Department of Sociology and Criminology

Professor Gary Craig, chaired by Prof Maggie O'Neill, with Dr Amin Sharifi Isaloo, and with respondents: Dr Amanullah De Sondy and Dr Tom Boland

Monday May 9th 2022 at 12 noon until 1.30pm, Boole 3, UCC

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84917030960?pwd=Z3ZOZm5tUTNHNlg4dmFoay9HT2ZEdz09

Abstract related to this talk: Britain’s stance towards ethnic minorities has been Janus-faced: developing an increasingly repressive and restrictive stance towards immigration, and – supported by a strident media – portraying minorities and migrants as undermining British culture and values, ‘sponging’ on the welfare state. Domestic policies of successive governments, including some ameliorative community-based programmes of community and race relations, and occasional claims that governments were determined to create a compassionate and caring multicultural society, have not fundamentally addressed the racism inherent in immigration policy and practice. The consequence has been that the welfare of Britain’s minorities – measured by outcomes in every branch of welfare provision – has largely been disregarded by the British state. Despite these few liberal initiatives supposedly aimed at improving the lot of Britain’s minorities, the racism inherent in policy and practice persists. Worryingly for the social policy academic community, this racism extended beyond the political practice of social policy to the academic discipline of social policy. This is striking considering that the social policy discipline is concerned centrally with issues of citizenship rights, welfare, equality, poverty alleviation and social engineering. This lacuna extended to the practice of social research, where many proposals, proposers, funders or commissioners still treated the dimension of ethnicity as too complex, too expensive or too marginal to be worthy of serious attention.