In the spring of 1992 the Feminist Review collective decided to do a special issue for 1993 on ‘Ethnicities’ as part of our prioritizing of issues around gender, race and ethnicity (see the editorial in Feminist Review, Number 40, Spring 1992). The decision came out of our annual planning weekend at which we discuss the agenda for the following year and focus on what seem to us to be the pressing debates to which the journal could make a contribution. Within Europe it is clear that questions around ethnic identities have become vital and pressing. In other parts of the world (for example, Malaysia and parts of Africa) differences and antagonisms expressed around ethnicity had been part of the political, economic and social agenda for more than a decade. That the power of ethnicity as a key site of contestation would proliferate around the world to such an alarming extent was not something that we in Europe anticipated in the 1980s.