Law, Migration, and the Construction of Whiteness

""A terrific contribution to the critical study of whiteness transnationally, this lively, broadly learned, and methodologically sophisticated work shows that the 'enlargement' of the European Union only expanded political rights and economic opportunities for central and eastern Europeans within stark and contested limits. Assumptions regarding what made a united Europe cohere and of what nations and institutions should lead it continued to aggrandize Europe's north and west even as the lesser whiteness of those to the east was nominally acknowledged."" David Roediger, University of Kansas, USA ""In this much needed account, Dagmar Myslinska explores the interconnectedness between the legal environment, migration and evolving ideas about whiteness in the European Union. Drawing on detailed research, it provides an important insight into the changing dynamics of mobility, migration and bordering in the world around us."" John Solomos, University of Warwick, UK ""A valuable and original intervention that opens up the causes and consequences of hostility to Central and Eastern European migrants in Western Europe. Dagmar Myslinska unpacks and complicates existing debates on whiteness and, along the way, demonstrates that the racial politics of ‘Brexit’ were not exceptional but indicative of wider patterns found across Europe."" Alastair Bonnett, Newcastle University, UK ""Dagmar Myslinska’s book levels a forceful, yet measured, critique of the entrenched inequality that has driven the European Union’s treatment of Central and Eastern Europeans. It articulates the historical processes through which peripheralization has occurred, and evidences the contemporary manifestations of this inequality, with intricate clarity. Myslinska’s impressive command of the historical, legal and sociological dimensions of her work render it all the more compelling."" Samantha Currie, Monash University, Australia ""This book powerfully demonstrates how East-West divides of old have been given a new lease on life via East-West mobility from the EU’s newest member states. The author’s postcolonial approach shows how the racialising logic of the EU legal framework for intra-European mobility call-upon, validate, and refresh East Europe’s – and East Europeans’ – continued marginality in Europe."" Jon Fox, University of Bristol, UK ""The concluding chapter offers the most powerful introduction to the grave consequences of the racialisation of CEE nationals and to the simultaneous invisibility of this racialisation from the EU discourse."" Alezini Loxa, Lund University, Sweden