Political Blockage and the Absence of Europe: Subterranean Politics in London

Abstract

London does not represent the United Kingdom as a whole: it is a ‘global city’, a place where ‘an immense array of cultures from around the world … are reterritorialized’ and whose links to that new territory are ‘far less likely to be intermediated by the national state or “national culture”’ (Sassen 2000: 88–90). As a global city, London is understood as a point of convergence for local, national and transnational identities, as well as a wide range of overlapping political formations organised around anything from community or diaspora concerns through to national issues and on to global justice. Studying subterranean politics through the views and strategies of its diverse informal political actors, then, brought an interesting dimension to the overall project. It required that we engage with these overlapping identities, which, we hoped, might help reveal the nature of the relationship of subterranean political actors to Europe beyond the national context.

With acknowledgement and thanks to Maro Pantazidou, who was key to the research design and interview phase of the project; see Deel and Murray-Leach (2012).