Claire Alexander

Contesting Cultural Communities: Language, Ethnicity and Citizenship in Britain

In recent years, the Home Office has adopted a reinvigorated policy of citizenship education and integration towards both new immigrants and settled minority ethnic communities. One of the cornerstones of this new policy is English language, which is seen as a key tool for the successful integration of Britains diverse communities. This paper is divided into two parts. Firstly, it explores the changing role of English language in the current debates around citizenship, nationhood and belonging. It argues that English language is used symbolically as a cultural boundary marker, which both defines minority ethnic ‘communities’ and excludes them from the re-imagined national ‘community’. Secondly, using empirical research from a recent study on ‘Access to Services with Interpreters’, the paper seeks to challenge the reification of national and minority versions of ‘community’ that lies at the heart of current discourses around nation and citizenship. Taking language as a key symbol of ‘community’, the paper explores the complex contours through which individual, familial, local and collective identities are lived. It concludes that minority ethnic ‘communities’ are best understood as arising out of systems of localised ‘personal’ networks which challenge reified and abstract ideas of ‘imagined communities’ and provide insights into the performance of citizenship and belonging ‘from below’.

Introduction: Mapping the issues

Abstract While the field of ethnic and racial studies has increased dramatically in recent years, issues of methodology have to date remained relatively unexplored. Despite a long tradition of ethnographic research on racialized and ethnic minorities in North America and Europe, comparatively little has been written on what it means to research and write race ethnographically. This Introduction maps the key issues and controversies surrounding ethnography and race in Britain, the United States and mainland Europe, and traces the different anthropological and sociological/urban perspectives on the ethnographic method in relation to race and ethnicity.

STUART HALL AND ‘RACE’

This introductory paper seeks to locate Stuart Halls writing on ‘race’ and ethnicity in the broader context of his work and life. The paper seeks to examine Halls significance as one of the most important theorists of race globally, and as a theorist of Black Britain, before exploring the intersection of the personal and political dimensions of his work. The paper finally considers the continuities of Halls writing on race and considers the implications of this for ‘illuminating Dark Times’. It serves also as background and introduction to the papers included in this special issue.

Introduction: Framing difference: racial and ethnic studies in twentyfirst-century Britain

The events in Britain since the beginning of the new millennium starkly and dramatically reflect the continued salience of racial and ethnic difference. In media, political and academic discourse, the struggles over nationhood and multiculturalism, the duties of citizenship and the right to cultural expression, similarity and difference have been played out against global and national backdrops, and across many local stages. The articles in this volume aim to explore the contours of this changing terrain, and suggest new avenues for research and theorization. They are primarily an engagement with British debates and events, but seek to place these within a broader global and diasporic context. The aim of this introductory article is to sketch the background to the events that surround the production of these articles, to outline a broad conceptual overview of the current academic debates and to explore the links between each contribution.

Interpreting Trust: Abstract and Personal Trust for People Who Need Interpreters to Access Services

This article looks at the political and conceptual process of trust drawing on a research project exploring the experiences of people who speak little English and thus need interpreters in order to access services. We examine posited solidarity/diversity tensions in the politicisation of notions of general social trust, and debates about the process of trust, including distinctions between abstract and personal trust, the role of familiarity, and the concept of ‘active trust’, as well as challenges to the functional link between interpretation and expectation in trust. We address the increasing professionalisation of interpreting service provision based on abstract trust, and use case studies to illustrate the complexity of the articulation of trust in interpreters, often involving personal trust, as well as strategies for managing distrust. We conclude that, while trust may be a personal praxis, it takes place in a particular socio-political context that involves asymmetrical relations that focus on particular, minority ethnic, groups.

Contested memories: the Shahid Minar and the struggle for diasporic space

Abstract Drawing on new empirical research on ‘the Bengal diaspora’, this paper explores the struggle over Bangladeshi identity in East London, as exemplified in the monument of the Shahid Minar and the related celebration of Ekushe, which marks the beginning of the Bangladesh national liberation struggle. Bringing together theories of diaspora consciousness and memorialization, the paper explores the ways in which rituals and memory work both as a form of continuity with the homeland and as a method of claims-staking for minority groups in multicultural spaces. Using original interviews with community and religious leaders, the paper explores the ways in which the establishment of the monument and the memorialization of the Liberation War represents the re-imagination of the Bangladeshi community in London and draws the lines for the contestation of this identity.

