Ethnicities

In discussion of `identity politics' in modern Britain, issues of ethnicity and national identity rarely seem to connect in the literature. Whereas the vocabulary and rhetoric of ethnicity belong to a framework of `multiculturalism', those of nationalism and national identity relate to constitutional politics and the devolution of power. The article argues that this separation is a result of differential patterns of migration in the postwar years into the constituent nations of the UK, as well as different debates about the meanings of state (British) identity and national (English, Scottish, Welsh) identities. By focusing on how people choose to mobilize and negotiate the cultural markers and rules relating to identities which are available to them, the article argues that the relationship between ethnicity and national identity in these islands is not straightforward. Nevertheless, there is opportunity to reconnect these dimensions by exploring how they play in different territories of Britain. Thus, there is no single `national' debate about issues of nationality and ethnicity, and while being `English' (as opposed to British) as an identity seems to be less available to ethnic minorities, in Scotland and Wales nationality and ethnicity interact differently with one other to the extent that some forms of hybrid identity are possible.

The interpretive turn in urban studies signals a heightened emphasis on the locus of the city as the site for both the making and unmaking of identities and differences. Juxtaposing examples from British popular culture with narrative extracts from my published ethnographic research on `mixed race' family and memory, this article addresses two key problematics associated with this discursive shift. First, I explore the concept of multiethnicity as another paradigm for understanding the relationship between structures and forms of agency, particularly as multiethnicity forces a rethinking of racialized and essentialist notions of Englishness and non-Englishness; what I refer to as differentiating between the hyphen and the ampersand. Second, I assess the extent to which lived and constructed ideas of `the urban' in general and `the city' in particular are preconditions for the performance of multiethnicity. That is, are urban sites ideal laboratories for an illustration of the ways in which `mixed race' and multiethnic subjectivities are intertwined?

Drawing largely on Latin and North American and British examples, the three sections of this article each provide a different illustration of the relationship between whiteness, modernity and the urban. The article, first, offers a critique of the lack of engagement with the issue of racialization apparent within some recent studies of urban westernization. This section proceeds to illustrate the association between whiteness, modernity and the urban with reference to Latin America. In the second section, I address narratives of the `dark city'. It is argued that these discourses reflect the zoning of non-whiteness and, at least in the case of Britain, have sustained a class-based, colour-coded imaginative geography of the city. Third and last, I return to the Americas to discuss the way the rural, non-whiteness and nature have been conflated and constructed in opposition to negative racialized portrayals of the city as an inauthentic and unnatural landscape.

The traditional approaches of governments to citizenship, nationality and social relations have become obsolete or unfit in the face of the demands of more heterogeneous, multicultural and complex societies. This article argues that, in France, the persistence of xenophobic and neocolonialist attitudes and the strong belief that equal treatment for all is an adequate response have prevented state institutions from vigorously tackling discriminations with appropriate policies. Despite the growing ethnicization of social relations at work, school and in the neighbourhoods, the struggle against social inequality still dominates the public debate, thereby neglecting the specific harms suffered by long-settled postcolonial immigrants and their children. The latter have become the easy scapegoats of a perceived general societal malaise, and for this they are easily criminalized. The article argues that current timid institutional innovations observed here and there in France will only gain force if civil society becomes more open to negotiations about rights to the city and more tolerant of the expression of ethnic differences in public space.

This article examines the debates that have arisen in relation to the establishment of sites of worship by Britain's minority religious groups. Frequently, the buildings of non-Christian religious communities have been portrayed as `alien' and incommensurate with surrounding urban landscapes, and there are numerous cases in which such opposition has had a decisive bearing on the success or failure of plans to develop such sites of worship. However, beyond this geography of exclusion, we have begun to detect a changing attitude in the ways such buildings are positioned in relation to their local urban landscapes. In several cases, new sites of worship have been represented as welcome contributions to the production of multicultural, ethnically diverse cities. In these instances, public bodies and institutions have co-opted such buildings into broader urban policy agendas. Local religious communities have themselves played a defining role in this shift, having become astute actors in the political sphere, adapting to the processes involved in gaining planning permission and financial support. Evidence of this changing geography is provided through case study material from the town of Preston in Lancashire and the city of Leicester in the East Midlands, both in England.

This article discusses the entanglement of commerce and culture in the production of ethnicized commodities. Drawing on a case study of fashion label Ghulam Sakina and its designer Liaqat Rasul, we explore how he engages with a notion of `multicultural' as both sociological, aesthetic and commercial. We argue that commodification is not something done to pre-existing ethnicities and ethnic subjects, but is a process through which ethnicities are reproduced and in which ethnic subjects actively engage with broader discourses and institutions. We conclude by arguing that commodity culture does not inevitably result in the production of superficial, thin and bland ethnic differentiations. Nor does it inevitably involve the appropriation of ethnic forms constructed as `authentic'. Rather, our case study suggests that commodity culture can mobilize varied `multicultural imaginaries'.