Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

New, interesting, & timely free to read research article: "‘The jobs all go to foreigners’: a critical discourse analysis of the Labour Party's ‘left-wing’ case for immigration controls."

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

This paper critically examines how senior figures in the @UKLabour Party & wider labour movement discussed the topic of immigration in the immediate aftermath of the UK's vote to leave the European Union in 2016.

Influenced by the Discourse Historical Approach, the paper is based on an analysis of 86 public interventions by Labour figures, over a 6-month period, delivered in speeches, articles and essays.

The paper examines argumentative strategies adopted by Labour figures – including Members of Parliament, advisors and trade union leaders – who called for stronger immigration controls from an avowedly ‘left-wing’ perspective.

Foregrounding their commitment to progressive politics, Labour politicians argued that restricting the number of migrants entering Britain was democratic, anti-racist and an expression of the Labour Party's commitment to the interests of working-class people.

Nevertheless, it is the contention of this paper that the Labour Party's rhetoric tapped into right-wing populist discourses which constructed immigration as a threat to the racialised privileges of a ‘white’ working class.

Senior figures in the Labour movement have offered various overlapping justifications for ending free movement and reducing immigration, articulated in a range of genres.

It was argued that Labour must restrict immigration because it posed a threat to the jobs and wages of its working-class voters; because immigration controls could be used to achieve socialist or social democratic ends (namely the protection of working conditions and wages);

because voters were in favour of immigration controls; and because immigration controls were necessary to prevent racism. This was in turn predicated on an understanding of racism as a phenomenon limited to the ‘bad attitude of ignorant or vicious individuals’.

In order to make such arguments appeal to Labour members and supporters, speakers drew on strategies of calculated ambivalence and positive self-presentation, emphasising their liberal, left-wing, anti-racist credentials, thus making ‘liberal arguments for illiberal ends’.

While there is little new about liberal & left-wing politicians invoking the language of democracy, equality & anti-racism to argue for stricter immigration policies, this paper has explored the ways in which this occurred under Jeremy Corbyn's left-wing leadership of @UKLabour.

As such, it contributes to a body of scholarship which examines the way liberal democratic Govts & political parties continue to employ ‘a range of legitimation strategies to substantiate their ever stricter politics of exclusion’ (see Ruth Wodak's work).
taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/…

As van Dijk notes, appeals to ‘vox populi’ or the interests of ordinary voters are a time-worn rhetorical manoeuvre; of particular interest here, however, is the political complexion of the @UKLabour Party in the period during Jeremy Corbyn's left-wing leadership.

Under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, the party arguably shifted further to the left than at any point in its recent history, adopting elements of radical left-wing populism in response to the Government's post-2008 (neoliberal) #austerity policies.

repository.uel.ac.uk/download/3d905…

Nevertheless, figures from across @UKLabour's political spectrum agitated for the party to position itself as tougher on immigration.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

In spite of Corbyn's strong record on migrant solidarity, the leadership gradually acceded to the logic of anti-immigration sentiment on jobs & wages, conceding that post-Brexit, freedom of movement would come to an end in order to reduce the number of migrants entering Britain.

With a large left-wing membership, party figures advocating stronger immigration controls needed to not to appear as prejudiced or racist; hence the use of positive self-presentation, ‘calculated ambivalence’ & appeals to the language of class, economic justice, & anti-racism.

Labour advocates of stronger immigration controls made little/no effort to critique & debunk the purported links between immigration, low wages & pressure on public services; rather, these links were used to argue for ending free movement on ‘socialist’ or ‘progressive’ grounds.

What emerged was a form of rhetoric which drew on left-populism in its focus on raising wages & working conditions in the face of elite power, & right-populism in its equation of immigration & multiculturalism with elites, pitted against ordinary working-class Labour voters.

Under severe pressure from senior party colleagues, Corbyn's Labour arguably retreated into the familiar territory of what Virdee has called ‘socialist nationalism’ (as opposed to socialist internationalism).

books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr…

This appeal to working class voters is often underpinned by the strategic deployment of class posed in explicitly racial terms; while references to the ‘white working class’ were few, there was nevertheless a sense in which w/c people were constructed as victims of immigration.

Rhetoric positioning working class people as victims of immigration was mobilised by the Right, but also by figures on all wings of @UKLabour who argued that immigration should be restricted in order to improve the wages & job security of non-immigrants.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…

In this respect, the discourse was underpinned by, and reproductive of, racial logics which pitted ‘native’ workers against immigrants in a zero-sum competition for scarce resources.

Yet as Bhattacharyya et al. warn, ‘in times of deepening global crises and ecological catastrophe, any arguments for controlling immigration converge with lifeboat ethics, in which some must die so others can live – “they” must die so that “we” can live’.

blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofboo…

Were alternative discourses available to @UKLabour politicians? A minority of voices in the Labour movement condemned further immigration restrictions and made unambiguous calls for the right to move freely, but these were rarely heard in the media.

Labour MP Chi Onwurah argued in the Guardian that ‘Labour must dare to defend freedom of movement’ while Shadow Home Secretary Dianne Abbott repeatedly defended free movement throughout the autumn of 2016.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

Dianne Abbott said the Guardian in November 2016 that ‘it is simply not the case that immigration has driven down wages’.

theguardian.com/politics/2016/…

In 2017, Labour members launched the Labour Campaign for Free Movement (LCFM), dedicated to ‘defending & extending the free movement of people in the context of the debate around Brexit’.

labourfreemovement.org

Nevertheless, the question of whether a sustained and successful campaign against anti-immigrant racism can emanate from the @UKLabour Party remains to be seen.