Simone Varriale

Simone Varriale

@simov.bsky.social

Sociologist at Loughborough University, linktr.ee/simovarr Class, migration, race, culture, music. Migrant cook. He/him.

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Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

New article out! We rethink ‘meritocracy’ not as a fixed belief but as practical, embodied knowledge transformed through experiences of social and geographical mobility onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 1/6

onlinelibrary.wiley.comMeritocracy, Recognition and Double Consciousness: Why Black and Muslim Italians Move to (and Sometimes Leave) Post‐Brexit BritainThis article rethinks meritocratic ideology as practical knowledge that transforms through biographies of social and geographical mobility. Drawing on 37 interviews with Black and Muslim Italians liv....
Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

Imagine the rest of your career (redundancies permitting) reading billions of sentences like 'shit did not just hit the fan, the fan shitted itself'

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

The irony of reading about enclosures on the most restrictive ebook I've ever seen: no copy and paste allowed, can't download a chapter (only 10 pages every 24h via library credentials). Academic books are not meant to be read, publishers just need to sell (highly restricted) digital access

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

The article argues that we need to understand how ‘authentic’ representations of working-class culture are used by political elites to advance policies and legislation that widen economic inequalities. It explores these issues in relation to *both* far-right and centre-left politics in Italy.

Simone Varriale reposted

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

I’m really happy to see this open-access article finally out doi.org/10.1111/anti... It explores ‘varieties of racial capitalism’ through the experiences of Black and Muslim Italians who moved to Britain during the 2010s and sometimes returned to Italy (or moved elsewhere) 1/5

doi.orgVarieties of Racial Capitalism: Black and Muslim Italians' Unequal Migrations Between Italy and Post‐Brexit BritainThis article advances debates on racial capitalism by reconceptualising it as globally connected yet regionally uneven, and as negotiated and resisted through unequal migrations. Drawing on interview...
Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

#sociologicalplaylist 6: Stuart Hall's posthumous autobiography. I suggest digging into it to find out what he thought about (among other things) race & class, diaspora, identity politics & Zionism in his later years.

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

#sociologicalplaylist 5: a fascinating ethnography of trap music, aspirations and music-making among young migrants and minoritised Italians in Milan (in the context of moral panics about 'maranza', police violence & institutional racism). Really important work & beautifully written (in Italian)

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

#sociologicalplaylist 4: a recent Italian translation of Lea Ypi's work on class and migration. She's a political theorist & sociologists would learn significantly from how she recentres class in debates about migration & racism. The original essays are in English (probably easy to find via GS)

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

Finally, the article explores how some participants got caught in Britain’s post-Brexit ‘re-bordering’, and how intersecting inequalities shape unequal experiences of Britain’s labour market 4/5

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

Random facts: it's nice to be published in a geography journal (as a sociologist who was bad at geography in school). And it's the first time (in 12 years) I don't reference Bourdieu 🙃

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

I’m really happy to see this open-access article finally out doi.org/10.1111/anti... It explores ‘varieties of racial capitalism’ through the experiences of Black and Muslim Italians who moved to Britain during the 2010s and sometimes returned to Italy (or moved elsewhere) 1/5

doi.orgVarieties of Racial Capitalism: Black and Muslim Italians' Unequal Migrations Between Italy and Post‐Brexit BritainThis article advances debates on racial capitalism by reconceptualising it as globally connected yet regionally uneven, and as negotiated and resisted through unequal migrations. Drawing on interview...
Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

The findings highlight the economic dimension of racism in Italy: how labour-market insecurity shapes family and individual biographies, affects belonging and ideas of ‘integration’, and can feed into decisions to emigrate 2/5

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

I also show how Italian citizenship law stratifies access to intra-EU mobility and creates legal inequalities between families and within them. This echoes longstanding arguments by scholars and activists about the institutionally racist effects of Italy’s citizenship regime 3/5

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

#sociologicalplaylist 3: Jonathan Dean's article on 'left politics in the age of the social media influencer'. A really sharp analysis of UK-US online left culture. Sadly Jonathan is no longer with us, I wish I'd known him better (met him briefly years ago). journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

journals.sagepub.comFrom solidarity to self-promotion? Neoliberalism and left politics in the age of the social media influencer - Jonathan Dean, 2024The aim of this article is to map the contested intersections of influencer culture and left/progressive politics within the current conjuncture. Furthermore, d...
Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

#sociologicalPlaylist p2, Alessandra Lembo's study of country music fans and their taste trajectories. A criminally under-cited paper (ethnographies of music taste using Bourdieu but in a critical way are as rare as unicorns) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

sciencedirect.comThree chords & [somebody’s] truth: Trajectories of experience and taste among hard country fansTo date, much social scientific work on taste has relied on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to account for changes in tastes across the life course. But…
Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

Add growing emigration to this and UK politics will soon experience 'postcolonial panic attacks' rather than the usual 'postcolonial melancholia'

Alexander Clarkson@aphclarkson.bsky.social

We have a UK government intellectually and psychologically unprepared to cope with potential labour shortages or market crashes because these scenarios don't match entreched assumptions about the trajectory of the global order

Simone Varriale reposted

dnlgvn.bsky.social
@dnlgvn.bsky.social

This article by @simov.bsky.social on Black and Muslim Italians navigating post-Brexit Britain brings double consciousness into the realities of global mobility. It's a sharp, thoughtful take on how opportunity, recognition, and belonging collide. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

onlinelibrary.wiley.comMeritocracy, Recognition and Double Consciousness: Why Black and Muslim Italians Move to (and Sometimes Leave) Post‐Brexit BritainThis article rethinks meritocratic ideology as practical knowledge that transforms through biographies of social and geographical mobility. Drawing on 37 interviews with Black and Muslim Italians liv....

