Transposition Inclusion

If you can imagine a world where there are no interminable immigration debates “sating” and fueling “white worries” and where the migrant is not the object of either draconian or benign operationalizations of integration,

then you have some idea of the discourses subsumed under Transposition Inclusion. Here, the spotlight is transposed from the migrant Other and focused squarely on autochthonous whites, as the targets of inclusion measures. Transposition Inclusion seeks to rectify the dispensation from integration which has been granted to white citizens where they have not had to “appear on the integration monitor” (Schinkel 2018, p.4). It is this omission which is consequential, and which affirms and further entrenches distinctions between those acknowledged to make up “society” and those who are not; those who need to further “integrate.” Perhaps the central question here is how well dominant white groups are integrated into a modern, global reality characterized by cultural hybridity, increasingly varied migration patterns and complex networks of attachment.

Sociologists Maurice Crul & Jens Schneider (2012, p.400) in discussing the increasing urbanization and cultural diversity of American and European metropolitan centers, argue that these forces have major ramifications for how we understand inclusion. In an urban glocality where no single ethnic group is able to claim a numeric majority, they query: “How much longer, can ‘native whites’ be the yardstick for measuring the integration of other ethnic groups?” In their comprehensive study of second-generation migrant urban youths, they also raise other critical points about a “migrant-targeted” integration policy:

In cities like Stockholm, Zurich and Paris, our results revealed that the majority of our respondents’ friendship groups are multi-ethnic [...] the second generation is taking the lead here. They are the ones who more often and more easily cross and blur ethnic boundaries. In this regard, young people of native-born parentage show the most serious “integration problems.” More often than any second-generation group, the “majority” seems to be in a mono-ethnic world, inhabiting an impervious parallel to the increasingly diversifying society around them. (Crul & Schneider 2012, p.401)

Taking the dwindling white critical mass and the mono-ethnic social bubbles of autochthonous populations as points of departure, Transposition Inclusion reframes traditional immigration worries and redirects these at dominant white groups. Questions such as, “How ethnically diverse are your social and professional circles or those of your children?” now aimed at white groups, recollect charges of ghettoization frequently levelled at migrant groups. Enquiries about levels of community

involvement, the extent of local and national knowledge, even linguistic dexterity, traditionally directed at migrant residents are now levelled at the new “white target group.” Transposition Inclusion thus inverts the subject-object paradigm which characterized previous interactions between dominant and minority groups where the former demand compliance from the latter to conform to integration measures. It also moves into focus the debilitating personal, social, economic and societal costs of racism, discrimination and white privilege for both autochthonous groups and newcomers. Here the majority gaze is redirected inwards. This reframing makes it possible to explore the inclusion-exclusion nexus by looking, for example, at how cultural spaces of inclusion such as multicultural festivals etc. are opened up as substitutes to effective inclusion in mainstream political processes. Transposition Inclusion highlights the psychological and economic costs counted in wasted talents and thwarted hopes, effected by structural obstacles and repressive immigration policies, for societies as a whole.

A Transposition Inclusion perspective also draws parallels between the agendas of white exclusionary nationalists and white diversity liberals as ultimately related, by being built upon different degrees of tolerance.

Tolerance has often been described as the cornerstone of Western attempts at achieving ethnic and racial coexistence. However, such tolerance is perceived as unidimensional (Hage 2000). It is dependent on the magnanimity of those with power who deign to tolerate. Tolerance is not simply acceptance; it is to accept and position the other within the specific limits or boundaries majorities set. The advocacy of tolerance never really challenged white Westerners’ capacity to unilaterally exercise this power. It merely reproduced and reasserted their “right” to act intolerantly when these boundaries were transgressed.

Like the “evil nationalist” engaging in exclusion by categorizing the other as undesirable, the “good, tolerant nationalist” engages in inclusion by categorizing the other, if not as “desirable”, at least as “not that undesirable”[...] This leads us to an important conclusion: the difference between those who practice nationalist exclusion and those who practice nationalist inclusion is not one of people committed to exclusion versus people committed to inclusion, but rather one of people with different thresholds of tolerance. (Ibid 2000, p.92)

Therefore, where one places oneself on the shifting continuum from tolerance to intolerance designates the separation of nationalists and diversity liberals, yet both are empowered within dominant culture. By refocusing the inclusion lens on dominant whites and examining how their entitlement shields them from Transformation Inclusion’s egalitarian import, Transposition Inclusion exposes white groups’ own “integration problems.” It also undermines the myth of “sameness”, a cornerstone of liberal democracies’ individualism, by unmasking the hypocrisy of such claims (hooks 1992). As such, it exposes the need for inclusion efforts to be aimed at dominant populations lest the illiberal treatment of migrant and minority groups masked as expressions of tolerance and equality persists.