Immigrants aren’t us!(part 2-prejudice)

 On the one hand there’s the prejudice arising from fear. Post 9/11 and 7/7 any fear of colour, especially Muslim colour, can be rationalised through terror. Yet these acts of terrorism came after racial prejudice had been firmly grounded in our national psyche. So any prejudice must stem from something else and this is the key dynamic, prejudice.

 

As a nation we are encouraged to highlight social differences between people, be it on intellect, age, gender, sexuality, appearance, social class etc. Exploiting differences is a fundamental aspect of our social interaction which can be traced back centuries through either the lens of social-class, gender, ethnicity, age etc. Such a dynamic is exploited by powerful elites as a means of social control in order to retain their dominance and distance through barriers of social difference.

 

This approach prevents any notion of integration through multiculturalism from taking hold. For example in education independent schools keep a minority of children out of mainstream state education so they never have to integrate with the majority. Similarly existing discourses of multiculturalism conveniently ignores the fact the UK is comprised of four countries with distinct cultural differences. Indeed Wales is expanding its cultural difference through the growth of the Welsh language, yet we largely remain comfortable with these examples of multiculturalism mainly because we don’t see the difference.

 

Yet on this basis the vast majority of us experience more prejudice than we realise. Indeed it’s so subtle more of us experiences migratory prejudice than we realise. As a secondary school teacher I have witnessed an increasing number of adults entering teaching as a second or third career due the increased popularity of SCITT (school-centred initial teacher training) based courses. An individuals’ decision to change career is as diverse as their social, economic and cultural backgrounds. And it’s this diversity or difference which makes the migration from one job to another difficult or sometimes prohibitive. Because when you arrive having maybe crossed a social border you’re viewed by the ‘indigenous’ as an outsider, a threat and therefore an immigrant.