Discourses on Discrimination: Talking Status, Making Race

• In Event: 324 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 04. RGC, Immigration, and Integration

Abstract

There is mounting evidence to suggest that East European migrants in the UK have been victims of discrimination. Reports of pay gaps point to the possibility of structural discrimination, restrictions on employment operate as a kind of legal discrimination, and politicians and the media construct East European migrants as different and the source of concern. The Hungarians and Romanians we spoke with in Bristol also reported discrimination, albeit in ways that carefully deflected its racialized connotations. But they also denied that they were victims of discrimination. Why would East Europeans, the supposed victims of discrimination, deny and deflect discrimination? We argue that the discursive strategies preferred and proffered by East Europeans reflect their ambiguous position in Britain’s status hierarchies. Denying discrimination and deflecting its racialized connotations help resolve this ambiguity in their favour by aligning them with other deniers and deflecters of discrimination: a white British/European majority. We examine the ways Hungarians and Romanians negotiate their ambiguous status through these different discourses about discrimination. We argue that they are not claiming they are white, but they are claiming a higher status in ways that produce whitening effects. Whiteness doesn’t determine status; rather, status determines whiteness.

Authors

• Jon E. Fox, University of Bristol

• Laura Morosanu, University of Sussex

• Eszter Szilassy, University of Bristol