New Labour paired diversity language with authoritarian youth and immigration policies

Evidence

The absurdity of this situation is captured by the fact that while New Labour has adopted the language of diversity and racial justice it has also overseen some of the most authoritarian initiatives directed against young people, and an incredibly stringent immigration policy. The tremors of moral concern about the domestic quality of “the youth question” have been in large part separated from a wider concern about the “new immigration.” In recent times we have seen a tidal wave of xenophobia hit Britain surrounding the new immigration in the form of asylum seekers and refugees. What is significant about this is the degree to which domestic cultural politics of race and youth are seen as distinct to what Stephen Dobson calls the “border questions” relating to refugees and asylum seekers (Dobson, 1999). The venom and crudeness of the public outcry revolves around the image of “beggars” and “violent crime” which have become a routine reference point in the media. The general context is that asylum seekers are living below the poverty line, surviving on vouchers that can only be traded for goods, and subject to a dispersal policy that is aimed to inhibit them settling in particular areas together. Meanwhile, liberal or even left-wing politicians try to justify these draconian measures as being “fair.” — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3018

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that domestic race/youth politics were deliberately kept separate from asylum-seeker ‘border questions’ is a strong analytical move worth probing — what institutional mechanisms produced this separation?
• SEED: Angle: how governments can rhetorically champion diversity for citizens while running harsh exclusion for non-citizens, and how ‘fairness’ framing launders the cruelty.
• XREF: connects to: Left-wing radicalization, not right-wing opposition, made Labour unelectable for two decades — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 424