An issue that could tear us apart”

Literature on immigration and race relations in 1960s Britain has consistently emphasized legislation of this period as “racist” in intent. Insufficient attention has been paid to the deconstruction of the language surrounding anti-immigration sentiment. In the context of the 1968 Kenyan Asians crisis, Commonwealth Immigrants Act, and Race Relations Act, popular anti-immigrant sentiment was not couched in singularly definable terms of racism. However, much opposition to immigration was expressed in a manner that suggested a defensive and exclusive sense of British national identity, described in terms that reflected concerns about the appendages of the postwar welfare state. This language suggests that anti-immigration sentiment ought to be placed in a broader context of economic and socio-political decline in Britain, rather than read exclusively as an expression of some objectively definable notion of “racism.”

Immigration · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Psychological nativism · Racism · Sociology · Welfare state · Gender Studies · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US

• Many Mouths

  Open Access•Nadja Durbach•Many Mouths•2020

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