Description: This book argues that Roma became a racialised surplus population of post-socialism. It is a critical contribution to the study of racial capitalism in East Central Europe.
Review Quotes:
'Quite simply, this book is extraordinary. The text is coherent, theoretically and analytically rich, and above all, readable. The theoretical grounding for the book is complex, but the author unpacks her main arguments about racial capitalism and surplus populations lucidly and in an understandable manner.'
- Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Masaryk University, Czech Republic; co-author of Historicizing Roma in Central Europe: Between Critical Whiteness and Epistemic Injustice
- Sara R. Farris, Goldsmiths University of London; author of In the Name of Women's Rights 'Cernusáková boldly shows what a theoretically astute urban ethnography can do. Surplus lives offers us a deep understanding of how class and race operate on and within the lives of Roma people in the Czech Republic and how central this is for postsocialist industrial policy.'
- Don Kalb, University of Bergen; author of Value and Worthlessness 'Surplus Lives under Racial Capitalism is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand how racialisation and capitalism intertwine in contemporary Europe. Through powerful ethnographic insight, Barbora Cernusáková reveals how precarious work, segregation, and debt are not peripheral issues but central mechanisms producing a racialised "surplus population". Urgent, rigorous, and deeply illuminating, this book is essential reading for scholars, students, and all those concerned with inequality and social justice.'
- Angéla Kóczé, Associate Professor of Romani Studies at Central European University; author of Romani women at the edge of neoliberal Europe: Discursive emancipation and structural violence