open Democracy News Analysis - Immigration and the politics of resentment, Shamser Sinha - Comments

sick of these lies on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

sick of these lies — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:28:41 +0000

The fact that you have to go back over a thousand years to the Anglo-Saxons to find something even remotely comparable (and even then as Zen9 says, that's debatable) basically proves the point that what is happening in England is unprecedented.

Zen9 on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Zen9 — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:02:35 +0000

There was no mass movement of anglo-saxons as such. This idea was a product of romatic nationalisms.

The reality is that peoples of the North Sea Basin are all pretty much the same in terms of genetics. In effect from eastern England, along Belgium and the Netherlands, Niedersachsen and Shleswig-Holstein to Danemark they are indestinguishable.

Germanic languages came to south eastern Britain during the movement of members of the Belgae confederacy from what is now modern Belgium, and northeastern France. Since a considerable element of the Belgae where in Germanic peoples. Almost certainly they where Inguaevonic speakers (north sea germanic, a branch of western germanic).

When one considers the evidence for the movement of an entire people that seems confined to Schleswig-Holstein (Angln) and is of a very minor scale compared even to the population of the then provinces of Britannia.

What is dramatic about that time is the cultural shift from Romano-celtic to Germanic in eastern England. Certainly facilitated by the anglo-saxons finding the people there already speaking a dialect of their own language.

bigC on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

bigC — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:45:21 +0000

This is an unbearably dishonest argument, and I'm sure you were
preening smugly as you wrote it.

No not really. I'm Welsh. We're not very good at being smug: not much practice.

Do you really believe that the
immigration of the last fifty years and, particularly, the last ten is
nothing out of the ordinary, that it's all just more of the same?

Yes. Pretty much so. It's certainly nothing compared to the influx of the Saxons for example. Individually Jews and Hugeunots only made local impacts but the sum total of ALL the influxes has had it's influence. There is an acceleration of migration generally throughout the world because it's easier to travel now. That tendency will increase no matter how much Little Englanders (or Little Germans, French, Russians or any other "besieged" imperieal culture) try to play Canute. Culture is not a static entity, to be preserved in aspic. It is a dynamic, fluid process, constantly in a state of movement and change.

If the murder rate increased twenty-fold would you seriously try to argue that nothing was different?

Er no. Are you suggesting that the dilution of your precious (and in reality, delusional) ethnic and cultural purity is equivalent to an increase in the murder rate?

sick of these lies on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

sick of these lies — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:48:06 +0000

This is an unbearably dishonest argument, and I'm sure you were preening smugly as you wrote it. Do you really believe that the immigration of the last fifty years and, particularly, the last ten is nothing out of the ordinary, that it's all just more of the same?

Shame on you. You know as well as anyone else that the scale is utterly different and that scale matters.

The Huguenots and the Jews were never more than a small proportion of the population, and their numbers were never remotely on a comparable scale to what England is now experiencing. Look at the schools: already a fifth of schoolchildren are ethnic minorities, and this proportion is increasing year-on-year. The mass immigration of non-Europeans is fundamentally altering England in a way that the far smaller numbers of Jews, Irish and Huguenots did not. Pretending that it has always been like this is utterly dishonest.

If the murder rate increased twenty-fold would you seriously try to argue that nothing was different?

Although I don't agree with them, I can at least respect left-wing arguments like Andrew Neather's that the country has been changed for the better, because at least they are being serious by acknowledging the change that has occurred.

You deserve no such respect.

bigC on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

bigC — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:00:54 +0000

Stephen Harrison imagines some pure ethnic group called the English. In fact the inhabitants of all the countries on these isles are as ethncially mongrel as it's possible to be. We're all descended from Picts, Scots, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Jutes and goodness knows how many ethinc groups settled and interbred during the Roman occupation. There would certainly have been all sorts of Europeans but also black Aficans, Arabs and possibly Turkic peoples. Since then we have had the Norman Conquest and wave after wave of immigrations of French Huguenots, Russian Jews, Poles, Bengalis, Africans and Arabs.

