Induced vulnerability: the consequences of racialization for African women in an emergency shelter in Catalonia (Spain)

The growing presence of African women (especially Moroccans) in the support services for survivors of gender-based violence in Catalonia (Spain) highlights how the perception of difference in contexts of significant cultural diversity can fuel othering processes based on racialized assumptions, which may ultimately lead these women to experience situations of additional vulnerability. Through the results of an anthropological study based on African (mainly Moroccan) women, we show how their racialized “otherness” is a cultural construct resulting from a combination of five main variables: gender, ethnicity, nationality, phenotype and religion. One of the most critical consequences of activating this reductionist mechanism is the creation of additional vulnerability for other women in the same situation.
We then analyze how these women mobilize cultural, ethnic, religious and socioeconomic markers, with results that ultimately impede the formation of sisterhood and mutual support relationships, thus increasing their sense of being neglected and their vulnerability.