1st Edition
Racial Nationalisms Borders, Refugees and the Cultural Politics of Belonging
This book addresses the centrality of race and racism in consolidating the nationalisms currently prominent in Brexit Britain. Particular attention is given to the issues of refugees, borders and bordering, and the wider forms of nativist and anti- Muslim sentiments that anchor today’s increasingly populist forms of nationalist politics. It is argued that the forms of scapegoating and alarmism integral to the revival of nationalism in British politics are fundamentally tied to racialised processes. Equally however, it is argued that such a political climate is not simply discursive, but also yields acute forms of governance, wherein an increasingly violent attention is given by the state to the border. The chapters in the book do however also attempt to think through the possibilities of a constructive response to this moment. Emphasis is given here to the everyday cultural textures that might help shape a popular opposition to racial nationalism. Similarly, the book attempts to unpack the appeal of today’s distinctive populism in ways that might be more responsive to anti-racist and anti-nationalist sentiments.
Racial Nationalisms will be of interest to academics and researchers studying postcolonialism, nationalism, ethnic and racial studies, and to advanced students of sociology, political science and public policy.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Introduction
Sivamohan Valluvan and Virinder S. Kalra
1. Deportation, racism and multi-status Britain: immigration control and the production of race in the present
Luke de Noronha
2. More in common: the domestication of misogynist white supremacy and the assassination of Jo Cox
Hannah Jones
3. Conflating the Muslim refugee and the terror suspect: responses to the Syrian refugee "crisis" in Brexit Britain
Madeline-Sophie Abbas
4. Care and cruelty in Chios: the "refugee crisis" and the limits of Europe
Malcolm James
5. Racism and Brexit: notes towards an antiracist populism
Ben Pitcher
6. "I feel English as fuck": translocality and the performance of alternative identities through rap
Richard Bramwell and James Butterworth
Biography
Sivamohan Valluvan is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. His book Clamour of Nationalism was published in 2019.
Virinder S. Kalra is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of multiple monographs, including Beyond Religion in India and Pakistan (co-authored with Tej Purewal, 2019) and Sacred and Secular Musics (2016).