Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Coloniality of Meritocracy: From the Anglosphere to Post-Austerity Europe
- 2 Imagining Meritocracy in Unequal Positions
- 3 (Re)Imagining Meritocracy in Unequal Migrations
- 4 The Coloniality of Belonging
- 5 The Coloniality of Brexit
- Conclusion
- Appendix A Interviewing: From Theory to Practice
- Appendix B Sample Composition
- Appendix C Summary of Participants
- Appendix D Interview Topics and Questions
- References
- Index
Conclusion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 January 2024
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 The Coloniality of Meritocracy: From the Anglosphere to Post-Austerity Europe
- 2 Imagining Meritocracy in Unequal Positions
- 3 (Re)Imagining Meritocracy in Unequal Migrations
- 4 The Coloniality of Belonging
- 5 The Coloniality of Brexit
- Conclusion
- Appendix A Interviewing: From Theory to Practice
- Appendix B Sample Composition
- Appendix C Summary of Participants
- Appendix D Interview Topics and Questions
- References
- Index
Summary
‘It's economically suffocating, I mean, if you don't have someone who supports you or a big source of income it's hard, it's hard to get by, you see? It's not a country that offers much in this respect, even for those born and bred [here]. I mean, if you’re born poor, it's not going to be great in a country like this one, regardless of the American Dream. I think a Ken Loach movie is more real, rather than all those [pause] you see? At least this is what I see … social inequalities are higher than in Italy, and my fear is that it will get worse, with all the privatizations of [pause] I don't know, the NHS, everything.’
Eleonora's description of Britain as a Ken Loach movie, rather than the American Dream, directly challenges the imaginaries of Northern meritocracy discussed in this book. We need to go back to Maria's discussion of precarity to find a similar critique (Chapter 3). Eliza's reflection on the privatization of British life, in Chapter 3, also approximates a critique of Northern meritocracy (an imaginary which, nonetheless, she partly endorsed).
When I conducted the interviews for this book, only a minority of participants engaged in explicit critiques of British meritocracy. Eleonora, like Maria, had long-term experiences of insecure work, albeit in a high-status sector (she was an experienced, but still precarious, freelance journalist). She also had a political biography that allowed her to access a different imaginary. Her critique of “social inequalities” and “privatization” (and her reference to Ken Loach) need to be situated in a longer biography of militant journalism and left-wing activism. Similarly, Maria mentioned that she supported the Labour Party in Britain. She did not speak about her political experiences or sympathies in Italy, but her discussion of British precarity revealed exposure to (and investment in) postwar discourses about the welfare state as a safeguard to workers’ collective rights (Littler, 2017). The word she used for precarity (precariato) also indicates that, in Italy, Maria had some familiarity with the critique of anti-austerity movements to the growing precarization of the Italian labour market and welfare.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Coloniality and Meritocracy in Unequal EU MigrationsIntersecting Inequalities in Post-2008 Italian Migration, pp. 139 - 145Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2023