From Windrush to Grenfell

British Citizenship, Race, and Rights - Lecture 6

Lecturer: Dr Luke de Noronha, University of Manchester

1 October 2020

Both the Windrush scandal and the Grenfell fire raise urgent questions for sociologists, and for people concerned about tackling racism more broadly. Both remind us that racism is not just about individuals being intolerant, prejudiced, or bigoted, but about the social and institutional structures that organise who is entitled to what.

In this lecture, I invite us to ask some questions about racism, rights and exclusion – particularly in relation to the history and contemporary dynamics of immigration control. It is by asking who is a member of the nation, who is excluded, how this changes over time, and what can be done to those denied membership, that we can develop critical methodologies for studying racism in anti-immigrant times.


Reading

Resources

Questions for discussion

  1. How is the history of British immigration and nationality law implicated in the reproduction of racism?
  2. How do the Windrush Scandal and the Grenfell fire reveal the dynamic between ‘race’, class, migration status and deservingness?
  3. What are some of the dangers with arguments for rights on the basis of ‘contribution’?