The ‘illegal’ and the skilled: effects of media portrayals on perceptions of immigrants in Britain

Public perceptions often diverge widely from reality on the size and make-up of immigrant populations, with likely consequences for public opinion about immigration. Prior research has not established whether the media has any causal role in the construction of these perceptions. This paper examines whether and how actually occurring media portrayals of immigrants in Britain affect perceptions of immigrants among members of the British public. We begin by conducting a large-scale quantitative study of the British national press. We then report on an original survey experiment that tests for causal impact of news frames derived from the media study. Specifically, we focus on three depictions of immigrants: as ‘illegal’, Eastern European, or highly skilled. Results show that even subtle media interventions can shift public perceptions of immigration, in this case towards more realistic understandings of the overall size and make-up of the immigrant population in Britain. We suggest empirical, theoretical, and methodological implications for the study of media effects on public opinion towards immigration.     

‘Chinese-Mexicans’ and ‘Blackest Asians’: Filipino American youth resisting the racial binary

This study provides a deeper understanding of the interracial connections not just between non-whites and whites, but among non-whites. Filipino American youth attending high school in New York City contended with a dominant bipolar racial discourse that marginalizes the racialized experiences of Asians and Pacific Islanders. However, instead of feeling invisible or marginalized, data point to how they negotiated a black–white racial discourse to decide when and how they enter dialogues about race. Filipino youth reconceptualized this racial binary to position themselves on a continuum to form the racial ‘middle ground’ between blacks and whites. Importantly, rather than a racial hierarchy that places whites at the top, youth used discursive strategies to place themselves on a racial continuum that emphasizes the interconnectedness among racial minorities.     

Whitewashing the nation: racist jokes and the construction of the African ‘other’ in Greek popular cinema

This article explores representations of race in three Greek popular films of the 1970s and 1980s. The portrayal of African characters in these films is antagonistically positioned in relation to the dominant, ‘whitewashed’ Greek national narrative which relies on the nineteenth century idea that Greece is the progenitor of European civilization. Often masquerading itself as ‘just a joke’, the discourse of these films narrates the African Other as lacking in terms of culture, intelligence and beauty – the three central categories upon which the idea of the ‘white supremacy’, according to Cornell West, is historically constructed in modernity. Tightly woven with this idea (largely introduced in Greece by the leading European powers), these films enunciate explicitly colonial viewpoints in a country that was neither a colonial power nor at the geopolitical center of the European project. The article argues that the racialized representations of these films are an effect of appropriating the Eurocentric idea of historicism, where the ‘progress’ and ‘backwardness’ of groups and nations are measured according to how effectively they perform the values of modernity.     

‘You Are Germany’– ‘I Am Australian’: The construction of national unity through diversity in select examples from Australia and Germany

This article explores the construction of national unity through diversity by analysing two case studies from Germany and Australia: the television campaign ‘You Are Germany’ and the song ‘I Am Australian’. It places both examples in a broader context of forging national unity through diversity and argues that diversity has occasionally been hijacked as a nationalist argument to advance national identity and unity. This study explores the different aspects of diversity appearing in both cases under study, identifies those parts of diversity being excluded and asks how national unity is being forged through recourse to diversity.     

Boxing,national identities and the symbolic importance of place: The ‘othering’ of Joe Calzaghe

In an analysis informed by social identities research, this article critically assesses the importance of place and nation in professional boxing. Based on media accounts surrounding the fight between Joe Calzaghe and Bernard Hopkins, it examines how the nation is positioned and how national identities are imagined. Calzaghe serves as a floating signifier of Wales, Britain and Europe in discourse positioning him as an outsider in the American boxing landscape. In examining the ‘othering’ of Calzaghe the article highlights how simplistic binaries are used to perpetuate notions of difference.     

