The unbearable whiteness of class: towards an intersectional reading of poverty discourses in Brexit Britain

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In 2012 Save The Children, an organisation known for its humanitarian work overseas,launched its first domestic appeal. Using the slogan 'It Shouldn't Happen Here', the appealaimed at raising money for British families living in poverty.The response was a ferociousbacklash. Many expressed the view that real poverty only happened in places like the Africancontinent, and the associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society stated that "no child inBritain can possibly be said to be living in that kind of poverty (...) unless their parents aregrossly misusing their handouts" (Murray 2012).This particular moment, when many Britons simultaneously denied the experience of poverty intheir country, and proclaimed that "real" poverty only happens far away, raises severalquestions:1. What does this backlash tell us about understandings of poverty in Britain today?2. What does this particular moment tell us about race in Britain today?3. How does this tie with racialized discourses of poverty?Fast forward to 2016, the decision to leave the European Union has set in motion efforts tounderstand the dynamics at play behind the surprise Brexit vote. Notably, discussions about the'white working class' were propelled to the forefront of political discourse by politicians,academics and media pundits. Given what is known about poverty in Britain, including therelation between poverty and race as evidenced by numerous reports by organisations such asthe Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) and the Runnymede Trust (see Catney and Sabater2015; Khan and Shaheen 2017; Institute of Race Relations 2017), we must also ask:4. How can we explain the gaps between understandings of who is poor and/or workingclass, and who is represented as poor and/or working class?5. What happens when ethnic minorities are erased out of narratives about legitimatepolitical voices in Britain?Both these examples, the backlash against Save the Children's domestic campaign and thediscourse of the 'white working class' present us with a challenge to understand the relationbetween social welfare, social solidarity and the politics of whiteness.Despite the scholarship of Black British feminists who provided us with tools with which tounderstand the intersections of various systems of subordination including gender (Bryan,Dadzie and Scafe 1985; Mirza eds. 1997), and the critical work of cultural theorists who lookedat the social formation of multi-ethnic postwar Britain (see Gilroy 1987; Hall 1980; Centre forContemporary Cultural Studies 1982), there is a lack of consistent and nuanced analysis aboutthe relationship between race and class in Britain today. This also means that there is a gapbetween popular and political perceptions of who is actually poor, and who is represented aspoor. In light of this, the proposed research project contends that there is a need to look into theconstructions of narratives and discourses of poverty and the intersections with race in Britaintoday.