Actividades claves

Constructing social identity is a growing subject in modern Western societies. It became progressively challenging due to the economic and security changes in Western countries, which turn the focus upon social identities as a source of meaning (Spalek, 2008a). The political rhetoric is an important aspect of processing, persuading and making certain social realities more legitimate or credible than others (Gorman et al., 2006, p 22).

Sociological and criminological work in immigration (Flores, 2003) suggest interconnections between race, ethnicity, nation, faith and immigration in political rhetoric. In crisis, questions of identity seem to rise more than in times of stability. Throughout UK history, political rhetoric has focused on particular ethnicities, races and religions and created cultures of fear and surveillance. Such debates are especially heightened during times of economic and political turmoil. For instance, the war on drugs heightened fears of some ethnicities (like black groups and in particular Caribbean nationals), while national security and terrorism may result in heightened anxieties of some faith groups (like Muslims), and ultimately they all often impact issues of immigration (see Chapter 3).

As Chapter 2 illustrated, political power has the greatest capacity to impose labels upon people by raising a moral panic surfaced about Irish, Jewish, and BAME groups as a source of social problems and picture them as the alien criminals. Angel-Ajani (2003), argued that in Italy and

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the rest of Europe (much like the USA), discourses on race, ethnicity, faith and nationality are joined together with the rhetoric of crime and crime prevention in such a way that migrant populations are popularly viewed as being illegal and therefore more prone to criminal behaviour.

Not surprisingly then, discourses on crime and on who commits it are saturated with the language of national citizenship, social class, gender and race. In other words, the volume of political rhetoric in using ethnic minority and foreign minority in crime, violence, terrorism contexts has implied a common culture in Europe that ‘all Third World people as immigrant and refugees, and all immigrants and refugees as terrorists and drug-runners’ (Angel-Ajani, 2003, p 433).

Ethnic and foreign minorities are considered as an easy target to blame especially when political policy is contributing actively to the fear of their criminal behaviour and keep trying to convince the public that the safety, security and integration is not possible with the continuity of accepting new comers (Sayad, 1996, Palidda, 2009).

Agozino (1997, p 103), explained how the political discourses in the UK, which circulated the criminality of black people and especially black women have constructed the criminality of foreign nationals. Agozino, described a predictable pattern in regards the relationship between foreign nationals and crime in the UK, which suggests that foreigners are criminals, unless otherwise proven.

The racist discourses by some British politicians that manifest itself in text, talk and communication contribute to the reproduction of ethnic and foreign criminality (Panayi, 1999, Panayi, 2010). Presenting the identity of

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some races, ethnicities and faith as a social problem, blaming them for social and legal problems, and applying the criminality of some of them to their majority have alienated ethnic minorities from the rest of society and placed them firmly as suspicious (Bolognani, 2006, Beddoes et al., 2010).

However, the construction of identities by politicians changed over time when the focus was directed to faith groups, especially Muslims, rather than other key categories like race and ethnicity, at the beginning of 2000s (Den Boer and Monar, 2002, Fenwick, 2002, Amoore, 2006, Fischer et al., 2007). The rhetoric of terrorism, for example, has presented widely across contexts of contention. Where the focus was supposed to be on how to keep the nation safe and protect the country from danger, the forms of rhetoric have concentrated more on presenting some faith groups and foreign nationals as the source of terrorism (Fischer et al., 2007, Hammond, 2011, Huysmans and Buonfino, 2008).

The threat of international terrorism had been of increasing concern for UK governments from the 1980s onwards, however it has accelerated further during the 1990s, before the terrorist events in 9/11/2001 in the USA and the start of the ‘ war on terror ’ policy that has been followed by western liberal states. However, the terror of terrorists has produced a conflict in understanding who is the enemy therefore, some particular ethnicities and faith groups have been targeted by the ‘new’ policy (Jackson, 2007, Spalek and Lambert, 2008).

The political rhetoric pictured the ‘new’ terrorism has ‘new’ characteristics in terms of different actors, motivations, aims, tactics and actions. For instance, instead of political and ideological reasons the ‘new’ terrorists

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are motivated by religious extremism and ethnic-separatism and are not prone to political negotiation or military deterrence. In addition, the new technology and weapons increased the threat of the nation and the fear of terror (Pantazis and Pemberton, 2009). The 'War on Terror', which started in 2001 in the USA, might not be directly focused on immigrants but has a significant impact on them. Foreign nationals from specific countries have been stereotyped and many of the human rights of these foreigners have been breached under the guise of security, counter-terrorism or national security (Hansard, 2001f, col 747, 773, 807-808, 924-925).

The political rhetoric that have social and practical implications ultimately affect the criminalisation of foreign nationals; by focusing on the criminality of the few and applying it to the majority and to legislate more acts that connect them to different sorts of crimes under the label of national threat, controlling borders, or reducing the pressure on prisons (Gorman et al., 2006, Every and Augoustinos, 2007, Kundnani, 2002).