Bridget Byrne

In Search of a ‘Good Mix’: ‘Race’, Class, Gender and Practices of Mothering

Drawing on interviews with white middle-class mothers, this article examines the ways in which mothering involves practices and identities which are classed, raced and gendered. In particular, it focuses on the construction and articulation of middle-classness with whiteness. The article examines the women’s descriptions of how they constructed social networks as mothers, chose schools for their children and planned their after-school activities. It argues that these activities involved in being mothers and bringing up children can be understood as performative of race, class and gender.That is, practices of mothering are implicated in repeating and re-inscribing classed and raced discourses

Not just class: towards an understanding of the whiteness of middle-class schooling choice

Abstract There is increased attention to questions of class in studies of education, particularly among those who adopt a Bourdieuian perspective. This paper explores the burgeoning literature on school choice and class (in particular middle ‘classness’) to argue that there are serious analytical and sociological costs to a singular focus on class without due attention to race. Examining interview material, it will show instances where the racialized nature of schooling choice has been ignored or overlooked. It argues that viewing the literature through the lens of race and class is imperative for an understanding of the complexities of class and white middle classness in particular.

Testing Times: The Place of the Citizenship Test in the UK Immigration Regime and New Citizens' Responses to it

Citizenship tests are designed to ensure that new citizens have the knowledge required for successful ‘integration’. This article explores what those who have taken the test thought about its content. It argues that new citizens had high levels of awareness of debates about immigration and anti-immigration sentiment. Considering new citizens’ views of the test, the article shows how many of them are aware of the role of the test in reassuring existing citizens of their fitness to be citizens. However, some new citizens contest this positioning in ‘acts of citizenship’ where they assert claims to citizenship which are not necessarily those constructed by the state and implied in the tests. The article will argue that the tests and the nature of the knowledge required to pass them serve to retain new citizens in a position of less-than-equal citizenship which is at risk of being discursively (if less often legally) revoked.

Trying to Find the Extra Choices: Migrant Parents and Secondary School Choice in Greater Manchester.

This article, based on qualitative research in Greater Manchester, examines the experience of migrants in navigating the education system, and in particular in choosing secondary schools for their children. There has been extensive research on the process of choosing schools since the policy reforms of the 1980s, but none has examined how the process of choosing a secondary school is impacted by the material and affective impact of migration. The article argues that migrants’ experience is embedded in gendered, classed and racialised processes and that, despite the heterogeneity of the category, migrants often face particular barriers in negotiating the school system. Nonetheless it also explores the importance put on education by the migrants who were interviewed and the active labour they engage in to try and achieve the best results for their children.

Diversity in place: narrations of diversity in an ethnically mixed, urban area

ABSTRACT This paper explores the implications of representations of places as ‘diverse’, particularly for those who live in them. Arising from an interdisciplinary research project, the paper takes one neighbourhood in Manchester (Cheetham Hill) and explores some of the narratives about it produced by residents and those who have a ‘professional’ stake in the area. These are put in the context of public narratives of the area, as well as Census data. The paper examines how different types of data generate different stories and how different methodological approaches can produce varied understandings of place, which have implications for how a place comes to be known and for the potential impact on the distribution of resources. Cheetham Hill is known as ‘diverse’, or even ‘super-diverse’, but the paper examines how this label serves to obscure lived experience and inequalities and can reveal ambivalences over the ethnic difference and urban living.

Rethinking Intersectionality and Whiteness at the borders of citizenship

This article critically engages with the concept of intersectionality, beginning with an account of its roots in Black feminist’ theorizing and critical legal studies. The article argues that it is important to understand the origin and roots of the term in order to track its radical potential. Whilst intersectionality as a concept has been perhaps one of feminisms most successful exports, the article also considers some of the potential pitfalls in the widespread usage of the language. It asks: has intersectionality lost something in its travelling and re-interpretation? The article argues that there is a risk that intersectionality has, in some contexts of its usage, lost its critical, anti-racist and feminist edge. Considering the campaigns against changes in the spousal visa regulations in Britain, the article tracks the production of whiteness and of citizens and non-citizens in Britain. This example is used to argue for the maintenance of a more flexible and complex range of vocabularies with which to examine exclusion and oppression.

Rhetoric and Multiculturalism — David Cameron’s ‘King James’ Speech and the Crisis of Multiculturalism

At the end of a year of celebrations of the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Bible, David Cameron gave a speech to a gathering of Church of England Clergy in 2011. This chapter will provide an examination of how his speech sought to use the rhetorical elements of ethos, pathos and logos in its account of the need for Britain to be more clearly asserted as a Christian country. This argument needs to be put in the context both of a political discourse of the ‘crisis’ of national identity in Britain, as well as arguments against multiculturalism that hold multicultural policies responsible for causing (or at least failing to counter) religious extremism and terrorism. National identity has long been understood within sociology and allied disciplines as an act of creation and narration. It requires the production of a sense of common culture and belonging for a mass of people who may otherwise have many differences between them. Rhetoric can play an important role in the speeches of national leaders in creating this sense of common interest and culture, and also feelings of belonging. Therefore a rhetorical analysis of the speeches of those politicians who rely on a notion of a shared national culture is very illuminating.

Taking the Oath

In the impressive, highly decorative and heavily gilded art deco Paramount Theatre in Oakland, California, the host of the naturalisation ceremony welcomes the people who have come to receive their American citizenship: ‘America becomes a better place because of you. Everybody, thank you for becoming citizens’. This is greeted by clapping and whoops from the audience.1 In the less elaborate surroundings of the Brooklyn, New York courthouse, which lack the razzmatazz of the California ceremony, the presiding judge declares, ‘When I look at this gathering, I see the beautiful smiles of America’.

Welcome to Britain

Citizenship ceremonies were introduced in Britain in 2004 as part of a programme of legislation around citizenship rolled out by the New Labour government over several years. The first ceremony was held at Brent Town Hall in London, an area known for its high level of ethnic diversity. The home secretary, David Blunkett (who had introduced the idea of citizenship ceremonies) and Prince Charles were present at the first ceremony which created 19 new citizens. At the ceremony, Blunkett said: I think the new ceremonies across the country will be the answer to those who fear difference, who fear the diversity which comes with migration of people coming across the world to live in our community and sends a very clear message that those who choose to be part of the family are committing themselves. Prince Charles added: Being British is something of a blessing and a privilege for us all … I very much hope that this ceremony has added something to the significance of acquiring British citizenship and that it’s reinforced your belief, if indeed any reinforcement is required, that you belong here and that you are very welcome.1 These statements reflect two potentially contradictory elements of the ceremonies.

Routes to Citizenship

Citizenship ceremonies are the moment of marking a particular stage in the complex processes of migration and international mobility. For individuals, it signifies the successful navigation of the nation-states’ multiple technologies of identification and filtering. As I argued in Chapter 2, the legal framework of nation-states needs to be understood as emerging out of a history of Western imperialism, which is also gendered, classed and raced. There have been suggestions that national citizenship is no longer the most critical membership and affiliation that shapes access to rights. For Yasemin Soysal, the increasing acceptance of a universal concept of citizenship which is based on individual personhood — rather than national belonging — means that resident workers share many of the rights of national citizens (Soysal 1995). Nonetheless, recently there has been increased attention given to the reassertion of state control of borders and the spread of practices of bordering from the external frontiers to locations such as medical practices and universities within the state. Citizenship status within the nation continues to have important consequences. Aiwha Ong claims that ‘the multiple passport holder is an apt contemporary figure: he or she embodies the split between state-imposed identity and personal identity caused by political upheavals, migration and changing global markets’ (Ong 1999: 2).