Urban roots and national belonging: hierarchies and scales of belonging in London

What does it mean to be British, English, to be a Londoner, or simply 'local'? How are these identities produced, imagined and maintained? Who do they include and who is excluded? At a time when questions of Britishness and belonging are at the forefront of public and political debate, my research provides an important corrective to divisive and over-simplified debates that position people as either national or non-national, tolerant or racist, and which overlook the ways that white British middle-class people embody, perpetuate and adjust normalised ideas about what 'Britishness' is and who/what is part of it.
With a focus on the reproduction of boundaries and hierarchies of belonging among the white British middle-classes, my research innovates the discussion around migrant integration, national belonging and Britishness by highlighting a new research agenda focused on the role of the established majority in these processes and reveals both the racialised nature of Britishness and the significance of historical imaginaries in shaping ideas of belonging in the present, a fact often overlooked by policy-makers.
The fellowship will provide the necessary time to establish myself as an early career academic with a strong publication record and to build a basis on which I can continue to deliver high quality, impactful research on nationhood, identity and belonging in a changing Britain. I will consolidate my doctoral work through academic publication, dissemination and impact, and will also begin to develop plans for future research extending my work through ethnography of London-based family histories. These activities are organised around three interrelated sets of research questions:
1) How, or to what extent, are Britishness and contemporary British identities, racialised? What role does 'race' play in the politics of recognition and belonging? And, how is 'race' understood in relation to notions of relatedness?
2) In what ways, and to what extent, are possibilities for migrants and ethnicised minorities to integrate and belong in and/or to Britain meditated by more established and dominant groups? And, how is belonging understood and reproduced hierarchically and across scales?
3) What is the role of historical and genealogical imaginaries in shaping understandings of belonging - national and regional - in the present? And, in particular, how are hierarchies of belonging reproduced through ideas of relatedness and belonging in time?
Academic outputs will include 3 peer-reviewed articles (one related to each set of research questions and all intended for high-ranking social science journals) and 3 conference papers (related to journal articles to support dissemination). In addition to conference papers, dissemination activities will include 3 policy briefings, 3 blogs, and 3 short videos, all stressing the implications of my findings in the context of Brexit. These dissemination activities will be related to the research questions and will reassert the following key findings: (1) Whiteness continues to mark core ideas of Britishness, even while the edges of 'Britishness' are blurring; (2) There are power inequalities embedded in processes and politics of integration and belonging; and (3) Ideas about the past, including about genealogical relatedness and Empire, reproduce hierarchical conceptions of belonging in the present.
The fellowship offers a real opportunity to increase public and political awareness of the hierarchical and power-laden construction of belonging in Britain, something that is crucial in the context of a 'Brexit Britain' apparently anxious about multiculture and polarised over immigration. It facilitates the extension of my doctoral work through ethnographic investigation of the most exclusive and racialised form of belonging identified in my doctoral work and, in facilitating my transition into an academic career, will secure the continuation of my research at a vanguard in migration geographies.