Studies of postwar immigration reveal much about the causes and consequences of population movement for European societies, economies, and polities, and poignantly describe the often arduous life of the immigrants themselves. All but absent from this substantial body of research, however, is a concern with everyday European responses to immigrants. A similar lacuna prevails in many studies of race in the United States, and for similar reasons. From the late 1960s, the shift in focus from the “prejudice” of individual whites to the broader framework of “institutional” or “structural” racism generated powerful insights into the nature of inequality at the same time as, in important ways, it dismissed the questions of white racism, ambivalence, and anti-racism (Miles 1989: 50–6). Thus critical, often Marxian, analyses of race tend to attribute racism to systems, and ultimately to the elites who are thought to benefit from a divided workforce, and to overlook the actions of white workers in shaping their racial identity and protecting their own privileges. As a result, too many concerned scholars on both sides of the Atlantic take for granted how whites think about and act with regard to race and immigration, how they give or do not give political expression to notions of difference and similarity, and how class, culture, and gender shape views and practices. This oversight has obscured our understanding of the role of power, ideology, and everyday experience in contemporary societies.