So you're about 5,000 years too late Stephen. The dastardly and sinister ethnocide you refer to has been underway for the last 5000 years or so. Long may it continue.

Stephen Harrison on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Stephen Harrison — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 13:47:23 +0000

I wish to report to you a case of the most serious crime in the world.

Against the Geneva Convention Ethnocide and United Nations Indigenous Peoples Rights to Identity and Culture.

This is a case of Ethnocide and it is happening here and now in the United Kingdom.

Labours plan of uncontrolled immigration policy has come to light and this can be proven in the statistics.

Wikipedia lists and explains exactly the Crime of Ethnocide.

Attacks On Culture and Displacement.

Put simply it is the cleansing or minoritising of an indigenous population by methods other than mass extermination.
It is a fact that by 2070 the immigrant population will be ahead of the indigenous peoples of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
This is a Crime against humanity according to the Geneva Convention it is an equivalent crime to Genocide and is a form of ethnic Cleansing.

I am reporting this crime to every agency in the UK to expose this crime to the British People.

Take action Now! Reveal this Labour Plot because the hunt is on for the conspiracy that exists between labour and conservative politicians who have plotted this treason.

Regards

[Your Name Here]

I have emailed this matter to hundreds of important people, If they ignore it and take no action then surely they by default become an accomplice to the crime.
Organisations, QC’s, Barristers, Solicitors, Members Of Parliament, The Hague, The United Nations.

As an Englishman, along with thousands of others we have been displaced and made to feel inferior in our own land we will have a website shortly so that the whole world can see what is being done to us. THE FIGHT BACK HAS BEGUN.

Open Your Eyes And See Before it Is Too Late!

IPCC Complaint Made.
Crimes Reported to West Midlands Police and Metropolitan Police.

The Cornish Democrat on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

The Cornish Democrat — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:42:36 +0000

There has been much use of the term 'citizenship' in this debate. I know it's not the answer to everything but having a clear definition of citizenship with a written constitution seems like a good idea. Whether for a Cornish, English, Scottish, Welsh or British state a written constitution for all citizens to fall back on that provides a guarantee of equality before the law has to be the first step. Dam it give me a republic.

The Cornish Democrat

Toque on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Toque — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 15:34:42 +0000

OK, so I was being unfair!

Britishness isn't inclusive, hence devolution to Scotland and Wales, an act that has devalued Britain for most English people who previously - happily and without much thought - blurred the distinction between nation and state, a conflation of England and Britain. Some say that the rise of England has a cultural basis dating back to the mid-nineties, but for me the politicisation of English identity is a direct consequence of devolution and the fragmentation of Britain.

English identity has been about race in the past, and occasionally movements spring up to reinforce that. However, "Englishness", which is not the same as ethnic identity, is not about race. Because the English have invested a lot of their national identity in institutions - many of which have turned out to be British - it allowed non-English people (particularly during the second Empire) to become part of the English endeavor. The Scots and Welsh have requested to play a reduced role in that English endeavor, and in the institutions of greater England. The English are adjusting accordingly, contracting from greater England to little England.

Although English identity can be about race, ethncity, institutions of state, culture, it is also about the national identity of the country of England (nation = people, country= territory). Ethnic nationalism opperates across boundaries, across territories; civic nationalism within them (we are little Englanders). I try not to use the word "progressive" because my idea of progression is so often opposed to that of the progressives.

If you are not English, then what is your interest?

Cynic on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Cynic — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:51:03 +0000

Well, my 'English identity' isn't threatened, since I'm not English! I do find this 'progressive English nationalism' strange, and I'm trying to get a grip on it. If you aren't going for blood-and-soil ethnic nationalism and you want an all-inclusive happy-smiley identity, then why not stick with 'Britishness'? That's even more inclusive! Is it all a preparation for if/when the Scots become independent and England is alone?

England was never about race, it was about face, and whether it fit - our way or the highway, whoever you are.

So, are you saying that Englishness was always unconnected with race? Really? If so, why the need for a 'progressive re-appropriation of Englishness'?

