To begin with, what is Intersectionality?
Intersecionailty is a way of understanding different kinds of problems, such as seeing things as not just a race problem itself, but also being a gender problem as well. These intersectional groups are used as negative way where social power works to exclude or marginalised these groups (Crenshaw, 1991). A way of understanding social relations by looking at intersecting forms of discrimination, in this blog we will be talking about gender and race when referring to intersecting forms of discrimination. It understands that in an individual’s life, race and gender can be two issues present in their lives contributing to outcomes. My blog will focus on the relationship between marginalised groups and their political engagement. The marginalised groups I will be referring to are race and gender.
Factors such as immigrants who first came to the United kingdom may base their voting habits on which political party allowed them to settle in the UK, such as labour, therefore would be more inclined to vote for labour due to this.Especially when looking at South Asian communities, they may be seen as labour being the only party to support south Asians. The idea of passing on a strong identity of which political party they support is strong within Asian communities, an the problems that may arise is that perhaps being a woman and a south Asian would heavily impact voting patters due to over lapping discrimination that would influence who or of they voted. There are two separate problems of discrimination here, through being a woman and being of an ethnic minority, but these problems exist together, therefore we have to look at these overlapping ways of discrimination
It is difficult to separate different experiences into different categories, the experience of political engagement of a south Asian in the UK, depends on many factors, such as their social economic status, their ethnicity, whether they have a disability, sex, gender and so on, these all affect ones political engagements for different reasons, a person who is a Indian woman who is a lesbian will have different experiences with politics due to overlapping discrimination. To understand this we look at intersectionality.
Community elders within Asian communities are losing their grip. Political engagement also depends on the circumstances of living in the UK. South Asians tend to vote for labour due to it being the Labour government allowing them to migrate to the UK, (Sanders et al., 2013). A book called The Political Integration of Ethnic Minorities in Britain confirms that ethnic minorities who have migrated to Britain as adults have higher levels of duty to vote, compared to the white British. Whereas the white British have higher interest and knowledge in politics compared to the ethnic minorities, but this is changing due to the labour and Tory parties changing their ideas and therefore manifestos, now south Asians specifically can now benefit from the opposition party.
The second generation people of mixed heritage or black Caribbean people are more likely to be disengaged from British democracy than other minorities and British citizens, this is due to the feeling of social exhaustion and unfairness in the treatments of their groups, that the allocation of rewards are lacking in this group, their vote, political participation doesn’t seem to have an impact as much as other groups, or in fact they are not being represented politically, therefore are less likely to engage.
Table 1: Ethnic minority MPs by gender and Party in 2015 & 2017 (House of Commons Library, 2017)
In this graph we can see that in 2017 there were as many minority ethnic female MPs as there were minority ethnic male MPs, compared to in 2015, where there were more minority ethnic male MPs than females. Although this graph shows that there has been an improvement of the representation of ethnic minority females in politics, it is clear that there is still a remaining inequality experienced by women of minority ethnic groups, racism and sexism. Therefore they may not only be discriminated for being a woman, but also based on their ethnicity, but both existing together. Impacting on the experience of those who are voting, if their ideas and characters are not represented politically, naturally people will be less of an engagement within politics, when ones ideals are not being heard or seen. Despite the increasing number of ethnic minority candidates within politics in the UK, neither labour or conservative manifestos in 2010 general election made no attempt or commitment to address ethnic inequalities or addressing racial discrimination, even thorough this minorities still lean towards labour as being more supportive of ethnic minorities concerns.
Bibliography:
Crenshaw, K. (1991) Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review. 43(6) Pp. 1241-1300.
Sanders, D., Sobolewska, M., F. Heath, A., D. Fisher, S. and Rosenblatt, G., 2013. The Political Integration Of Ethnic Minorities In Britain. Oxford Scholarship Online.
Willson, C., 2020. Election Delivers Most Diverse Parliament. [online] BBC News. Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40232272> [Accessed 9 June 2020].
House of Commons Library (2017) Ethnic Minorities in Politics and Public Life. Available at: https://researchbriefings.parliament.uk/ResearchBriefing/Summary/SN01156 (Date accessed: 09/06/20).
Rashid, I., 2019. General Election: South Asians Could Hold Balance Of Power In Key Marginal Seats. [online] Sky News. Available at: <https://news.sky.com/story/general-election-south-asians-could-hold-balance-of-power-in-key-marginal-seats-11879224> [Accessed 9 June 2020].