RESEARCHING 'WHITENESS': AN INTRODUCTION

This book is an exploration of sociological and psycho-social theories of the construction of whiteness vis-à-vis perceptions and imaginings of otherness. It has three main aims. First, to introduce the reader to the history and theoretical unfolding of contemporary studies of whiteness in North America and Europe. Second, to explore the structural facilitating factors of these constructions, through such institutions as the state and the media. Finally, the book synthesises a psycho-social perspective to look at the underlying mechanisms which fuel social exclusion and inclusion in society. Theory is never separated from practice and the book makes full use of empirical examples from the authors' own research and secondary examples. We also discuss the theoretical problems and methodological dilemmas in this field of research in a journey that takes the reader from the social construction of whiteness to the psychological othering of marginalised groups in society.

This book aims to provide the reader with an in-depth analysis of the construction of white identity, or 'whiteness', in the British context through the exploration of sociological and psycho-social ideas which the authors synthesise to provide a fuller picture of the social and psychological construction of identity. Whiteness, as a form of ethnicity, is rarely acknowledged by its bearers, yet it has significant ramifications in terms of the construction of 'other' identities; in the creation of community; in processes of exclusion and inclusion; and discourses around 'race' and nation. We start from the perspective that what we are researching is specific to a time and a place. The paradigm developed from American sources but that does not exhaust its potential for application or illumination of social relationships (Garner, 2006). We show that in provincial England in the first decade of the twenty-first century, some threads of the discursive construction of Englishness link people in different class positions to each other through mechanisms of exclusion, entitlement and belonging that function to racialise the speakers as white and entitled, and their Others as not white and un-entitled.

What is the Whiteness Problematic?

Whiteness is as much an analytical perspective as a describable social phenomenon. Indeed, in the introduction to his cultural analysis of white people, John Hartigan's concise definition of whiteness is qualified, 'as a concept honed by academics and activists' (Hartigan, 2005: 1). 'Whiteness', he argues, 'asserts the obvious and overlooked fact that whites are racially interested and motivated. Whiteness both names and critiques hegemonic beliefs and practices that designate white people as "normal" and racially "unmarked"'.

This is a good starting point because it exemplifies the inextricability of epistemology and objectification in this project. The debate among American labour historians and partially pertinent critiques such as those of Kolchin (2002) and Kaufman (2006) testify to some of the circular arguments that potentially ensue from this 'catch-all' use of whiteness. This debate appears irresolvable: the positivist empirical tradition dominant in the discipline of history seeks a different type of evidence from the interpretive tradition. If the proof of the pertinence of whiteness consists of people referring habitually and explicitly to themselves being white, then British fieldwork will not generate much data that satisfies this criterion. However, there are also potential drawbacks to using the whiteness problematic: when we look through this prism, we risk seeing everything as whiteness and not accounting for specifics, where other concepts might be equally effective (racialisation comes immediately to mind). The emphasis of the whiteness problematic, as we see it, should be on how white British subjects identify themselves through an often contradictory system of codes, involving evasion of direct references to 'race' with discourses involving culture, nation, class and gender, and combinations of them. These 'discursive repertoires' (Frankenberg, 1994: 2) are exemplified by some of Bridget Byrne's (2006) London mothers, who talk about getting 'the right mix' (of racialised groups, in which whites remain in the majority) in local schools. Indeed, Reay et al. (2007) observe that the right mix is vital to some middle-class families' projects of accumulating what they term 'multicultural capital' for their secondary school-age children. This is accomplished as a process of making themselves better people by learning how to interact with their Others: both ethnic minorities and working class.

Implicit in the enterprise of analysing whiteness is a recognition that its field of application and epistemological grounding are not concerned with what can be covered by the term 'race' alone, but also with class and gender, nationality and status. While this type of perspective might draw the critique that racialisation is here over-emphasised vis-à-vis the other elements, it might be worth considering that work that postulates a white class-based identity as normative – without referring at all to the effects of racialisation – is equally a conceptual error.

So the paradox of this enterprise is evident: although the actual objective is to deconstruct whiteness, objectifying it as 'white identity' risks reification. 'Whiteness' as a problematic is merely an instrument to be deployed within the sociology of racism. It should not become a separate field of 'whiteness studies', which, in the British context, we consider an intellectual and political dérive. Rather, probing whiteness has two main objectives:

1. the problematisation of white identity as a raced, privilege-holding location that is part of the social relationship in which structural racism flourishes;

2. to force recognition of the limits and the parallels drawn between less privileged white actors and racialised minorities by confronting the complexities of the intersections of class, 'race', ethnicity and gender.

