What is Labour doing on migration?
Soundings - Print ISSN 1362-6620 - Online ISSN 1741-0797
Volume 2025 Number 90 & 91
What is Labour doing on migration?
Frances Webber, Joseph Maggs talk to Kirsten Forkert, pages 142‑161
DOI: 10.3898/SOUN:90-91.09.2025
Abstract
This interview discusses the Starmer government’s approach to migration, which has prioritised securitisation and criminalisation in order to appease the far right, and to address the ‘hero voters’ of its imagined notion of a ‘white working class’. It also gives a brief account of the work of the Institute of Race Relations - the UK’s oldest ‘race’ charity - on immigration. In many ways Starmer’s policies are a continuation of longer-term trends in the British state and Labour Party, but the government’s current stance should also be understood in the current dangerous conditions marked by the advance of the electoral far right, increased racist violence at street level, plummeting living standards and decaying infrastructure. Given the government’s abandonment of responsibility on these issues, a revived anti-racist class politics must rise to the occasion - but success is not guaranteed.
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To cite this article
Frances Webber, Joseph Maggs (2025) What is Labour doing on migration?, Soundings, 2025(90 & 91 ), 142-161 . https://doi.org/10.3898/SOUN:90-91.09.2025