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Genealogy
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Global Racialization, Class and the Politics of Nation: Tensions and...
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Global Racialization, Class and the Politics of Nation: Tensions and Articulations in the Twenty-First Century

A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 November 2025) | Viewed by 7114

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Steve Garner

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Social Sciences, Swansea University, Swansea SA1 8EN, UK
Interests: race; racism(s); immigration; ethnicity; class; nation; nationalism; Irish studies; Caribbean studies
Dr. Amal Abu-Bakare

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Politics, School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool L69 3BX, UK
Interests: anti-colonial international relations; postcolonial studies; abolitionist thought; racialisation and systemic racism in international politics; intersectional and Islamic feminist projects; counterterrorism and CVE; migration security; critical security studies; art as a political medium

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue aims to capture the global dynamics of the intersection between the process of racialization, social class and the political evocation of nationalist ideas and practices—in their broadest sense. The goal of this Special Issue is to publish cutting-edge work on how race, nation and class articulate, across the world, in the third decade of the twenty-first century. We therefore invite essays from scholars of social science and humanities disciplines on this topic. These pieces will engage critically with the literature on nationalism by focusing on its internal tensions, around race and class, and analyze how states and/or citizens produce versions of the politics of nation deriving from such tensions. This is an attempt to add nuance to theories of the nation, underscore the articulation of the state and social movements’ roles in developing racialized and classed versions of the nation and to set studies drawn from different parts of the world in dialog with one another.

Dr. Steve Garner
Dr. Amal Abu-Bakare
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • racialization
  • race
  • class
  • nation
  • nationalism
  • state
  • social movements
  • ethnicity

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Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

