Abstract
ABSTRACT In analysing efforts to pass as white, this article examines the ways racialized difference materializes on the bodies construed as “Eastern European”. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Russian-speaking migrants in Helsinki, it examines their attempts to inhabit whiteness through tactics of passing, such as changing their surnames, working on their accents, and adjusting how they dress. I argue that these efforts to pass as not “Russian” should be understood through the postcolonial formation of Europeanness, with its internal racialized division between (proper) Western Europeanness and (incomplete) Eastern Europeanness. The labour of approximating whiteness through passing draws attention to sites of racialized differentiation such as accent, audibility, language, surnames, and clothing. These efforts of attempting to pass for someone Russian speakers are not recognized as point to the structural racist hierarchies that refuse to attach value to their bodies.
Highlights
In critical theory of race, the former “second world” is often a blank space on the map
I argue that these efforts to pass as not “Russian” should be understood through the postcolonial formation of Europeanness, with its internal racialized division between Western Europeanness and Eastern Europeanness
These tactics suggest that even bodies that appear phenotypically white do not live up to the standards of hegemonic whiteness and Europeanness, and that these migrants feel they must invest in their bodies to approximate the white Western body if they want to achieve social advancement after migration
Summary
In critical theory of race, the former “second world” is often a blank space on the map (see Böröcz 2017; Baker 2018; Krivonos 2018; Zorko 2018). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among Russian-speaking migrants in Helsinki, it examines their attempts to inhabit whiteness through tactics of passing, such as changing their surnames, working on their accents, and adjusting how they dress. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2014 and 2016 in Helsinki, I analyse these migrants’ attempts to inhabit whiteness through tactics of passing, such as changing their surnames, working on their accents, and adjusting how they dress.
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