The Racialization of Global Labor

Abstract

Drawing on both historical and contemporary examples, the authors argue that today's global capitalist system is maintained and structured within a global system of White supremacy. Groups of workers are located within a hierarchically organized, racialized labor system that differentially exploits workers based upon their racialized and gendered location. Dominant racialized labor groups (mainly White/European workers) are in general afforded more privileges than subordinate racialized labor groups (workers of color), who face the denial of basic citizenship rights and higher degrees of exploitation and inferior working conditions.

Racialized im/migration and autonomy of migration perspectives: New directions and opportunities

“…Migration scholarship, AoM approach/migration scholarship, AoM approaches contest sovereign constructions of "illegals aliens," demystify grandiose technological displays of the "border spectacle" by highlighting how illegality and deportability facilitate subordinate inclusion, and ultimately withdraws from hegemonic investments in nationalist assimilation. While undertheorizing the role of race, relational racialization and racial ordering in borderscapes of differential inclusion, the AoM approach is nevertheless consistent with literature that takes seriously the racial and class dimensions of im/migration and the continuous reformulation of racial capitalism (Bonacich, Alimahomed, & Wilson, 2008;Gleeson, 2010;Gomberg-Munoz, 2012;Gonzales, 2014;Lowe, 1996;Melamed, 2015;Molina, 2011;Ponce, 2014;Robinson, 2000;Robinson, 2006;Roediger & Esch, 2012). In particular, Golash-Boza's (2015) work on how mass deportations form a critical part of global neoliberalism and circuits of neoliberalism and Gonzales's (2014) neo-Gramscian treatise on the contested nature of anti-migrant hegemony provide unique openings to think through both racialized im/migration and AoM in ways that account for racial domination and migrant resistance.…”

‘“For a better life …“ A study on migration and health in Nicaragua’

“…At work, the physical being is intimately connected to socio-economic relations, often characterized by unequal power relations [80]. Today’s global, capitalist labour system is not only hierarchically organized and geographically differentiated, it is also racialized and gendered, and exploits workers based on their social position [81,82]. Migrant workers are in a particularly vulnerable situation, as they are newcomers who are less familiar with the labour market, and often also have fewer rights [83].…”

Geo-capitalism and global racialization in the frame of Anthropocene

“…In the perspective of global racism, dynamics of racialization such as the discrimination against minorities in order to exploit their labour or to exclude them from social benefits underlined by a number of scholars (see for example Castles, 1993;Miles & Brown, 2003;Bonacich, Alimahomed, & Wilson, 2008;Rex;), are taking two converging dynamics. On the one hand, the global economy generates local regimes of racialization in which targets of racial practices change depending on the race, religion, culture descent: afro-descendants, natives, tribes, groups, and minorities of different religion and habits (such as Rohingya in Myanmar, Uyghur in China, Dalits in India, Xavante in Brazil, Ogoni in Nigeria).…”