26 pages, 9552 KB  
Article
Resurrecting Pharaohs: Western Imaginations and Contemporary Racial-National Identity in Egyptian Tourism
by Zaina Shams
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 152; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040152 - 12 Dec 2025
Viewed by 1129
Abstract
This paper explores racialization as a historical-sociological concept and an ongoing, contemporary material praxis, using a Global Critical Race and Racism (GCRR) framework. Racialization is an ideological and material practice of colonial conquest that requires constant reification and maintenance. This paper examines how [...] Read more.
This paper explores racialization as a historical-sociological concept and an ongoing, contemporary material praxis, using a Global Critical Race and Racism (GCRR) framework. Racialization is an ideological and material practice of colonial conquest that requires constant reification and maintenance. This paper examines how racialization and racial practices are positioned within Egyptian state tourism campaigns, through a media content and discourse analysis, as a function of contemporary national-racial identity formation. Histories of colonial archaeology, race science, and the European colonial domination and imagination of Egypt heavily contextualize this analysis. First, the paper outlines how the identity of ancient Egyptians was a racing project fundamental to white supremacy and global race and racism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in ways that are intricately tied to contemporary nationalism, national identity formation, and nation-building in modern Egypt. The focus of this paper is Egypt’s agency in its national identity formation practices, wherein it acknowledges, negotiates, and markets aspects of its racialization that are economically and geopolitically advantageous, specifically within the tourism industry and in relation to Pharaonic Egypt. In this way, Egypt’s racialization is not simply externally imposed; the Egyptian state is engaging with global structures of race and racism by maintaining racial mythologies for Western imaginaries. Egypt’s contemporary national identity formation includes an engagement with its past that negotiates its position within a global hierarchy of nations across the racial-modern world system. This study explores notions of autonomy, acquiescence, and resistance under racialization by examining how nation-states engage with, resist, or leverage racialization. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Racialization, Class and the Politics of Nation: Tensions and Articulations in the Twenty-First Century)
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18 pages, 368 KB  
Article
Global Racialization, Class, and the Politics of Nation: Education as a Site of Racial Formation and Resistance in the United States, South Korea, and Iran
by Yaereem Lee, Haniyeh Kheirkhah, Hannah Stohry and Brittany Aronson
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 150; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040150 - 11 Dec 2025
Viewed by 665
Abstract
This study examines the applicability of Critical Race Theory (CRT) beyond its U.S. American origins by analyzing the intersections of state, nation, race, and education in two distinct sociopolitical contexts: South Korea, and Iran. This manuscript explores how education functions as a genealogical [...] Read more.
This study examines the applicability of Critical Race Theory (CRT) beyond its U.S. American origins by analyzing the intersections of state, nation, race, and education in two distinct sociopolitical contexts: South Korea, and Iran. This manuscript explores how education functions as a genealogical site of power mediating relations among the state, nation, race/ethnicity, and social class in the construction and contestation of national identity. In South Korea, historical and contemporary student movements, from anti-colonial struggles and democratization to the Sewol Ferry protests, illustrate how education has served both as a means for producing normative citizens and as a site for cultivating democratic participants through civic resistance. In Iran, educational institutions intersect with gender, ethnicity, and political authority; within a tightly centralized system, CRT and intersectionality illuminate both possibilities and constraints of critical engagement. By situating these two cases within global debates on racialization, class inequality, and nationalism, this paper contributes to a comparative understanding of education as a contested arena where nations are imagined, challenged, and reconfigured. It contributes to scholarship at the intersection of race, class, and nationalism by offering insights into how the state structures and civic actors co-construct the politics of national identity through education in the 21st century while also highlighting the role of racial experiences in these processes. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Racialization, Class and the Politics of Nation: Tensions and Articulations in the Twenty-First Century)
23 pages, 366 KB  
Article
The Enforced Silence: Gaza and the Scholasticide of Palestinian Academics—Parallels, Provocations, and Pathways for Action
by Syra Shakir, Fadoua Govaerts and Penny Rabiger
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 146; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040146 - 4 Dec 2025
Viewed by 2037
Abstract
This article interrogates “enforced silence” in higher education as an active, racialised technology of governance that manages speech, polices dissent, and narrows the horizons of legitimate knowledge. Bringing scholarship on institutional racism, decoloniality, and academic freedom into dialogue with analyses of scholasticide, [...] Read more.
This article interrogates “enforced silence” in higher education as an active, racialised technology of governance that manages speech, polices dissent, and narrows the horizons of legitimate knowledge. Bringing scholarship on institutional racism, decoloniality, and academic freedom into dialogue with analyses of scholasticide, the systematic destruction of education and intellectual life in Palestine, the paper argues that neutrality and professionalism function as administrative veneers that protect institutional reputation while disciplining racialised scholars and erasing Palestinian epistemologies. Palestine operates here as both an acute site of violence and a diagnostic mirror that illuminates a transnational repertoire of epistemic governance: censorship, securitisation, campus injunctions, and weaponised definitions that chill debate and criminalise solidarity. The article extends the concept of scholasticide beyond material destruction to include ideological and institutional assaults on dissent and critical thought, demonstrating how marketised, securitised universities reproduce racial regimes while disavowing complicity. Against this architecture, the paper advances a praxis-oriented framework drawing on critical pedagogy and the Palestinian ethic of Sumud to envision universities as sites of freedom rather than corporate neutrality. It sets out concrete strategies for scholars and institutions, including protections for dissent, refusal of censorious definitions, divestment from complicit partnerships, cross-border classrooms, and recognition of emotional–political labour, to convert witness into transformative action. The article concludes by insisting that academic responsibility is irreducibly collective: education must commit to liberation, not serve domination. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Racialization, Class and the Politics of Nation: Tensions and Articulations in the Twenty-First Century)
