New racisms, new racial subjects? The neo-liberal moment and the racial landscape of contemporary Britain

Abstract

The articles in this volume reflect upon a very specific moment in the social architecture of British society: a moment which brings financial meltdown together with some sizeable shifts in the racial and ethnic landscape of the UK. As a 'neoliberal revolution' (Hall 2011) heralds the end of public services and the end of the welfare state, it proclaims 'the end of race' as well. But cultural retrenchment and coded xenophobia have also been sweeping the political terrain, accompanied by 'new racisms' and 'new racial subjects' which only close contextual analysis can unpick. Against those who suggest we live in a post-racial time, the research presented offers friction. By focusing on particular locations in Britain at a particular moment, the articles explore local stories of 'race' and racism across changing socio-political ground.

Conviviality on the Brink

“…However, recent work critiques the very institution of citizenship as an instrument of power used to control and subject a nation state's own population (Genova 2015). While we observe that equality often appears as the ethical aspiration and the normative potential of politically motivated concepts such as citizenship, the relationships among people are rarely equal or unmarked at this neoliberal moment we are in (Redclift 2014). Despite all their differences, this dynamic can be observed in the African postcolony (Mbembe 2001), postcolonial Europe (Gilroy 2006), decolonial Latin America (Mignolo 2011) and their disjunctive democracies (Holston 2007).…”

The politics of nationalism and white racism in the UK

“…Declining levels of apparent racist sentiment might be due to a greater awareness amongst respondents that such views are illegitimate to raise in public. Furthermore, as Bobo (2011; see also Bobo, Charles, Krysan and Simmons 2015) has shown in the American case, and as Redclift (2014), and Kapoor (2013), and Valluvan and Kapoor (2016) reflect in the British context, declining levels of overt 'Jim Crow-like' white racism may be replaced by neo-liberal and 'performative' modes of racism which are not so easily manifested in survey responses. We deal with this issue by linking survey responses from the National Child Development Study (NCDS), one of the most famous in the world, (see Pearson 2016) to 220 qualitative accounts gathered with a sub-sample of panel members.…”

Migrant mothers: performing kin work and belonging across private and public boundaries

“…Migrant mothering also disrupts the logic of public debates concerning what it means to be a 'good citizen' and the boundaries of who may be performing citizenship. This work is both timely and significant in challenging public and media debates that oftentimes position racialised migrant women and their children as the 'enemy within borders' (Redclift, 2014). In the UK 'visible minorities' families from diverse ethnic and racial origins are cast as a hostile threat to the nation.…”