Attachments and connections: a ‘white working-class’ English family's relationships with their BrAsian ‘Pakistani’ neighbours

Abstract

White working-class people have been portrayed in the media and political discourse as unable to keep pace with the demands associated with living in multicultural Britain. In this article, I shall challenge such representations of white working-class people's attitudes towards racialized ‘others’. To do this I explore the views of the members of a white working-class family to the changing racial composition of their once ethnically homogenous council estate (municipal housing). My ethnographic attention is directed to the connections, affective ties and emotional investments that the members of this family have with the estate and its community, and the ways in which BrAsians become configured in these narratives of belonging. I will show how analytical attention to the connections and attachments that white working-class people form with those whom they identify as ethnic and racial ‘others’ provides an account of white working-class identities that undermines popular representations of ‘them’.

Keywords:

• white working class
• connections
• affect
• BrAsian
• values
• council estate

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the reviewers of Ethnic and Racial Studies, Cathrine Degnen, Nigel Pleasants and the seminar audience at Canterbury Christ Church University for their excellent comments on drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research formed part of a project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council [RES-000-22-2796] called ‘Communities within communities: a longitudinal approach to minority/majority relationships and social cohesion’. I was the principal investigator and Ole Jensen the research fellow. We were assisted by two neighbourhood-based researchers.

Notes on contributors

Katharine Tyler

KATHARINE TYLER is Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter.