Skip to main content
Rebordering Britain & Britons after Brexit

Cultural violence in the aftermath of the Brexit Referendum: manifestations of post-racial xeno-racism

Abstract

This paper makes a novel contribution to the academic debate on Brexit and racism. It emphasizes the need to distinguish different manifestations of post-racial xeno-racism in the aftermath of the Brexit Referendum as either direct, structural or cultural violence. This distinction of different types of violence is important for everyday and academic contexts, because it affects the ways in which racist behaviour is identified and addressed. Cultural violence in the form of nationalist defensive, anti-immigration statements is the most common type of racist violence that we found in our analysis. Yet, it also tends to be more readily dismissed as “not racist” by its perpetrators and targets, and contributes to feelings of subdual and powerlessness amongst the latter. Our arguments are based on findings from 15 semi-structured interviews that we conducted in 2017 with British and non-British residents of Great Yarmouth, a seaside borough in East Anglia.

You might also be interested in :

Do they need to integrate? The place of EU citizens in the UK and the problem of integration
This article aims to provide empirical evidence against the theory and practice of immigrant integration through the experience of EU citizens in the UK around Brexit. We demonstrate that, in the case of EU citizens, the outcomes of presumably successful “integration” have been achieved while - and…
Intergenerational narratives of citizenship among EU citizens in the UK after the Brexit referendum
The share of British naturalization applications by EU citizens increased in the aftermath of the 2016 EU referendum. This article offers unique insights into the range of motivations informing decisions to become British or not among EU families from new and old EU member states.
Marginalized (non)citizens: migrant youth political engagement, volunteering and performative citizenship in the context of Brexit
Migrants' opportunities for civic and political participation are often restricted by their legal rights. This paper reports on a study which included a survey with 1,120 young people aged 12-18 originally from Central and Eastern Europe, living in the UK…
Superdiversity's backstory
In Superdiversity: Migration and social complexity, Vertovec returns to the concept of superdiversity and reviews its uses in different disciplinary fields. Importantly…

Journal

Ethnic and Racial Studies

Authors

Maria Abranches (United Kingdom)
Ulrike G Theuerkauf (United Kingdom)
Caitlin Scott (United Kingdom)
Carole White (United Kingdom)

Article meta

Country / region covered

Population studied

Year of Publication

Source type

Keywords