Introduction: What’s going on?

Abstract

In the summer of 2010, I overheard the following conversation between two men in a pub in Essex (about 25 miles east of London).

‘You know Tesco are sponsoring the England football team during the world cup?’

‘Yeah.’

‘There was this woman from South Africa who complained about all the England stuff being displayed in the shops. What does she expect? This is England. If she doesn’t like it here, she can leave.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

Nothing terribly thrilling here, you might suppose. And yet think for a moment what this apparently insignificant conversation tells us about how these men view the world and their place in it. Why might the assumptions that underlie the exchange and, in particular, the sense of entitlement they claim, be important, not least because it all seems so unremarkable?