Impacto sobre la práctica profesional

Constructing an ‘ideal’ neighbourhood might allude to ideals which connect to the ‘ideal’ past. Neal (2002: 443) maintains that there has always been a certain nostalgia associated with the English countryside: ‘Pastoral images of England

– rolling green fields, winding lanes, cream teas, chocolate box villages – have, historically and contemporarily, provided the corner-stones of a specific national identity’, something which resonates with Kumar’s (2000) description of what is quintessentially English. This can be seen both through structural differences in the political and class system, as maintained through the countryside and through the connections ‘between the countryside, nation and racialisation [which] have had a particular longevity’ (ibid.: 444). During colonialism, it was this pastoralism which constructed the English nation, while post-colonialism has allowed for an (invisible) whiteness to construct the national identity (ibid.). Even though urban landscapes differ greatly from this quintessential image of Englishness, it could be argued that most public schools still maintain this image, not through their cohort but with the grand buildings which oftentimes resemble the country house, with the great fields dedicated to sport and the traditions around lunch and dinner; all resembling a more idyllic landscape compared to the urban architecture characterising some schools. This ‘white landscape’ and the invisibility of whiteness (ibid.) is what describes St Aber’s; despite being amid a multicultural city, the way the everydayness is constructed is seen through a lens which resembles this idea of England.

The idyllic rurality of Britain as a signifier of national belonging and culture are also discussed by Neal and Agyeman (2006) as ways for inclusion and exclusion. The English narrative adopts the rural as a way to signify those who are included in the national discourse, namely whites, not so much by naming them as those who belong here; but mostly through not mentioning certain types of people who are not seen/ do not belong (the Ethnic Other). Colls (2002) echoes this by pointing that national identity is often linked to sense of belonging, which in Britain is seen through natural England; a relationship which went through a historical crisis through the Industrial Revolution, but has since remained a strong point of identification. Moreover, the fact that England is separated from the Continent through the long stretch of water encouraged a distinction from foreigners and a sense of security, most notably seen through

avoiding some of the war atrocities which Europe experienced (Blake, 1982). Tyler (2006: 129) discusses the safety of the rural, ‘a crime-free zone and a ‘retreat’ away from what is perceived to be the ‘malaise’ in English cities often associated with Asian and black settlement’. It has been the white, middle classes who mostly seem to belong to this pastoral context.

In contrast, urban contexts can feel threatening, unlike the ‘white safety’ that the rural symbolises (Neal, 2002). Solomos and Back (1995) describe how the urban, with its multi-ethnic Other, can be the symbol of unrest. They provide the example of a cartoon published in a newspaper at the time of the riots in the 1980s, where urban Black youth had words written on their chests, emblematic of the threats to the safety of the city: ‘unemployment, drugs, crime, poor housing, racial tension’ (ibid.: 83). As the authors argue this cartoon sums up how ‘whiteness as a discourse is manifest within urban environments, acting as an illuminating presence that we cannot see, while determining what is made visible’(ibid.). Therefore, it can be concluded that whiteness and Englishness have acquired, historically, a tacit yet racialized nature, which excludes the Other.

Kumar (2001) observes that Englishness has always embodied the aspirations, values, and images of the middle and upper classes; their sports, their manners, their education, their politics. They came to form a national character which in many ways represented what they considered as of value and therefore, tended to exclude those who appear not to fit into these white normative values. This, it can be argued, partly stems from a lack of what this white Englishness might involve. The crisis facing Great Britain, very aptly manifested by the forced introduction of British Values in schools and the implying fact that the large numbers of incoming migrants (especially after the end of the Empire) and in more recent years, with economic migration from various EU countries and those seeking asylum, is partly a problem of England. As Crick (1995) discusses more than twenty years ago, Englishness and more recently, Britishness need to

be defined in more clear terms and not only to provide legal institutional frameworks or political allegiances. This can provide a less abstract definition of who belongs and can be deemed as legitimate in the country.

Apple provides a different explanation on how the known becomes safer, through the discourses of postcolonial loss. There is often as Apple writes an

unarticulated sense of loss, a feeling that things are out of control, an anomic feeling that is connected to a sense of loss of one’s ‘rightful place’ in the world (an ‘empire’ either now in decline or under threat), and a fear of the culture and body of ‘the other’. The private is the sphere of smooth running and efficient organisations, of autonomy and individual choice. The ‘public’ is out of control, messy, heterogeneous (2004: 79).

However, apart from the ethnic Other, there is exclusion of those who are white but do not have the same values and ‘aspirations’ with the white middle-classes, namely the working-class Other. Neoliberal and class-based interests constitute the white working-classes as a ‘culturally burdensome whiteness’ and frame them symbols of backwardness, as opposed to Britain which is deemed a highly aspirational and modern nation (Haylett 2000: 351).