Simone Varriale

Varieties of Racial Capitalism: Black and Muslim Italians' Unequal Migrations Between Italy and Post‐Brexit Britain 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 interview...

I’m really happy to see this open-access article finally out doi.org/10.1111/anti...

It explores ‘varieties of racial capitalism’ through the experiences of Black and Muslim Italians who moved to Britain during the 2010s and sometimes returned to Italy (or moved elsewhere) 1/5

#sociologicalplaylist 4: a recent Italian translation of Lea Ypi's work on class and migration. She's a political theorist & sociologists would learn significantly from how she recentres class in debates about migration & racism. The original essays are in English (probably easy to find via GS)

No emails in the last 4 hours... everyone is marking 😅

I'm still at 20%(ish) 😭

Random facts: it's nice to be published in a geography journal (as a sociologist who was bad at geography in school). And it's the first time (in 12 years) I don't reference Bourdieu 🙃

Finally, the article explores how some participants got caught in Britain’s post-Brexit ‘re-bordering’, and how intersecting inequalities shape unequal experiences of Britain’s labour market 4/5

I also show how Italian citizenship law stratifies access to intra-EU mobility and creates legal inequalities between families and within them. This echoes longstanding arguments by scholars and activists about the institutionally racist effects of Italy’s citizenship regime 3/5

The findings highlight the economic dimension of racism in Italy: how labour-market insecurity shapes family and individual biographies, affects belonging and ideas of ‘integration’, and can feed into decisions to emigrate 2/5

Varieties of Racial Capitalism: Black and Muslim Italians' Unequal Migrations Between Italy and Post‐Brexit Britain 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 interview...

I’m really happy to see this open-access article finally out doi.org/10.1111/anti...

It explores ‘varieties of racial capitalism’ through the experiences of Black and Muslim Italians who moved to Britain during the 2010s and sometimes returned to Italy (or moved elsewhere) 1/5

From solidarity to self-promotion? Neoliberalism and left politics in the age of the social media influencer - Jonathan Dean, 2024 The aim of this article is to map the contested intersections of influencer culture and left/progressive politics within the current conjuncture. Furthermore, d...

#sociologicalplaylist 3: Jonathan Dean's article on 'left politics in the age of the social media influencer'. A really sharp analysis of UK-US online left culture. Sadly Jonathan is no longer with us, I wish I'd known him better (met him briefly years ago). journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Three chords & [somebody’s] truth: Trajectories of experience and taste among hard country fans To date, much social scientific work on taste has relied on Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to account for changes in tastes across the life course. But…

#sociologicalPlaylist p2, Alessandra Lembo's study of country music fans and their taste trajectories. A criminally under-cited paper (ethnographies of music taste using Bourdieu but in a critical way are as rare as unicorns) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Why Things Matter to People Cambridge Core - Social Theory - Why Things Matter to People

I might start a #sociologicalPlaylist (books, articles etc. I think should be rediscovered). Here's Sayer's Why Things Matter to People, a masterpiece on everyday ethics & morality. Philosophically powered but crystal-clear writing that takes time, care & craft www.cambridge.org/core/books/w...

Meritocracy, Recognition and Double Consciousness: Why Black and Muslim Italians Move to (and Sometimes Leave) Post‐Brexit Britain This article rethinks meritocratic ideology as practical knowledge that transforms through biographies of social and geographical mobility. Drawing on 37 interviews with Black and Muslim Italians liv....

New article out! We rethink ‘meritocracy’ not as a fixed belief but as practical, embodied knowledge transformed through experiences of social and geographical mobility onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 1/6

Add growing emigration to this and UK politics will soon experience 'postcolonial panic attacks' rather than the usual 'postcolonial melancholia'

I wrote ‘The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia: Engaging in everyday struggle’. It tells the story of working-class communities in post-industrial cities explaining the challenges they face and showing how they struggle with them. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526167637/

Meritocracy, Recognition and Double Consciousness: Why Black and Muslim Italians Move to (and Sometimes Leave) Post‐Brexit Britain This article rethinks meritocratic ideology as practical knowledge that transforms through biographies of social and geographical mobility. Drawing on 37 interviews with Black and Muslim Italians liv....

