Anoop Nayak (Race, Space and Globalization)
Chair and Discussant Of Session: Jo-Anne Dillabough (Educational Studies, Ubc & University Of Cambridge)
Youth Research Symposium
April 2, 2008
9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. | St. John’s College Social Lounge
Organized by the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education and sponsored by the University of Cambridge, UK
Abstract
This paper examines the complex articulation of race, religion and citizenship in the light of urban unrest in Britain in 2001, the destruction of the Twin Towers later that year and the aftermath of the London bombings in 2005. It considers the contradictory ways in which Muslim youth, asylum-seekers and minority ethnic young people are positioned in the post-9/11 landscape. A key fault-line identified in political rhetoric is the tension between asserting national citizenship while maintaining a belief in global multi-cultural difference. Based on the testimonies of minority ethnic subjects, asylum-seekers and refugees, I argue that the utopian ideal of a mobile cosmopolitan citizenship remains far removed from the prosaic struggles of many young people residing in working-class neighbourhoods. These insights challenge some of the postmodern aspects of a hybrid trans-national belonging, by suggesting that the lives of many minorities become fixed through the ‘power-geometries’ of race, class and religion. The paper concludes that asylum-seekers and ethnic minorities are better conceived of as ‘bodies out of place’ – dark matter that is challenging claims to whiteness, Britishness and the nation state.