The ambiguous lives of ‘the other whites’: Class and racialisation of Eastern European migrants in the UK

Abstract

A body of recent literature has examined how migrants from Eastern European countries have been racialised in the UK both pre- and post-Brexit, and has explored the limits of their earlier assumed ‘invisibility’ owing to their perceived whiteness. Less attention has been placed on understanding how intersections of class and nationality may play out in these processes of racialisation. In this article we argue that it is precisely the entanglements between racialisation, nationality and class that are conditioning unequal possibilities of inclusion for different groups of migrants in British society, especially in the post-Brexit reality. Based on a qualitative longitudinal study with over 70 migrants from Poland and Lithuania, undertaken between 2019 and 2021, we demonstrate how cultural capital and other resources help migrants to ‘pass as white’ or, more precisely, ‘middle class white’ to escape certain forms of racialisation and othering experienced by their co-nationals. The acceptance into the ‘community of value’ is nevertheless conditional. The racialised and classed forms of othering force migrants to constantly prove their ‘good immigrant’ status either by reaffirming their class position, hiding their Eastern European origins and/or racialising other groups. Our article sheds light on the relational and entangled ways in which race, nationality and class are lived, negotiated and resisted by migrants and how they can be experienced simultaneously as a privilege, a burden and a weapon (for othering others).

Introduction

Dorota will never forget the joy when Poland, Lithuania and several other so-called Eastern European ¹ countries joined the EU. It was 2004 and the stigma of being a ‘worse part of Europe’ was seemingly gone. Fast forward to 2009, and Dorota was transferred from an advertising company in Warsaw to the London office. As a 27-year-old, she moved to the UK, rented a flat and negotiated a decent salary. But then, very quickly she realised that taking up a position of a highly qualified employee did not look that straightforward to some of her colleagues. The mixture of patronising tone and politeness made her detest every visit to HR. Other colleagues did their best to be friendly and welcoming. Upon learning that she was Polish, some would routinely tell her that ‘their cleaner was Polish’ or that ‘she did not look Polish’. And then, in her department she got a nickname: ‘Wooden Toys’. Cute. Having been brought up behind the Iron Curtain, the assumption was that she had never had cool toys to play with. She also found the nickname amusing.

‘Dorota’ is in fact one of the authors of this article. We are opening it with a glimpse of personal experience to highlight two aspects that we want to unpack. First, rather than trying to indulge in a sense of victimhood of Eastern European migrants, ² we explore the meaning and social consequences of seemingly innocent, sometimes slightly irritating forms of othering, that, till the Brexit referendum, many took for granted as a fact of life. It was in the UK that Dorota, like many other Eastern Europeans, recognised her own racial privilege (of being seen as ‘white’), and relative national disadvantage (of being Polish and not, say, French). But it was also in the UK that Dorota understood that the category of ‘other white’ to which she belonged was not quite the same as ‘British white’.

Racial categories are socially and historically contingent. Whiteness has many ‘shades’. These shades are less about colour, but more about one’s gendered body, national, cultural and social background, and its relation to other (racialised) bodies. Drawing on the scholarship of whiteness, critical race and postcolonial theory, we see whiteness as ‘socially produced’ (Krivonos, 2018), ‘intersectional and negotiated’ (Meer, 2018, p. 1176) and especially in the context of postcolonial Britain, ‘entwined with narratives of empire and nation’ (Varriale, 2021, p. 298). The fact that Dorota occupied a relatively privileged social and economic position, despite her national background, not only posed a cognitive dissonance to some of her colleagues, it also meant that using her class resources such as cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) Dorota could, at least to some extent, escape the racialised stereotype of an Eastern European and adopt the habitus of ‘white bourgeois body’ operating in a postcolonial social word (Ahmed, 2007, p. 160). And this is the second aspect that we want to unpack in this article. Aside from some notable exceptions (e.g. Gawlewicz, 2016; Moore, 2013; Varriale, 2021), the link between racialisation and class has been less explored in the context of EU migration to the UK. ³ We argue, however, that it is precisely the entwining of class resources and racial categories that has been crucial in framing the unequal conditions of belonging for Eastern Europeans in British society, and the extent to which they can become part of the ‘community of value’ (Anderson, 2013). We posit that the discourses surrounding Brexit have further amplified this entwinement, making the intersectional analysis of crucial importance. Using two migrant groups – Poles and Lithuanians – we capture commonalities and differences in terms of their positioning in the UK in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum.

We therefore speak of the everyday experiences of Poles and Lithuanians as ‘ambiguous’ to highlight their ephemeral and blurred positioning in existing racial hierarchies in the UK. We have taken the notion of ‘other white’ from the UK census and use it not as a fixed label, but in a coercive manner to highlight the ambiguous nature of the term, which encompasses both the ‘familiarity’ of whiteness as a cultural norm and the ‘strangeness’ of being ‘the other’. As we will further argue, ‘other whites’ can simultaneously remain invisible by using their cultural capital or other class resources to ‘pass as white’, or be racialised and surface as ‘not quite white’, or to racialise other groups in the race to secure their place in the British hierarchies of desirability (Back et al., 2012). This ambiguity reflects not only the borderline status of Eastern Europeans in the racial hierarchies of the UK (and wider Europe), but also the relational and, as we would further argue, conditional character of ‘whiteness’ – which we see as a structural position of superiority and perceived through the lens of unequal distribution of power and privilege (Moore, 2013) in postcolonial and post-Brexit Britain.

