The Awkward History of Racism and Capitalism

At first glance, neoliberalism appears to have little in common with racism, since it promises a meritocratic order in which individual competences matter, regardless of ethnicity, skin colour or origin. This chapter problematises that assumption by reconstructing the structural relationship between racism and successive configurations of capitalism: colonial, industrial and neoliberal. It demonstrates that racial differentiation has repeatedly operated as a classificatory principle for organising labour, mobility and access to rights. Drawing on Michel Foucault, it is assumed that neoliberal capitalism works not only as a political economy but also as an art of governance which produces entrepreneurial subjectivities. It disciplines individuals into seeing themselves as autonomous, self-investing agents. This perspective reveals how a neoliberal labour regime generates social hierarchies in which migrants are valorised either positively, as mobile, adaptable, hard-working subjects, or negatively, as embodiments of undesirability and disposability.