Lunch & Learn: Integration through racism? Far-right activism among immigrants and ethnic minorities in Britain and Canada

This seminar was co-convened by Michał P. Garapich, Anna Jochymek and Rafał Soborski, Global Diversities and Inequalities Research Centre (external link) , London Metropolitan University, and John Carlaw, CERC Migration, and Zhixi Cecilia Zhuang, Toronto Metropolitan Centre for Immigration and Settlement (TMCIS), Toronto Metropolitan University.

While it is overwhelmingly well-documented that migrants and ethnic minorities are subject to multifaceted oppression, there is growing evidence that they can also be involved in far-right activism dominated by racism and xenophobia. This phenomenon has not been adequately explored, partly because of its relative novelty, but also due to conceptual difficulties with bridging the native/immigrant dichotomy.

This seminar provided intellectual space to critically confront such normative biases and contemplate some important questions. What do we mean by ‘integration through racism’ or ‘pathological integration’ (Fox and Mogilnicka 2017)? Can diasporic nationalism be reconciled with multicultural policies? This seminar showcased the theoretical and empirical framework of a pioneering three-year study of far-right activism in transnational milieus between Poland and Britain (funded by UKRI), while also exploring similar issues in the Canadian context. The project examines constructions of whiteness and culturalist racism and their function in diaspora politics and the political trajectories of individual immigrant/transnational far-right activists. In doing so, it merges several conceptual fields from anthropology and political science looking into urban diversity, transnational political movements, political remittances, mainstreaming of the far-right, far-right ideologies and processes involved in their transnational transmission.