Paul Kingsnorth on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Paul Kingsnorth — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:12:26 +0000

Cynic -

There's not much to add to what Toque has put very well indeed, but:

My point was not that I'm not 'white' - I am. My point was that I don't identify as white. I don't give a toss what colour I am, and I don't accept race as a viable marker of identity. It doesn't interest me in the slightest. I can think of no situation anywhere in the world, at any time in history, where an identification with 'race' has done anything but hinder progress and cause strife between people of different origins.

You ask me who I am. My answer is that I am English. There is such a thing as an English ethnicity, and I regard myself as part of the English ethnic group. The point about ethnic groups, though, is that they are mutable. They change over time and can absorb new people; they are largely self-defining. The English ethnic group has managed to absorb others for a thousand years. It has absorbed Jews and Americans and it has even absorbed the Normans who conquered the country and unleashed mass slaughter on the English people; their descendants are now English too, and neither you or I could tell the difference between an English person of Norman or Saxon descent if we passed them in the street.

So, on the subject of Bilal and Kwame - they don't become English by the simple act of just turning up in England. But when and if they - or, more likely, their children, born here - consider their primary identity to be English; consider this their country; consider themselves to be part of it, as I do - then yes, they are English too. As English as I am, if not the same colour. Why wouldn't they be? What would be stopping them?

I get very frustrated with this constant 'Englishness is under threat' narrative. English culture changes all the time, and if it is under threat from anything at the moment it is American-style consumerism, which is wiping out our cultural particularities far faster than Kwame and Bilal ever could, assuming they even wanted to. English identity will continue to change, as it always has, and it will never be based on race or the idea of a single, unchangeable 'ethnicity' which is gifted by descent from Ulfric the Saxon. Instead it will be based, as it always has been, on England the place, and the lives lived by the people who inhabit it.

Toque on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Toque — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:16:01 +0000

Cynic,

There's more than one type of "English". There are people whose ethnic identity is English, and people whose national identity is English, and people like me, who is both ethnically English and feels a strong English national identity.

There are people like my wife who is ethnically English, but whose national identity is Canadian. Then there are "Bilal from Bradford and Kwame from Kennington" who may not be ethnically English, but nevertheless feel English, and are recognised by me as English. Then there are Anglo-Brits, people who are English, quite clearly English, who call themselves British - even though they wouldn't last two seconds in a Glasgow pub.

The English are an ethnic group. The English are also more than an ethnic group, and more diverse than an ethnic group. England was never about race, it was about face, and whether it fit - our way or the highway, whoever you are.

I get people like you (and I don't think I'm being unfair) all the time arguing with me about civic English nationalism. You think it's a threat to your Englishness because every Tom, Dick and Abdul starts calling himself English, which devalues it for you. It's so pathetic I feel like beating my head against a wall. Are you that insecure in your culture? Do you really think that your ethnicity is threatened by a strong inclusive English national identity? Or can you just not distinguish ethnic identity, from national identity, from state identity (citizenship)?

Cynic on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Cynic — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:43:03 +0000

Paul, I take it that you don't like being called white, then, and that you don't feel white? That you really feel English and that's what's important to you? Yet, as you've stated before in your debate with Vron Ware, you feel that ethnicity/race is no barrier to Englishness, so that yer Bilal from Bradford and Kwame from Kennington are 'just as English' as you, no? So, if this is a multi-ethnic country (as you've said in this post), and you aren't white (or at least you don't like to admit it!), yet the English are not an ethnic group, what ethnic group do you belong to? Who are you?

Paul Kingsnorth on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Paul Kingsnorth — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:38:13 +0000

Halima and Shamsa -

Speaking as a 'white', can I just say that being referred to as a 'white' really gets my back up. I'm not 'white', I'm English. I don't go around referring to people as 'blacks' or 'browns', for obvious reasons.

I've never met anyone from Britain who self-identifies as 'white'; I have met many with English, Scottish, Welsh and Cornish identities though. The only self-declared 'whites' I've encountered have been open racists or ethnic nationalists, and fortunately there aren't that many of them around. Best not to encourage them, eh?

