Un/mothering: An ethnographic account of the role of colonialism, patriarchy and poverty in the child protection system in England

Gazing at the child protection system in England through the lens of Black feminists Christina Sharpe, Hortense Spillers, Alexis Pauline Gumbs and bell hooks, I analyse the role of race, gender and class in deciding who is allowed to be a mother. Using ethnographic vignettes, I interrogate how colonialism, poverty and patriarchy has affected one woman’s fight to mother her children and document how the state has tried to ‘unmother’ her. The article is based on an 18-month multimodal ethnographic study with ten children and their mothers, all of whom have experienced domestic abuse and social work intervention in England. All children lived with their mothers and siblings in social housing and had one or both parents from a country formerly colonised by the UK or another European country. The article concludes that the narratives and practices in England’s child protection system have deep roots in the colonial discourse on mothering. Through the ethnographic account of one mother, Nicole, I reflect on Sharpe’s question of how a woman becomes ‘a former mother’ or ‘unmothered’. I argue that ‘the hold’ that Sharpe writes about is very much in existence in the child protection system in England.