Model minority authoritarianism: Social mobility and the new anti-equality agenda

This article puts forward a cultural-political formation it terms ‘model minority authoritarianism’. The idea of the ‘model minority’ has both been venerated as the virtuous face of immigration and/or non-white achievement in the Global North and roundly contested and critiqued as a patronising, divisive and implicitly racist trope. Yet it is currently embraced by right-wing figures as a route through which the ideology of the opportunity for ‘upward social mobility’ and neoliberal, marketised meritocracy can be promoted; which is linked to displays of nationalism, military-style discipline and centralised control; and in which an image of ‘multicultural’ progressiveness is used to give credence to increasingly reactionary policies. This configuration comprises ‘model minority authoritarianism’. The article outlines its theorisation and analyses its manifestations by considering recent developments in the UK Conservative Party and its wider cultural networks. In particular, it examines the actions of Katherine Birbalsingh, former Head of the Social Mobility Commission and ‘Britain’s Strictest Teacher’, alongside policy sources including the Levelling Up White Paper and the ‘Sewell Report’. It argues that model minority authoritarianism needs to be understood as part of a broader right-wing ‘anti-equality’ agenda which vehemently attacks accounts of structural social inequality and practices seeking to redress it.