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Issues concerning women Racial issues and the multicultural society 106 8 ➤ The background to racial problems in the UK ➤ Descriptions of the main pieces of race legislation ➤ The features and importance of the Stephen Lawrence case ➤ The importance of the Macpherson and Ousley Reports ➤ The work of the Commission for Racial Equality ➤ The broad issues of racial discrimination ➤ Forms of non-legislative race relations initiatives ➤ The issue of multiracialism IMMIGRATION Although Britain has, throughout its history, assimilated large numbers of different
Sexual images and innuendo have become commonplace in contemporary advertising; they often fail to register in any meaningful way with the audience. This book examines the essentially racist stereotypes through which Irish people have conventionally been regarded have been increasingly challenged and even displaced perhaps by a sequence of rather more complimentary perspectives. The various developments that are signified within the figure of the Celtic Tiger might be considered to have radically altered the field of political possibility in Ireland. The enormous cuts in public expenditure that marked this period are held to have established a desirable, stable macroeconomic environment. The Celtic Tiger shows that one can use the rhetoric about 'social solidarity' while actually implementing policies which increase class polarisation. The book discusses the current hegemonic construction of Ireland as an open, cosmopolitan, multicultural, tourist-friendly society. The two central pieces of legislation which currently shape Irish immigration policy are the 1996 Refugee Act and the Immigration Bill of 1999. The book offers a critical examination of the realities of the Celtic Tiger for Irish women. Processes of nation state formation invariably invoke homogeneous narratives of ethnicity and national identity. To invoke a collective subject of contemporary Ireland rhetorically is to make such a strategic utopian political assumption. For the last few hundred years, the Gaeltacht has exemplified the crisis of Irish modernity. Culture becomes capital, and vice versa, while political action increasingly consists of the struggle to maintain democratic autonomy in the face of global market forces.
refugees and asylum seekers. So the ethnic geography of the country has changed over the years and Scotland has become a more diverse and multicultural society. In this chapter, we begin by examining the 2011 census data to illustrate the various identities and ethnicities within the country. We then seek to explain how this pattern has evolved, by describing the various migrant groups who have made their home in Scotland, the changes that have taken place in recent years and we subsequently explore the concept of multiculturalism in Scotland, together with ongoing
MCK4 1/10/2003 10:24 AM Page 71 4 Toleration, justice and reason Rainer Forst In contemporary debates about the idea and the problems of a multicultural society the concept of toleration plays a major but by no means clear and uncontested role. For some, it is a desirable state of mutual respect or esteem, while for others it is at best a pragmatic and at worst a repressive relation between persons or groups. In the following, I want to suggest an understanding of toleration that both explains and avoids these ambiguities. First, I distinguish between a
projecting the values of a multicultural society, but also about establishing a multicultural infrastructure through which society is governed. The rise of hate crime policy marks a shift from the emancipatory anti-racisms of the 1960s to the overriding concern with social cohesion and social control in the twenty-first century. As Erich Bleich has noted of hate crime laws, it has become much riskier to express or to act upon provocatively racist thoughts in contemporary multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-faith democracies. Values such as community cohesion, public order
into 2015, 44 mosques and churches have been torched, most probably by Jews, the latest being the Catholic Church of Multiplication of the Loaves and Fish by the shore of the Sea of Galilee.108 Europeans, Muslim migrants and threat perceptions Muslim immigration to Europe is portrayed as a threat that dilutes ‘Europeanness’, European culture, European customs and European languages, turning the continent, the EU and the single European state into a multicultural society. Eliza Manningham-Buller (Baroness Manningham-Buller), the Director General of Britain’s MI5
of multicultural society. This has led to the conclusion that ‘the EDL is clearly Islamophobic’ (Allen, 2011: 293) and, although having successfully accommodated aspects of the diversity of contemporary multicultural Britain and not espousing a traditionally racist ideology, promotes a form of ‘new racism’ or ‘cultural racism’ (2011: 293). This chapter starts by critically outlining debates about how we define and measure ‘Islamophobia’, focusing on the question of whether Islamophobia is a new, and distinct, phenomenon or consists primarily in anti
This exploration of one of the most concentrated immigrant communities in Britain combines a new narrative history, a theoretical analysis of the evolving relationship between progressive left politics and ethnic minorities, and a critique of political multiculturalism. Its central concern is the perennial question of how to propagate an effective radical politics in a multicultural society: how to promote greater equality that benefits both ethnic minorities and the wider population, and why so little has been achieved. It charts how the Bengali Muslims in London’s East End have responded to the pulls of class, ethnicity and religion; and how these have been differently reinforced by wider political movements. Drawing on extensive recorded interviews, ethnographic observation, and long sorties into the local archives, it recounts and analyses the experiences of many of those who took part in over six decades of political history that range over secular nationalism, trade unionism, black radicalism, mainstream local politics, Islamism, and the rise and fall of the Respect Coalition. Through this Bengali case study and examples from wider immigrant politics, it traces the development and adoption of the concepts of popular frontism and revolutionary stages theory and of the identity politics that these ideas made possible. It demonstrates how these theories and tactics have cut across class-based organisation and acted as an impediment to tackling cross-cultural inequality; and it argues instead for a left alternative that addresses fundamental socio-economic divisions.
This chapter examined work by Sinéad Morrissey, Mary O'Malley, and Leontia Flynn, revealing how these female poets use their personal experiences of global mobility to achieve a better understanding of modern Irish multicultural society. The latter part of this chapter analyses Michael Hayes's daring attempt to record the daily life of asylum-seekers in ‘Survivor’ – Representations of the ‘New Irish,’ coauthored with the African artist Jean ‘Ryan’ Hakizimana. By placing his poems beside Hakizimana's paintings, Hayes opens up an intercultural dialogue between cultures and traditions which genuinely reflects the hybridisation and polyphony of Irish society nowadays.
While the early songs written by The Clash were firmly rooted in certain neighbourhoods in West London, over time the imaginary of the band would become ever more closely connected to the fabled streets of New York. In the early 1980s, as the four-piece faced incessant criticism from their erstwhile champions in the British music press, they would find a rather warmer reception from American audiences. In this chapter, the author offers a critical exploration of the complex relationship between The Clash and their adopted town of New York. One of the more progressive outcomes of the American odysseys that dominated the latter half of the group’s career was their enthusiasm for emergent and multicultural musical forms. They would, for instance, become the first white artists to record a song inspired by the then nascent black American genre of hip hop. Although The Clash would remain sincere champions of a multicultural society, the chapter casts doubts on whether this message had any real impact on an audience that was overwhelmingly white and would only become more so when the release of Combat Rock confirmed the band as a major stadium act in the United States.