Restorative Kinship: How a Local Movement of Women of Color Transforms Family Relationships

Abstract:This article illuminates how collective action shapes the kinship relationships of women of color leading a local restorative justice movement in Chicago. Using forty-seven in-depth interviews with community organizers and fifteen months of participant observations of local collective action as evidence, I highlight the intersecting processes of collective action and family life. Findings elucidate how leaders in the study, most of whom are African American and Latina mothers and grandmothers, coproduced community organizing and family life. Leaders incorporate community organizing training sessions and skills within their intimate kinship relationships. They engage in what I call restorative kinship, an intentional practice of advancing the social and emotional healing of relationships through the use of community organizing repertoires. Findings highlight implications for the strengthening of families through a collective action model that is intentionally inclusive of families—implications that I argue not only support mothers of color to fight for the rights of their children and families but also help them to construct and mend relationships that have been strained by social marginalization. Social movement and restorative justice scholarship must increasingly recognize that collective action participation is not a one-directional activity to achieve policy change but rather an interactive process that can deeply shape kinship.