TY - JOUR
T1 - Ethnic minorities in British politics
T2 - candidate selection and clan politics in the Labour Party
AU - Akhtar, Parveen
AU - Peace, Timothy
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis Group in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies on 4 Mar 2018, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1443804
Funding: Moray Endowment Fund.
PY - 2019/8/18
Y1 - 2019/8/18
N2 - In increasingly diverse polities, the question of how minorities engage with national and local political processes is important. In the U.K., the Labour Party has traditionally benefited electorally from ethnic minority communities, often through ethnicity-based voting blocs. However, little attention has been paid to how the Party’s candidate selection process is influenced by strategic party membership and nomination. We argue that community clan or kinship (biraderi) networks found amongst British Pakistanis have been mobilised for this purpose. We examine the cases of Bradford and Birmingham with respect to the nominations for Prospective Candidates at both parliamentary and local council level. We show the continued importance of biraderi connections in spite of Labour Party attempts to ‘clean up’ selection contests through impositions of the National Executive Committee (NEC). Such practices favour the selection of candidates with strong biraderi links and, as such, often marginalise female candidates.
AB - In increasingly diverse polities, the question of how minorities engage with national and local political processes is important. In the U.K., the Labour Party has traditionally benefited electorally from ethnic minority communities, often through ethnicity-based voting blocs. However, little attention has been paid to how the Party’s candidate selection process is influenced by strategic party membership and nomination. We argue that community clan or kinship (biraderi) networks found amongst British Pakistanis have been mobilised for this purpose. We examine the cases of Bradford and Birmingham with respect to the nominations for Prospective Candidates at both parliamentary and local council level. We show the continued importance of biraderi connections in spite of Labour Party attempts to ‘clean up’ selection contests through impositions of the National Executive Committee (NEC). Such practices favour the selection of candidates with strong biraderi links and, as such, often marginalise female candidates.
KW - Biraderi
KW - Labour Party
KW - candidate selection
KW - ethnic minority politics
KW - kinship networks
UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2018.1443804
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85042937501&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1443804
DO - 10.1080/1369183X.2018.1443804
M3 - Article
SN - 1369-183X
VL - 45
SP - 1902
EP - 1918
JO - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
JF - Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
IS - 11
ER -