Surplusification, Carceral Violence, and Super-Exploitation in Europe: Racial Capitalism as a Bridging Analytic

The concept of racial capitalism has been widely discussed in academic and activist circles for some years now. While much of the debate focuses on specific readings and employments of the concept, this article argues that racial capitalism is helpful to analyze and critique the relation between increasing state and border violence on the one hand, and ongoing forms of unfree labor on the other. Drawing on accounts from various European contexts, ranging from strikes of migrant workers to mobilizations against increasing policing and border violence, this article employs racial capitalism as an analytic that can bridge these articulations of capitalism in post-neoliberal Europe. In the first part, three crucial characteristics of racial capitalism approaches are discussed. In the second part, the connection between carcerality, as a response to surplusification, and modalities of unfree migrant and racialized labor is conceptualized by drawing on examples from Germany and France. The final part elaborates why class struggle must encompass the areas of political struggle waged by people rendered surplus as well.