Researching Eastern European migration to the UK through the lens of race and class

Racialisation of Eastern European migrants as ‘not quite white’

While the decision to open up the UK labour market after the EU enlargement in 2004 was defined in economic terms without referencing the desirability of EU migrants on racial grounds (Fox et al., 2012), the close affinity of European citizenship with whiteness (El-Enany, 2020) should not be discounted. Even if the colonial origins of the EU are seldom recognised, ‘whiteness’ is embedded in the union’s foundations as an intrinsic basis for (shared) belonging (El-Enany, 2020, pp. 175, 184). Some of the recent scholarship specifically points to the existence of an ‘unequal Europe’ and the racialisation of Southern and Eastern parts of Europe as ‘backward’, and recognises the applicability of the decolonial theory in studying the ‘multiple’ forms of European whiteness (Antonucci & Varriale, 2020; Boatcă, 2013). The ‘moral geopolitics’ of the EU places the Western part of the EU on the top of the hierarchy (as ‘modern’, ‘democratic’, ‘fair’, ‘progressive’; see Makdisi, 2014, p. xiii) and other parts, especially the Southern and Eastern parts of Europe, as occupying less privileged positions (Boatcă, 2013). Eastern Europe has long been exoticised or seen as threatening (Veličković, 2020), and as Europe’s internal ‘Other’ (Dzenovska, 2013), while Eastern Europeans have been portrayed ‘as poorer and rougher’ vis-a-vis their Western European neighbours (Lulle et al., 2018, p. 9). As Lundström (2014) argues, these historical and contemporary racial hierarchies should be taken into account when researching migration experiences in host countries.

In the UK, Eastern European migrants have found themselves navigating the longstanding hierarchies of ‘desirability’ informed by the discursive hierarchies of unequal Europe (Boatcă, 2013), but also by colonial legacies and the particular entanglement of ‘whiteness’ with histories of the Empire. They have been racialised not for their skin colour, but for the very fact of coming from European ‘backwaters’ – somewhat less ‘modern’, less ‘civilised’, more ‘backward’, not part of ‘imperial legacies’ (Boatcă, 2013; Makdisi, 2014). While ‘nominally white’ and capable of ‘blending in’, they have been seen as ‘not quite white’ in some aspects, and more prone to racialisation than others (Benson, 2019; Garner, 2017; Spigelman, 2013). Importantly, while Tudor (2018) sees these processes discriminating Eastern European migrants as ‘migratisation’ and not ‘racialisation’, we are reminded by Back et al. (2012) that the very term ‘immigrant’ in a British postcolonial race relations context is ‘imbued’ with racism. In this context, some white migrants are invisible, and, we would add, not even considered migrants, while others are ‘marked for distinction and differentiation’. The considerations on ‘who counts, then, as an “immigrant”’ are inscribed in the broader framework of colonial racism (Back et al., 2012, p. 141). As Virdee and McGeever (2018) demonstrate, the Leave campaign ‘activated long-standing raciali[s]ed structures of feeling about immigration and national belonging’. Both ‘brown and black’ British citizens and ‘white’ migrants were depicted as unwanted outsiders within Brexit discourses and both groups fell victim to racial violence in the aftermath of the referendum (Virdee & McGeever, 2018, p. 1808). The racialisation of ‘new’ Europeans was already noticeable following the EU enlargement, with research focused on the hierarchies of desirability, deservingness, accents and other markers, boundary-making processes vis-a-vis non-white individuals (e.g. Burrell, 2010; Drnovšek Zorko & Debnár, 2021; Fox et al., 2012). There is now a burgeoning literature exploring how these processes of racialisation have been strengthened by Brexit (e.g. Botterill & Burrell, 2019; Guma & Jones, 2019).

In this article, we see the ways in which Eastern Europeans surface as ‘not quite white’ – and therefore ‘othered’ – as forms of racialisation which are embedded in the wider context of European and British racially tainted inequalities. In doing so, we build on the notion of ‘whiteness’ as a relational construct of power and privilege, and draw on the literature on ‘other white’ groups that have been historically marginalised in the UK (e.g. Hickman et al., 2005) and other contexts (e.g. Jacobson, 1998; Ignatiev, 1995). Migration from one context to another is thus shown to be a ‘sit[e] for negotiation of privilege’ (Benson, 2019, p. 25), where depending on their background, migrants are faced with greater or lesser degree of effort in order to escape racialisation as a ‘migrant other’ (Benson, 2019, p. 30).

Navigating racial hierarchies

Eastern Europeans with diverse backgrounds have certainly not been neutral recipients of various forms of racialisation. They bring their own understanding of race and ethnic hierarchies which then come into contact with the British racial hierarchies and history of race relations (Balogun, 2020; Nowicka, 2018; Ząbek, 2007). Recent scholarship demonstrates how Eastern European migrants’ encounters with a multicultural society affect their attitudes towards difference (Datta, 2009), sometimes resulting in deeper divisions and contributing to the racialisation of other groups (Gawlewicz, 2016). It also points out how migrants adapt their understandings of race and ‘learn’ specifically British workings of racism to navigate racial hierarchies and advance their social positions in British society (Fox & Mogilnicka, 2019).

