Written by Jack Baker
One of the hallmarks of life at LSE is its international nature. Since arriving in London, I have made friends from countries I have never before heard of, let alone visited. It is this potential for people coming together, sharing ideas and cultures, that sets London universities apart from their high-level counterparts throughout the country.
However, as anyone familiar with British politics will know, this positive sentiment is not shared throughout the country. With the recent rise of the deeply anti-immigrant Reform UK under Nigel Farage, as well as Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric on deportations, I wanted to understand this structure of feeling better, and learn what we can do to counter the prevailing threat of the far-right. So, I spoke to one of LSE’s resident immigration specialists – Professor Paul Apostolidis.
Apostolidis currently teaches Contemporary Political Theory (GV262), and serves as the Department’s lead on student civic engagement. His rich research history ranges from investigations of migrant day labourers in the US, to studies about immigrant workers and democracy.
Many academics attribute the rise of populist anti-immigrant beliefs with changes in material circumstances. In this light, I asked Paul about the role of racialisation, given the stark difference in attitudes towards white and non-white refugees. I cited the recent example of the British prime minister Keir Starmer, stating that it was ‘wrong’ for a Palestinian family to come to the UK under the Ukrainian Families scheme intended for refugees fleeing the war with Russia.
Paul thought for a minute, before responding that “race, properly understood, has a lot to do with material issues.” He argued that race and racism are not just a “matter of individual prejudice or bias,” but that he “prefers to think in a more historical vein about the processes of racialisation by which certain groups have become racialised subjects.” Referring to people having to take low-paid jobs because of a lack of qualification recognition and linguistic barriers, he said we need to “think about how it is that certain groups became disproportionately subjected to the effects of dehumanising labour processes.”
This has meant that in areas of work largely dependent on non-white people’s labour, “the rates of occupational safety and health problems have outpaced many other industries,” which is “an important part about what racialisation actually is.” Therefore, he suggested, “when you see hostility to immigrants” among Trump and Brexit voters, there is often a “misrepresentation of these groups as a threat to the thriving of the British or American economy, when in fact they are structurally necessary for the economy to achieve its objectives.” He specifically mentioned that many industries, such as healthcare and hospitality, are reliant on immigrant workers because the UK simply lacks sufficient labour qualified to do these jobs.
All of this seemed compelling so far, but I still wondered how we can therefore account for where the negative stereotypes towards non-white immigrants come from. Professor Apostilidis expanded: “in part they are connected to the ways that different groups are assumed to be fitted for different kinds of low-skilled occupations.” He referred to the attitudes towards Mexican immigrants to the US more than a century ago, where many assumed they were “biologically fitted for labour in the fields,” but unable to “compete with Americans on an entrepreneurial level.” As a result, he explains that attitudes often occur because of racist perceptions about which industries certain groups belong in.
Although I thoroughly enjoy political theory, one sometimes wonders if there is much value in having academic debates about concepts as important as immigration when they feel so far removed from the experiences of ordinary people. Apostolidis vehemently denies this. He asserts that his approach to political theory doesn’t emphasise moral philosophy, as important as that is, but that “more urgent questions have to do with power, and how we conceptualise that people come to have these negative opinions,” in order to begin to deconstruct these attitudes. He calls for “more public education about the realities of how [ethnic] groups are distributed within an economy.”
When asked about how education should be applied to change public sentiment, he acknowledged the role of objective facts, but also asserted that “this has to be embedded within a broader political and cultural movement.” Specifically, we shouldn’t try to embed universalist moral principles, but instead use political theory to identify “what kind of moral vision would mobilise people as a mass force.”
Furthermore, he identifies the value of deep personal stories in bringing this to light, highlighting his own articles in mass media, as well as films and migrants’ own stories. For it is “only when migrant groups organise themselves and demonstrate that they have the capacity to change things, that other people take notice.”
Towards the end of our conversation, I voiced one last question that had been sitting at the back of my mind. “What is one thing that you want everyday people to take away from immigrant narratives?” I grimaced as I eagerly awaited his response.
“It’s important to acknowledge the heart-breaking aspect of these experiences,” he replied swiftly. “The whole logic of commodification makes us predisposed to not think about where our products come from, and whose limbs had to be injured in the process of manufacturing.”
He acknowledges, however, that “although it is important to hear about the pain, we must also take inspiration from the leadership and innovation that immigrants have shown within their own political organisations.” Such thinking inspired the subtitle of his 2010 book Breaks in the Chain: What Immigrant Workers Can Teach America about Democracy.
“There is an assumption that if people from the Global South come to the West, then ‘we’ have to teach ‘them’ how to live in a civilised democratic society.” Yet, “in fact the opposite is often true.” In his field research, Apostolidis has been inspired by new “modes of practicing democratic politics that we may not ordinarily think may work.” This way, he challenges the paternalistic attitude towards marginalised groups that often masks the valuable lessons that immigrant communities can teach the West about their own struggles.
Leaving Apostolidis’ office, I felt a resounding sense of hope about the future of immigration discourse. At a time where supposedly ‘progressive’ parties are adopting far-right talking points, Apostolidis’ research shows that the only way forth is to adopt a new narrative. Research like his reaffirms the power that stories can hold in changing national consciousness.
While the journey towards a progressive immigration policy is a long and difficult road, it is a journey worth taking.
Taking inspiration from the words of Paulo Frere, Apostolidis reminds us that true liberation comes from oppressed people “learning their own capacities to analyse the world for themselves, and transforming the world for themselves.”
