James Carr is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology in University of Limerick.
He is an authority on the topics of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism in Ireland having completed his doctoral studies into racism directed towards Muslim communities in Ireland with funding from the Irish Research Council [now Research Ireland].
His book Experiences of Islamophobia: Living with Racism in the Neoliberal Era (London and New York: Routledge (paperback since 2018) focuses on anti-Muslim racism in Ireland set to the international context.
James has received European Commission funding via the Citizens Equality, Rights and Values (CERV) programme for SALAAM [Sustainable Alliances Against Anti-Muslim Hatred].
With my work, I know there's no ‘winning’. I know that we're up against it in many ways, but this is my society as well, and I'm not going to allow someone within my society to take my understanding of Irishness and corrupt it to exclude people.
We are aspiring for something better than a society that excludes.
A passion for inclusion and equality for all is the fire that fuels the work of Associate Professor James Carr.
The inspiration, the spark, the trigger for my research was a curiosity about racism. I've always been curious about trying to see how society works, who's included, who's excluded, and racism is something that is clearly very, very important and something that impacts upon so many different people.
The aim is an inclusive society
An inclusive society for me is where people get to really realise their potential and ambitions, not having to worry about whether or not they'll get a job, whether or not they'll succeed, whether or not they'll be able to live in such a neighbourhood because they're coming from a particular identity background.
It’s a society that feels free from all those barriers that are holding people back, barriers that diminish all of us. Because if somebody is being excluded right now and they haven't got the opportunity to bring their voice to the table because of who they are, then we all lose out.
Education is key…one step at a time
What's quite clear is that those who experience racism experience it across their life course, across a whole range of different contexts, and it's something that's ever present-within their lives. What I wanted to do is really get an understanding of racism, and then to try and challenge racism at a social level.
Part of my SALAAM research is working with local communities to try and find ways where we can support people working within local authority contexts, to inform and educate about racism and anti-racism and how people can be supported as service users.
Now we start to see a greater natural, organic relationship flourishing between local authorities and the service users they have from diverse backgrounds who were otherwise not engaging for whatever reason.
The challenge is that racism is something that is so big. And this is a small piece, but it's a piece that in the broader context, within the Irish context, that provides us maybe with a space where we can leverage the experiences here, the insights we learn here to then inform a broader European context.
It's been a really good process. It’s partnership. It's collaboration.
We're not going in with ‘this is the university, and this is what we're doing’. We're a collaboration of University of Limerick, the Immigrant Council of Ireland, Doras in Limerick, and the Irish Network Against Racism.
We're working together as a consortium, and we're working in partnership with the local authorities to try and provide evidence-based solutions to societal issues at a real grassroots level.
While the challenge might be huge, we can take it on a step at a time.
Meaningful change through understanding
In terms of impact, for me, some of the most important work I've done so far has been working with international organisations and advising them on how racism is even understood, and seeing those understandings then translate into policies and recommendations that are used to hold nation states, governments to account.
I would have maybe been cynical in the past, thinking, ‘well, how much impact can you have in this space?’ But certainly, in one piece of work that I was involved with, a month after its publication, it was used in a monitoring report about how a particular government was treating negatively racialised minorities within their society.
And that for me is quite encouraging because it's saying, ‘okay, this is making a difference’. It is an incremental thing. The challenge of racism is not something we're going to solve overnight, so we have to stay involved.
Global but local
The work James and his colleagues are engaged in is a global one, but he has no doubts when it comes to the potential impact one university in Ireland can have.
We're doing work that will have that profound effect on society in Ireland, in Limerick, but also outside of that. While we're in this really privileged location in a beautiful university on a beautiful campus, we're plugged into bigger debates, debates that really span across the globe right now, across a range of different issues.
On the topic of inclusivity, we're there. We're right there with the best of them in terms of trying to create a more inclusive society. We're really trying to lead in it.
It’s the stance of University of Limerick of saying to the world that ‘yes, we want to be part of a group that leads and we're open to new ideas’.
We're open to taking on these challenges. We're not afraid of it. We're not sitting back and saying, okay, we're this new university, just over 50 years old.
We're saying, “no, this is our space. These are our issues. We claim these”. And we live those values.
We step up!
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