MA Political Science - European Politics & Policy Pathway (Standard Route) / Course details

This course explores the political economy of displacement on international, national, and urban scales. In so doing, the course seeks to expand common-sense conceptions of migration governance to include the study of displacement within interrelated issues in political economy. Students will be introduced to a theoretical tool kit which they will later apply to weekly topics in the course.

The notion of racial capitalism has enjoyed a renewed interest among political and critical theorists in the last decade. Faced with the joint crises of capitalism and liberal democracy, which have been accompanied by racist hostility against migrants, refugees, and non-white minorities, this framework seems particularly well suited to tackle the connection between capital accumulation and racist violence. Racial capitalism takes as its starting point the insistence that the movement, settlement, and hierarchical arrangements of people along racial lines is inseparable from regimes of capital accumulation. It rejects the treatments of race as external to a purely economic project and counters the idea that racism is an externality, cultural overflow, or aberration from the so-called “real workings” of capitalism. With a first part dedicated to theoretical debates and a second part covering issues such as slavery, crime and policing, indigeneity, and the politics of mass incarceration, the course will offer students a multi-faceted insight into the entanglements of race and capitalism. In taking this course, students will:

1. Explore the politics of race and capitalism in the global North and global South.
2. Understand empirical topics like housing, migration, labour, and incarceration through various theoretical approaches in political economy
3. Develop research and analytical skills

 

This course will take place in week two-hour seminars over 10 weeks. Each seminar will focus on one topic. The course convener will provide a short overview of the material and open up the discussion to a key question or learning objective. Students will then discuss the material and debate the various issues in a managed discussion by the instructor. The seminar will also include one group activity/group break-out so students can work on their interpersonal skills and aid each other in the grasping of certain concepts.

• Explain and analyse various conceptions of political economy
• Understand how theories relate to, and offer explanations of, various empirical topics
• Understand the importance of race, class and gender to political economy analysis

• Interrogate key texts and concepts

• Construct, critique, and defend arguments

• Understand the scholarly and political lineage of various theories

• Interpret the political meanings and significance of theories

• Independent research to support essay writing
• Oral communication and presentation skills
• Critical reading and writing skill development

• Critical reflection in terms of reading and writing
• Independent and teamwork development

• Close-reading and analytical reasoning  

• Virdee, Satnam (2019), “Racialized Capitalism: An Account of Its Contested Origins and Consolidation.” The Sociological Review 67(1): 3-27.
• Dawson, Michael C. (2016). "Hidden in Plain Sight: A Note on Legitimation Crises and the Racial Order." Critical Historical Studies 3(1): 143-61.
• Bhattacharyya, Gargi (2018) Rethinking Racial Capitalism: Questions of Reproduction and Survival, London: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Fields, Barbara and Karen Fields (2012) – Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, London: Verso
• Melamed, Jodi (2015), "Racial Capitalism." Critical Ethnic Studies 1, no. 1 (2015):76-85.
• Omi, Michael and Howard Winant (1994). Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. London: Routledge
• Harris, Cheryl (1993), “Whiteness as Property”, Harvard Law Review 106(08): 1707-1745
• Hartman, Saidiya V., (1997) Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press
• Coulthard, Glen S., (2014), Red Skin, White Masks. Rejecting the Colonial Politics of
  Recognition, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
• Shilliam, Robbie (2018) – Race and the Undeserving Poor: From Abolition to Brexit, Newcastle: Agenda Publishing
• Boggs, James. (2009) [1963], The American Revolution. New York: Monthly Review Press.
• Alexander, Michelle., (2011) "The New Jim Crow," Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 9, no. 1: 7-26
• Hall, S., (1978) Policing the Crisis, London: MacMillan
• Gilmore, R. W., (1998/1999). “Globalization and US Prison Growth: From Military Keynesianism to Post-Keynesian Militarism.” Race & Class 40 (2/3): 171-188.