In conclusion, using the whiteness problematic in terms of the UK is a project aimed at highlighting the fluidity, contingency and power relations bound up in white identities rather than shoring up their homogeneity.

The Context and Empirical Research

The context of this book sits within a three year Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project entitled 'Mobility and Unsettlement: New Identity Construction in Contemporary Britain', which formed part of the larger Identities and Social Action programme. This project explored the links between the themes of mobility, home and settlement (through ideas about community) in the way 'white' British identities are constructed vis-à-vis those of Others. It was therefore located at the confluence of literature on nationalism, ethnicity, racism and whiteness. Our assumptions were that identities are multiple and contingent, and that racialisation in twenty-first century Europe is not fixed by a black–white binary (Garner, 2003), with culture as important as skin colour in racialising discourse. The timeliness of this exploration of English people's conceptualisation of belonging and identity is underscored by the post-7/7 climate of questioning multiculturalism; early experiences of European labour migration as a result of EU enlargement; and the impact of devolution on attitudes towards Britishness.

The nature of immigration and asylum has changed over the past two decades, and different forms of hostility have arisen. Hostility now seems to have shifted to access to welfare, rather than simply employment. Processes of racialisation are more locally contingent and have become more dependent on the perceived presence of asylum seekers and the intense projective identifications between individuals and groups. This runs hand-in-hand with a growing suspicion of the state. In this project and book we explore the implications of this for contemporary identity construction, in particular the way in which 'white' Europeans 'other' other Europeans, and the way in which new stereotypical discourses of racialisation are emerging which abound with projective identifications. When people were asked what picture the word 'immigrant' conjured up for them, many commented that in the past it could have been a black or Asian person, but now it could quite easily be an Eastern European. Indeed, in Bristol and Plymouth people were well aware of such migrants filling local economic niches in the period during which that stream of migration was expanding.

So several strands of thought and questioning emerge in this research project. The first, and this is the bigger research question, concerns the way in which white identities are constructed, and are changing in subtle ways in the UK. Second, the nature of immigration into the UK has also changed: there is now more of a focus on white, with refugees seeking asylum from East European countries (although the biggest populations are still from Iraq, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Somalia and China). Third, the construction or perception of asylum seeker identity is largely based in imagination and, we would argue, unconscious phantasy. The asylum seeker has become a contemporary 'folk devil'. The term has ceased to signify its original signified: it now covers anyone, whether a labour migrant, student, asylum seeker or refugee, collapsing and amalgamating statuses (Lewis, 2005). In one way, it doesn't matter that the majority of asylum seekers are non-white, but that the term's current popular and abusive usage seeks to situate its object as simultaneously unwelcome, suspicious and a drain on the public purse. Fourth, what effect does this have on the construction of British identity, if any, and in particular to notions of nation and home? 'Home', we feel, is a particularly poignant area because if we start to consider perceptions of how the British feel about others, in particular economic migrants and asylum seekers, there has been a sea change in attitudes (evidenced by continuing electoral success for the British National Party (BNP) and opinion polls since 2002), which leads to our final point. It appears that in the general discourse, particularly in the media, that arguments around entitlement, in other words who gets what, have shifted from access to employment to encompass the question of who is entitled to welfare benefits – who gets housed, who receives a home and why.

The research project focuses on two major cities in the south west of England. Both have very long histories of immigration, transition and trading, both are sea ports with a seafaring tradition that is as old as British history. The big difference is that one city has a long history of multiculturalism and a relatively high population of minority ethnic groups, the other is largely white. The first city is Bristol, once at the heart of the Atlantic slave trade, famous for its imports and exports of tobacco and sherry. Once home of the Merchant Venturers and John Cabot, it is now a modern business centre within easy reach of London. The second is Plymouth, again with a very long seafaring tradition, synonymous with the name of Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake, the famous pirate, circumnavigator of the world (1579) and mayor of Plymouth, as well as John Hawkins, the first licensed English slave trader (1564). Plymouth is the home of the senior service, the Royal Navy, and has been so since the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Devonport – HMS Drake is the largest naval port in Western Europe. Plymouth is very much white and we sense because of the long history of seafaring has a very strong identification with 'home' for its inhabitants.

