Towards a transnational analysis of racialization, affect, and neoliberal capitalism

ABSTRACT

This review of Lisa Flores' Deportable and Disposable connects racialization of Mexican migrants in the US with a similar process in Hong Kong towards mainland Chinese immigrants, and Southeast Asian domestic workers. The essay argues for increased rhetorical attunement towards the transnational interconnectedness of racial hierarchy and neoliberal capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• immigration
• transnationalism

Notes

1 Shui-yin Sharon Yam, Inconvenient Strangers: Transnational Subjects and the Politics of Citizenship (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2019).

2 Flores, Lisa. Deportable and Disposable: Public Rhetoric and the Making of the “Illegal” Immigrant (Penn State University Press, 2020).

3 Annie Hau-nung Chan, “Live-in Foreign Domestic Workers and Their Impact on Hong Kong’s Middle Class Families,” Journal of Family and Economic Issues 26, no. 4 (December 1, 2005): 509–28; Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Migrant Workers (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).