Coloniality and Meritocracy in Unequal EU Migrations
Intersecting Inequalities in Post-2008 Italian Migration
By Simone Varriale
ISBN
978-1529222708Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529222715Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University PressISBN
978-1529222715Dimensions
234 x 156 mmImprint
Bristol University Press
Coloniality and Meritocracy in Unequal EU Migrations
This book rethinks meritocracy as a form of coloniality, namely, a social imaginary that reproduces narratives of ethnic and racial difference between European centres and peripheries, and between Europe and its others.
Drawing on interviews with working and middle class, white and Black Italians who moved to Britain after the 2008 economic crisis, the book explores the narratives of Northern meritocracy and Southern backwardness that inform migrants' motivations for moving abroad, and how these narratives are experienced within classed, racialised and gendered migrations.
Connecting decolonial theory with the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, this book provides innovative insights into the relationships between meritocracy, coloniality and European whiteness, and into the social stratification of EU migrations.
"Varriale deftly explores the discourses that shape migration in unequal Europes. The book forcefully reveals how a racialized imaginary of Northern modernity and Southern backwardness reproduces hierarchies of nation, race and class in Italian migrants’ politics of belonging." Manuela Boatcă, University of Freiburg
"A fascinating exploration of the meritocratic imaginaries of Italian migrants in Britain, and a timely intervention into the changing landscape of European migrations to the UK." Matthew Hayes, St. Thomas University
Simone Varriale is Lecturer of Sociology at Loughborough University.
List of Tables
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 The Coloniality of Meritocracy: From the Anglosphere To Post-Austerity Europe
2 Imagining Meritocracy in Unequal Positions
3 (Re)imagining Meritocracy in Unequal Migrations
4 The Coloniality of Belonging
5 The Coloniality of Brexit
Conclusion
Methodological Appendix
References
