Contesting ‘European Whiteness’: Stronghold against Europe’s Internal Diversity

Abstract: The paper attempts to provide an account of a silent feature that structures, sustains and mobilizes policies and actions at the wider EU level: European whiteness. The paper argument that whiteness plays a pervasive role both at the individual and institutional level, despite the symbolic construct of the European community with its declared diversity as the foundation and prerequisite for coherence and unity. The issue of whiteness is important especially in the context of a persistent, almost obsessive discourse around the importance of diversity and its centrality in forging a European space of identification that mirrors the multiplicity of its cultures and peoples. Drawing upon Butler’s theory of performativity, the paper illustrates exclusionary practices with a focus on two vulnerable groups in the EU, asylum-seekers/refugees and Muslim communities. These practices show how the European norm of whiteness is constantly reproduced in the face of threats from outside others, i.e. in the context of global economic instability or terrorist threats. Whiteness functions to set the standard against which external elements are judged, classified and assigned an often punitive and discriminatory place. The paper argues that an increased awareness of the pervasiveness of the white discursive performance is a first step in challenging and deconstructing discriminatory narratives of identity and related practices Tags: Academic