‘Am I less British?’: Racism, belonging, and the children of refugees and immigrants in North London

This book presents a unique perspective on the everyday lives of British Turkish and British Kurdish youths, children of Turkish and Kurdish origin immigrants and refugees, in North London.It delves into notions of identity and belonging, as well as identity crisis and intergenerational conflicts between British Turkish and British Kurdish youths and their first-generation immigrant parents.The author also explores the dynamic and contingent relationships between class, ethnicity, and gender, the everyday experience of racism, and the social and cultural-political context transferred from Turkey.This nuanced understanding provides a significant depth in grappling with social, political, and cultural perceptions of young people about Turkey and Britain, London in particular, on a comparative basis.The rich insights collected through interviews with British Turkish and Kurdish youth help international readers understand the discussions about the broad distinctions between Turkish and Kurdish identities in a transnational context, while also shedding critical light on the repercussions of Turkish politics on the informants of this book.The above serves as a foundation for the racial, class and gendered dynamics of identity and belonging that the young subjects of the book carve out for themselves in a transnational arena and family houses harbouring a clash between parents and children over cultural values in North London.Consistent with this motivation, the book could have had a greater scholarly impact by more thoroughly integrating existing research conducted in the UK, such as drawing extensively on the identity formations of Turkish and Kurdish-origin British youth and the discourse of culture and identity clash with their immigrant parents.This would have strengthened the fresh perspective built upon the existing research.On a different note, bringing the spatiality of north London as a centre of the analysis in chapters 3 and 4, we learn the two-fold effect of living in multicultural London on the lives of young British Turks and Kurds.On the one hand, with its urban, convivial environments, London represents familiarity and the comfort of a "home", for those who seek emotional attachment (107).Its multiethnic neighbourhoods, including Hackney Dalston, Stoke Newington, Harringay and Tottenham, appear to be a safe haven, entwined with its "'homogenous spaces", including cultural and political community organisations run by Kurdish and Turkish-origin immigrants and refugees.It is striking to find how differentially Kurdish and Turkish-origin British youth navigate through and negotiate London-based Turkish and Kurdish organizations' political and ideological divisions based on their economic and cultural capital.The only caveat being in the previous context is the lack of sufficient background information about the community organisations mentioned.Competitive discourses underlying the polarisations and tensions beyond what those organizations represent in the UK would have been helpful, especially for international readers who do not speak Turkish and, hence, are not fully aware of the internal dynamics in Turkey.This additional information would have made