The unbearable whiteness of class: towards an intersectional reading of poverty discourses in Brexit Britain

In 2012 Save The Children, an organisation known for its humanitarian work overseas,
launched its first domestic appeal. Using the slogan 'It Shouldn't Happen Here', the appeal
aimed at raising money for British families living in poverty.The response was a ferocious
backlash. Many expressed the view that real poverty only happened in places like the African
continent, and the associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society stated that "no child in
Britain can possibly be said to be living in that kind of poverty (...) unless their parents are
grossly misusing their handouts" (Murray 2012).
This particular moment, when many Britons simultaneously denied the experience of poverty in
their country, and proclaimed that "real" poverty only happens far away, raises several
questions:
1. What does this backlash tell us about understandings of poverty in Britain today?
2. What does this particular moment tell us about race in Britain today?
3. How does this tie with racialized discourses of poverty?
Fast forward to 2016, the decision to leave the European Union has set in motion efforts to
understand the dynamics at play behind the surprise Brexit vote. Notably, discussions about the
'white working class' were propelled to the forefront of political discourse by politicians,
academics and media pundits. Given what is known about poverty in Britain, including the
relation between poverty and race as evidenced by numerous reports by organisations such as
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and the Runnymede Trust (see Catney and Sabater
2015; Khan and Shaheen 2017; Institute of Race Relations 2017), we must also ask:
4. How can we explain the gaps between understandings of who is poor and/or working
class, and who is represented as poor and/or working class?
5. What happens when ethnic minorities are erased out of narratives about legitimate
political voices in Britain?
Both these examples, the backlash against Save the Children's domestic campaign and the
discourse of the 'white working class' present us with a challenge to understand the relation
between social welfare, social solidarity and the politics of whiteness.
Despite the scholarship of Black British feminists who provided us with tools with which to
understand the intersections of various systems of subordination including gender (Bryan,
Dadzie and Scafe 1985; Mirza eds. 1997), and the critical work of cultural theorists who looked
at the social formation of multi-ethnic postwar Britain (see Gilroy 1987; Hall 1980; Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies 1982), there is a lack of consistent and nuanced analysis about
the relationship between race and class in Britain today. This also means that there is a gap
between popular and political perceptions of who is actually poor, and who is represented as
poor. In light of this, the proposed research project contends that there is a need to look into the
constructions of narratives and discourses of poverty and the intersections with race in Britain
today.