Identities: new directions in uncertain times

In the inaugural issue of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, founding editor Nina Glick-Schiller wrote of the ways in which issues of identity and culture had emerged as central to “the current historical moment” (1994, p. 1). The original vision for the journal was to “explore the relationship between racial, ethnic and national identities and power hierarchies within national and global arenas” (1994, p. 3), to critically engage with the processes of cultural representation and politics, to explore the relationship of culture and power, and to examine “the multiple processes by which cultural representation, domination and resistance are embedded in social relationships” (1994, p. 3). The view of culture which lies at the heart of this vision was one inseparable from processes of struggle in political, economic and social arenas, and which considered the resurgence of strong racial, ethnic, nationalist and transnational exclusionary identities alongside processes of resistance, hybridization and change – what Glick-Schiller described as “a paradox of our time” (1994, p. 1). In the nearly two decades since the journal was founded, issues of culture and identity have moved to the centre of analysis across the humanities and social sciences. This has been linked to the decline of traditional forms of social affiliation and action and the emergence of new forms of solidarity and collective identities, captured in the notion of identity politics from the 1960s onwards (Laclau and Mouffe 2001, Appiah 2005). These are contiguous with, and inseparable from, the mass migrations from the old imperial peripheries to the post-imperial metropolitan centres, which in the post-war period have transformed the societies of the global north and west permanently. Since the 1980s, the challenges of contemporary forms of globalization, a shifting post-Cold War world order, the age of migration (Castles and Miller 2009), the redrawing of nation-state boundaries and the proliferation of new nations, new loyalties and new citizens as well as the development of innovative technologies that subvert classical notions of time and space, here and there, “us” and “them”, have transformed and unsettled traditional certainties, raising important and troubling questions about who exactly “we” are, who belongs and who, more importantly, does not. The new (and recurring) wars of the past decade, in particular, have reframed the geopolitical cartography of a post-9/11 world order, sharpening old hostilities and discovering new enemies (Calhoun et al. 2002).

Marriage, Migration, Multiculturalism: Gendering ‘The Bengal Diaspora’

Transnational marriage has been at the centre of controversies around migration control and multiculturalism in Britain in the past decade, with South Asian Muslim women placed at the heart of concerns around integration, segregation and ‘parallel lives’. Such discourses perpetuate a pathologised and ahistorical account of gendered processes of migration in which subcontinental marriages are viewed as posing barriers for integration and belonging. Drawing on interviews with Bangladeshi Muslim brides, this article challenges these dominant accounts and argues, instead, for viewing marriage as a field of interaction and exchange, which is itself formed and transformed through the process of migration. Using Levitt and Glick Schillers idea of ‘transnational social fields’, the paper explores the complex levels of interaction and (ex)change, relations of power and historical dynamics of transnational marriage amongst this community in Britain.

History Lessons: Inequality, Diversity and the National Curriculum

Abstract This article explores the continued importance of teaching a diverse curriculum at a time when issues of racial and ethnic equality and diversity have been increasingly sidelined in the political discussion around ‘British’ values and identities, and how these should be taught in schools. The 2014 History National curriculum, in particular, provoked widespread controversy around what British history is, who gets included in this story and how best to engage young people in increasingly diverse classrooms with the subject. The new curriculum provides both opportunities for, and constraints on, addressing issues of racial and ethnic equality and diversity, but how these are put into practice in an increasingly fragmented school system remains less clear. Drawing on the findings of two research projects in schools across England and Wales, this article examines the challenges and opportunities facing teachers and young people in the classroom in the teaching and learning of diverse British histories. We argue that it is not only the content of what children and young people are taught in schools that is at issue, but how teachers are supported to teach diverse curricula effectively and confidently.

Breaking black: the death of ethnic and racial studies in Britain

ABSTRACT In this paper, I examine the changing contours of racial and ethnic studies in Britain over the past forty years. Building on my 2002 ERS paper “Beyond Black”, I reflect on the transformation and fragmentation of political blackness, in and out of the academy, and consider the implications for racial and ethnic identities, solidarities and political action.