Ghettos let dominant societies extract a minority’s economic services while keeping them socially excluded

Evidence

The ghetto was from the outset a site of ambiguity: a means of housing the Jews while holding them at arm’s length. Christian societies had need of the Jews, not least because they were not bound by the prohibitions against usury. Jewish loans assisted the poor, helped finance trade, and provided governments with an additional source of funds through taxation. The ghetto provided a way in which Christians could enjoy the commercial benefits that the Jews provided without having to live alongside them. It was a way of incorporating those who would nevertheless continue to be treated as outsiders. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2372

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the dynamics of racialized labor extraction and ‘separate but useful’ incorporation seen in colonial, plantation, and debt-peonage systems.
• SEED: A possible essay angle: the ghetto as a generic technology of ‘incorporation without inclusion’ — how societies across time and place use spatial segregation to secure a minority’s services while denying membership.