The ‘enemy within’? Asylum, racial violence and ‘race hate’ in Britain today

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of ‘race hate’ that has emerged and flourished in British society in recent years. It will discuss a number of inter-related issues that constitute important causal factors in articulations of ‘race hate’ among sections of the white working class. Many of these issues relate to deep-seated structural factors like socio-economic marginalisation and perceived challenges to hegemonic white identity. The paper also considers a combination of developments that facilitate the particular form that ‘race hate’ takes in British society. Thus, dominant political discourses, as expressed and perpetuated within sections of the tabloid press and government policy surrounding immigration and asylum, ‘facilitate’ this form of racism in the presence of other causal factors.