Speaking of the Working Class

Citizenship is inextricably bound up with voice, with the act of speech and the act of listening. At the edges of accounts of the Athenian polis and of the Roman republic, we can faintly hear the clamour of the demos, those with no voice and have not counted, insisting on being heard. In the Roman republic, the proletariat were those who were heard last, if at all, in the assembly; it was property that gave weight to voice, that made a voice count, and the proletarians were counted in the census only by their number of offspring (proli) instead of their property. For Aristotle, while all animals have voice, only humans have speech. Discussing a tale told by Livy of the Roman plebs on Aventine Hill, as retold by Pierre-Simon Ballanche in 1829, Jacques Rancière talks of the plebs claiming the human facility of speech. “They [the plebs] do not speak because they are beings without a name, deprived of logos – meaning, symbolic enrolment in the city. Plebs live a purely individual life that passes on nothing to posterity except for life itself, reduced to its reproductive function. Whoever is nameless cannot speak.” Just as Plato called the demos a “large and powerful animal”, the Roman patricians heard the sounds of the plebs as – in Ballanche’s words – “only transitory speech, a speech that is a fugitive sound, a sort of lowing, a sign of want”: a voice that did not count, that held no meaning to them. In today’s modes of citizenship, not all voices are heard as speech, as carrying the weight of meaning in the community of value

Getting away from the noise Jewish-Muslim interactions and narratives in E1/Barbès

This article offers a comparative lens on intercultural and interreligious encounter in urban contexts in France and the UK, focusing on the commonalities and specificities of different national and municipal contexts. It offers an account of three forms of encounter, based on extensive fieldwork in two neighbourhoods of Paris and London: commercial interdependencies embedded in early phases of immigration; voluntaristic ‘interfaith-from-above’ policies shaped by state agendas developed since the beginning of the twenty-first century; and still emerging ‘interculturalism-from-below’ generated by second- and third-generation children of immigrants, which is marked by nostalgia and selective reading of local heritage. In doing so, it bypasses the sharp disciplinary and methodological divides that separate research on Jewish histories and cultures, Muslim communities, immigrant quarters, and postcolonial/minority ethnic contexts. It aims instead to show how intercultural and interfaith encounters often occur in mundane spaces, and operate through and despite forms of ambivalence, and in this respect offer a context in which to displace the terms of spectacular accounts of racial and civilizational conflict.The Leverhulme Trust Research Studentship abroad (2010-12); The Woolf Institute (2015-17

Asdatown: The intersections of classed places and identities

This chapter explores the intersections between classed places and identities, focusing on the UK and examining the ways in which the figures of the ‘chav’ and the ‘pikey’ have been represented in British popular culture and in official policy discourses. It argues that these representations conflate the racialized identity of the Gypsy Traveller with white working class identities and draw on the presence or proximity of Irish or Gypsy Travellers to the white ‘underclass’ in order to metonymically racialize the white working class as a whole. The politics of space is central to this process. Existing sociological and cultural geography literature hints at the active role of the spatial imaginary in classing people (Charleworth 2000, Robson 2000, Haylett 2000, Hewitt 2005, Skeggs 2005). This chapter argues that particular spaces and places – housing estates, and places described as ‘chav towns’ – are used discursively as a way of fixing people in racialized class positions

Cousin trouble: Jewish and Muslim ideas of the Other

Judaism and Islam are in many ways the closest of cousins. Sharing a rigorously monotheistic faith as articulated by a shared canon of prophets in related Semitic tongues, tracing their common origins to the patriarch Abraham, their destinies have been inextricably intertwined. In dispersal in western countries such as Britain or France, Jews and Muslims have together occupied the ambiguous position of being constructed as both “ethnic communities” and “faith communities” at odds with their normatively Christian wider societies; both have suffered forms of racism and persecution, been accused of dual loyalties, condemned for refusing to integrate, stereotyped as terrorists. The kinship of Judaism and Islam is most concisely evoked (and it has become clichéd to do so) in the bearnear-homonymy of the Hebrew and Arabic words for peace: shalom and salaam. And yet, today more than ever, Jews and Muslims live largely in a state of enmity, characterised by mutual distrust. Hearing more about each other than perhaps ever before, it seems that Jews and Muslims might know less about each other than at any time in their histories. There is widespread Islamophobia amongst Jews, widespread antisemitism amongst Muslims. Arguably, though, it is not each other that they fear, but the idea of the other. How do these ideas form? This article looks at this question, focusing especially on the Jewish idea – or, rather, ideas – of Islam

Failing better at convivially researching spaces of diversity

In this chapter, I argue that participatory and convivial tools are always destined to fail, but, with a certain ethical courage and intellectual humility, we can learn to fail better. It reflects on a series of (in some senses failed) attempts to use participatory and action research tools, including peer research training and various visual methods, in conducting research in urban contexts, mainly in inner south London, with heterogeneous research participants. The chapter explores the ethical and epistemological challenges involved in this kind of research

Citizenship and belonging : East London Jewish radicals

This thesis is about citizenship and belonging: how citizenship has articulated with or against different forms, practices and spaces of belonging. It examines Jewish East London in the period from 1903 to the end of the First World War and is based on original archival research. It argues that this period saw the emergence of a new form of racialized biopolitical citizenship, which was normalized in the "state of emergency" that was the war. This citizenship was framed by the imperial context, was based on singular 1e1it her/or" identities and was defined against the figure of alien. The thesis also argues that, in the same period, an alternative space of political belonging existed in East London, based on different forms of political rationality and threaded through with multiple loyalties and identifications, that challenged the either/or logic of the nation-state. Consequently, Jewish radicals who operated in this alternative public sphere developed understandings of political belonging which cut against the grain of the nation-state, and thus offer resources for thinking about citizenship today. The thesis seeks to unsettle some of the conventional languages of citizenship and political belonging by historicizing them: by concentrating on the specific way in which modern citizenship emerged in imperial Britain, and on the material processes by which this citizenship was policed and mapped. The thesis examines a series of different spaces and scales of political belonging. It attempts to keep in focus regimes of visibility, subjectification and governmentality that produce these spaces and the practices of belonging and cultural traditions that wove through them