Consequently, various strategies of inclusion and exclusion, combining elements from discourses at home and in the UK, may be employed to reassert oneself into whiteness (cf. Krivonos, 2018) and distance oneself from other groups seen as inferior (Rzepnikowska, 2018). Recent research shows how the renewed discourses on the right to reside and stay after the referendum have forced some Eastern European migrants in the UK to demonstrate their ‘good citizenship’ or question the worthiness of ‘failed and less deserving others’ (Blachnicka-Ciacek et al., 2021; Mogilnicka, 2018). Interestingly, some have observed how resistance to discursive othering reinforced by the Brexit campaign may also take an unexpected turn and contribute to strengthening the European or Eastern European migrant identity, leading to new expressions of intra-EU migrant solidarity (Blachnicka-Ciacek et al., 2021; Lulle et al., 2018).

Class, race and intersectional analysis and ways of escaping racialisation

The above studies, while offering an insight into the ways in which Eastern European migrants are racialised and racialise others, often treat migrants in the UK as a homogeneous group. Less attention has been placed on understanding intersectional dimensions that, in our view, are crucial to understanding the processes through which racialisation occurs with some exceptions (Antonucci & Varriale, 2020; Gawlewicz, 2016; Varriale, 2021). In thinking about class in this context it is useful to draw on the Bourdieusian conceptualisation of class as multidimensional and encompassing different forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1986) that are (if available and transferable – see Nowicka, 2015) employed by migrants in navigating social hierarchies in the host society. In particular, we see the relevance of employing the notion of cultural capital in thinking how the ability to speak ‘British’ English, projecting a certain ‘not Eastern European’ look or showing ease in social interactions inform the ways in which migrants are classed (Prieur & Savage, 2013). Along with Skeggs (2004) and Tyler (2013), we see class as a dynamic process, or as a ‘struggle’: a lived reality involving constant toil against the classificatory power of class-related categories. Drawing on these dynamic and relational understandings can highlight two ways in which class intersects with race, which we will further explore in our analysis.

The first one relates to processes of racialising the lower classes, in which individuals undertaking low-skilled jobs become alienated and discursively scapegoated as being guilty of their own poverty, deprivation or lack of economic, social and cultural capital. Here, we draw on the seminal analysis by Tyler (2013) of the ways in which some groups (e.g. asylum seekers, the disabled or unemployed) become subjected to stigmatisation, rendering them as ‘abject subjects’ (p. 9) and reconfiguring them as welfare system abusers and a threat to ‘good citizens’ (p. 26). These processes have also affected migrants from Eastern Europe, who, especially in the run up to the Brexit referendum, have been stigmatised and discursively labelled as wild, uncivilised and not deserving to be part of the ‘community of value’ (Anderson, 2013; Blachnicka-Ciacek et al., 2021). Importantly, Varriale (2021) adds that these processes of stigmatising people in low-skilled jobs can take place even within national groups of migrants. Similar processes have been observed such as the gradual creation of working class racism and racialisation of poor whites in the US (see Hartigan, 2005; Mondon & Winter, 2019; Roediger, 1991/2017).

In considering how class interacts with race we look at how, by employing different forms of capital, some migrants may escape racialisation. Here, it is useful to refer to Skeggs (1997) and the notion of ‘respectability’, as one of the key signifiers of the ‘middle class’ and evidenced through the ways in which people speak, classify others and mentally position themselves. In the context of UK society, Skeggs demonstrates how respectability has become ‘the property of the middle classes, and an unattainable status’ against which the working class is ‘judged against, may aspire to, but can never quite obtain without a sense of unease’ (1997, p. 3). Importantly, Stoler reminds us of the colonial roots of middle class respectability, which have become contiguous with ‘whiteness’ and constructed in moral terms against the ‘bodies of an immoral European working class and native Other’ (1995, p. 100). ‘Whiteness’, in her view, has been established as the ‘moral rearmament of bourgeois society’ (p. 100).

The underlying conjunction of middle-classness with whiteness is picked up by Byrne (2009) in her analysis of the educational strategies of middle class parents and their desire to place their children in institutions that are frequented by ‘people like us’. It is also identified by other researchers exploring various disaffiliation practices to maintain spatial boundaries between racialised others and members of their own (middle) class in the UK (Jackson & Benson, 2014), as well as those analysing the social production of whiteness and ‘class as distinction’ among the British living in France (Benson, 2019). Similarly, the scholarship on migration from Southern Europe explores how the symbolic power of various class markers is used by Italian migrants to differentiate themselves from other Italians in less advantageous positions in the UK in the post-2008 economic crisis context (Varriale, 2021).

Aside from the few above-mentioned exceptions (e.g. Fox et al., 2012; Gawlewicz, 2016; Moore, 2013), research on Eastern European migration in the UK has paid less attention to the intersections of class and racial categories in analysing these migrants’ experiences and position in British society. Few studies analyse how working class Polish migrants have racialised others in their strive to secure a better position in post-Brexit realities (e.g. Gawlewicz, 2016; Nowicka, 2018). The literature on Lithuanian migrants in this respect is even more limited, but the research on migration to the UK from other Baltic states observes detachment from other co-ethnics on the grounds of ‘behaviour, class and taste differences’ rather than linguistic preferences (Lulle & Jurkane-Hobein, 2017, p. 604). We argue that, by drawing on available cultural capital, ‘middle class’ status may offer a gateway to ‘whiteness’ for our Polish and Lithuanian research participants and a means by which they can escape the above described processes of racialisation.

