Robert Miles

Capitalism and unfree labour : anomaly or necessity?

Robert Miles deals with the historical continuity of forms of unfree labour in parallel with the emergence and reproduction of free, waged labour, offering a theoretical explanation drawing on international data.

RACISM, MIGRATION AND THE STATE IN WESTERN EUROPE: A CASE FOR COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Comparative studies of post-1945 migration into Western Europe, and of the political and ideological responses to migration, have become increasingly common. While these studies demonstrate a number of common processes, their particular mode of expression can differ substantially from one country to another. This requires the development of a theoretical framework which is formulated at a level of generality which can encompass the historical specificity of, and variation between, particular instances, yet which permits a general explanation which is sensitive to that specificity and variation. The framework offered in this paper proposes a comparative analysis of the migration of four analytically distinct categories of person which highlights the role of the state in the reproduction of the imagined community of nation. That role is carried out in the context of a more general process of the regulation of scarcity, in the course of which people are simultaneously included in and excluded from the hierarchy of economic, political and ideological positions in the nation-state. Of special interest is the content of the processes of signification and categorisation that are generated in the inclusionary and exclusionary processes. The countries selected for analysis are France, the Netherlands and Britain.

Comparative Studies of Migration and Exclusion on the Grounds of “Race” and Ethnic Background in Western Europe: A Critical Appraisal

Comparative studies of migration into Western Europe and of the expression of racism within the various countries of Western Europe have become increasingly common. These can be divided into three relatively distinct categories on the basis of their intentions and objectives. However, they all share the weakness of being unable to explain both the commonality and the specificity of migration flows and the political and ideological character of the reaction to these migrations. Hence, they highlight the need for an alternative methodology and theoretical framework for such comparative analysis.

Class, Race Ethnicity and Political Action

The article considers three potential processes involving the political action or inaction of West Indian and Asian immigrant workers in Britain. Drawing upon both documentary sources and the authors own research it argues that political organization across ethnic minority lines is neither a current reality nor a short-term possibility. In contrast, while members of ethnic minorities engage in class-based forms of political action, they sometimes organize along distinct ethnic lines due to the racial exclusion of white British workers in the industrial sphere. Furthermore, it is likely that such action will be used to bring pressure to bear on the formal sphere of politics when accommodation of ethnic interests is inadequate or fails to occur.

United Kingdom? : class, race, and gender since the war

Part 1 Class: reform and reaction two gears of class the mechanics of nonchange. Part 2 Race: the solution that started a problem making sense of racism a quiet fire. Part 3 Gender: out of the ideal home shaping moulds the feminist solution conclusion - potential and prohibition.

Racism and Ethnicity

While sociologists reject the Idea of naturally occurring biological races, they are interested in the ways in which ideas and beliefs about ‘race’ are important sources of Inequality and identity. The aims of this chapter are to question the concepts of ‘race’ and ‘race relations’ and explain and illustrate the concept of ‘recialization’ and ‘racialized’ inequalities, It also considers how ‘racial’ inequalities relate to inequalities of class and gender considered in the previous chapters. This chapter should help you understand: the distinctions between ‘race’ and ethnicity and ‘race relations’ and ‘racialized relations’ What sociologists mean by racism and new racism Some of the major theoretical approaches that have been developed to examine ‘race’ and ethnicity How the idea of racialized inequality can be applied to the example of Britain

The politics of immigration to Britain: East-West migrations in the twentieth century.

This analysis places recent interest in East/West migration in a historical perspective. It argues that East/West migration to Britain is not a new phenomenon: Russian Jews arrived at the turn of the twentieth century and members of the Polish Armed Forces and Displaced Persons in the mid‐to late 1940s. Official responses to these refugee movements varied as did the ideological representations of the incomers. In particular, prevailing political and economic considerations as well as ‘race‐thinking’ informed official responses. Current British policy towards refugees from former Yugoslavia reinforces the argument that refugee status is socially determined, rather than inherent in a particular set of circumstances.

A rise of racism and fascism in contemporary Europe?: Some sceptical reflections on its nature and extent

Abstract This article examines recent suggestions that manifestations of racism and fascism are becoming more widespread throughout Europe. Without denying that there may have been a ‘rise in racism’, it is argued that statistical evidence of a rise in racist incidents also reflects an increased willingness to report these incidents. In turn this may reflect a greater political recognition of the dangers of racism and fascism. This recognition brings with it its own problematic, implying a demand for political action to avert an impending evil. Doomsday scenarios of a looming catastrophe, akin to events in the 1930s, do not adequately reflect the complex and troubling issues now facing Europe.

Book reviews : Black and Ethnic Leaderships in Britain: The Cultural Dimensions of Political Action Pnina Werbner and Muhammad Anwar (eds) Routledge, London, 1991, 345pp, £40.00 hbk

as envisaged. To be fair, the authors do attempt to carefully catalogue each phase of the project and to draw out the lessons learnt at each stage. The conclusion and list of recommendations seem to reflect fairly the problems encountered and how things might be done differently in the future. Although this is a sometimes dry report, it does contain information of interest for anyone involved in this area. But that is not quite all there is to it. What the report fails to do is attempt any kind of evaluation, let alone critique, of the premises of the project. Whether that is a reflection of the ideological commitment to the

Book reviews : The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars Elazar Barkan Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991, 381pp, £37.50 hbk

Claims that scientific racism is dead sometimes seem premature: while the body might have been buried by the eminent scientists gathered together by UNESCO several times after 1950 in the wake of the horrors of Belsen and Treblinka (and so many other factories of death), the ghost still seems to put in an occasional appearance in the academic work of individuals who put the name of science to their various assertions concerning inheritance and ‘race’ . ’Intelligence’ has long been a common arena for such work, and AIDS has more recently become an alternative terrain. Yet, it is only the neo-fascists who continue to publish photographs of human heads or statistics of imputed brain sizes, hierarchically ranked, in an attempt to legitimate their authoritarian objectives. In this rather specific sense, scientific racism was successfully buried some 40 years ago, at least in Europe and North America. Barkan has written a useful book which traces the terminal illness of the ’beast’ in the United States and Britain during the 1920s and 1930s.