The Performance: Nativism, belonging, and the confluence of two worlds at the London 2012 Olympic Games

The London 2012 Olympics represented to the socio cultural imagination of the nation, a seminal moment of not simply sporting excellence but of a national arrival, a coming together global showcase of British society and values. Embedded into this mass communicated display of a quintessential variety of British multiculturalism, interminably discussed at the time, was the national discourse of British ‘tolerance’, formative in shaping notions of national identity. Collectively characterised as ‘structures of feeling’, an ensemble of mutual social and expressive cultural relations operative in society (Williams , 1978; Williams 1981).
However, existing at the same time and space as this event was a vehement practice of intolerance, which took the form of state sanctioned ‘hostile environment’ policies, enacted against the same groups who were spearheaded as exemplars of Britishness. Ordained as heralds for the zeitgeist of a new national identity prevalent within society at this moment in national life. Of concern, the UK Government’s hostile environment legislation a cluster of policies set in motion in 20 12 tasked private sector banks, employers, landlords and the non private sector NHS alongside a host of various intra and extra governmental agencies in the enforcement of immigration controls (Akala, 2018; JCWI). This unquestionably resulted in unpreced ented state sanctioned abuse of citizen rights (JCWI). Research scholarship accords that the results of these policies were not an accident, but the inevitable consequence of political decisions (Akala, 2018; JCWI, 2023; Wimbush, 2023).
This paper will revisit this conjectural moment in British national life and explore this socio cultural event through the critical and novel conceptual lens of colourwashing. Thereby problematising related literature that foregrounds the event as a symbol of contempor ary unification to give voice to alternative readings (Thomas, & Anthony, 2015). Unpacking this moment to explore why some contributions were deemed inconsequential, discounted, and excluded their Britishness denied, eviscerating their identity. The pape r will seek to discern why those lives were lived in precarity at a moment of symbolic national identity formation that globally displayed ‘diversity’ as a source of national strength.