Immigration in the Brexit campaign : Protean dogwhistles and political manipulation

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, there has been much discussion of whether the vote was caused by anti-immigrant sentiment or by economic factors, or by some combination of these. Often, the anti-immigrant sentiment is referred to as “racism”, and quite often “anti-immigrant” and “racist” seem to be used interchangeably. It’s a notable feature of these discussions—though not one that is actually much noted—that the immigrants against whom prejudice is directed shift from discussion to discussion: some discussions focus on prejudice against all foreigners, some against all Europeans, others against Eastern Europeans, and still others against refugees, dark-skinned foreigners, or Muslims. A key contention of mine here is that the variety of possible targets for anti-immigrant sentiment (call this “target variation”) has made this form of prejudice a particularly difficult one to effectively fight. And key to this target variation is the invocation of ever-shifting associated groups that are the target of negative sentiment about immigrants—different groups for different speakers and audiences.