ABSTRACT
The politics of austerity being played out across Europe in the early decades of the twenty-first century is accompanied by populist and far-right rhetoric scapegoating migrants and minorities (especially in Northern Europe and former communist states).1 In the context of financial collapse and economic recession since 2008, questions of belonging are once again becoming increasingly pertinent to political debate. One of the common features of this debate is the presentation of the history of European states – and Europe more generally – as culturally and ethnically pure, or culturally homogeneous, only to be disrupted by the subsequent arrival of a diversity of peoples from elsewhere. In this chapter, I use the example of the United Kingdom to examine attempts to purify national history. I will call into question the very idea of autonomous national histories existing separately and separated from their locations within broader complexes of empire and colonialism. I then address contemporary political discussions on belonging, citizenship and rights to suggest that basing political arguments for citizenship and rights in exclusionary histories of belonging and citizenship is, at best, politically naive and, at worst, a precursor to authoritarian populism.
