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We aren’t all talking about the same thing when we mean ‘community’. When Corbyn and his ilk mention community they mean state-funded social infrastructure eg schools, libraries, swimming pools. Or they mean identitarian political blocs eg gay ppl or Muslims.
Thatcherite rightwingers mean (if they think of ‘community’ at all) embarrassing shitwork women do, like wiping the arses of old ppl and babies, that is inherently difficult to turn into a profit-making enterprise. Or they mean identitarian political blocs.
The thing about both these worldviews is that in neither one is the concept of ‘community’ threatened by population churn. Libraries persist whoever visits them (as long as still funded); care homes can be staffed by whoever. Identitarian voting blocs are strengthened by churn.
As a mum of young children, when I think of ‘community’ I don’t think of politics or commerce at all. I think of extended, reciprocal networks of thick and thin connections, in a relatively stable social group where the pace of people arriving & departing is measured.
Knowing whose teen I can trust to babysit. Knowing local childminders by reputation. Being recognised as my daughter’s mum by ppl who’ve seen us together in the park. Knowing who I could lean on in an emergency even if immediate family couldn’t help. Community.
All of that is threatened if the population of my area is transient. If ppl might move away again in a few months, or don’t plan to put down roots, they don’t bother to make links with neighbours. This is what’s missing in the immigration debate.
As a mum with young kids, unless I’m wealthy enough to buy in services to support me, I’m heavily reliant on ‘community’ in my sense: for company, for recommendations, for sanity. If the population churns too fast, community in this sense can’t take root.
If ‘community’ of the kind formed by mothers with young kids can’t form, there’s nothing left but ‘community’ in the sense of for-profit care homes & nurseries; state-funded stuff like libraries; identitarian groups. Everyone senses something missing but no-one quite knows what.
Then it’s easy to point the finger at incomers - whatever their origin - for taking that something undefinable away. This, then, gets traduces as racism by people who don’t need the kind of community that people accurately recognise as impacted by population churn.
But opposition to immigration may not be about racism at all. It can just be opposition to population churn, to the impact churn has on the ability of ppl to find & form a community in which to be rooted. Paid nurseries and identity-based politics are a poor substitute.
@threadreaderapp unroll please
