Who still needs the nation? Empire, identity and the British welfare state

It is difficult to conceive of a re-imagination of "us" by focusing solely on the state, especially where the intended objective is to trouble the prevailing national project. If national projects, like racial projects, must be laboured at to be sustained, then in the case of Britishness we find a rich vein of contestation by those left out of its formal narration. It is on this point that the discussion will focus, beginning with a preliminary but unstated question that warrants explicit attention, namely: why re-make national projects at all?