School de-segregation and the Politics of ‘Forced Integration’

Using the programme for creating the controversial school academies, local governments in the UK have attempted to force an integration of schools with majority white and ethnic minority pupil cohorts via new mergers. This has largely been as a response to analysts’ fears about self-segregation and insufficient community cohesion, following riots in northern towns in 2001 and the spectre of radicalisation among young Muslims following 9/11 and 7/7. An examination of school mergers in Burnley, Blackburn, Leeds and Oldham reveals how they have amplified racial attacks on Muslim pupils and their feelings of insecurity, while also fuelling a backlash against what is perceived by some members of the white working class as a form of social engineering that endangers white privilege