Tidal Politics: Queer Feminist Diaspora and Refusal in the Netherlands  

This project argues that the Dutch manage migrants in similar ways as they have managed water. Amidst the literal and figurative sinking landscape of the Netherlands, queer feminist diaspora employed strategies of creative resistance. I show how queer feminists of color ‘stayed afloat, navigated ‘sinking feelings’, and explored transnational kinship and exchange to manage the ongoing impact of Dutch colonialism. Water is an important vantage point in the book and thus contributes to other ways of theorizing histories of empire and race in Europe. By using narratives, archival materials, and cultural production from the Black, Migrant and Refugee (BMR) Movement, the project charts how queer feminists of color navigated the Dutch racial climate.  I use Tidal Politics as a conceptual and analytical framework to account for the affective, cultural, political, and visual intersections between water, migration, gender, race, and sexuality. As such, Tidal Politics operates across multiple scales and in various formations. The book brings together BMR feminist and queer organizing, politics, literature and cultural production, and diasporic exchange, to foreground how ideas of mastery and control shape the Dutch racial climate. In examining how the BMR movement used everyday strategies of creative and strategic interruption, this book offers insight into how we might creatively think about other ways of knowing.