Haley Mcavay

This course is available on the MSc in Economy and Society, MSc in Inequalities and Social Science, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy and MSc in Sociology. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

This course has a limited number of places. For information on how to apply for a place on this course, please see Courses offered and related information

Why are ethnic/racial inequalities so pervasive and enduring across contemporary societies? What markers (e.g. phenotype, language, religion) underpin ethnoracial boundaries, and why do some countries formalize these distinctions and others do not? What mechanisms create and sustain these inequalities? This course aims to give you the empirical and theoretical tools to address these types of questions from a global and interdisciplinary perspective. This means exploring the form ethnoracial inequality takes across different national contexts (primarily in North and South America, Europe, and Asia), how they are measured, and how social scientific theories (from sociology but also from social psychology, economics and political science) can help us grasp their mechanisms. In the first part of the course, we will spend time unpacking the concepts of race/ethnicity, how and why ethnoracial classification systems are deployed (or not) by states, and lessons from social psychology about categorical cognitive processes. We will then explore the interconnectedness of migration and ethnoracial boundaries. The second part of the course will focus on key structural mechanisms. The course will conclude by discussing how ethnoracial inequality interacts with other forms of categorical inequality such as gender and class. By the end of the course, students should feel well-equipped to study ethnoracial inequality in a variety of ways and engage with live debates and challenges in this area unfolding worldwide.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through seminars. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week in WT.

Presentation.

The formative assessment is a group presentation project. Students will work in small groups to produce a 10-minute presentation addressing a question on ethnoracial inequality. These will be presented in class in Week 7.

• Beaman, J., & Petts, A. (2020). Towards a global theory of colorblindness: Comparing colorblind racial ideology in France and the United States. Sociology Compass, 14(4), e12774.
• Bonilla‐Silva, E. (2000). “This is a White Country” 1: The Racial Ideology of the Western Nations of the World‐System. Sociological Inquiry, 70(2), 188-214.
• Brubaker, R. (2004). Ethnicity without groups. Harvard university press.
• FitzGerald, D. S. (2017). The history of racialized citizenship. The Oxford handbook of citizenship, 103(1), 129.
• Morning, A. (2015). Ethnic classification in global perspective: A cross-national survey of the 2000 census round. Social statistics and ethnic diversity: cross-national perspectives in classifications and identity politics, 17-37.
• Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2014). Racial formation in the United States. Routledge.
• Safi, M. Migration and Inequality. Polity Press.
• Solomos, J. (2022). Race, ethnicity and social theory. Routledge.
• Tilly, C. (1998). Durable inequality. Univ of California Press.
• Weiner, M. F. (2012). Towards a critical global race theory. Sociology Compass, 6(4), 332-350.
• Wimmer, A. (2013). Ethnic boundary making: Institutions, power, networks. Oxford University Press.

Course participation (5%).

Essay (85%, 4000 words) in May.

Continuous assessment (10%).

The continuous assessment will comprise weekly journal entries based on prompts. Students will need to complete at least 5 entries of 200-250 words throughout the term. Oral feedback on the journal entries will be given during office hours upon request by the student.