This article aims to contribute to the emerging literature on these issues and bridge the research gap by demonstrating the entanglements between racialisation and class among Polish and Lithuanian migrants in the UK. We demonstrate how some, using their class resources (such as language, manner of speaking and bearing), can escape, or strive to escape, various forms of racialisation and how other research participants use disaffiliation from racialised ‘others’ to negotiate their own position in British society and subscribe to (middle class) respectability (Stoler, 1995).

Data and methodology

We draw on a qualitative longitudinal study carried out as part of a mixed-methods project ‘CEEYouth: The comparative study of young migrants from Poland and Lithuania in the context of Brexit’. It started with 77 research participants (41 Poles and 36 Lithuanians in their twenties and early thirties), who lived in the UK at the time of the Brexit referendum, recruited using a mixture of purposive and convenience sampling. Each participant was given a pseudonym. The empirical data were gathered in their native language through five waves: starting with semi-structured interviews in early 2019, continuing with asynchronous and in-depth interviewing in early 2020, followed up by two additional waves of asynchronous exchanges in 2020–2021. Fifty-one research participants remained until the end of the project. The sample was intentionally diversified in terms of place of residence and duration of stay in the UK, which varied from 2 to 15 years.

The longitudinal design allowed us to deepen the themes that emerged through initial thematic analysis. One such theme captured initially was (un)deservingness and hierarchies of desirability, which our research participants talked about without solicitation. In the subsequent wave of data collection we prompted the interviewees to talk about their place in British society, their sense of belonging and their take on the British class system. Our sample was biased towards the well-educated (out of 77 of interviewees, 56 were university-educated and a further 8 were in pursuit of tertiary degrees) and working in so-called ‘white-collar’ jobs. ⁴ Ascribing oneself to the middle class was common to both interviewees in high-skilled and low-skilled positions in our sample. None openly considered themselves to be part of the working class, which they often associated with poverty. Numerous answers were ambiguous, offering additional insight into the experiences of how class is lived, negotiated and contested, and how migrants aspire to be classed in a certain way. How they were positioned (and self-positioned) in class hierarchies shaped the extent to which our interviewees felt the need to disassociate themselves from working class co-nationals or other ethnic groups and has also informed their personal experiences of racialisation, especially in the post-referendum context.

Differences in the relative size of the Polish and Lithuanian populations in the UK and the varying degrees of attention they receive in public discourse in the UK have also influenced the degrees of their (in)visibility and experiences of racialisation. The comparative design of our study allowed us to shed light on these nuances when presenting our findings.

The experience of living in a Western European country as an Eastern European migrant in a relatively privileged situation due to social and cultural resources is something that the authors of this article share with most of the research participants. We feel it is important to acknowledge our own positionality, which informed our rapport with the interviewees. Having experienced some of the forms of ‘othering’ and ‘ambiguity’ in terms of fitting into racial and ethnic categories (of passing as ‘white’ yet not always ‘fully’ white due to our Eastern-Europeanness) informed how we read and analysed the empirical material.

Findings

Racialisation of Eastern European migrants and the issue of visibility pre- and post-Brexit referendum

While being seen as ‘white’ allows many Eastern European migrants to ‘pass as white’ in the public sphere, there are limits to this invisibility on a closer encounter. One way in which the privilege of assumed whiteness disappears is through the ‘where are you from’ question. It becomes a deception mechanism through which seemingly invisible migrants are made to reveal their identity. Throughout the duration of our research we kept hearing stories like the one from Kornelia:

In relation to the British, when I say I am from Poland, it is often met with complete silence. And when my husband says he’s from Brazil, everybody is like . . . ooooo Brazil. They light up and ask questions. I sort of got used to that. (Kornelia, office manager, female, from Poland)

Kornelia’s narration deals with the social hierarchy of ‘desirability’ in which some nationalities are more desirable in the eyes of the interlocutors than being Polish (cf. Botterill & Burrell, 2019). These experiences are common in the lives of Polish migrants in the UK, to the point that they are taken-for-granted and come as natural to our interlocutors. These nuanced forms of othering happen en passant and may be experienced as innocent and perhaps only slightly annoying. Kornelia, like other participants in our sample, acknowledges that she is (‘sort of’) getting used to such experiences. This can be read as indicative of her awareness of the latent hierarchies of European nations, in which being from Poland and not, say, ‘Holland’ as hinted by another interviewee, points to the inequality of her origins (Antonucci & Varriale, 2020, p. 41) and places her as one of Europe’s internal and more ‘backward’ ‘others’ (Dzenovska, 2013). We read the reactions of complete silence experienced by Kornelia, or disappointment when interlocutors learn that someone is from Poland not Holland, as moments when the mask of whiteness is dropped, to paraphrase Back et al. (2012). Given the ontological positioning of Eastern Europe, we see it as a form of othering in which one’s claim to the privilege of whiteness disappears or at least becomes undermined.

Such repeated experiences make people feel not only less socially attractive, less confident, but also socially abject. Especially in a ‘hostile environment’ the ‘where are you from’ question loses its assumed innocence by enforcing implicit forms of citizen ‘bordering’ practice, and becomes an invisible checkpoint that forces people to reveal their identity (Anderson, 2013; Jones et al., 2017). In this way, not just the border police, but also citizens in a bar situation gain power to test others on the grounds of belonging.