Labour and Antisemitism: a crisis misunderstood

In this article, we argue that Labour’s antisemitism crisis has been misunderstood. We suggest that a more accurate and sophisticated understanding of antisemitism offers a way forward. There are three elements to this claim. First, by drawing on existing data on attitudes towards Jews, we criticise the widespread focus on individual ‘antisemites’, rather than on the broader problem of antisemitism. In turn, we conceive of antisemitism not as a virus or poison, as in so many formulations, but rather, as a reservoir of readily available images and ideas that subsist in our political culture. Second, following on from this understanding, we offer five ways forward. Finally, we set this analysis in the context of a historical parting of the ways between anti‐racism and opposition to antisemitism. An anti‐racism defined solely by conceptions of whiteness and power, we argue, has proven unable to fully acknowledge and account for anti‐Jewish racism

50 days in the summer: Gaza, political protest and antisemitism in the UK – A sub-report for the All Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Antisemitism

On 12 June 2014, three Israeli teenagers were abducted in the West Bank, against a backdrop of heightened tension between the Israeli state and Palestinian forces, including a renewal of settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The abduction was followed by days of escalating violence, including a massive Israeli policing operation in the West Bank, the murder of a Palestinian teenager after the bodies of the kidnapped Israelis were found, and increasing numbers of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. A series of Israeli air strikes on targets in Gaza on the night of 30 June'1 July marked the start of sustained Israel’s military engagement, and Operation Protective Edge was launched on 8 July, comprising initially of airstrikes on targets associated with rocket fire (with around 200 people killed in the strikes), followed by ground engagement a week later. De-escalation began on 3 August, with Israel withdrawing ground troops from Gaza, and an open-ended ceasefire concluded this round of the conflict on 26 August. In total, over 2100 Palestinians were killed (with estimates of civilians ranging between 50% and 76% of the losses), along with 66 Israeli combatants, 5 Israeli civilians and 1 Thai national. There were demonstrations against Israel’s prosecution of the conflict across the world, including several in the UK, as well as other manifestations of protest, such as public calls for and acts of boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. There were some reports of antisemitic content in some of these demonstrations, against a broader context in which antisemitic incidents spiked dramatically. Over 130 antisemitic were recorded by the Community Security Trust (CST) in July, making it the highest monthly total since January 2009 (a previous period of war in Gaza and Israel’s Operation Cast Lead). This short report examines the 2014 protests, exploring the extent and degree of antisemitism in the anti'Israel protests, as well as the reporting of this antisemitism and its impact on the Jewish community. It focuses in particular on the 50 days of Operation Protective Edge. The research questions which this report attempts to address are: • What were the predominant discourses in the UK protests relating to Operation Protective Edge? • Were antisemitic discourses present? If so, how prevalent were they? • Are UK protests relating to Operation Protective Edge comparable in scale and in discourse to protests relating to other conflicts? • How do these issues relate to mainstream and Jewish media reporting on the conflict and on the demonstrations? • How do these issues and their media representation affect Jewish feelings about antisemitism

Identity, Belonging & Citizenship in Urban Britain

This paper explores how identity, belonging and citizenship might change in the cities of the future. It starts by setting out how we are using our key terms. As a baseline, it traces the tectonic shifts that have structured these terms in the period from 1965 to the present. As part of this, we present new original analysis of Census data to explore how national identity is patterned geographically across the UK’s system of cities. The paper then briefly sets out some of the “known unknowns” that will affect their future unfolding, before tracking what we know about trends that are likely to shape future urban forms of citizenship, belonging and identity. Drawing on an inventory of key future threats and opportunities, we set out a series of scenarios for future cities in relation to our three key terms. In thinking this through, we have foregrounded the role that citizenship, belonging and especially identity might have in rethinking notions of resilience in both imagining and planning for cities of the future. For the sake of coherence, we focus in this paper on trends which relate to the ongoing massive migration-driven demographic transformation of the UK. As we will note in the paper, these changes intersect with changes in several different domains of life – such as gender, age, lifestyle, sexuality, constitutional change and cultures of consumption. International migration is the main driver of demographic change in the UK today. Thus this paper specifically addresses how migration has fundamentally changed identity, belonging and citizenship in Britain, especially urban Britain. This transformation is not unique to the UK. As we will show, it is part of the larger turbulence of globalisation that has put more people on the move on the planet than ever before, hastening a final global shift from the countryside to the city – but an understanding of Britain’s near future is impossible without it. At the start of our baseline period, 1965, there were a little over 2 million foreign-born people in the UK; now there are close to 8 million. The period between the 2001 and 2011 Censuses saw the biggest population growth in the UK since the Census began in 1801: a growth of 3.7 million or 7.1%, of which 55% was directly due to international migration rather than natural growth (births over deaths). As the demographic changes caused by this period ripple down the generations in the coming decades, the ethnic make-up of the UK and the prevalent forms of identification, belonging and citizenship will be transformed. There are now a growing number of “majority minority” cities, and the transnational connections of the residents of these cities will be among the most significant drivers of change in this domain