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Surplus lives under racial capitalism

Regular price £85.00
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This book argues that Roma became a racialised surplus population of post-socialism. It is a critical contribution to the study of racial capitalism in East Central Europe.
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  • 28 April 2026
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Surplus lives under racial capitalism is a critical contribution to the study of racial capitalism. It theorises the link between political economy, anti-Roma racism and modern forms of white supremacy in East Central Europe. The book shows how the introduction of capitalism in the 1990s overlapped with the rise of racialised disposability of Roma workers. Since then, their surplusing recurrently comes into sharp relief during the time of crisis. Surplus lives under racial capitalism is built on an investigation of how race and class structure the Czech labour regime and how they form a single site of struggle. One which binds workers across racialised divisions as surplusing continuously expands.
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Price: £85.00
Pages: 200
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Series: New Ethnographies
Publication Date: 28 April 2026
ISBN: 9781526181879
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:

SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Social and cultural anthropology, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / European Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Sociology / Social Theory, Sociology: work and labour

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‘Quite simply, this book is extraordinary. The text is coherent, theoretically and analytically rich, and above all, readable. The theoretical grounding for the book is complex, but the author unpacks her main arguments about racial capitalism and surplus populations lucidly and in an understandable manner.’
– Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Masaryk University, Czech Republic

‘This book forcefully re-centres race and class in East-Central European and post-socialist scholarship. By bridging Marxian accounts of reserve armies of labour with theories of racial capitalism, Cernušáková provides a crucial lens on contemporary capitalist racialisation and the Roma question.’
– Sara R. Farris, Goldsmiths University of London

Introduction
1 A Roma neighbourhood and the political economy of spatial segregation
2 Stuck in low-paid precarious work
3 Disciplined through unpayable debt
4 The post-socialist state and the racialised surplus population
5 Issues with ethnographic research
Epilogue