life is projected to look good from far away and once you go near then reality is not the same.

5 Urdu language word. A traditional dish in Pakistan made with rice and meat or vegetables as basic ingredients.

6 Urdu language word. A traditional dish in Pakistan made with minced meat as basic ingredients.

7 Equivalence of educational degrees is assessed in the Netherlands by the National Academic Recognition Information Centre.

8 Urdu language proverb literal translation: ‘came to ask for fire and becomes owner of the house’. In the past women used to get live fire from the neighbourhood. It refers to colonizers who came to Pakistan for the spices and became rulers of the land.