The Making of ‘Eastern Europeans’: The Transnational Institutionalization of a Category

A growing scholarly literature has accounted for experiences of racism among individuals from the East of the European Union, particularly in the context of pre- and post-Brexit Britain. Others have argued, from diverse epistemological standpoints, that concepts such as race or racism add little to our understanding of intra-European mobility. These recent contributions, I suggest, suffer from a related shortcoming: they focus mainly on the attitudinal dimension of racism as expressed in the media or personal encounters. Foregrounding racism's structural features, I examine whether, how and why we can consider ‘Eastern Europeans’ as a racialized group. Specifically, I trace invocations of the category ‘Eastern European’ in public discourse and political mobilisation in two West European contexts, Britain and Germany. Empirically, the analysis draws on data collected for the MAM (‘Reaching out to close the border’: The Transnationalization of Anti-Immigration Social Movements) project, and includes a systematic mapping of statistical evidence, public statements by political representatives, and qualitative research interviews with activists who express their opposition against immigration. The analysis points to the transnational features of this racist repertoire and shows how the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated the inequalities produced by its means. However, this repertoire of racism should not be analysed in isolation from others. I argue that the categorization as ‘Eastern European’, and the attributes associated with it, operate analogously to, but also are embedded in and enabling of various other repertoires of racism. These entangled racisms, notably, help justify a growing precarisation of labour, the politics of austerity and the fortification of borders. The paper extends the emergent literature on undertheorized repertoire of racism, and develops our understanding of the motile, relational and shape-shifting nature of race.