Racial Capitalism and the Border

Abstract

Abstract What is racial capitalism? This is a term that comes up frequently in the articles in this all-too-timely special essay on Exiles, Migrants, and Refugees. With the help of Cedric Robinson, Jodi Melamed, and Robin D. G. Kelley—and loosely modeled on Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s famous definition of racism—this commentary defines racial capitalism as a system for the production of surplus value through the maintenance and exaggeration of human group differences, made possible by the movement of large groups of people. The commentary then considers how this term guides the contributors of this special issue in thinking about a wide range of historical periods, geographical locations, and groups of people as they have experienced, again and again, a physical mobility that has been coerced or compulsory more often than voluntary. As much as racial capitalism might keep such groups apart from others, it also brings them into contact with one another and makes new social relations possible. It concludes with a call for greater attention to climate change and its significance for understanding the growing strength of anti-immigrant populism and the militarization of national borders all over the world.