Idk who needs to hear this...

Propagating the good immigrant trope or individuals’ exceptionalism narrative doesn’t change the minds of those who use the language of “swarms” to describe asylum seekers/refugees as a population group or stand in front posters like this.

Y’all need to read the many, many articles on why measuring the value of people in terms of GDP/economic value is awful & read @nikeshshukla’s ‘The Good Immigrant’.

It’s almost like people have forgotten the lessons of Coronavirus. Specifically about how we value people, and in particular the brown & Black working classes who don’t work in middle class professions or have exceptional academic records (that often get them to said jobs).

Some of you had figurative whiplash when reckoning with how one day a cleaner or supermarket store staff were unworthy & not valuable and the next they’re heroes.

I also woke up to a tweet that said I was attacking an exceptional student for not being “BAME enough” & others implying I’m bitter.

Always lovely. But to follow up with a personal anecdote...

My siblings & I (well, not me - I’m the least accomplished!) are the definition of exceptionalism & good immigrants. That strengthens my reasons for not subscribing to the good immigrant/individual exceptionalism/economic value criteria: my parents weren’t valued according to it.

It means for individual immigrant/descendants of immigrant being brandished as exceptional, they may well have a parent who those same people want to kick out or not allow in.

This is the one example when ‘All Lives Matter’ is important: value all immigrants, asylum seekers & refugees. Celebrate individuals, absolutely, but what’s needed is a wholesale changing of kinda about the entire group of people. Be kinder for the sake of human dignity.

PS. My mum never attended school. My dad attended primary school in Bangladesh & worked in UK since his early teen years in midlands restaurants & East End garment factories. He’d leave the factory with a sack of suit patterns home, which he & my housewife mum would sew until 1am