This piece of narrative may well evoke memories – and many questions – for you as a reader. What has been the impact on Djamillah's life and identity of that ‘misrecognition’ of her brown skin as ‘dirty’? How did this event affect the children doing the excluding, and the teacher standing by? How widespread were such experiences in the 1970s, in Britain and in other countries, and for Black, Asian and Arab immigrants? How do schools tackle such incidents? In what ways does racialised social exclusion differ from other kinds of everyday social prejudice?

Djamillah's extract may lead you to pessimistic thoughts about the extent of racism in Europe. However, there have also been many positive developments in the direction of multiculturalism. If you went to Germany in the mid-1990s, you might well have seen a widespread wall slogan which declared, “We are all foreigners!” Cleverly, this inverted the process of misrecognition, hailing passers-by to identify themselves as ‘foreigners’. While addressing all, the slogan simultaneously differentiated the German readers, inviting them to take the place of the stranger. This kind of sophistication is now commonplace in European countries experiencing their second and third generations of postcolonial cultural mixing. It is highlighted in the lively debates, often led by the university-educated children and grandchildren of migrants, about which concepts best capture the specific features of second- and third-generation migration experience and identity issues, and about how multiculturalism is shaking the foundations of European thinking and politics.