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The aim of this article is to emphasise physicality and embodiment in child-centred research, fieldwork and intellectual activity. It will argue that research is not a separate form of action, placing the researcher in a position of epistemological privilege, but an embodied capacity developed through practical activity. This will be explored through an examination of the 'least-adult' positionality. Drawing from a large ethnographic study of primary schools in Dublin, Ireland, this article contends that the body must be put at the centre of the research process. I introduce the conceptualisation of the 'passive' and 'active' body, as key components for the relational context of fieldwork. Moreover, through an engagement with phenomenology, it is argued here that knowledge production is an embodied capacity developed through a sensuous relationship with the field.

We argue that the stories told about the histories and nature of places, are vehicles for narrating race. Drawing on interviews with professionals and community workers in Butetown in Cardiff and Govanhill in Glasgow, we explore how they negotiated – and contested – racialized histories of place, constructing different versions or claims to belong. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre's spatial concepts we explore this conceptualization through examination of the two areas that have distinct histories, and present experiences, of migration and racialization. In discussion of the accounts from the two distinct areas, we show that narratives of the past have a political resonance that shape accounts of current experiences of migration. Accounts of place are often related in relationship to comparisons with and narratives of other places and to global processes of trade and migration. Whilst these racialized narratives are contested, they also shape responses to social problems faced by communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the modes by which hate crime shapes targeted groups’ engagement with public space. It breaks new ground by drawing on spatial concepts and embodiment theory, to consider the geographic dimensions of hate crime. The ways in which targeted groups negotiate, restrict and curtail their movements, and attempt to conceal their targeted identities, in public are detailed. We argue victims experience a profound sense of dislocation from their local communities. This is explored by focussing on the spatial consequences of hate crime for victims, both at the material level, through the restriction of their physical movement, and also somatically, through feelings of restriction inculcated into victims’ affective being. Drawing on inductive qualitative fieldwork conducted in Ireland, we consider some of the particularities of the Irish case while also advocating for a wider understanding of the link between space and hate crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of authenticity as a moral orientation and social evaluation in practices of racism. It will argue that discursive conceptions of authenticity disguise and legitimise racism within micro encounters. Using evidence from a qualitative study of minority children in Ireland, this paper explores how perceptions of 'authenticity' are bound within racist and gendered conceptions of whom can be said to legitimately embody nationally and locally authorised dispositions and identity markers. The specific context of how this played out through the locality of north Dublin and constructed notions of Irishness is examined. The wider implications of a discourse of authenticity are discussed in relation to assumptions of similarity, adaptation and integration. This paper contributes two unique insights, firstly, that the passive body (one's appearance) has a central role in perceptions of authenticity and, secondly, that similarity in one's active body (dispositions and tastes) does not necessarily act as a bridge to bring racialised groups together or facilitate integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay we reflect on the relationship between aesthetic practices and racialised conceptions of belonging. In particular, we explore attributions of beauty and ugliness, order and disorder, as these are made in relation to local space, and we consider how these attributions can be linked to proprietorial claims about who is welcome in those spaces. Our focus is thus on the everyday aesthetics of location: the ways in which aesthetic judgements are tied to the inhabitation of space and, in this case, the exclusionary potential of 'ways of looking' at such spaces and at the social relations which exist within them. Drawing on data from qualitative research in two adjoining neighbourhoods in Glasgow's Southside, we make three analytical contributions. First, we consider the racialising potential of everyday aesthetic responses to local space. Second, we explore the ways in which local social relations themselves can be aesthetically interpreted. Third, we reflect on forms of everyday aesthetic resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the shift towards an emphasis on 'resilience' in local government discourses. Using the London Borough of Newham as a case study, it will argue that contradictory definitions of the term have, until recently, been used to justify the erosion of the third sector in the borough, specifically groups who support religious and linguistic minorities. Interviews and documentary analysis are used to consider how the concept of resilience had a racializing effect in this borough, and we argue that as a facet of policy resilience risks treating plurality as a threat rather than a strength. This is highlighted through an examination of how the third sector was characterised as retarding individuals' resilience and promoting 'ethno-centrism' in official resilience discourse. We offer three distinctive insights on the problem of resilience as a feature of policy, firstly, that resilience has a symbolic power that makes it difficult to securitize; secondly, resilience discourses risk instituting racism within policy; and thirdly, that resilience is built against collective forms of resistance and is therefore incapable of harnessing the resources and capacities of local populations. To conclude, we discuss the evolving political situation in the borough and the demise of the administration promoting resilience, through collective forms of resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of austerity on anti-racist and community organizing. We focus on three key shifts: changes to public funding, the push to entrepreneurialism and the mainstreaming of Equalities legislation. The paper contributes to critical understandings of the changing relationship between civil society and the state and the challenges this creates for working against racism. We highlight how austerity acts as an alibi to further diminish race as a policy concern. Organizations and activists are encouraged to act as entrepreneurs and confront each other as competitors, rather than allies in a political struggle. This leads to a very real sense that solidarities are being deliberately ruptured in order to "divide and conquer" and diminish collective organizing capacity. We illustrate how this is compounded by the cumulative affective consequences of austerity measures, often at considerable costs in terms of a broader collective agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data on new migrants to England from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey, we show how a key component of migrant integration - labour market progress in terms of wages and unemployment rates – is broadly positive in the early years after arrival across a range of migrant groups and across gender. However, the precise level of labour market success achieved varies considerably across groups reflecting both the initial entry-level and labour market trajectories after migration. Migrants from Western Europe and the Old Commonwealth countries have unemployment rates (wages) which are generally lower (higher) than other groups, particularly non-white groups, while migrants from the Accession countries experience relatively low unemployment but also low wages. Groups which have better outcomes on entry also tend to experience higher rates of progress over time in England. However, the extent of multiple deprivation in the local authority where migrants reside interacts with years since migration to dampen wage trajectories for some groups and accounting for deprivation highlights the importance of internal migration for access to employment. The results emphasise structural explanations for patterns of labour market integration of new migrants to England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the concept of “double estrangement”. Drawing on a large qualitative dataset it will argue that young migrant group boys in Dublin’s north inner city suffer from a break with their embodied selves as they are pushed between habitual and reflective action. The dual elements of “double estrangement” will be outlined, firstly, through the contention that visible difference and dispositions of the body mark minority boys out as not belonging within peer exchanges in three primary schools. Secondly, by arguing this has the effect of heightening a boy’s self-consciousness of their body as an object of value estranging them from their habitual embodied being. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]