State, Multiculturalism and Ethnic Leadership in Australia

In June 1995 "ethnic riots" appeared on the streets of Bradford, West Yorkshire. Senior police were heard on television to condemn "ethnic leaders" for their failure to control their youth, who had erupted into violence following police attempts to arrest two Mirpuri teenagers. Police went on to say that the youth were alienated both from British society and from their "own ethnic community". Meanwhile new ethnicities dominated international headlines, the most potent being the crypto-state Bosnian Serbs, anxious to assert a new imagined community in order to legitimate claims to territory and territorial power.