Varieties of Racial Capitalism

Black and Muslim Italians' Unequal Migrations Between Italy and Post‐Brexit Britain

Bibliographic Data

ID7472012
AuthorsVarriale (0000-0001-7276-3435, Department of Criminology, Sociology and Social Policy, School of Social Sciences and Humanities Loughborough University Loughborough UK, corresponding author)
Year2026
Volume58
Issue1
Publication date2026-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAntipode (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0066-4812 • E-ISSN: 1467-8330
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/anti.70115
OpenAlexW4417499689
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited42

This article advances debates on racial capitalism by reconceptualising it as globally connected yet regionally uneven, and as negotiated and resisted through unequal migrations. Drawing on interviews with Black and Muslim Italians living in Britain or returned to Italy, it explores how participants and their families use EU mobility rights to navigate nationally distinctive but transnationally connected racialised capitalist dynamics. Findings demonstrate the connections between exploitation, racism and ‘integration’ in Italy, and their influence on participants' motivations for emigration. They further highlight how Italy's citizenship legislation stratifies access to intra‐EU mobility, producing legal and economic inequalities between and within families, and how intersecting inequalities and Brexit expose more vulnerable participants to the sharp end of Britain's racial capitalism, challenging imaginaries of a more inclusive Northern society. The article argues that centring racialised minorities' geographical imaginaries and unequal migrations allows for mapping varieties of racial capitalism, while also capturing their transnational effects and intersectional experience