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Gate-keeping the nation: discursive claims, counter-claims and racialized logics of whiteness

Gabriella Elgenius Orcid Logo, Steve Garner Orcid Logo

Ethnic and Racial Studies, Volume: 44, Issue: 16, Pages: 215 - 235

Swansea University Author: Steve Garner Orcid Logo

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DOI (Published version): 10.1080/01419870.2021.1943483

Abstract

This article analyses the racialization of discourses about national identities, and explores the implications for populations racialized as white. Two extensive datasets have been brought together, spanning a decade and 560 interviews, to explore discursive interplay, the oppositional nature and re...

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Published in: Ethnic and Racial Studies
ISSN: 0141-9870 1466-4356
Published: Informa UK Limited 2021
Online Access: Check full text

URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa64029
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Abstract: This article analyses the racialization of discourses about national identities, and explores the implications for populations racialized as white. Two extensive datasets have been brought together, spanning a decade and 560 interviews, to explore discursive interplay, the oppositional nature and relationality of majority and minority claims about national belonging. We demonstrate that national identity claims are constructed discursively from positions of relative advantage and disadvantage: here the English majority and Polish minority. Discourses of national identity involve positioning and using resources differentially available. Dominant majority groups, perceiving themselves as entitled through their conceptualization of the nation-state and indigeneity, interpret and police minority claims in ways that equate to a gate-keeping function. The analysis examines the contingent hierarchy of whiteness and the discursive implications for entitlement, deservingness and resentment. The framework of whiteness helps illuminate the construction and contested racialization of hierarchies around national identity and belonging.
Keywords: National identity, racialization, whiteness, entitlement, English, Polish
College: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Funders: We would like to acknowledge the funders and principal investigators, other than ourselves, over the extensive periods of research and data collection for this article; the Economic and Social Research Council [Identities and Social Action Programme, 2005–2007] (Professor Margie Wetherell, Professor Anthony Heath, Professor Simon Clarke; Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya), the British Academy [2007–2011], the John Fell Fund OUP and University of Oxford, the Birmingham and Bristol City councils [2007–08, 2011], the Department of Communities and Local Government, the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) [2011–2016], (PI Professor Kerstin Jacobsson) and the Swedish Resaerch Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Arbetsliv och Välfärd) [2019–2022].
Issue: 16
Start Page: 215
End Page: 235

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