Stakeholder identities in Britain's neoliberal ethical community: Polish narratives of earned citizenship in the context of the UK's EU referendum

McGhee, Derek; Moreh, Chris; Vlachantoni, Athina

doi:10.1111/1468-4446.12485

Cited by 17 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…skin tone), they focus on the historical and contextual conditions under which being recognised as white, and as the right sort of white, gives access to material resources, social connections and symbolic recognition, such as the prestige associated with Northern European ethnicities and the invisibility that they afford vis-avis systemic racism (Lundström, 2015). While this work addresses how whiteness is converted into capital (and how it intersects with class and gender), research with Eastern Europeans has highlighted the contexts in which whiteness is not recognised as a capital, focusing on the racialisation of some Eastern European ethnicities (Fox et al, 2012), its link with experiences of downward social mobility (Krivonos, 2018), and how migrants transfer their stigma onto other racialised minorities (Fox et al, 2015;McGhee et al, 2018).…”

Section: Situating Post-crisis European Migration At the Intersectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The coloniality of distinction: Class, race and whiteness among post-crisis Italian migrants

Varriale

2021

The Sociological Review

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This article explores how strategies of class distinction reproduce racialised hierarchies between ‘modern’ and ‘backward’ European populations. Drawing on 57 interviews with Italian migrants who moved to England after the 2008 economic crisis, and combining Bourdieusian class analysis and decolonial critique, the article shows that migrants in different social positions are equally concerned with claiming closeness to the UK’s meritocratic culture and with distancing themselves from Italy’s backwardness. However, they mobilise unequal forms of capital to sustain this claim. More resourceful migrants use economic and cultural capital to demonstrate fit with British culture and to racialise less resourceful co-nationals as too ‘Southern’ to belong. The latter stress self-resilience and Italianness as sources of distinction, but more frequently report exploitation and stigma in the context of insecure professional fields. The article advances research on class, racialisation and European whiteness, unravelling the coloniality of distinction, namely how class helps more resourceful migrants to symbolically claim North European whiteness while displacing ‘race’ – in the forms of laziness, lack of rationality and self-restraint – onto less resourceful migrants. This reveals how, in the post-2008 context, enduring narratives of South–North difference legitimise class inequalities, exploitation and neoliberal forms of self-governance.

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Section: Situating Post-crisis European Migration At the Intersectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The coloniality of distinction: Class, race and whiteness among post-crisis Italian migrants

Varriale

2021

The Sociological Review

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“…When asked about the legal consequences Brexit would have, they often answered that they believed they would be able to stay in the UK. They then spontaneously enumerated reasons that built up their deservedness to stay: they worked, paid taxes and were not a burden to the welfare system (see also Moreh, McGhee & Vlachantoni 2019). None expressed resistance against the prospect of losing rights they are guaranteed now under the 2004 Citizens Directive.…”

Section: Post-referendum Care Intensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Envisaging post-Brexit immobility: Polish migrants’ care intentions concerning their elderly parents

Radziwinowiczówna¹,

Kloc‐Nowak²,

Rosińska³

2020

JFamRes

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The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union will end the European Freedom of Movement and the privileged migration status of EU Citizens in the UK, which will likely affect ‘Brexit families’ and their transnational care arrangements. This is a case study of the biggest migrant group in the UK, namely Poles. Before the Brexit referendum, the first wave of the in-depth interviews identified several types of migrants’ intentions concerning elderly care for their parents who remained in Poland. The research approached intentions as discursive strategies: declarations of care commitment and statements provided to explain the absence of care intentions. The second wave was conducted after the UK had decided to exit the EU and new policies concerning EU citizens were being developed. Brexit’s influence on elderly care intentions is twofold. First, it brings higher uncertainty about future migration regulations and disorientates migrants about the possibilities regarding reunification with their parents in the UK. Second, Brexit appears in the interviews as a discursive construction to alleviate a migrant’s involvement in direct care provision, where they still deem it normatively appropriate to enact this cultural norm, but do not intend to in fact do so.

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“…It is puzzling, therefore, that despite the interest in entrepreneurial selfmaking, becoming a self-sufficient citizen in practice through the medium of tax remains overlooked. Existing literature notes that transitional migration controls created particular types of economically active migrants (Anderson 2010(Anderson , 2015McGhee et al 2019). Yet for all the discursive weight associated with being seen and narrating oneself as a 'good worker', the leap from tolerated residence to substantive citizenship is conditioned on migrants' ability to credibly translate their autonomy into a fiscal footprint.…”

Section: Placing Tax In the European Worker-citizen Regimementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A similar ambivalence characterizes European citizenship and the story of Romanian migrants who informed this article. If, in a juridical sense, all Romanians became European citizens, free to move across the member states the moment Romania acceded to the EU, at a discursive level even a cursory look at the press illustrates how Romanians' mobility was not welcome but merely tolerated to the extent that they proved themselves 'good workers' (Anderson 2015;McGhee et al 2019).…”

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confidence: 99%

Into and Out of Citizenship, through Personal Tax Payments

Vicol¹

2020

Social Analysis

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This article builds on observations of self-employed Romanian migrants and their encounters with UK fiscal obligations to position tax as a distinct node in the worker-citizen nexus. Speaking to anthropological critiques of neoliberalism, I argue that economic activity is not merely the ethical imperative of a political order premised on self-reliance. It is also a practical test of migrants’ abilities to translate the moral capital of ‘hard work’ into the categories and bureaucracy of fiscal contribution. Analyzing migrants’ compliance with immigration controls and fiscal regimes, seen as a duty to ‘account for oneself’ in moral and financial terms, this article theorizes tax returns as a key junction in the worker-citizen nexus—one that can allow migrants into, but also confine them to the margins of, European citizenship.

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Stakeholder identities in Britain's neoliberal ethical community: Polish narratives of earned citizenship in the context of the UK's EU referendum

Cited by 17 publications

References 44 publications

The coloniality of distinction: Class, race and whiteness among post-crisis Italian migrants

The coloniality of distinction: Class, race and whiteness among post-crisis Italian migrants

Envisaging post-Brexit immobility: Polish migrants’ care intentions concerning their elderly parents

Into and Out of Citizenship, through Personal Tax Payments

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