'Indigenous' transnationalism: life geographies of the 'white working-class'

This paper explores recent invocations of a category of 'indigenous white working class' by media and political elites in England. Such imaginings in relation to a 'migrant other' are juxtaposed with the ubiquity of spatial moves and ongoing transnational and translocal connections and absences that so many people maintain across space and which are often deeply felt, not least by those classified as 'indigenous white working class'. The concept of life geographies captures the material, emotional and imaginative moves of contemporary people across both space and time, as well as the connections between these and the immobility forced or chosen of others. The paper's focus on continuity and change in the transnational and translocal connections of people -- portrayed as fixed in place, and by some as 'indigenous' -- is revealing both of the subjects of the story and of those who create the categories through which the stories and their subjects are represented.