Halima - what you're actually grasping for is the concept of culture, not colour. That's why the tabloids find it just as easy - actually, easier these days - to foam at the mouth about Poles as they do about people from South Asia. People all over the world do indeed react when people from very different cultural backgrounds arrive in their midst. Colour certainly exacerbates that problem, but it's not the root cause.

More importantly, since all of us are apparently interested in living as one in this country, can I suggest we drop the 'whites' stuff forthwith please.

Andrew - people do tend to culturally self-segregate, and we can certainly see that in parts of the UK. And no, it should not be encouraged; it should be discouraged, on all sides. This means creating a country in which we all see ourselves as part of the same national culture, not as 'ethnic groups' with distinct cultures within the same state boundary - the outcome which state multiculturalism promotes, even if unwittingly.

As Toque says, 'nation states' in the modern sense are pretty much a 19th century development, but the concept of the nation is very much older. The English, for example, clearly saw themselves as a nation within specific boundaries as far back as the tenth century. As I pointed out in my reply, of course, none of this stuff is immutable - all identities change over time as they absorb new people and influences. But they still exist, and people still feel attached to them. My worry about Shamser's approach is that he doesn't acknowledge this.

My view is that in a very multi-ethnic country, we need to be encouraging people to mix and match and consider themselves part of the same 'gang', not members or rival teams based on ethnicity. Personally I'd like to see a lot more mixed marriage, a lot more mixed schooling and policies which encourage people to overcome their mutual suspicion and celebrate their shared British (or English, Cornish, Welsh etc if you prefer) identities together, instead of policies and approaches which entrench difference and reinforce the kind of 'resentment' - in all communities, white or otherwise - which Shamser rightly abhors.

Cynic on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Cynic — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:01:40 +0000

The same is true of a diverse society, where we can experience on a personal level different cultures, different interests, different lifestyles and different classes.

How do you experience it? I always hear people on the left use this line when it comes to mass immigration, about how much they learn from diversity and how important an experience it is, and the amazing vibrancy of inner London blah blah, without ever mentioning specifics. The same mushy reasoning over and over again, with no meat.

What have you learned?

Toque on "Immigration and the politics of resentment"

Toque — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 10:57:17 +0000

"I want to live in a diverse society and want government to resist the temptation to encourage segregation"

Why do you want to live in a diverse society? Personally I want to live in a good society where diversity is possible (formerly individualism or liberalism) but not pandered to, a society where I feel I belong, where I feel secure. The problem of people who encourage diversity is that they encourage segregation. Like religious state schools for example (thanks Tony).

I have absolutely no hesitation in telling you that if I had kids and lived in Bradford I would not send my kids to a school with a majority Muslim intake. Nor would I send them to a Catholic school, nor to an inner city London school with a third world intake. And I feel no shame or embarrassment about saying that.

You may feel differently, in which case I respect your right to live by those beliefs, but in respecting "diversity" you must respect my right to be different from you, and to live apart from you and people like you, to self-segregate. The words diversity and different and divide have the same root.

It's trendy to say that nation states are a modern invention, but it's not strictly true. Modern nation states - state nations - with their passports and border controls, citizenship and omnipotent governments are a fairly modern invention. But not nation states - if by "nation state" you mean "nation" having boundaries that are coterminous with the "state".

Immigration and the politics of resentment, Shamser Sinha

Shamser Sinha — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:22:50 +0000

Shamser Sinha (London South Bank University): The traditional response from the centre and centre-left to immigration since Roy Jenkins was Home Minister through to New Labour is (1) to accept that migration can be a good thing but that (2) we need to limit it so that, race relations or more contemporaneously social cohesion, can be maintained. Both Sunder Katwala and Paul Kingsnorth agree with this despite their differences on language use. Today, this politics is prominent with Phil Woolas, Minister for Immigration, recently warning that 'It's been too easy to get into this country in the past and its going to get harder', whilst Trevor Phillips adds that immigration has fuelled 'resentments that are real and should not be dismissed - resentments felt by white, black and Asian'. However, the truth is that, if you're not an EU citizen, it's extremely hard to get into this country and that Phillips's 'real' resentments are caused more by a politics that turns human against human than by the realities of net immigration to the UK.