We have therefore chosen two sites with different welfare and labour markets and also with different histories of minority settlement: Bristol, which has a tradition of limited but real multi culturalism (8.2 per cent of Bristol's population being ethnic minorities) and Plymouth, which remains overwhelmingly monocultural (just under 2 per cent ethnic minorities, according to the 2001 Census). Both cities are ports and have a long tradition of transition. Bristol also has a long history of immigration and emigration, whereas in Plymouth this has been limited. The development of the university and Derriford Hospital has been responsible for most of the city's ongoing diversity. The Observer newspaper (Bright, 2003) reported that Plymouth had become a 'city of hate' with on average 22–30 racist attacks per month, many of which involve asylum seekers. Refugee groups claim that as many as six times this number may go unreported.

We hypothesise that processes of racialisation are locally contingent, in other words, who gets 'othered' in Burnley may be significantly different from Reading or Barking. Indeed Bristol and Plymouth demonstrate this phenomenon to a certain extent, with Bristol contrasted by a number of Plymouthians with their city as a place of (black and Asian) diversity. Yet they also demonstrate the virtual character of much of the discourse. A lot of what people spoke about (asylum, areas of self-segregating minority concentration, etc.) seemed to be happening 'elsewhere'. The arrival of new migrants may paradoxically facilitate the inclusion of longstanding 'black' minorities into the indigenous ('white') 'us'. It appears that a central locus to these processes is still very much centred on entitlement, but entitlement to welfare rather than employment.

The research had as its focus in-depth interviews using psychosocial methodologies in the two locations. Two sets of people were interviewed: those resident on large former or current council estates, and in middle-class residential areas (the indicators were to do with socio-economic groups, levels of higher education and home ownership) that were roughly comparable. This represents a sample which is slightly based in social class but predominantly based on access to social housing and home ownership. The specific research questions were as follows:

1. How do people construct their identities in relation to Others (groups and individuals), and why?

2. What are the most important sites of identity construction (nation, welfare, employment, Europe, class)?

3. Are there local factors that differ between Bristol and Plymouth and which structure the way people construct their identities?

The interviews were conducted in a way that we could elicit material that was open to a psycho-social or sociological reading, and were constructed along these lines:

1. A biographical interview exploring the respondent's work, housing and life history with particular reference to social location, identity, community and belonging, whether real or imagined.

2. A second interview that explores key themes such as nation, belonging, the changing nature of Europe, welfare entitlement, identity and geographies of exclusion.

3. Emphasis in both interviews on both socio-structural determinants, and imagined and phantasied attachments.

We provide a detailed overview of these aims and methods in chapter 9, which changed over the course of the three-year project as we listened to the 'lived' lives of the people we interviewed.

Before going on in the main part of this book to discuss constructions of whiteness, we want to note that historically and more recently there have been some key myths and distorted perceptions of immigration in the UK. Immigration to the UK is not a modern twentieth or twenty-first century phenomenon. The history, or at least the early history, of the British Isles is one of colonisation, first Celtic and Pict tribes and then the Romans. Later in 250 AD Rome sent a contingent of Black Legionnaires drawn from the African part of the Roman Empire to stand guard on Hadrian's Wall against the marauding Celts (Scots) (Fryer, 1984: 1). When the Romans left in the fifth century, the Germanic tribes – Jutes, Angles and Saxons – colonised Britain. One of the largest waves of immigration, which changed the face of law and culture in Britain, was that of the Norman invasion of 1066. This also saw the largest influx of Jewish people whom William the Conqueror invited to England to take up positions in commerce and banking. In the 1770s, largely as a result of the slave trade, around 14,000 black people lived in Britain. The abolition of the slave trade in 1833 all but stopped black immigration to Britain. Between the two great wars many black people fighting on behalf of Britain (and empire) settled and the culmination of this was the docking of the Empire Windrush in 1948 at Tilbury docks where hundreds of men came from the West Indies to join the RAF and take up jobs in the post-war days of labour shortage. They were followed by thousands of often skilled migrants of both sexes, many of whom were directly recruited into factories, the health service and the transport sector (Peach, 1968).