Europe responds to perceived external menace by constructing concentric rings of inauthentic belonging

Evidence

This response to the perceived menace from the outside can be characterized as “federalizing containership.” This consists of a European core around which, as Balibar suggests, are nucleated at least two container rings of states conceived as less or incompletely or not fully European by nature or historical formation. Federalizing containment plays out locally as increased harassment of racial foreigners (and those profiled as not fully belonging). This includes criminalizing not just immigration but (those perceived as) immigrants by state agents with more or less unqualified support by a state citizenry frenzied by fear. Racial europeanization thus resituates the classic mix of institutional and individual racisms, of racisms representative of the state and sewn into the fabric of civil society. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 928

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces ‘federalizing containership’ as a coined concept for Europe’s concentric-ring exclusion structure.
• SEED: The ‘federalizing containership’ concept could anchor an essay on how scaled belonging (EU vs nation vs locality) redistributes who counts as authentically local.
• XREF: connects to: the MOC “The Enemy-Making Machine: How Ourselves, the True, and Every Other Are Built from War”