The complexity of the ‘where are you from’ question is also taken up by our Lithuanian interviewees, albeit from a different perspective:

I often hear remarks [. . .] like ‘where are you from?’ and I say ‘I’m from Lithuania’ and then they say ‘I see and do you know that about one million Romanians have come to London since 2014?’ and I say ‘I know, thanks for letting me know’ [laughs]. [. . .] Earlier, maybe, I reacted to them differently, I was more hurt by it. [. . .] Not that this would hurt me anymore, it does not hurt anymore after so many years. (Ada, analyst, pursuing an MA degree, female, from Lithuania)

Ada’s quote may be read as indicative of the experience of Lithuanians, who, as having a smaller presence in the UK than Poles, are not always at the forefront of negative associations. Her nationality is, however, met with confusion and ignorance. In the ‘where are you from’ question Tudor sees the strategy of ‘migratisation’ of people and relegating them to the ‘elsewhere’ which undermines their connection to ‘here’ (2018). So with this question Ada needs to undertake the labour similar to Kornelia of accepting (or resisting) being sent to the Eastern European ‘elsewhere’. She also needs to do something else in this exchange. Like a number of other Lithuanian interviewees, Ada is confronted with the need to distance herself from imaginaries about other (larger) Eastern European migrant groups, instead of dissociating from stereotypes about their national group. The exaggerated information about the supposed number of Romanian nationals thrown at her creates the context of the conversation where the presence of Eastern Europeans is projected as a ‘crisis’, a situation which places an expectation of reaction from her. While not directed towards her, she is not only expected to respond to it, but by affiliation her right to be in the UK is undermined. The expression of laughter accompanying Ada’s narration may be read as an affective capacity to cope with the feeling of (potential) vulnerability, bearing resemblance to the employment of humour by migrants as a coping mechanism documented elsewhere (Van Ramshorst, 2019). Similarly to Kornelia, Ada seems to have become used to these remarks and has learned how to respond without being ‘hurt’ – suggesting that she has normalised the discourses of ‘othering’ and learned to live with them.

For some of our research participants, the results of the referendum marked a ‘wakeup call’ and a moment when it became no longer possible to ignore such forms of othering and take them to be innocent. Many of them, both Lithuanians and Poles, felt that the Leave campaign particularly targeted Eastern Europeans as benefit scroungers, abusers of the system and those who steal British work, and made them feel inferior just for the sake of their origin. Certainly, the Brexit campaign reinforced some latent intra-Eastern European hierarchies, where some of the Lithuanian research participants felt annoyed for being taken as a Pole or relieved that they had not been scapegoated as the Polish people were. Following the approach offered by Hall (1990), in which he embraces ‘blackness’ as an imposed identity, we argue that the ongoing practices of en passant othering in the form of the ‘where are you from’ question contribute to the emergence of particular racialised forms of Eastern European identity in the UK that emerge irrespectively of these intra-Eastern European dynamics. This borderline identity is ambiguous in terms of its position in racial hierarchies in the UK, and carries both the realisation of being ‘the other’, and ‘not quite white’, while simultaneously offering conditional acceptance as part of the ‘community of value’ (Anderson, 2013) when certain resources (in particular their cultural capital) are drawn upon. In the next section, we will examine further how these processes of racialisation intersect with class and experiences of being classed, and how using cultural capital, such as accent and looks, help some of the interviewees to ‘escape’ racialisation.

Navigating racial and class hierarchies: How cultural capital helps to ‘escape’ racialisation

The burden that Eastern Europeans seem to carry in contact with their host society is well illustrated by an example given by Ryszard, who tells an anecdote about a successfully proceeding Tinder date till it got to the point when he heard:

If your accent had been a bit more Eastern European I would not have found you that attractive. (Ryszard, research assistant at a university, male, from Poland)

In Ryszard’s case, his flawless English helps him to pass as an attractive middle class person. Exploring the question of why some accents are seen as more desirable than others, Birney et al. (2020) argue that while generally weaker accents are seen as more desirable, such common questions as ‘where are you from’ are indicative of the desire to shape ideas about the speaker. The information about nationality is used to influence the meanings natives attach to the speaker’s accent. Ryszard’s case poses a challenge for his interlocutor, as his accent eludes the usual categorisation of accents and hence the easy compartmentalisation of speakers into less and more desirable groups. The ability to speak English without an ‘Eastern European’ accent allows him to escape the process of racialisation through audible markers (cf. Krivonos, 2020). Blackledge (2006) sees the emphasis on English proficiency as a condition of citizenship, and integration as a form of institutional racism in which ‘English language dominance is conflated with a racialised “white” dominance’ (p. 77).

It is not just the language, however, that helps him to pass as ‘middle class white’. It is also the allure of confidence, related to the fact that he lived in an Anglo-Saxon environment for many years, allowing him to develop certain professional and social skills. He tells us, jokingly, elsewhere in the interview that he sees himself as ‘a cosmopolitan class from nowhere’, paraphrasing Theresa May’s words, not just to illustrate his ability to exercise his ‘cosmopolitanism’, but to emphasise his values as an open minded progressive person. This confidence allows him not only to be ‘inside’ by passing as white, but also to almost ‘see through’ the mechanisms of the classificatory system and use them to his benefit.

