Neoliberalism, securitization and racialization in the Irish taxi industry

Abstract

The Irish taxi industry was deregulated in 2000 during an era of neoliberal reform and record economic growth. Driving a taxi became a popular occupation for new immigrants, and the industry came to be associated with racial tensions. Today, the taxi industry is undergoing a process of re-regulation that includes a variety of security and identification measures. This article explores contested trends in governance, contemporary interventions that make use of new technologies and processes of subjectification such as racialization. We draw on several years of ethnographic research on the integration of African migrants in Ireland, which includes an exploration of labour integration, and extend this work here. We retrace the political rationalities behind deregulation and re-regulation and show the specific ways in which security interventions manifest themselves. We also look to the ways in which racialization processes operate within the industry and are nested in the modes of governance and (in)securitization.