Rex pioneered explaining racial conflict through migration status and market-position inequalities

Evidence

John Rex and Robert Moore’s classic account of “race, community and conflict” in Birmingham in the West Midlands of England during the 1960s remains an important account of this phenomenon. Rex and Moore’s (1967) study represents an early attempt to develop a conceptual framework for the analysis of the politics of race in contemporary societies. The starting point of this study was that the position of ethnic minority communities must be understood primarily in terms of their status as migrants. Rex combined a Weberian notion of class analysis with elements of the urban sociology developed by the Chicago School, and what he has termed in his later work a “loose marxism” (Rex, 1989). Rex subsequently attempted to provide a sociologically based explanation for racial discrimination and conflict by identifying inequalities in “market situations” which fuel conflicts between indigenous workers and newcomer populations (Rex, 1973:32). — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2160

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Rex’s synthesis of Weberian class analysis, Chicago School urban sociology, and loose Marxism.
• XREF: connects to: Rex defined race relations situations by matching structure plus deterministic belief — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 671