‘Being while black’: resistance and the management of the self

‘Being while black’ is ultimately an ‘everyday revolution’, Despite the fact that people manage their selves by their own choosing, especially as their desires are being shaped (Foucault, 1977), their selves remains the basic revolutionary unit. Foucault's oeuvre on power and concept of dressage is utilized to explain racial profiling of blacks of what I call ‘racial dressage’, intended primarily to discipline the ‘black body’ (el-Khoury, 2009). In this paper, I argue that despite this false sense of presence of power and internalized social-control, blacks actively construct their day-to-day activities as a discursive object of resistance. Critical awareness to racial oppression is in itself is a form of opposition to it (Collins, 1990). I argue that social control and resistance are coproduced. Using discursive analysis of interviews I identified the following modes of resistance: disposition to steadiness (constituting an ethical self, sustaining an internal dialogue, and emotional management), rejecting criminalizing identities, discursive consciousness, refusing the spatial power, and lastly disbelief in the system. Ultimately, blacks live against ‘themselves’ and this is because the soul that has become the prison of the body, is being dismantled (Luxon, 2008).     

‘Settling’ the multicultural nation-state: Little Mosque on the Prairie,and the figure of the ‘moderate Muslim’

This paper analyzes Little Mosque on the Prairie, its characters and themes within the context of post-9/11 discourses of nationalism and citizenship. Against the backdrop of the Canadian national narrative, I argue that the sitcom foregrounds a ‘moderate Muslim’ that demarcates the boundaries of the multicultural nation-state, especially when juxtaposed against the racially and sexually coded Muslim ‘other’ on the global landscape. The moderate Muslim is represented as ‘liberal’ and ‘modern’, one who seeks to integrate her faith into the multicultural fabric of society. Such a figure, represented both as a ‘good’ Muslim/immigrant and a ‘good’ Canadian citizen-subject, illuminates the boundaries of ‘acceptability’ within the Canadian national imaginary. The figure of the moderate Muslim reinforces the racial coding embedded in this imaginary, while enabling the state to proclaim its ‘multicultural tolerance’ and benevolence. Building on previous scholarship on race, citizenship, and nation-building, I argue that the moderate Muslim – as exemplified in Little Mosque on the Prairie – serves important ideological functions in (re)defining the internal (and racially coded) borders of the nation. While Little Mosque on the Prairie makes an important contribution to the representation of Muslims, challenging some stereotypes, I argue that it does not deliver on its considerable potential to articulate nuanced representations of Muslims. Through its foregrounding of the figure of the moderate Muslim, the sitcom reaffirms key norms, engages in a politics of authenticity, and reinforces hegemonic messages, both within Muslim communities and in Canadian society. Thus, the moderate Muslim becomes a key player in enabling the state to render invisible its exclusion of the ‘Muslim Other,' while maintaining its non-racist credentials.     

‘Felons are also our family’: citizenship and solidarity in the undocumented youth movement in the United States

The undocumented youth movement began in the United States in the mid-2000s. Drawing on qualitative research with undocumented young organisers in California, this article explores how relationships between undocumented youth, the wider undocumented population, and legal citizens have been understood in narratives of citizenship in the movement over time. It is argued that, paradoxically, the movement’s retreat from prioritising a pathway to legal citizenship for the most ‘eligible’, made visible historic and contemporary ties to the United States and its peoples that are obscured in hegemonic narratives of contemporary citizenship. In becoming more inclusive of the wider undocumented population, positions of solidarity with marginalised US citizens have also emerged. In the context of attacks on some racialised and other marginalised social groups during Trump’s presidency, such solidarity is even more vital.     

