Racism by stealth: The construction of racist hate crimes

This thesis presents the findings of an ethnographic study of the social worlds of racist hate crime victims and their caseworkers. The fieldwork involved participant observation and 25 interviews with victims and caseworkers at a charity that supports victims of racist hate crime, based in an ethnically diverse UK city. The aim of the research was to explore victims’ perceptions and experiences of racist hate crime in light of the victim-centred definition of ‘hate crime’ adopted by the criminal justice system in England and Wales. This research contributes to a gap in our understanding of who is victimized and how, with what impact, and why they believe they have been victims of racist hate crime.The literature review sets the foundations for the thesis, arguing that empirical research is required to understand victims’ perceptions of racist hate crimes at the micro-level and the process of victimization as it extends to claiming and negotiating hate crime victim status with, for example, police officers. The analysis and findings build on the idea of racist hate crime as a process and shows how people become victims and how hate crimes are interactional accomplishments.Whilst making the case for the use of embodied ethnography for research into hate crime, the thesis addresses a range of complex ethical and epistemological issues – from cross-cultural research to researcher safety. The research also addresses gaps in knowledge, including the significance and operation of the Stephen Lawrence definition of hate crime. It adds granularity to our understanding of who is victimized and how, including less blatant forms of victimization – racism by stealth. The thesis thereby contributes to our understanding of the ways in which racism is encoded in victims’ lives and how they perceive risk and suffer harm.