This dissertation brings together an archive of texts that both reflect and challenge the construction of a contemporary crisis of social mobility and working-class decline as a racial problem. British news media, political rhetoric, and creative work such as literature and film have increasingly represented the expansion of multicultural Britain, particularly after postwar decolonization, as responsible for the loss of the good life for the white working classes. In response to this causatively intertwined narrative of migrant mobilities and class stagnation, this doctoral project has developed an alternate dialogue between the present day and the postwar by examining social mobility as an affective genre in representations of race and class.
By exploring literary and cinematic representations of urban mobilities, the home, and the school, my thesis demonstrates the ways in which social mobility materializes as an affective structure that shapes the connections between white working-class and migrant communities in more nuanced ways than has been portrayed by British media and politicians. My analysis of literature and film reveals that the affective genre of social mobility since the postwar era has tended to shore up the continuation and preservation of white nationalism through the marginalization and continued exploitation of racialized subjects. And yet, although the contemporary rhetorical construct of social mobility and its apparently racially-caused endangerment utilizes the white working class as its litmus test and ultimate victim, what the narrative of the good (white) life obfuscates is its inaccessibility for not just the racialized other, but for the white working classes as well. Thus, while my project teases out the colonial structuring of relationships between white working class and migrant and minority ethnic subjects within narratives of class desire, it also ultimately understands classed and racialized communities as jointly — if unevenly — impacted by capitalism. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This project critically examines the common portrayal of the decline of white working-class social mobility as caused by immigration and multiculturalism in British media, politics, and culture. In particular, this narrative of racially-caused social “immobility” cultivates a comparison between the postwar era, which was supposedly a time of working-class affluence, and the twenty-first century present, which is characterized through economic austerity and lack of opportunity for lower income communities. My dissertation counters this popular and politically motivated narrative by bringing together an archive of cultural material — literature, film, political speeches, and news media coverage — that provides a more nuanced description of interactions between the white working class and migrant communities in Britain from the postwar and contemporary eras. This thesis ultimately examines social mobility as a desire that mediates relationships between classed and racialized people under capitalism, rather than a pre-existing economic and social privilege that has been “taken away” by immigrants and the expansion of multiculturalism in Britain.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/21446 |
| Date | 05 1900 |
| Creators | Busse, Cassel |
| Contributors | Attewell, Nadine, English and Cultural Studies |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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