Simone Varriale reposted

Djordje Sredanovic
@djsredanovic.bsky.social

Labour's announcements on asylum seem part of an 'anything goes' tendency started by the Conservative governments, essentially going towards reneging on basic international law obligations. The confusion in announcements makes it clear that it is about electoral signalling rather than policy itself

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

Yet ‘meritocratic Britain’ is a practical, fuzzy ‘map’: it is transformed by the experience of living in Britain (sometimes leading to new migrations) and co-exists with critique of ‘British’ racism. 5/6

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

We also show the damages of Italy’s institutional and everyday racism: how it pushes new generations of Black, Muslim and minoritised Italians abroad and the scars it leaves on their sense of identity and belonging. For many, post-Brexit Britain remains desirable compared to this context. 6/6

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

We draw on interviews with Black and Muslim Italians living in post-Brexit Britain and Du Bois’ ‘double consciusness’, which helps us understand racialised minorities’ relationship with hegemonic narratives in more nuanced ways than ‘strong’ ideology theories 3/6

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

Key findings: participants don’t invoke ‘meritocracy’ as a coherent ideology, but are attracted by imaginaries of ‘meritocratic Britain’ which resonate with their search for recognition, equality and security 4/6

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

By centring racialised minorities' double-consciousness, practical knowledge & struggles for recognition, we highlight the limitations of false consciousness, misinformation and psychological compensation as explanations for meritocratic belief 2/6

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

Probably the days of 'excited to announce' are over, but I got an article accepted in a geography journal, which *is* exciting because I was crap at geography in school 😅

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

This looks great: “A Problem with the Person”: Class Blindness and the Reproduction of Social Class Inequality

link.springer.com“A Problem with the Person”: Class Blindness and the Reproduction of Social Class Inequality - Qualitative SociologyIn this paper I introduce and explicate the concept of “class blindness,” and show how it works to obscure and justify class inequality even in a small community in which social divisions are well recognized. Similar to the concept of color-blind racism, class blindness is a discursive strategy to erase and minimize class privilege and the social processes by which class inequality is created and perpetuated. Denial of these processes, and the social-structural roots of class advantage and disadvantage, undermines efforts to effectively address societal problems born of social class inequality. I show how class blindness allows those with privilege to police their social positions and secure resource hoarding within a community while holding the disadvantaged personally responsible for their struggles. I further describe how class blindness allows advantaged individuals to express concern about social problems including poverty and inequality in the abstract, while acting in ways that contribute to its perpetuation on the micro and the macro levels. This qualitative case study, based in 84 interviews and 10 months of participant observation with individuals across the class spectrum, illustrates the processes that contribute to the reproduction of social inequality even among those whose ideological stances include commitment to its reduction.

Simone Varriale reposted

LSE Inequalities
@lseinequalities.bsky.social

“The far-right’s emphasis on culture conveniently obscures economic inequalities between different factions of the working- and lower-middle class: everyone becomes a ‘lad at the pub’” – @simov.bsky.social in our latest blog post #LSEInequalitiesBlog 🔗

buff.lyHow working-class culture became an elite gameFrom Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

Simone Varriale reposted

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

I wrote a blog about how far-right leaders use ordinary tastes & 'working-class' identifications as political weapons (with some extra focus on Meloni, her cultural politics & policies). Plus other considerations about the 'political economy' of cultural taste blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities...

blogs.lse.ac.ukHow working-class culture became an elite gameFrom Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?
Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

I wrote a blog about how far-right leaders use ordinary tastes & 'working-class' identifications as political weapons (with some extra focus on Meloni, her cultural politics & policies). Plus other considerations about the 'political economy' of cultural taste blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities...

blogs.lse.ac.ukHow working-class culture became an elite gameFrom Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

Simone Varriale reposted

LSE Inequalities
@lseinequalities.bsky.social

How is cultural taste used as a political weapon? @simov.bsky.social argues that far-right leaders give public performances of working-class tastes as part of a conscious political strategy. What does this reveal? And what does it conveniently obscure? #LSEInequalitiesBlog 🔗 buff.ly/IRzaJJI

buff.lyHow working-class culture became an elite gameFrom Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?
Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

Apparently the Blue Labour take on the white paper is 'fine, but Starmer doesn't look like a working class bloke, it won't work'. It's a bizarre argument for people claiming they care about economic inequality (for whom? Britons looking like a Ken Loach character?) 1/2

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

The other implication is that talking about migrants & minorities as human beings is a middle class soft sentimentalism, so no need to engage with the contents of the white paper. Hence why not simply vote for Reform? It's the perfect performative class politics party

Simone Varriale
@simov.bsky.social

This is what in Naples is now called 'contemporary' pizza (fluffier crust, lighter dough), costed only 8 euros because despite touristification you can still get enormous/delicious sourdough pizzas at 6-8 euros in Naples