Model Minority Authoritarianism: Social Mobility and the New Anti-equality Agenda

This article puts forward a cultural‐political formation it terms “model minority authoritarianism.” The idea of the model minority has both been venerated as the virtuous face of immigration and/or nonwhite achievement in the global North and roundly contested and critiqued as a patronizing, divisive, and implicitly racist trope. Yet it is currently embraced by right‐wing figures as a route through which the ideology of the opportunity for “upward social mobility” and neoliberal, marketized meritocracy can be promoted; is linked to displays of nationalism, military‐style discipline, and centralized control; and presents an image of multicultural progressiveness that is used to give credence to increasingly reactionary policies. This configuration comprises model minority authoritarianism. The article outlines its theorization and analyses its manifestations by considering recent developments in the UK Conservative Party and its wider cultural networks. In particular, it examines the actions of Katharine Birbalsingh, former head of the Social Mobility Commission and “Britain's Strictest Teacher,” alongside policy sources including the “Levelling Up” white paper and the Sewell Report. It argues that model minority authoritarianism needs to be understood as part of a broader right‐wing anti‐equality agenda that vehemently attacks accounts of structural social inequality and practices seeking to redress it.