After Nativism: Belonging in an Age of Intolerance

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 210 pages
Publication date: 29 September 2023
Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Ltd

In the face of globalization, uncertainty, and precarity, a growing number of people in democratic societies are resorting to strongarm politics for reassurance. This trend is evident in countries across the globe, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Brazil, India, and Turkey, where support for nativist politics has surged, targeting migrants, minorities, liberals, and elites as enemies of the nation.

While the book "After Nativism" acknowledges the need to address the security and well-being of the "left-behind" in order to disarm nativism, it argues that the lines drawn by nativism are deeply affective and shaped by imagined communities. At the core of popular perceptions of just dues lies a sense of belonging and voice.

According to Ash Amin, progressive forces, including liberal, social democratic, and socialist parties, need to reclaim this territory in order to shift public sentiment away from xenophobic intolerance and towards a commonality amid difference as a basis for facing existential risks and uncertainties. The book proposes a relational politics of belonging that centers around encounters, fugitive aesthetics, public interest politics, collaboration over common existential threats, and the establishment of daily collectives and infrastructures of well-being.

There is ample ground for progressives to mount a counter-aesthetics of belonging that will appeal to the discontents of neoliberal globalization and offer a better alternative to nativism. By highlighting the shared values and experiences that unite people across differences, progressives can build a stronger sense of belonging and solidarity that can counter the divisive and harmful effects of nativism.

Weight: 264g
Dimension: 138 x 216 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781509557318