12 pages, 239 KB  
Article
Global Tensions and Articulations in the Twenty-First Century Politics, and the Need to Reconceptualise Citizenship Education
by Charste C. Wolhuter, Johannes Lodewicus (Hannes) Van der Walt and Nico A. Broer
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 144; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040144 - 4 Dec 2025
Viewed by 523
Abstract
It seems, three decades into the twenty-first century, as if the interrelated trends of deglobalization, regressive nationalism, populism, and identity politics are gaining traction worldwide, thereby embodying inclinations that seem to be the opposite of those in preceding decades. Citizenship Education, both as [...] Read more.
It seems, three decades into the twenty-first century, as if the interrelated trends of deglobalization, regressive nationalism, populism, and identity politics are gaining traction worldwide, thereby embodying inclinations that seem to be the opposite of those in preceding decades. Citizenship Education, both as a broad academic discipline and as a school subject, appears to be a suitable vehicle for addressing and even countering these new global trends, if and when required. The first part of this paper surveys and assesses the aforementioned global political trends that are currently unfolding. This is followed by considering whether these trends can be countered by citizenship as a broad academic discipline, and by Citizenship Education as a subject taught in schools. The historical evolution and present state of citizenship education are reconstructed and assessed. The article concludes with arguments aimed at reconceptualising Citizenship Education as a school subject capable of successfully countering current political trends, if required. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Racialization, Class and the Politics of Nation: Tensions and Articulations in the Twenty-First Century)
13 pages, 220 KB  
Article
White South African Refugee Claims to Marginalisation: A Case of Re-Racialisation
by Suriamurthee Moonsamy Maistry
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 143; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040143 - 2 Dec 2025
Viewed by 888
Abstract
South Africa has relatively recently transitioned from a condition of legislated racial stratification to a democracy in which all South Africans now enjoy political enfranchisement. While political emancipation has been achieved, economic and social emancipation remain elusive for the majority of Black South [...] Read more.
South Africa has relatively recently transitioned from a condition of legislated racial stratification to a democracy in which all South Africans now enjoy political enfranchisement. While political emancipation has been achieved, economic and social emancipation remain elusive for the majority of Black South Africans who still bear the brunt of poverty and deprivation. South Africa’s white colonial communities, having relinquished political power, continue to retain and enjoy economic and social class privileges. Despite state-driven social cohesion and nation-building initiatives, the envisaged ‘rainbow nation’ (a metaphor coined by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu) is becoming an increasingly fragile social aspiration. Historical legacies, especially regarding white affirmation, wealth accumulation, and the imperative for economic redistribution and land reform, have become key flashpoints in contemporary South Africa. This paper addresses the issue of how South Africa’s corrective justice and affirmative action policies are re-racialised into narratives of reverse racism, white persecution, and white genocide. It examines how racial arbitrage works where whiteness is systematically re-racialised and traded for its value in a different country context. It examines how disillusioned white South Africans leverage white racial and class privilege for transnational mobility and protections, white settler-colonial receptivity and white nationhood. It draws attention to the tensions and contradictions in global asylum regimes, illuminating transnational networks of privilege and economic superpower coercion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Racialization, Class and the Politics of Nation: Tensions and Articulations in the Twenty-First Century)
16 pages, 299 KB  
Article
Discipline, Conformity, Compliance—An Analysis of Italy and Tunisia’s Education Guidelines for ‘Westernized’, White, Middle-Class Nations
by Valentina Migliarini and Nabil Ferdaoussi
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 116; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040116 - 1 Nov 2025
Viewed by 984
Abstract
The conjuncture of our present time, as Stuart Hall would argue, calls for a critical scrutiny of socio-political forces that aim to destabilize epistemologies and praxis of inclusion, diversity and equity. Such forces use education as a strategic site to perpetuate far-right ideologies [...] Read more.
The conjuncture of our present time, as Stuart Hall would argue, calls for a critical scrutiny of socio-political forces that aim to destabilize epistemologies and praxis of inclusion, diversity and equity. Such forces use education as a strategic site to perpetuate far-right ideologies and the idea of superiority of white, Western, middle-class nation-states. This article explores more recent manifestations of fortress Europe through the co-optation of inclusive education for migrant and refugee students in Italy and Tunisia. As critical scholars from opposite sides of the Mediterranean, we draw on anti-Blackness to engage in an analysis of the use of education policies to reproduce white supremacy in Italian society, while investing in humanitarian education in Tunisia to contain the movement of African migrants towards Europe. Lastly, the article intends to center the voices of Afro-descendant activists, who have increasingly gained a platform to speak back against such policies, and advocate for a more equitable society, with a more inclusive citizenship law. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Global Racialization, Class and the Politics of Nation: Tensions and Articulations in the Twenty-First Century)
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