What are the boundaries of white privilege in the context of a fragmented European space? Why did European expansion reinforce, rather than dissolve, those fragmentations? How are historical, legal, political, and economic processes implicated in the racialization of Eastern European citizens? And what are the limits of anti-discrimination laws and discourses in addressing these inequalities? These are some of the central questions that structure Dagmar Myslinska’s book, which seeks to shed light on the paradoxical effects of the European Union’s (EU) enlargement in the 2000s. A project underpinned by a benevolent, almost civilizing vision of integration—aimed at reducing regional disparities and fostering cohesion—has, instead, contributed to the entrenchment of social and economic inequalities within Europe.
Myslinska argues that this outcome is not accidental, nor merely an unintended consequence of complex integration processes. Rather, it is the product of a confluence of historical trajectories, political and economic decisions, and legal inertia and silences. At the heart of her argument lies the claim that the EU operates as a Western-centric project that continues to extract political and economic value from its peripheries. This claim is developed through a careful legal and discursive analysis of the accession negotiations and subsequent integration of Central and Eastern European (CEE) states into what is often framed as the “core” of Europe. The resulting analysis offers a lucid account of the fraught and uneven realization of key EU promises, particularly those concerning freedom of movement and equal rights within the Union.
European Integration Reinforced Internal Racial Hierarchies
Against dominant critical accounts that frame European integration primarily in terms of the construction of a “Fortress Europe” (Albrecht Reference Albrecht2002; Melossi Reference Melossi, McCulloch and Pickering2012), Myslinska persuasively argues that integration has also reinforced internal hierarchies and boundaries, not merely external borders. These internal divisions, however, have remained largely unacknowledged in both political and academic debates on migration, where exclusion is typically assumed to begin at the external border and to affect primarily non-European, racialized others. Myslinska’s intervention is therefore particularly important in drawing attention to the ways in which Eastern European migrants occupy a liminal position within European racial hierarchies. Even in the context of rising anti-migrant sentiment and increasingly visible Eurosceptic and ethno-nationalist movements—of which Brexit represents perhaps the most consequential manifestation—the “differential inclusion” of Eastern Europeans remains strikingly under-explored (Mezzadra and Neilson Reference Mezzadra, Neilson, Balibar, Mezzadra and Samaddar2011). While much scholarly and political attention has focused on the exclusion of non-white migrants, Myslinska demonstrates that processes of racialization also operate within Europe itself, shaping the experiences of those who are formally included within the category of European citizenship. In doing so, the book challenges dominant assumptions about the relationship between whiteness, citizenship, and privilege.
How Law Produces Exploitation and Inequality
A key contribution of the book lies in its efforts to redress these blind spots by foregrounding the role of law in the construction and maintenance of racialized hierarchies. Moving beyond reductive understandings of law as a neutral instrument for the realization of rights, Myslinska develops a more complex account of what we might term the “legal production of exploitation.” Through this lens, law emerges as a contingent and dynamic site through which inequalities are both produced and normalized. Although her primary focus is on CEE migrants or “movers”,Footnote 1 Myslinska acknowledges that her analysis extends to other groups who have been unequally incorporated into the European project, including Romanian and Bulgarian nationals.
One of the most compelling aspects of the book is its historical depth. Challenging the myth of a homogeneous and uniformly white Europe, Myslinska traces in chapter 1 the racialization of Eastern Europeans back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She situates contemporary forms of exclusion within a longer history of intra-European differentiation and hierarchy. Groups such as the Irish, Jews, Russians, Poles, Travellers, and Roma were constructed, at various moments, as Europe’s “white others,” occupying ambiguous positions within racial and civilizational hierarchies. This historical perspective is particularly illuminating in relation to the development of early immigration controls in countries such as Britain. The Aliens Act of 1905, for instance, was explicitly designed to restrict the entry of Eastern European Jews fleeing persecution (Anderson Reference Anderson2013; El-Enani Reference El-Enani2020). As Myslinska shows, such measures reveal that the category of “Europe” has always been constituted through processes of exclusion and boundary making. Whiteness, in this context, emerges not as a fixed or stable identity but, rather, as a contested and hierarchical status—one that is “most unstable at its margins” (3).
