New Dynamics of Racialised Labour Disciplining in Central and Eastern Europe
Our intervention focuses on the operation of racial capitalism on the periphery of the Global North—in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). We examine the entanglement of racialisation in the disciplining of labour through household debt in Czechia and Hungary. Drawing on empirical data from both countries, we discuss how the mechanisms of labour racialisation evolved around Roma and how they expanded to migrant workers. For decades, Roma workers in both countries have been disproportionately affected by unpayable debts and they also remain confined to low-paid and precarious jobs. Despite nationalistic and racist rhetoric of leading politicians, the demand for cheap manufacturing labour in CEE increased, which led the rise of the number of migrant workers. In 2024 in Hungary, 100,000 migrant workers, mainly from Ukraine, Philippines and Vietnam, were reported to work in automobile and electronics factories. The number of migrant workers in Czechia was reported to be even higher (Desku, 2024). Researchers have described their situation as “perpetual temporariness” (Bisztrai et al, 2022), marked by precarious employment contracts and racialisation (Schling, 2022; Sachetto & Andrijasevic, 2016).
We propose that the entry of new migrant labour from Global South to CEE countries, builds on the existing dynamics of labour racialisation in employment and household indebtedness. Our intervention explores these dynamics of racialisation in workplaces and neighbourhoods, and examine how it affects the existing mechanisms of residential confinement and labour disciplining and racialisation of Roma?
We will conclude with a discussion on the responses of workers to these dispossessive mechanisms, and the new opportunities to re-politicise these struggles through the presence of workers from Global South. Our focus on social reproduction and anti-racism struggles aims to provide an opportunity to re-articulate the demands of labour movement at this junction.