Postwar European racism targeted integrated but culturally excluded migrant workers

Evidence

In some countries, immigrant labor was recruited in former colonies, but in these same countries, as for others, immigrants also came from Yugoslavia, Italy, Spain, or Portugal. In many respects, the populations of rural origin who came to work in the more industrialized areas of the same country were comparable to immigrants and were referred to as “peasants” - for example, in Italy those who had come from the South to work in the cities in the North, or in France the Bretons attracted by the steel industry in Lorraine or the car factories in the Parisian region. In these cases, racism was one of the elements in the disparagement and exploitation of workers who were, in the main, socially integrated, since they were employed, and culturally and politically excluded, as it was often a question of single men living in hostels or furnished rooms and more concerned with preparing their return home than with contemplating any form of integration in the host country. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3147

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to broader scholarship on guest-worker programs and the structural racism of temporary labor regimes; also resonates with the insider-outsider dynamics discussed in Zelizer’s moral economy work.