Postsocialist racial geographies studies

The chapter discusses the main contribution of the volume Urban Marginality, Racialisation, Interdependence: Lessons from Eastern Europe by recentring the analytical and political value of the concept of "post-socialism" to advance a form of racial geographies studies from - and not just about - Eastern Europe (EE). Building on the work of EE scholars, the chapter argues that the post-socialist framework - if understood in terms of the wider cartographies and genealogies of dispossession spanning pre-socialist, socialist and post-socialist times and spaces - can provide situatedness to explore translocal intersections of dispossessive economies and embodied racialised practice in contemporary cities. Working with such an ethos in the context of EE requires forging tools to fight the epistemic and material devices occluding a critical understanding of EE's racialising landscapes and, crucially, asking what kind of learning those landscapes offer beyond EE. The chapter argues that three moves are necessary. First, to situate EE in its socialist history, among other previous histories, not simply by evoking a lost political differential but by working with the schizophrenic contemporary operationalisation of that past time. Second, to connect pre- and post-socialist times with the racial capitalist formations occurring during socialism. Third, these structural formations should be landed on and through embodied practice by looking at the place of concern and its geographical elongations.