International migration and the rise of the ‘civil’ nation

Scholars largely agree that immigration policies in Western Europe have switched to a liberal, civic model. Labelled as ‘civic turn’, ‘civic integration’ or ‘liberal convergence’, this model is not identically applied across countries, since national institutions, traditions and identifications still matter. Even so, the main focus is on processes which allow or prevent migrants to be incorporated into nations usually taken for granted in their meanings. Moving from policies to discourses, this article aims to interrogate what kind of nation is behind these policies as a way to further scrutinise the ‘civic turn’. Exploring how the term ‘civility’ and its adjectivisations are discursively deployed in Italian parliamentary debates on immigration and integration issues, the article points to two opposite narratives of nation. While one mobilises civility in order to rewrite the nation in terms of a common, inclusive, civic ‘we’, the other uses civility to reaffirm the conflation between national identity and the identity of the ethno-cultural majority. These findings suggest the importance of exploring the ‘civic turn’ not only across countries, but also across political parties within the same country to capture the ways in which a liberal, civic convergence in political discourses might hide divergent national boundary mechanisms.     

The ‘isolated ethnics’ and ‘everyday ethnics’: region,identity, and the second-generation Midwest Asian American experience

While studies have documented the Asian American experience in the past two decades, a dearth of research exists on those who grew up in the Midwest. How do Midwest Asian Americans experience their co-ethnic community, culture and pan-ethnic identity? Drawing from in-depth interviews of second-generation Midwest Asian Americans, an analysis of the data reveals two patterns of experiences, including: isolated ethnics and everyday ethnics. The findings are framed around issue of ‘access points’ to the co-ethnic community, and its influence on ethnic identity formation. This research highlights the importance of geographic community context on acculturation of Midwest Asian Americans.     

In the name of Ossian: Celtic Galicia and the ‘brothers from the north’

ABSTRACT

The modern Celtic myth is a complex framework because of its variety of constituent elements. In essence, it consists of an empathetic celebration of otherness, based on a timeless narrative and restorative nostalgia, but including nationalist and capitalist-market interests. Since the first edition of the Ossianic poems by James Macpherson in 1760, Celticness has firmly settled within a collective imagination in search of alternative aesthetic, political, and even spiritual values. It has been exploited in different geocultural spaces and articulated in propaganda strategies, to found ethnic consciousness and fill the gaps of history. In addition to other Celtic areas of Europe, Galicia (NW Spain) has a long Celtophile tradition, with relevant intellectual support, ritual symbologies, and media productions. This article focuses on Galician Celtic-based history, icons, events, phenomena like the Real Banda of bagpipes, the Interceltic Festival of Ortigueira, and the renewed archaeological attempt to locate Galician ancestry within Iron Age Celts. Celticness has been the main identity locus in the construction of Galicia as a nation, shaping a specific social awareness and even invoking racial arguments. Comparison is established with Scotland, Brittany and Ireland (the ‘brothers from the north’) in their respective perception and treatment of modern Celticness.     

Lévy-Bruhl among the Phenomenologists: Exoticisation and the Logic of ‘the Primitive’

Lucien Lévy-Bruhl's impact on continental philosophers from Edmund Hersserl, Max Scheler, and Martin Heidegger, to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida is documented with specific reference to the question of understanding other cultures. However, the fact that Lévy-Bruhl focused on understanding ‘the primitive’ infected the philosophical discussions of this topic with a certain racism and even, on occasion, a certain exoticism, still visible even in Julia Kristeva's efforts to overcome it.     

The mediated politics of place and people: picturing the ‘contested place-making’ of Irish Travellers at Dale Farm

This article discusses meanings of people–place relationships, relating to ethnicity–class–gender intersections. The case examined concerns the ‘contested place-making’ of Irish Travellers at Dale Farm (UK), where the Travellers were eventually evicted from a place they owned. The material consists mainly of online slideshows in the Guardian. Visuals and place share the role of concretizing news, situating them and underlining their truth claims. Hence, news visuals are well suited for discussions of relationships between places and peoples. The study comprises theories of media, place and identity, relating to mobility, minorities and globalization. Methodologically, compositional analysis, discourse-theoretical method and an intersectional approach are combined. The place conflict is rarely understood in terms of justice. Instead, ethnicity–class–gender intersections appear as significant in the imagery, countering certain old stereotypes, but also connecting to discourses of ‘threatening minorities’, and ‘bad mobility’. Manifested through excessive imagery of barricades/fences/walls/gates, ‘identity management’ meets ‘place management’, detaching some identities from some places. The Travellers thus appear as anomalies, separated from others. This is partly connected to the slideshow format, where linguistic elaboration on motifs is very limited, partly to the selection of certain themes and motifs in the slideshows, and partly to the societal politics surrounding the issue.     

