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Hesam JEBELI-BAKHT-ARA
Academia de Studii Economice din Bucureşti
This paper explores how racialized capitalism operates beyond the traditional North-South divide by examining the economic discrimination embedded in ethnic labour segmentation within Europe. Building on Cedric J. Robinson’s notion of racial capitalism, the study argues that ethnic and racial hierarchies are not residual features but structural mechanisms that sustain capitalist accumulation. The case of Eastern European and migrant workers employed in low-wage sectors in Western Europe illustrates how economic systems profit from ethnic differentiation: precarious contracts, reduced bargaining power, and systematic exclusion from higher-value labour markets. At the same time, migrants originating from outside the European Union, particularly from regions in the Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa or South East Asia face layered forms of socio-economic exclusion and cultural stigmatization within European host societies. By framing these inequalities as part of a global capitalist logic rather than isolated national phenomena, the paper demonstrates that economic discrimination along ethnic lines is a constitutive element of international political economy and thus stands as an important element of the current way of understanding the economic environment of today.

ŒCONOMICA no. 4/2025
Keywords: racialized capitalism, labour market segmentation, economic discrimination, migrant labour, political economy of labour, Europe
JEL: F22, F66, J15, J46, J71, P16
Racialized Capitalism and Economic Discrimination: The Case of Ethnic Labour Segmentation in Contemporary Europe