Finding common ground against disadvantage: challenging the ethnicization of class

The current economic, financial and policy climate has expanded disadvantage in the UK via greater precariousness at work and drastic cuts to welfare benefits and public services. For some analysts, the success of UKIP in council elections in spring 2013 was generated by this climate. Yet UKIP’s narrative does not encourage a united approach to tackling disadvantage. Rather it helps to reproduce a longer established public discourse of divide and rule; one that seeks to separate out ‘strivers’ from ‘skivers’ to justify cuts in benefits, and immigrants and ethnic minorities from the so-called indigenous population in defining who belongs to the UK’s constituent nations.