Racialisation, ethnic competition and legacies of colonialism: Peripherally white workers' position in global racial hierarchies

This chapter delves into racialisation processes experienced by Polish working-class migrants in Belgium and Germany. Empirical literature on the ‘ambiguous racialisation’ of Eastern Europeans in Western Europe is characterised by two persisting gaps. First, empirical accounts often lack integration with theoretical analyses of the postcoloniality of labour. Second, most studies focus on the British context. This chapter addresses these gaps by examining traces of imperial pasts in everyday interactions between migrant domestic workers from Poland and employing households in Belgium and Germany. The concept of ‘peripheral whiteness’ is central to the analysis, making sense of the simultaneously privileged and subaltern position occupied by Eastern Europeans within global postcolonial hierarchies of labour. The chapter shows that ‘peripherally white’ migrant domestic workers navigate their privileged yet precarious position by ‘affirming whiteness’, which involves competing with workers of colour and sometimes positioning themselves as victims of historical injustice.