Both the Windrush scandal and the Grenfell fire raise urgent questions for sociologists, and for people concerned about tackling racism more broadly. Both remind us that racism is not just about individuals being intolerant, prejudiced, or bigoted, but about the social and institutional structures that organise who is entitled to what. In this lecture, I invite us to ask some questions about racism, rights and exclusion – particularly in relation to the history and contemporary dynamics of immigration control. It is by asking who is a member o...
Both the Windrush scandal and the Grenfell fire raise urgent questions for sociologists, and for people concerned about tackling racism more broadly. Both remind us that racism is not just about individuals being intolerant, prejudiced, or bigoted, but about the social and institutional structures that organise who is entitled to what. In this lecture, I invite us to ask some questions about racism, rights and exclusion – particularly in relation to the history and contemporary dynamics of immigration control. It is by asking who is a member of the nation, who is excluded, how this changes over time, and what can be done to those denied membership, that we can develop critical methodologies for studying racism in anti-immigrant times.
Reading
- Anderson, Bridget 2013. Us and Them? The dangerous politics of immigration control (Oxford: OUP).
- Back, Les, and S. Sinha. 2016. “Multicultural Conviviality in the Midst of Racism’s Ruins.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 37 (5): 517–532.
- Bulley, Dan, J. Edkins, N. El-Enany 2019. After Grenfell: Violence, Resistance and Response. London: Pluto Press
- De Genova, Nicholas 2017. ‘The “migrant crisis” as racial crisis: do black lives matter in Europe?’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 41 no. 10.
- de Noronha, Luke 2019: Deportation, racism and multi-status Britain: immigration control and the production of race in the present, Ethnic and Racial Studies.
- de Noronha, Luke 2020. Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of deportation to Jamaica (Manchester: MUP).
- Lentin, Alana 2014. “Postracial Silences: The Othering of Race in Europe.” In Racism and Sociology, edited by W. Hund, and A. Lentin, 69–104. Berlin: Lit Verlag.
- Yuval-Davis, Nira, G. Wemyss, and K. Cassidy. 2017. “Everyday Bordering, Belonging and the Reorientation of British Immigration Legislation.” Sociology 52 (2): 228–244.
Resources
- Our Migration Story – Runnymede Trust
- Deporting Black Britons – Website
- Bhambra, G. K. 2016. ‘Brexit, the Commonwealth, and exclusionary citizenship’. Open Democracy:
Questions for discussion
- How is the history of British immigration and nationality law implicated in the reproduction of racism?
- How do the Windrush Scandal and the Grenfell fire reveal the dynamic between ‘race’, class, migration status and deservingness?
- What are some of the dangers with arguments for rights on the basis of ‘contribution’?
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