Explorations in ‘Event Ecology’: The Case of the International Gay Games

Mega-events increasingly shape and reinforce the identities and economies of cities and nations. Major sporting events such as the Olympic Games attract enormous interest, consume vast resources and generate substantial material and cultural capital. In what has become a competition of place and identity, an ecology of events can be discerned which highlights the considerable differences that exist between events in terms of their nature and internal objectives and their intersections with the discourses and politics of host cities. Through a study of selected gay and mainstream media coverage of the International Gay Games held in Sydney in 2002, this paper explores the consequences of, and deep contradictions inherent in, an agenda of cosmopolitan advocacy that requires the endorsement of different publics with competing interests. The paper argues that the emphasis on urban sophistication and anticipated economic benefits at the heart of the promotion of the Games to mainstream Sydney were at odds with the identity building and sexual political advocacy agenda of the gay and lesbian community. Through this analysis, the paper contributes to academic understanding of the contemporary event ecology and its wider significance for social identities, cultural formations and political interventions.     

‘The orange was dried up and shriveled’: oranges and the crisis of nationalism in Ghassan Kanafani and Smilansky Yizhar

The year is 1948. Palestinians, the majority of whom lived in or near the coastal areas extending from Acre to the northern part of Gaza, were dispossessed of their land. The loss of coastal areas, characterised by the abundance of orange-groves and the citrus industry, is represented in Palestinian and Israeli post-nakba literature. Whilst Kanafani and Yizhar use the orange symbol to link between land, memory, belonging and the necessity of Palestinian/Jewish return, I offer a quintessential comparison between both writers who also employ this symbol to problematise the presence of Arab nationalism and to build an image of Zionism-in-crisis.     

Contamination,deception and ‘othering’: the media framing of the horsemeat scandal

Food and consumption practices are cultural symbols of communities, nations, identity and a collective imaginary which bind people in complex ways. The media framed the 2013 horsemeat scandal by fusing discourses beyond the politics of food. Three recurrent media frames and dominant discourses converged with wider political debates and cultural stereotypes in circulation in the media around immigration and intertextual discourse on historical food scandals. What this reveals is how food consumption and food-related scandals give rise to affective media debates and frames which invoke fear of the other and the transgression of a sacred British identity, often juxtaposing ‘Britishness’ with a constructed ‘Otherness’.     

The road to ‘Yerussalem’ – Asterai and the Hebrew literature of Beta Israel

The immigration of the Beta Israel community from Ethiopia to Israel during the 1980s and the 1990s posed a challenge to Israeli society in relation to its ability to know, understand, and absorb a Jewish community with differing religious, ethnic and cultural backgrounds. For the Beta Israel, immigrating to Israel created a rift between their dream of returning to Jerusalem, a dream that would only be fulfilled after a journey of suffering, and its realization – in which they became an inferior and excluded minority within Israel. This article discusses Hebrew Ethiopian-Israeli literature, focusing on the major narrative of homecoming – the Journey to Yerussalem. This literature, which is relatively new and small, brings the voice of two generations – those who immigrated to Israel as adults, and the younger generation who were small children during the journey. Presenting various texts, and focusing on Asterai by Omri Tegamlak Avera (2008a Avera, O. T. (2008a). Asterai. Tel Aviv: Yediot. [Google Scholar]) I shall show how Ethiopian-Israeli literature constituted itself as a journey literature, contrasting the old generation with the younger generation's identity formation as it appears in the representation of this journey narrative, constructing a more complex, ambivalent approach to the concepts of immigration and absorption, homeland and diaspora.