Moving racisms, shifting targets: An analysis of race in postcolonial Britain

In order to explore the contemporary manifestations and meanings of race and its operation within racist discourse and practice, this paper draws on a secondary analysis of two research studies. The first study involved young separated migrants seeking sanctuary in Britain and the second focused on the experiences of lone white mothers of mixed-parentage children. Here we analyse the everyday and structural racism experienced by each group in order to consider how seemingly different manifestations of race and racism are in fact linked together and in some ways dependent on each other within a postcolonial logic that reconstructs race and racism to serve shifting hegemonic interests. The discussion seeks to address the salience of race and racism in contemporary Britain and how this interrelates with other social inequalities, such as migration status and family composition. Racism/postcolonialism/asylum/mixed-parentage/multiculturalism This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power on 14 April 2014 available online: http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/full/10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002#. VSuUUk3Qfct [10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002] 2 Introduction Historically, notions of blood and soil have been important to understandings of Britishness, defining both the extent of the territories’ geographical borders and crucially who the British ‘are’ in racial and genealogical terms. Articulations of Britishness and notions of racial purity underpinning it have moved from a more exclusionary racialised image to one that is, on the surface at least, more inclusive of ethnic diversity. This paper aims to examine the salience of race in contemporary Britain by comparing and contrasting the experiences of two different groups – lone white mothers of mixed-parentage children and young separated migrants (footnote 1). These groups tend to occupy different spaces within the sociology of race and ethnicity and are not usually analysed in relation to one another. The motivation for this paper is that by comparing and contrasting the experience of these different groups, a broader picture can be revealed about the way in which racism manifests itself at the current time. This is a particularly appropriate political moment to provide an analysis of race and racism in postcolonial Britain. Back and Sinha (2010) note how the governmentinvited, labour-led pattern of African, African Caribbean and South Asian migration settlement is at an end. Vertovec (2007) argues that the level of diversity in Britain today exceeds anything that the country has ever seen before. He employs the term ‘super-diversity’ to refer to the level and complexity of contemporary migration and argues that this is particularly visible in London. His analysis highlights the This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power on 14 April 2014 available online: http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/full/10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002#. VSuUUk3Qfct [10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002] 3 importance of taking into account a range of factors when seeking to understand the experiences of migrants, including country of origin, migration channel, language and area of residence. While processes of migration have become more complex than before, Vertovec (2007) argues that social scientists’ and policy-makers’ understandings of migration and multiculturalism in this country have largely been based on the experience of people arriving from the former Commonwealth between the 1950s and 1970s. It can be argued that contemporary Britain celebrates diversity, increasingly insisting that racism is on the margins of society, an aberrant extreme space populated by the BNP or English Defence League. However, at the same time legal channels for migrants to settle in the UK are becoming increasingly restrictive and public concern about immigration is regularly voiced. Notably, when the candidates for Prime Minister in the 2010 general election took part in a televised debate, immigration was the first topic to be raised by the audience (BBC, 16.04.10). Concerns about resources such as social housing (Dench, Gavron and Young, 2006), access to healthcare and the availability of paid employment have been highlighted. Of significance to this paper, they often invoke territorial or even racialised beliefs, assumptions and concerns. Such concerns are sometimes exploited by far right political parties such as the British National Party (BNP). However, it is of interest to note that the BNP did not do as well as predicted in the 2010 general election (Roberts, 2010), suggesting a complex and changing range of attitudes and voting This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power on 14 April 2014 available online: http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/full/10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002#. VSuUUk3Qfct [10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002] 4 behaviour. This paper draws on two studies in order to present an analysis of the nature of race and racism in contemporary Britain. The first study focussed on young separated migrants. It arose from tensions between the proclaimed universalism of policy initiatives such as Every Child Matters and the inequalities that young separated asylum seekers face (Dunkerely et al., 2006; Kelly and Stevenson, 2006). Healthcare access as well as sexual health and risk of sexual exploitation were concerns underpinning this research (UNHCR, 2004). Equally of concern was the changing politics of racism nationally and in East London that was targeting migrants as ‘not belonging’ in contrast to the claims on belonging and resources made by both post-war migrants and their often British-born descendents as well as the White British community whose inward/outward flows have historically been less controversial to British racial politics (Keith, 2008). The data created in Study A was placed against this backdrop. The second study explored the experiences of lone white mothers of mixedparentage children, focusing particularly on mothers’ support networks. The starting point for this study was the suggestion from previous research that families from this background may face particular difficulties (including the experience of racism) and may potentially have less than optimum support networks. For example, research and official figures indicate that mixed-parentage children are over-represented in the public care system (DfES, 2007), and a high number of children in care come from families headed by a lone white mother (Barn, 1999). The study sought to gain more This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power on 14 April 2014 available online: http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/full/10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002#. VSuUUk3Qfct [10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002] 5 understanding about mothers’ experiences and the formal and informal support networks available to them. The mothers in the study were parenting their children in a context influenced by past migration and settlement of people from the former Commonwealth countries. The young people in Author A’s research fit into Vertovec’s (2007) notion of ‘new immigration’ and face a different set of experiences and legal constraints. Comparing the experiences of this group can shed light on whether racisms’ disavowal and the adjoining celebration of diversity signal an increasingly tolerant UK, or a shift in terms of how racism operates. Despite the different starting points, some parallels can be drawn between the two original studies. Both sought to gain insight into the experiences of a potentially marginalised and stereotyped group. Both studies adopted a qualitative approach in order to gain insight into the research participants’ experiences from their own perspective and the results were analysed using the same technique (see methodology section). The two pieces of research generated data concerning racism and the findings highlighted the way in which social inclusion and exclusion could be complex and multi-faceted. For the purposes of this paper, we sought to compare and contrast the experiences of the two groups studied by reanalysing our data to examine everyday and structural racism. Based on the data presented we argue that ethnic diversity has found a level of acceptance in Britain alongside racism. We argue that the seemingly different manifestations of race and racism reported by the two groups are in fact linked together and in some ways dependent on each other. That is, the apparent celebration of diversity within Britain This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power on 14 April 2014 available online: http://www.tandfonline. com/doi/full/10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002#. VSuUUk3Qfct [10.1080/1070289X.2014. 892002] 6 is contingent on the racist targeting of migrants. Furthermore this celebration ignores the re-inscription of racism against those of mixed-parentage and their families. Before discussing the findings, we will briefly describe the methodology employed in this research.