Hierarchies, scale, and privilege in the reproduction of national belonging

Abstract

It is increasingly recognised both that belonging divides hierarchically and that people have different capacities to be seen as belonging. However, while the existence of hierarchies of belonging is well documented from the perspective of ethnically minoritised and migrant groups, what characterises, produces, and underpins these hierarchies is largely unaddressed, as is a geographically informed analysis of their reproduction. This paper, based on interviews with white British people in the suburbs of London, takes a novel approach, examining the reproduction of national belonging among people for whom such belonging is relatively privileged. The paper identifies three constructions of national belonging within white British narratives – “belonging in Britain,” “belonging to Britain,” and “being of Britain” – and argues that, although not always recognised as such, the three constructions are hierarchical in their differing temporalities and connections to whiteness. The elucidation of these different belongings and, crucially, the recognition of their hierarchisation and scalar reproduction, represent major contributions to research on belonging, and also help to explain the exclusion from a full sense of national belonging articulated by British people of colour.

Who's a good citizen? Status and power in minority and majority youths' conceptions of citizenship

“…For instance, the targeting of minority youths as potential counter citizens in Danish political discourse signals that these young people are not unequivocally seen to belong in or fit into the Danish nation. In a recent contribution to the literature, Clarke (2020) argues that while the language of citizenship may be open and democratic and thus offer inclusion to minoritized groups, these groups may simultaneously be marginalized within other hierarchies, such as that of national belonging.…”

“…As will be elaborated in the analysis and discussion, the agency that majority youths experience is enabled not by the absence of structure, as is otherwise implied (or undertheorized) in analyses that place weight on the creative enactment of ordinary citizenship. On the contrary, majority youths' agency is made possible by their recognition within a particular national structure that places them on top of the hierarchy of belonging (Clarke, 2020). In addition, while the reproduction of a widely shared set of citizen norms suggests that citizenship is highly ordered (Staeheli et al., 2012), existing (national) power structures make majority youths experience citizenship as more ‘ordinary’, standard, routine, and taken‐for‐granted than minority youths (Skey, 2013).…”

“…Even among the minority interviewees who did not express feeling challenged, several listed a set of reasons for why they were good citizens (e.g., being enrolled in education or working). In other words, instead of counting themselves as good citizens because they are ‘normal’ or ‘average’, several of these youths felt a need to defend their experience of being seen as good citizens with a list of ‘proofs’ for belonging to this category, thus reflecting their less secure status in the dominant, national hierarchy of belonging (Clarke, 2020; Soysal, 2012; Warikoo & Bloemraad, 2018).…”

“…While public and political debate suggests that the two groups subscribe to different, and potentially conflicting, citizen ideals, I follow Midtbøen et al's (2020Midtbøen et al's ( , p. 2626) conviction that 'we should not a priori assume that minority groups differ from majorities' in what they consider as important elements of citizenship. The co-analysis of the two groups enables me to simultaneously offer insight into the (re)production of common norms of citizenship (Erdal, 2019) and shed light on how hierarchies of belonging (Clarke, 2020) affect minority and majority youths' abilities to redefine citizenship.…”

Everyday Nation in Times of Rising Nationalism

“…Over the last two decades or so, a great deal of studies have explored all these instances, with a particular attention to how the nation is mobilised facing ethno-racial and religious diversity (Clarke, 2020; Erdal, 2019; Erdal and Strømsø, 2018; Skey, 2011), including how minoritised national citizens enact or deflect the nation (Antonsich, 2018a, 2018b). More recently, as part of this endeavour, an attention to affective nationalism (Antonsich and Skey, 2016; Antonsich et al, 2020; Closs Stephens, 2016; Merriman and Jones, 2016; Militz and Schurr, 2016; Sumartojo, 2016) has also emerged as an additional way to capture how people move and are moved by national feelings in their everyday life.…”