Similarly to Ryszard, Amelia consciously relies on her language skills, looks and being seen as ‘white’ to ‘blend in’ – pass as part of the white middle class society:

I find it easier to ‘blend in’ as I do not have a Polish accent, so nobody is able to guess by my accent or my looks that I am Polish. This is helpful, because people do not think in this stereotypical manner. Not that I want to hide my Polishness, but I do not want to show it off. If people ask me, I would reveal that I am from Poland, but I do not want to make a first impression as a Pole. (Amelia, manager in a media company, female, from Poland)

Amelia reverts to her looks and draws on her accentless English to project a particular impression of a middle class person rather than a Pole. She is capable of what Singh (2022) calls ‘code-switching’ in relation to his research participant who was able to suppress his racial and cultural identity of being a British-born, Jamaican origin from Tottenham to conform to the white middle class ways of being (p. 147). Similarly, Amelia suppresses her Polishness, which she sees as a burden, to project ‘middle class whiteness’ (Ahmed, 2007). Amelia is not only self-conscious of the complexity of her Eastern European identity in British society, but also aware of latent class hierarchies and inner workings of racism in postcolonial Britain and the privilege of whiteness that she can claim. She recalls the experience of working in a media company in which, out of a hundred people, only two were black. Yet, the entire cleaning crew was black:

For me it is easier: even if I am from Eastern Europe I am still white. [. . .] But if I was black, then I think I would struggle to do that [i.e. blend in]. It’s not ‘active’ racism, but somewhat rooted; less opportunities to develop.

We dwell on Ryszard and Amelia’s experiences to reflect on how their cultural capital helps them to escape the racialisation that many Eastern Europeans cannot. It also helps them to claim the privilege of whiteness so they can pass as ‘middle class white’ people. Ryszard and Amelia do not conform to the stereotypical views about Eastern European migrants. In both cases, it is not just the socio-economic markers (such as education and white-collar jobs) and linguistic competencies, but also a certain confidence in their own value, and an awareness of social expectations on how to project the ‘white respectability’ that will help them to become unidentifiable. While such non-conforming may require labour (cf. Krivonos, 2020), the cultural capital which Amelia and Ryszard possess reduces the effort required to ‘inhabit whiteness’ (Garner, 2006, p. 262) and makes it easier for them to pass (as middle class and white subjects) compared to the interviewees with fewer resources at their disposal (see section below).

Given the relatively lesser visibility of Lithuanians in comparison to Poles, we did not come across similar accounts in our Lithuanian sample. Nevertheless, the strategy of differentiation between groups and individuals, described above, was common in the ‘we do not mean you’ type of remarks which were often experienced by both Lithuanian and Polish participants:

When you talk in person, one to one, the other person may say that he/she is not talking about you, because you do your job well, you pay the taxes, in other words: ‘we want you, but these other migrants, we do not want them’. (Elena, researcher at a university, female, from Lithuania)

Elena’s quote gives insight into how the processes of racialisation and class-distancing are interconnected, and how they are often interpreted purely in terms of their assumed meritocratic value, in which educated people are welcome, yet those ‘bad migrants’ are othered. Similarly, another interviewee, Vaida (events coordinator, female, from Lithuania), whose social network was mainly composed of British nationals at the time of the referendum, reflected on the discursive division she noticed between the ‘nice immigrants’ (‘like you’) and ‘other immigrants’, in which being classed in a certain way is a demarcation line (‘it’s a class thing’). The problem with this is that, although both Elena’s and Vaida’s narrations indicate that they were both considered to be ‘worthy’ of living in the UK by their interlocutors, such ‘acceptance’ can come across as very conditional. While Poles and Lithuanians as a whole feel ‘excluded’ from the ‘community of value’, there are individuals who are able to benefit from the privilege of inclusion due to their cultural capital, social connections and perceived meritocratic value.

Perhaps the most eloquent account deciphering how class discourses can provide a gateway to escape racialisation is offered by Kamila. She explains how the family of her English partner would maintain prejudice towards Eastern Europeans and ‘other Poles’, yet exclude her from these otherings:

I am sick of people telling me that the [Brexit] vote was not about ‘migrants like me’ and this is fucking bullshit. I do not feel better than my two cousins who work in construction. (Kamila, medical doctor, female, from Poland)

Kamila’s narration indicates her awareness of the line drawn between highly qualified migrant professionals and migrant workers (often associated with the construction sector), related to racialisation of the lower classes. Kamila is aware of the discursive labelling in which migrants from the construction sector are demonised and racialised as uncivilised ‘swan’ eaters (Mail, 2008), while those in ‘respectable jobs’ like doctors are accepted. Kamila realises her own privilege, but understands that this acceptance is ‘conditional’ on her socio-economic status. She calls it out by refusing such categorisation, echoing several other participants in our sample, who resisted this ‘divide and conquer policy’. Kamila’s case alludes to migrant solidarities, observed in other research in the Brexit aftermath (e.g. Blachnicka-Ciacek et al., 2021; Lulle et al., 2018).

Navigating racial and class hierarchies: Classed insecurities and escaping classification through racialising others

Not all our research participants were as able to use their cultural capital (and other resources) to ‘escape’ various forms of racialisation. Those who were less confident about their position on the labour market (due to a lack of skills or inability to use their skills) and less at ease in mingling with British society felt more prone to racialisation as Eastern Europeans, less able to escape it, but were also ready to racialise others in order to reinforce their positions in the social hierarchies of inclusion.

