The DOI matches its Crossref record; 36 of the 36 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
East–west inequalities and the ambiguous racialisation of ‘Eastern Europeans’
Open accessAbstract
A growing scholarly literature describes people who moved from Europe’s East to its West as racialised. Others speak of ‘migratization’ or ‘xenophobia’. Many of these contributions have in common that they conceive of discrimination as occurring after migration. What is more, they focus on the attitudinal dimension of ‘prejudice’, as expressed in the media or the narratives of East–West movers themselves. What thereby slips from view is that racism has geopolitical-economic and legal dimensions, and structures life opportunities. This article explores how categories such as ‘Eastern European’ are invoked, deployed and how they are put to work – via policy or the law. The analysis shows that neoliberal policies have attributed a distinctive positionality to ‘Eastern Europeans’ in West European racial hierarchies. I argue that people from Europe’s East are distinctively, yet ambiguously racialised, and discuss facets of this ambiguity. Most notably, they are inferiorised within Europe, but often positioned within global racialised categories of ‘Europeanness’. This racialisation is not a product of twenty-first century mobilities but reflects and reproduces the peripheralisation of Europe’s East. Of course, racialisation shapes everyday lives after migration; yet, it also channels the life opportunities of those born in the East over the course of generations.
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“Following this logic, Ukrainians, as white Europeans (cf.Lewicki 2023 on Eastern Europeans' contested whiteness status), align with the white Canadian mainstream to secure a sense of belonging rather than allying with other displaced or refugee groups to challenge existing migration and class structures.”
From Wages of whiteness contra refugee in the twenty-first century: Afghan and Ukrainian women’s self-identification as (non)refugees in Canada (2026) · cites this paper as Lewicki 2023
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“micro-level research has prioritised gender, class, ethnicity and sexuality in refugees' self-identification, leaving race comparatively underexamined (for exceptions see Lewicki 2023Lewicki , 2024;;Mayblin 2019).”
From Wages of whiteness contra refugee in the twenty-first century: Afghan and Ukrainian women’s self-identification as (non)refugees in Canada (2026) · cites this paper as Lewicki 2023
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Citations
Cites
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Racism and xenophobia experienced by Polish migrants in the UK before and after Brexit vote
Rzepnikowska, A. (2018) · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · doi:10.1080/1369183x.2018.1451308 · Cited by 378
The Racialization of the New European Migration to the UK
Fox, J., Moroşanu, L., & Szilassy, E. (2012) · Sociology · doi:10.1177/0038038511425558 · Cited by 372
Racialized capitalism: an account of its contested origins and consolidation
Virdee, S. (2019) · The Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/0038026118820293 · Cited by 280 · cited 1×
“This categorising as different, Virdee (2019) suggests, becomes racism when characteristics are understood as immutable and groups are ordered hierarchically in relation to one another.”
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Seth, S. (2018) · Cambridge University Press eBooks · doi:10.1017/9781108289726 · Cited by 181
White enough, not white enough: racism and racialisation among Poles in the UK
Narkowicz, K. (2023) · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · doi:10.1080/1369183x.2022.2154913 · Cited by 96
Race, racialisation, and the East of the European Union: an introduction
KALMAR, I. D. (2023) · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · doi:10.1080/1369183x.2022.2154909 · Cited by 86
The Unbearable Whiteness of the Polish Plumber and the Hungarian Peacock Dance around “Race”
Böröcz, J., & Sarkar, M. (2017) · Slavic Review · doi:10.1017/slr.2017.79 · Cited by 85
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Cited by
Race, racialisation, and the East of the European Union: an introduction
KALMAR, I. D. (2023) · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · doi:10.1080/1369183x.2022.2154909 · Cited by 86
Coloniality, Race, and Europeanness: Britain’s Borders after Brexit
Lewicki, A. (2024) · International Political Sociology · doi:10.1093/ips/olae025 · Cited by 61
Self-citationRefugees Separated by the Global Color Line: The Power of Europeanness, Whiteness, and Sameness
Balogun, B. (2023) · International Migration Review · doi:10.1177/01979183231218981 · Cited by 40
Baker, C., Iacob, B. C., Imre, A., & Mark, J. (2024) · Manchester University Press eBooks · doi:10.7765/9781526172211 · Cited by 31
‘Stop calling me Murzyn’ – how Black Lives Matter in Poland
Balogun, B., & Pędziwiatr, K. (2023) · Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies · doi:10.1080/1369183x.2022.2154914 · Cited by 30
Metadata
- Authors
- Lewicki, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Sussex (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Lewicki, Aleksandra
- Venue
- Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2023-01-11
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1481-1499
- ISSN
- 1369-183X (ISSN-L)
- 1469-9451
- OpenAlex
- W4319841116
- Cited by
- 136
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 37 · 2025: 42 · 2024: 33 · 2023: 24
- FWCI
- 58.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Sussex Research Online (University of Sussex) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Research Council of Norway (303219)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Migration, Refugees, and Integration
- Social Sciences › Demography › Diaspora, migration, transnational identity
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Romani and Gypsy Studies
- Keywords
- racialization, neoliberalism, racial hierarchy, Europeanness, peripheralization, xenophobia, migrant policy, racism
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Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
