The Coloniality of Belonging

Abstract

Chapter 4 explores how participants’ investment in meritocratic imaginaries coexist with racialized and classed aspirations, reproducing distinctions between good and bad Europeans, good and bad migrants, and Europeans and non-Europeans. The chapter opens by focusing on participants’ positive experiences of ethnicization in the UK, showing how they benefit from hierarchies of European whiteness, their investment in such hierarchies, and the exclusionary character of Italianness for Black Italians and, to some extent, working-class Italians. The chapter continues revealing strong class divisions in aspirations of belonging. Middle-class participants invoke credentialized belonging, using high-status jobs and degrees as meritocratic badges. Working-class participants emphasize hard work (without middle-class credentials) or present good work as an ‘Italian’ quality (individualized and ethnicized belonging). The chapter concludes by exploring the epistemic limits of these narratives. Credentialized belonging stigmatizes working-class migrations while obscuring other inequalities among high-skilled migrants, including their limited access to ‘British’ social and cultural capital. Individualized and ethnicized belonging obscure the additional vulnerabilities that older, Black and female working-class participants experience in low-status and insecure jobs.