Below is an extract from the interview with Kinga. While she has an MA degree from a respected Polish university, her personal situation of being a single parent without stable employment undermined her confidence about her place in British society. She explains how she would be seen as part of the ‘working class’ and talks of visiting the middle class neighbourhoods in her city ‘as a different world’ to which she had no access. This sense of insecurity, related to her personal situation, translates into how Kinga felt in contact with the host society:

When I am on the bus with my daughter and somebody starts paying attention to her, because she talks or sings, I switch to English. [. . .] This is related to the situation. . . because of Brexit and things that happened to me. . . I feel a bit. . . I’m trying not to volunteer my Polishness. I’m realising now that sometimes I have this need, quite irrational, to show them that I do speak English and that my daughter also speaks English, so that we are not. . . you know what I mean, to avoid making the impression that we speak Polish and can’t handle our life here. We speak English so no-one feels excluded, but also to let them know that we are able to live here. (Kinga, unemployed at the time of the interview, female, from Poland)

Interestingly, Kinga, like Amelia, whom we met in the previous section, did not ‘volunteer’ her Polishness to prove that she ‘deserves’ to be in the UK, assuming that speaking Polish in public might be offensive to others. Yet, while Amelia speaks with confidence and at ease, Kinga’s narrative is tainted with fear. By speaking English to her daughter, she not only practises the rules of politeness, but also demonstrates that they deserve to be part of the ‘community of value’. She feels the urge, which she calls ‘irrational’, but nevertheless strong enough to convince others (narrated as ‘them’) that she can handle her life in the UK. Her feeling may be indicative of what Back et al. (2012, p. 140) call ‘new hierarchies of belonging’ sustained by ‘fear’ and ‘suspicion’ which transpire into everyday encounters. The fact that Kinga is unemployed and relying on social support might play to this urge, something that people with more cultural capital like Amelia will not share, as we have seen in relation to interviewees who can draw on their cultural capital in a more confident manner. Kinga wants to present herself as a person that can be respected, which is usually a concern for those who are not seen as possessing ‘respectability’ (Skeggs, 1997, p. 1). Her decision to ‘hide’ her Polishness can be read as a reflection of what Tyler (2015) says about ‘adopting this self-loathing’. Kinga’s frustration, related to the lack of a stable position on the job and housing market, is reinforced in the context of Brexit, in which she knows that carrying (or displaying) her Polish identity is not desirable in public as it reveals the stereotypes that she wants to escape – of those relying on the welfare system, and being relegated to the category of the ‘burdensome’ underclass (cf. Krivonos, 2018). Lacking such economic markers as ‘owning a property’ and having a stable job puts Kinga lower down the social hierarchy. This makes it harder for her to validate her status in the UK and adhere to ‘respectable’ middle class imagery and to avoid being discursively scapegoated as guilty of not being able to do so. Her experience of relying on social support and feeling guilty about not being able to provide for herself speaks about ways in which the UK system valorises neoliberal subjects and puts pressure on those who might be not as productive (Back et al., 2012; Varriale, 2021).

These classed insecurities (inherent to the interviewees with fewer resources and less cultural capital) sometimes translated into the urge to racialise others as a way of compensation. Both Polish and Lithuanian research participants used racism and white privilege to navigate racial hierarchies in the UK, often targeting people with fewer chances of being accepted due to the colour of their skin or some visual markers or assumed characteristics:

On the one hand, with this Brexit, I am happy about it, because it will get cleaner a bit, it will get cleaned from these Gypsies, non-gypsies. A lot of people came here who imagine that you come here to England and you do nothing, you can steal, do drugs, you will get benefits, you can take advantage of people. I am happy about this, I am glad about Brexit for this reason, that they will get rid of such [people] a bit. (Jolanta, section leader at a factory, female, from Lithuania)

Jolanta reverts to the repertoire of dehumanising stereotypes about Roma people, presenting them not just as a threat to the welfare system, but also a ‘biological’ threat’. Her use of the phrase ‘Gypsies, non-gypsies’ may suggest that she relegates this racial distancing to other groups and ethnicities that she decides to nominate as ‘abject’ and ‘failed citizens’ (Anderson, 2013; Tyler, 2013). Positioning herself in this argument with the Brexiteers (happy about Brexit) and ‘blackening’ poverty (cf. Varriale, 2021), she not only excludes others, but strives to side with the respectable citizens against the ‘unproductive’ ‘Gypsies, non-gypsies’. As research shows, the racialised discourses on Roma in the UK target both local and migrant Roma, the latter term being used interchangeably with ‘Eastern European’ (Yuval-Davis et al., 2017). Referring to the (recent) arrivals, Jolanta distances herself from (Roma) migrants and, at the same time, she may be tapping into the stereotypes of impoverished and stigmatised Roma minorities in her home country (cf. Fox et al., 2015). Jolanta asserts herself as a (white) respectable person by classifying others, and in striving to do so, embraces a form of ‘ontological denialism’ (Puwar, 2004) by distancing herself from other migrants (cf. Krivonos, 2018).

The aspiration to be on the ‘right side’ is also evident from Jolanta’s class positioning in the UK, as her immediate response to the question about class indicates: ‘in terms of our thinking, communication, mentality, I’d say that we belong to the highest level’. Later (without solicitation) Jolanta clarifies that she does not claim to belong to the ‘highest level’ on economic grounds (not ‘the rich, definitely not; we belong to the normal level’), but adheres to the notion of a ‘normal life’ (see also Galasińska & Kozłowska, 2009). Jolanta’s positioning may be indicative of what can be described as a subscription to (middle class) respectability (Stoler, 1995), and a claim for middle-classness, which Michaela Benson describes as being more than a project of self-realisation, but of a social distinction (2019, p. 28). This points to the relational formation of class (Skeggs, 2004; Tyler, 2013) and can be read as an attempt to be classed in a certain way as a struggle for value.