Immigration control is tightening. Since Labour came to power in 1997, and in a time of economic growth and the property boom, the government has instituted seven legislative acts on immigration and nationality. It has even turned doctors and nurses into immigration officials policing the legality of migrants, some of them children, in Accident and Emergency departments and GP surgeries - and not infrequently, denying them treatment. Stricter than even under the Thatcher regime, this immigration framework developed despite no tangible economic crisis existing.

Yet immigrants are supposedly a threat. If this proposition is the norm in times of economic prosperity than its political power increases in times of recession. . As Sunder observes the tightening immigration controls provide evidence that Enoch Powell did not stop anti-immigration talk or action at all. We talk about race a lot. We're not too politically correct to talk about it. We're obsessed by it. The idea that we need an 'honest' and 'democratic' debate provides cover for what Paul notes is the ugly language used by certain New Labour politicians. An ugly language based on the premise that immigration must be limited to stop the BNP. It doesn't always have to be said in ugly ways though as Anthony Giddens' snappy phrase - ''tough on immigration, but tough on the causes of hostility to immigrants' - shows. But where Paul and myself part ways is that for me, the proposition of tighter immigration control is ugly itself- no matter the language.- and based on a politics of resentment.

Phillips argues that in some parts of the country, 'the colour of disadvantage isn't black or brown. It is white'. For once, he's not wrong. He's right. But the question that this wicked formulation misses is why should we resent those with money or good jobs be they Chinese, black, brown or whatever anymore than we should resent white British people who've worked hard and done well? For Phillips it's commensense. But it's resentment. One reflection of this politics is the poisonous idea propounded by Giddens that, 'People feel stronger obligations to others when they are like themeselves'. So, we naturally feel that those like 'us' should have the money and security that is their birthright. Presumably, its also natural then if we resent 'others' not like 'us' when they have money, houses and jobs that we don't.

Hence Margaret Hodge's argument in May last year that UK citizens should have superior welfare rights to migrants. Including post war settlers from the Commonwealth and their descendents, this variation on White Rights has also been taken up the BNP in their attempts to gain electoral support from White British and non White British people by attacking new migrants and refugees. Resentment, on one level, is not based on skin colour but the fact of being an immigrant

Paul says our immigration rate is unsustainable. This is one basis for the politics of resentment that argues that 'natives' - whether old or new- should have rights that migrants don't. However, despite net immigration, the weight of migration is borne by the poorest countries least equipped to cope with it. The United Nations Refugee Agency's Statistical Yearbook for 2002 says that between 1992-2001, 86% of the world's refugees came from developing countries, whilst such countries provide asylum to 72% of the globe's refugees. Our politics of resentment creates arbitrary borders damning humanity's most vulnerable to what Agamben terms 'bare life'. If there are economic costs to bear for growing immigration- frankly we should - we have the money and technology - and if its difficult - its still the right thing to do. And if we want to curb immigration its not to border controls that we should look.

Underdevelopment provides reasons to migrate, to find a better life abroad. However, while financiers, bankers, and those lauded by Phillips as 'clever' can move themselves, their factories and their money across borders capitalising on opportunities for profit, those fleeing or seeking a better life cannot.

Underdevelopment is deeply intertwined with G8 and Chinese capitalism and its associated militarism (whether by proxy or not) from Iraq to Sierra Leone. As we exploit abroad, we destabilise and compel people to leave. The politics of resentment and Woolas's fervour to cut immigration turn neighbour against neighbour obscuring the barbaric effects of an often protectionist economic capitalism. As we hate the immigrant family next door we ignore our role in creating the unfavourable circumstances leading them to come here. Don't blame immigration. It is underdevelopment and its associated domestic politics of resentment that damage social cohesion. If we want to reduce resentment it is to underdevelopment that we must look for change.