Brexit, Trump, and ‘methodological whiteness’: on the misrecognition of race and class

Abstract

The rhetoric of both the Brexit and Trump campaigns was grounded in conceptions of the past as the basis for political claims in the present. Both established the past as constituted by nations that were represented as 'white' into which racialized others had insinuated themselves and gained disproportionate advantage. Hence, the resonant claim that was broadcast primarily to white audiences in each place 'to take our country back'. The politics of both campaigns was also echoed in those social scientific analyses that sought to focus on the 'legitimate' claims of the 'left behind' or those who had come to see themselves as 'strangers in their own land'. The skewing of white majority political action as the action of a more narrowly defined white working class served to legitimize analyses that might otherwise have been regarded as racist. In effect, I argue that a pervasive 'methodological whiteness' has distorted social scientific accounts of both Brexit and Trump's election victory and that this needs to be taken account of in our discussion of both phenomena.

Between disruptions and connections: “New” European Union migrants in the United Kingdom before and after the Brexit

“…The mobile lives of “new” migrants from the postsocialist EU countries collided with deeper, half‐formed, and ongoing postcolonial histories. They encountered a changing historical dynamic where, in the early postwar years, (Commonwealth) migrants became citizens, whereas from the 1970s on, and even more so since Brexit, (European) citizens were turned into immigrants (Bhambra, , 2018). So, instead of fostering a sense of European belonging, Brexit evoked sentiments of separating “us” and “them” (Anderson, ), and of diminishing rights to migrants.…”

Negotiating Brexit: Migrant spatialities and identities in a changing Europe

“…Furthermore, scholars have been quick to respond to the shifting parameters of Brexit geopolitics, for example, with critical commentary on how Brexit has intensified already existing racial and class hierarchies between migrants and citizens in U.K. communities (Bhambra, ; Botterill, ; Lulle, Moroşanu, & King, ; Rzepnikowska, ; Komaromi, ; Virdee and McGeever, ). The discourse of the Leave campaign, its appeal of imperial nostalgia and representations of migration as a threat to national sovereignty, has not only influenced the wave of racist violence against migrants and ethnic minorities that followed the referendum but “turned citizens into migrants” (Bhambra, ; Emujulu, ). Virdee and McGeever (:1808) note that “what is striking about this wave of racist violence is that perpetrators made little attempt to distinguish between Black and Brown citizens and White European migrants,” suggesting long‐standing racial hierarchies were reinvoked indiscriminately, irrespective of citizenship or migration status.…”

Geographies of deindustrialization and the working‐class: Industrial ruination, legacies, and affect

“…Drawing on analyses of voting and polling data to challenge these assumptions, Bhambra quotes from one extensive study that the archetypal Leave voter was in fact “white, middle class and lives in the South of England” (quoted in Bhambra, , p. 215; original Becker, Fetzer, & Novy, , p. 4, emphasis added). Situated in post‐colonial theories, Robbie Shilliam (), joining Bhambra (), has put forward a compelling argument which places the histories of (de)colonization and the racialization of class at the centre of explanations of recent populist democratic ruptures. It is true that working‐class studies, as practiced in Western universities, has been neglectful of issues of race (Holmwood, ; Roediger, ).…”

“…Bhambra () picks up on the slipperiness of class distinctions and the continuing tendency of some commentators to set the parameters of working‐class inclusion to suit their pre‐existing agendas (Hochschild, ). Part of the concern with locating the actions and opinions of the working‐class is certainly determining what constitutes the working‐class in the first place.…”

“…Relatedly, referring back to the Antipode symposium on "new" working-class studies and the lines of inquiry it sought to initiate, it is increasingly problematic to clearly define a post-industrial working-class and we should instead, perhaps, seek to investigate the borderlands of class differentiation and points of encounter with structural inequalities (Wills, 2008). Bhambra (2017) picks up on the slipperiness of class distinctions and the continuing tendency of some commentators to set the parameters of working-class inclusion to suit their pre-existing agendas (Hochschild, 2016).…”