The study of race and ethnicity has been transformed beyond recognition over the past three decades. We have seen the emergence of new conceptual and empirical research by new generations of scholars that has opened up new arenas for research and has given voice to new critical perspectives in a field that was dominated by a limited range of analytical paradigms. Yet what also remains clear is that there are still a number of major absences in the research literature. Among the most important of these absences we can include the study of race and ethnicity within rural settings and communities. This is an issue that has received regular attention in media coverage in recent years, but the academic discourses of race and ethnicity have remained silent and largely ignorant of this important social and political phenomenon.

Such an absence is to some extent the result of the origins of the study of race and ethnicity in societies such as our own. From its earliest stages as a sub-discipline, the sociology of race and ethnicity has been constructed through an urban frame of reference, and researchers and policy makers have shared the view that the focus of research should be on urban environments that have been shaped by the impact of race and ethnicity. In the period since the 1960s this is pretty much the direction in which the study of British race relations has gone, and this is evident in the main books in this field as well as in the journals.

This important new collection of original research on contemporary facets of ethnicity, nation and forms of exclusion in rural Britain is therefore to be welcomed both by scholars and by policy makers working in this broad field. In putting together this masterful edited collection Sarah Neal and Julian Agyeman have sought above all to raise questions and issues for further research and analysis. Apart from the editors’ opening and closing overviews, the collection provides us with important contributions from leading scholars and researchers in this area of research. It includes chapters on such topical issues as the experiences of minority ethnic communities in rural environments, the position of Gypsy Travellers and New Age Travellers, the role of ideologies of race and place in a range of different environments and the experiences of refugees in rural environments. The various chapters are the product of up-to-date research and have been carefully edited to produce a volume that allows for diverse views as well as emphasising a number of common themes throughout.