This article by @simov.bsky.social on Black and Muslim Italians navigating post-Brexit Britain brings double consciousness into the realities of global mobility. It's a sharp, thoughtful take on how opportunity, recognition, and belonging collide. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Labour's announcements on asylum seem part of an 'anything goes' tendency started by the Conservative governments, essentially going towards reneging on basic international law obligations. The confusion in announcements makes it clear that it is about electoral signalling rather than policy itself

We also show the damages of Italy’s institutional and everyday racism: how it pushes new generations of Black, Muslim and minoritised Italians abroad and the scars it leaves on their sense of identity and belonging. For many, post-Brexit Britain remains desirable compared to this context. 6/6

Yet ‘meritocratic Britain’ is a practical, fuzzy ‘map’: it is transformed by the experience of living in Britain (sometimes leading to new migrations) and co-exists with critique of ‘British’ racism. 5/6

Key findings: participants don’t invoke ‘meritocracy’ as a coherent ideology, but are attracted by imaginaries of ‘meritocratic Britain’ which resonate with their search for recognition, equality and security 4/6

We draw on interviews with Black and Muslim Italians living in post-Brexit Britain and Du Bois’ ‘double consciusness’, which helps us understand racialised minorities’ relationship with hegemonic narratives in more nuanced ways than ‘strong’ ideology theories 3/6

By centring racialised minorities' double-consciousness, practical knowledge & struggles for recognition, we highlight the limitations of false consciousness, misinformation and psychological compensation as explanations for meritocratic belief 2/6

Meritocracy, Recognition and Double Consciousness: Why Black and Muslim Italians Move to (and Sometimes Leave) Post‐Brexit Britain This article rethinks meritocratic ideology as practical knowledge that transforms through biographies of social and geographical mobility. Drawing on 37 interviews with Black and Muslim Italians liv....

New article out! We rethink ‘meritocracy’ not as a fixed belief but as practical, embodied knowledge transformed through experiences of social and geographical mobility onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... 1/6

Probably the days of 'excited to announce' are over, but I got an article accepted in a geography journal, which *is* exciting because I was crap at geography in school 😅

YouTube video by Arrevuoto James Senese & Napoli Centrale - Campagna

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcv5...

“A Problem with the Person”: Class Blindness and the Reproduction of Social Class Inequality - Qualitative Sociology In this paper I introduce and explicate the concept of “class blindness,” and show how it works to obscure and justify class inequality even in a small community in which social divisions are well recognized. Similar to the concept of color-blind racism, class blindness is a discursive strategy to erase and minimize class privilege and the social processes by which class inequality is created and perpetuated. Denial of these processes, and the social-structural roots of class advantage and disadvantage, undermines efforts to effectively address societal problems born of social class inequality. I show how class blindness allows those with privilege to police their social positions and secure resource hoarding within a community while holding the disadvantaged personally responsible for their struggles. I further describe how class blindness allows advantaged individuals to express concern about social problems including poverty and inequality in the abstract, while acting in ways that contribute to its perpetuation on the micro and the macro levels. This qualitative case study, based in 84 interviews and 10 months of participant observation with individuals across the class spectrum, illustrates the processes that contribute to the reproduction of social inequality even among those whose ideological stances include commitment to its reduction.

This looks great: “A Problem with the Person”: Class Blindness and the Reproduction of Social Class Inequality

YouTube video by Underworld Underworld - Push Upstairs

Rediscovering this great track & album youtu.be/W3Ud0UG7JbQ?...

How working-class culture became an elite game From Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

“The far-right’s emphasis on culture conveniently obscures economic inequalities between different factions of the working- and lower-middle class: everyone becomes a ‘lad at the pub’” – @simov.bsky.social in our latest blog post #LSEInequalitiesBlog

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How working-class culture became an elite game From Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

I wrote a blog about how far-right leaders use ordinary tastes & 'working-class' identifications as political weapons (with some extra focus on Meloni, her cultural politics & policies). Plus other considerations about the 'political economy' of cultural taste blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities...

How working-class culture became an elite game From Nigel Farage's pints of ale to Giorgia Meloni's tomato selfies, how are working-class tastes weaponised by the leaders of far-right political parties?

I wrote a blog about how far-right leaders use ordinary tastes & 'working-class' identifications as political weapons (with some extra focus on Meloni, her cultural politics & policies). Plus other considerations about the 'political economy' of cultural taste blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities...