3 - Shifting Dynamics of Race and Local Politics

Summary

This chapter analyses how the geographical scale of the local and the institutional forms of local government have become increasingly significant in understanding the politics of race and ethnicity in contemporary Britain. We suggest that the areas of settlement of migrant communities and minorities are key to understanding the evolution of the invariably unfinished politics of race. These localities, we argue, are characterised both by ongoing mainstream institutional responses to migration and community formation and the struggles, social movements and antiracist solidarities, exclusionary closure and boundary-crossing moments of dialogue, selective ethnic advance and systemic racial disadvantage, individual stories of success and failure. Through exploring these everyday expressions of racialised politics on the ground, we can begin to rethink the processes that have helped to frame the emergence of a new politics of race, shaping how new forms of political mobilisation, engagement, and disengagement are likely to emerge over the coming period.