ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have made it clear that when children talk about place they are engaged in the drawing of boundaries. This immediately brings up the question of belonging and who is an insider, who an outsider. As Newman and Paasi observe, ‘boundaries, by definition, constitute lines of separation or contact [which] usually creates an “us” and an “Other” identity’ (1998: 6). McCrone (1998: 116) identifies the same process in relation to the nation: ‘[n]ationalism has particularism built into it; hence every “us” has to have a “them” ’. This ‘othering’ effect is deeply embedded in the construction of identities, since defining the self always involves specifying what the self is not. Accordingly, much of our preceding discussion in this book about children’s boundary-drawing with regard to places and people is actually about the ‘lines of separation or contact’ that they draw between themselves and others. This chapter address national (and local) others, with particular reference to ‘race’ and the relation of minority-ethnic groups to national belonging. We are interested here in the aspects of children’s accounts of Welshness that are either racialised or inclusive. In writing of racialisation, we refer to ‘a dialectical process by which meaning is attributed to particular biological features of human beings’ (Miles 1989: 76). In many ways, this whole book is concerned with ethnicity, if we define an ethnic group as one that shares ideas about common descent. In this chapter, however, we focus in particular on the aspects of the children’s talk that highlight ‘race’ – that is, physical characteristics associated with ethnic groups – and explicitly refer to majority and minority racial and religious groups within Wales. Later in the chapter we also deal with how the children respond to constructs of Englishness.
