Mis-taken identity: being and not being Asian, African and British

This article offers an auto/biographical approach to understanding the links between transnational migration, citizenship and identity. It explores the relationship between fixed and fluid identities in the lives of migrants through consideration of a puzzle about essentialised identities in the form of 'roots' against more plastic identities in the form of 'routes'. Both the appeal of and some problems with this dichotomy are discussed. Drawing on personal and familial auto/biography, the paper delves into the identities of East African Asians and their capacity to both be and not be African, Asian or British at different times and places. The key argument is that felt and ascribed identities operate in uneven ways that are not reducible to matters of personal choice or structural determination. The context of the discussion and the examples used are intended to underline the key intervention this article aims to make – the enduring significance of being racially or ethnically marked as Asian as the process by which identity is, or can be, reduced into a singular form

Riot: Race and Politics in the 2011 Disorders

The 2011 riots have already been the most commented upon riots of recent decades. Casting some doubt about generalised and holistic explanations and responses, we seek to locate the events in a matrix of race, policing and politics. This approach enables us to identify shifts in political discourse around the riots from the simple to the complex, as well as significant changes between how the events of 2011 and earlier riots have been 'read'. We seek to unravel some of these strands, to show how race, place and political discourse have been located in the reaction to the riots. In drawing attention to important unevenness, we argue that sociologists need to focus on both continuities and changes since the 1980s.Racialization, Media, Haunting, Policies, Politicians, Police

Enacting the sacred: nation and difference in the comparative sociology of the police

Abstract not available

Stuart Hall as a criminological theorist-activist

What is the legacy of Stuart Hall for criminology, beyond just Policing the Crisis? In this article I highlight two other engagements by Hall in race and policing one in the 1980s through an independent inquiry, the other in the 1990s through a major public inquiry. Beyond bringing this work to light, this article shows how these engagements reveal Hall’s unique style of theorizing the concrete politics of the present through his stress upon conjunctures and context, and via the concept of articulation. Hall’s interventions in these two cases underscore an analytical and theoretical stance in public forums that made him more than a ‘scholar-activist’ but rather a ‘theorist-activist’ who drew on theory for strategic and ‘applied’ purposes. The ways in which he did this can, I suggest, point to different ways of ‘doing race’ in a critical criminology

Racism, structural and institutional

Institutional and structural racism are sociological explanations for racism as more than individual prejudice, and as a deep‐seated and ongoing force in contemporary societies that produce racially structured patterns of inequality that recur in spite of equality before the law and antidiscrimination policies. Such patterns can be seen across many aspects of society, such as employment, housing, and law enforcement. Institutional/structural racism is also evident in ideologies at national and global levels through “color blind” perspectives as well as Eurocentrism. In theory and in practice they are best thought of as working through an interacting and intersecting combination of individual/group, cultural, and structural processes and forces

Book review: the end of policing by Alex S. Vitale

In The End of Policing, Alex S. Vitale offers an indictment of contemporary policing in the US, condemning not only the roles and actions of the US police, but also the extensive, growing reach of crime control and criminalisation processes. While the book cannot fully realise its ambition to envisage ‘policing without the police’, this is a welcome challenge to reformist thinking and a powerful argument against social and economic injustice, inequality and racism, finds Karim Murji

Understanding the contemporary race–migration nexus

The linkage between race and migration, especially in the UK since the 1990s, has shifted from a focus on postcolonial migrants to focus on newer groups, while migration within the European Union has also altered the discussion of racism and migration. This critical review provides a framework for understanding how race is conceptualized (or ignored) in contemporary scholarship on migration. We identify three, partly overlapping nexi between migration and racialization: (1) 'Changing Migrations – Continuities of Racism'; (2) 'Complex Migrations – Differentialist Racialization'; (3) 'Post-racial Migrations – Beyond Racism'. The article analyses what each of these nexi bring into focus as well as what they neglect. The concept of race–migration nexus aids a fuller understanding of how migration and contemporary racialization are co-constructed. Scholars need to consider the relationship between migration and race to better address pressing issues of racism against migrants and settled communities

HOW DO SOCIOLOGISTS KEEP UP WITH A SOCIAL WORLD?

No abstract provide