Gate-keeping the nation: discursive claims, counter-claims and racialized logics of whiteness

This article analyses the racialization of discourses about national identities, and explores implications for populations racialized as white. Two extensive datasets have been brought together, spanning a decade 560 interviews, to explore discursive interplay, oppositional nature relationality majority minority claims belonging. We demonstrate that identity are constructed discursively from positions relative advantage disadvantage: here English Polish minority. Discourses involve positioning using resources differentially available. Dominant groups, perceiving themselves entitled through their conceptualization nation-state indigeneity, interpret police in ways equate gate-keeping function. The analysis examines contingent hierarchy whiteness entitlement, deservingness resentment. framework helps illuminate construction contested hierarchies around