RZ From a Palestinian perspective, for example, when home is a colonised space you are not allowed to return to – the struggle is to hold on to return, but also your rights and new belonging where you have ended up.
AB There’s always a tension. I remember thinking about this when I first came here. At first, you feel you’re in a new place; you don’t feel at home at all. But then there comes a time when you do begin to feel at home, but you may not necessarily be seen by the dominant group as belonging. That is why affect and the psyche are implicated in all of that. It’s also having that psychic strength to be able to say, ‘I now feel at home, and I’m going to contest you who say I’m not at home.’ To have that strength is very important. Political activism gives that collective strength, and our loved ones give us the personal strength. So it is a contest all the time. Because even now, I’ve been here twenty-odd years, more than that, but there are people who still think I’m an outsider. But I feel quite at home down here in London, and I challenge the processes that construct me as an outsider. But you’re absolutely right – it’s always contested, disputed, and how you feel does not necessarily reflect how others see you.
BB/RZ In Cartographies of Diaspora, you explore how the new Europe has been constituted juridically, legally, politically, economically and culturally, through race, class and gender. You make an intervention into the discourse of new racisms by showing how the racisms that emerged in Britain in the context of debates over the EU are informed by the New Right. This relates back to our earlier discussion about how terms like ‘nation’ and ‘people’ were used by Thatcher against trade unions and the working class and so-called welfare scroungers.
Alongside the austerity policies and politics that have saturated the UK and also the EU in the last decade, what differences do you perceive between the eighties and nineties, and this current moment? You mentioned Powellism and Thatcher and the language of the swarm, which came back, of course, in Cameron’s comments on refugees. We were wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit about some of the similarities or differences you see between that earlier moment and what’s happening today?
AB Well, I suppose the linguistic content can sometimes be very similar. Often, immigrant groups are represented as dirty, as inherently different, as other. There’s a recursivity about ways in which certain groups are described and othered. But what changes is the broader social context, and I think that has changed hugely, if you look back at the eighties. In economic terms the situation for some groups, such as the precariat class in the gig economy, has worsened. But also the global scene has changed so much with all the wars, ever since the war in Iraq and the Gulf in 1990. We’ve had several other wars since. The rise of the Islamic State as well, and the ways in which the securitisation discourses and practices have come to the fore since 9/11, for instance. All of these have actually changed the world enormously. So, the racism of which we speak has never been one racism. We talk about Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism, which is a very specific racism. Similarly, we talk about racism that is directed at asylum seekers and refugees; that is another one. And, of course, anti-Semitism, as well as the racism that is directed at the so-called economic migrants, or against people of colour; these are all distinct forms of racism.
Even the refugees are not accepted to any great degree in Britain. Turkey and Pakistan have taken millions of refugees, and here in Britain we have taken comparatively few. Indeed, we know that most of the refugees are in the Third World countries, or what we now call the global South. The global scene, in terms of these wars and what they have done to people’s lives, is just horrendous. I often think, here we sit, and politicians discourse about lofty ideals while we forget how people live in dire conditions in wartime zones.
Rather than resolving issues politically, countries, particularly countries in the West, are likely to be more and more involved in situations in which military intervention is regarded as justified.
BB I wanted to ask you, following up on the Brexit referendum, and these different forms of racism that you’re identifying, what is your diagnosis of the reemergence of the discourse around the Commonwealth?
AB Some people who are in favour of leaving the EU argue for the importance of the Commonwealth. They seem to assume for some reason that in the post-Brexit period, Britain will suddenly allow people from Africa and the Caribbean and India and Pakistan to enter the UK, that the doors will be open wide. The Brexit campaign has made them believe, somehow, that there is a competition between the East Europeans and people from the Commonwealth. That somehow if we didn’t have people from Eastern Europe, then we would get more people from the Commonwealth. That won’t happen.
BB It seems as though people who have been denied recognition as people who truly belong in the nation are trying to reinvigorate this discourse of empire, as if to say we have a place here that precedes that of the Eastern European migrants.
AB You are absolutely right about that – that’s true. In 2015, when Greece was in a very dire economic situation, I became very anti-EU. But on the other hand, the EU has the Social Charter,11 whereas some in Britain don’t even want to retain the Human Rights Act. I felt that because of the Social Charter, we probably needed to stay in the EU and argue for a better, more democratic EU than we have now. But the Brexit group managed to convince quite a few people that the interest of the Commonwealth would be better served if we leave. It just doesn’t make sense to me at all.
BB Can we switch tack for a moment? We wanted you to address the shift in political identification with respect to the use of the term ‘Black’.
AB There has been a splintering of the sense in which we used the term ‘Black’ from the 1970s onwards. Even in those days, in the mid 1970s, some people didn’t agree with us; they used to say, ‘Asians are not Black – they don’t look Black.’ But at the same time, there are some women today who also want to use the term ‘Black’ in the sense that we used it. When we constructed the term ‘Black’ to refer to a political colour rather than a shade of skin, it was in a context where we were working together against shared experiences of racism. There were immigration laws, for example, against which we, as Black communities mobilised across the board. So the term had a political purchase.
But nowadays, even the term ‘Asian’ has itself become fractured. When you use the term ‘Asian’, people don’t necessarily identify with that. People talk about being Muslims, or Hindus or Sikhs, so the religious identifications have become much more pronounced. The point is that unity has to be achieved through struggle and solidarity; it cannot be imposed. Because if a term doesn’t have a critical purchase, then it is probably more relevant to use a term that actually does have political resonance with a new generation of people today.
I’ve started using the American term, ‘women of colour’ or ‘people of colour’. Which is also problematic, because they used to use the term ‘coloured’ here in Britain, which was a racialised term. But people of colour has been constructed by ‘nonwhite’ groups in solidarity. And that is important.
RZ It’s interesting because religious affiliation has become much more common. This has taken place, like you’re saying, in many situations where it is your religious affiliation, even more specifically, your sect, that people are using. What do you think of that change that has happened?
AB That’s a very difficult one, isn’t it? It’s because it’s so caught up with global politics as well. We can’t talk about religion – we can talk about spiritualism. I’ve nothing against spiritualism – people can pursue their religious affiliation if they’re spiritually oriented. But religion is no longer seen as separate from the geopolitical order at the moment.
BB I think nowadays, rather than identifying people of colour by ethnicity, we are marginalised and racialised through –
AB Being called Muslim.
RZ Yes. There are certain types of racisms that have developed that