Jolanta’s use of racism to differentiate from others links with Zosia’s sentiment expressed below. Zosia, who has recently been promoted from the factory floor to the office, is very positive about her (white and mainly Eastern European) co-workers from other countries, elaborating that one should not judge based on nationality or stereotypes. She elaborates on the unfair treatment of Romanians and Bulgarians, but her attitude radically changes when the conversation involves Muslims:

Every person comes here to make money, to have a better life, you know. If this person does not hurt me, does not take my money from my bank account, why should I have friction with them? But the ‘Pakis’ [‘ciapaci’ in Polish] are super lazy, I had issues with them at work. I do not mean people from India, they work really hard, but I mean the Pakistanis. One Pakistani taxi driver told me once that the Queen gave them citizenship in gratitude for how they helped to rebuild the UK after the war. I think that the Queen really regrets this decision. (Zosia, factory office worker, female, from Poland)

Zosia simultaneously defends some migrants as hardworking, and worth being judged by their work and not ethnicity, while drawing a line of ‘exclusion’ based on Islamophobic prejudice.

Interestingly, these ‘othering’ comments are expressed more readily by research participants who may not be as confident of their ‘middle class status’ (Gawlewicz, 2016). One explanation for this could be related to the fact that our research participants in more privileged positions might have appropriated the rules of political correctness where instances of overt racism are better hidden. It can be read, however, also in a slightly different way, as a means of securing one’s own, uncertain position in the mix of social hierarchies in the UK. While those who can revert to their cultural capital may escape racialisation through passing as white, those in less privileged positions racialise others, often in even lower positions, to emphasise their own (racialised) privilege. This bears resemblance to the strategies of class distinction used by Italian migrants in the UK, reproducing racialised hierarchies between ‘backward’ and ‘modern’ European populations, and opting to position themselves on the side of ‘modernity’ (Varriale, 2021, p. 300). The process of racialisation, however, follows the same patterns as those which help the middle class ‘pass as white’ and blend in. As in the case of those with a higher degree of cultural capital, their value is based on seemingly meritocratic contributions (of language and skills) where race is mentioned rarely; here Roma or Muslims are diminished not for their cultural ‘otherness’ but for their laziness, something that is supposed to resemble a meritocratic type of stratification (cf. Tyler, 2013).

Conclusion

While the processes of racialisation of Eastern European migrants were present even in pre-Brexit Britain, the campaign leading to the referendum and the atmosphere of hostility towards migrants forced them to re-evaluate the terms and possibilities of their belonging to British society (e.g. Botterill & Burrell, 2019; McGhee et al., 2017; Rzepnikowska, 2018). In this article we posit the need to recognise the entanglement between the racialisation of Eastern European migrants and class, which informs the everyday experiences of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion’ among migrants, and which have so far been given less attention in the literature on racialisation of migrants from Eastern Europe pre- and post-Brexit. We argue that how class is lived and perceived, and the differentiation of class resources, are crucial elements conditioning the unequal possibilities of inclusion among Eastern European migrants in the UK.

Eastern European migrants have been seen as ‘less white’ and therefore less deserving. As we have demonstrated, through reverting to class resources such as proficiency in English and other forms of cultural capital, some migrants have been able to get away from the racialised profiling of Eastern Europeans and ‘pass as white’ or, to be more accurate, pass as ‘middle class white’. This process of acceptance might involve experiences of hiding or not volunteering one’s ethnic origins and nationality (while it is possible) or finding oneself perceived as being an exception (‘we do not mean you’) based on one’s position in the labour market or social skills. The acceptance of certain Eastern European migrants into the ‘community of value’ is therefore conditional and based on their individual access to resources. While their national background is a burden that they carry, they are granted an individual pass on entry if they meet the middle class criteria of ‘respectability’ and continue to prove their deservingness (cf. Blachnicka-Ciacek et al., 2021).

Similarly, we have demonstrated how some Eastern European migrants, especially those whose social and economic positions are less secure, try to reaffirm their status, not just by re-ascribing themselves to the middle class using their resources, but also by distancing themselves from other groups, often reverting to racism and racialised conceptions of the lower class to emphasise their own (racialised) privilege and restate their position. Reverting to the repertoire of available stereotypes, they discursively ‘blacken’ those ‘less deserving’ (see Varriale, 2021) and side with ‘respectable citizens’, by making economic contributions and leading ‘normal lives’.

This article offers a contribution to understanding the differentiated experiences of Eastern Europeans post-Brexit by demonstrating how class and experiences of being ‘classed’, nationality and race matter in the processes of inclusion and exclusion. We feel that our findings are not exclusive to the experiences of Eastern European migrants and have a more general contribution in terms of understanding how the axes of race, nationality and class inform migration and inclusion processes in the unequal Europe (Boatcă, 2013). Far too often, migration research has left the class angle out of the analysis, or has unintentionally reified the fixed categorisation of migrants, either by focusing on ‘labour’ migration or ‘professional migration’. Our findings demonstrate that it is specifically the dynamic and relational experiences of class, with challenges related to the transferability of cultural capital, and of being ‘classed’ in a certain way that are key factors shaping and conditioning the lives of migrants. For migrants in particular, the class categories are not fixed, but are something they are constantly tested against and to which they need to prove their belonging as they strive for recognition. How class is lived and perceived is strongly intertwined with perceived and lived racial positionality – both on an individual and collective level.