Sisters in the “Hostile Environment”: A womanist theological analysis of Brexit

This article builds upon Anthony Reddie's Theologising Brexit by offering a womanist perspective in response to his postcolonial and liberationist critique. In keeping with the framing of Reddie's argument I begin with history, by drawing on feminist historians which demonstrate that British enslavement, colonialism and mission should be understood as gendered as well as racialised forms of oppression in Africa and the Caribbean. In the second section, I critique Britain's “hostile environment” policies and Brexit as continuations of Britain's White supremacist and masculinist colonial past by centring the experiences of the “Zambrano carers”: predominantly single Black mothers left destitute by the UK government, and Black and Brown Muslim women who have borne the brunt of Islamophobic violence. In the final section I look to Hagar in Delores Williams's Sisters in the Wilderness to theologise Brexit with these women who are marginalised and dehumanised in contemporary British society.