The suburban paradox of conviviality and racism in postcolonial Britain

ABSTRACT

Taking my cue from work on relations of interethnic conviviality in super-diverse cities across the globe, this paper examines the ways in which conviviality co-exists with racism as found in a suburban British town. My argument is that ethnographic attention to the proximity of interethnic relations of conviviality to racism is necessary to guard against overly celebratory accounts of conviviality that downplay everyday manifestations of racism. By situating my study of conviviality in a suburban town, my account begins to unpack the characteristics of convivial relations formed in suburban neighbourhoods as opposed to super-diverse cities often studied by ethnographers in this area of inquiry. I examine manifestations of interethnic relations between British Asian Muslims and white British residents of this town. In contrast to the mainstream images that depict British Asian Muslims as a potential threat to neighbourhood stability and national security, some white and British Asian Muslim residents formed neighbourly relationships of trust, care and mutual recognition with each other across ethnic, racial, religious, gender, class and generational differences. Yet, my analysis of these convivial relations reveals some paradoxical ways in which individuals’ experiences of interethnic relations co-exist with their xenophobic, racist and Islamophobic attitudes.

KEYWORDS:

• BrAsian
• Muslims
• white
• conviviality
• racism
• suburban

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Cathrine Degnen, Nigel Pleasants and two anonymous reviewers and the Editors of Ethnic and Migration Studies for their thoughtful comments and support in writing this article. I presented this paper at the BSA Conference at Aston University in April 2016. I am grateful to the audience for their excellent questions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Following Ali, Kalra, and Sayyid (2006), I use the term ‘BrAsian’ to highlight the historical relationships of empire that bind people of South Asian descent living in Britain to Britishness. The terms ‘Pakistani’ and ‘Asian’ were used by white British and BrAsian research participants, and not the technical concept ‘BrAsian’. This research formed part of an ESRC funded project (RES-000-22-2796): ‘Communities within communities: a longitudinal approach to minority/majority relationships and social cohesion’. The research team included Ole Jensen (Research Fellow), and two community-based researchers that I hired. I was Principal Investigator. Each of us played a role in conducting the interviews reported in this article. Research participants were recruited to the project via the researchers' personal contacts, networking with local community groups in the area as well as via research participants themselves identifying someone who might be interested in participating in the project including a family member. Most interviews took place in research participants' homes or a public place in the neighbourhood such as a community centre. Most interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim (see further Tyler and Jensen 2009 for a fuller discussion of this project's broader aims and a more detailed account of its methodology).

2 A shorter extract from this interview appears in Jensen (2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [RES-000-22-2796].