The Historical Emergence of Eastern European Racialization
The book further traces how the racialization of Eastern Europeans as “less white” has evolved across different historical periods—from early twentieth-century moral panics to Cold War imaginaries and post-socialist transformations. Eastern Europe has repeatedly been constructed as a reservoir of cheap labor and as a region characterized by backwardness and underdevelopment—positioned simultaneously within and outside the boundaries of Europeanness. This historical continuity is crucial for understanding contemporary migration discourses, which often treat different migrant groups as discrete and context-specific phenomena rather than as part of longer-standing patterns of racialization. By emphasizing this longue durée perspective, Myslinska invites us to understand race and racism as both historically embedded and dynamically reconfigured. Racial categories, in this view, are neither fixed nor entirely fluid; rather, they are continually reshaped through shifting political, economic, and social contexts, while retaining a degree of continuity and “stickiness” (Stoler Reference Stoler2016, 249).
Myslinska explicitly links these processes of racialization to the political economy of European integration. Drawing on the concept of “racial capitalism,” chapter 2 argues that EU enlargement must be understood as a fundamentally economic project, aimed at expanding Western markets and securing access to a flexible and relatively cheap labor force. The incorporation of CEE states into the EU followed the end of the Cold War and was accompanied by strong pressures to adopt market-based reforms as a condition of accession. However, these states entered the Union on profoundly unequal terms. Given these asymmetries, Myslinska argues that the benefits of enlargement were unevenly distributed. Western European economies were better positioned to capitalize on new market opportunities, while CEE countries often entered the Union with significant economic vulnerabilities, including high levels of debt and structural weaknesses.
The result was a deepening of existing regional inequalities rather than their resolution. Enlargement, in this sense, appears less as a project of convergence and more as a mechanism for reproducing and institutionalizing uneven development. The CEE countries had limited influence over the conditions of their accession, and their integration was marked by a range of transitional arrangements and derogations that effectively rendered their access to rights conditional and partial. Restrictions on labor mobility, which in some cases lasted up to seven years, are a particularly salient example. These measures not only delayed full participation in the internal market but also reinforced perceptions of Eastern Europeans as second-class citizens within the Union.
The Paradoxes and Politics of EU Enlargement
These dynamics also had important political consequences. The failure of enlargement to deliver on its promises of prosperity and equality, Myslinska suggests, contributed to growing disenchantment among CEE populations, reflected in low electoral participation in EU processes and the rise of Eurosceptic and far-right political movements. At the same time, in Western Europe, enlargement intensified anxieties about migration, labor competition, and welfare provision (Fox et al. Reference Fox, Moroşanu and Szilassy2012). As she shows, pre-enlargement surveys indicating widespread support for restricting CEE migration highlight the extent to which these fears were already entrenched (119). In this political milieu, chapter 3 explains how the EU’s legal architecture played a central role in producing and sustaining the subordinate position of CEE migrants. By structuring access to rights in conditional and differentiated ways, legal frameworks contributed to the creation of a category of “less-than” citizens—formally included within the Union yet substantively excluded from full membership. This ambivalence is especially evident in the operation of the freedom of movement. While often celebrated as one of the EU’s fundamental freedoms, in practice, it has been unevenly realized and subject to various limitations. CEE migrants frequently enter labor markets in precarious positions, shaped by both structural inequalities and processes of racialization. As a result, they are disproportionately concentrated in low-paid, insecure, and socially devalued forms of work.
The paradoxes of European citizenship are particularly stark in the context of immigration controlls. Despite holding formal citizenship rights, empirical studies found that CEE migrants are often treated as deportable and disposable.Footnote 2 In some cases, their status as EU citizens has made their removal administratively easier than that of non-EU nationals. Further, this overrepresentation is frequently mobilized to deny the existence of racism in immigration enforcement practices (Aliverti Reference Aliverti2021). In what other scholars have called the “migranisation” of EU citizenship (Anderson Reference Anderson2013), such data challenges conventional assumptions about (European) citizenship as a secure and protective status, highlighting instead its role as a mechanism of stratification (Bosniak Reference Bosniak2008; Shachar Reference Shachar2009). It also lends support to Myslinska’s argument on the legal and institutional mechanisms that contribute to the normalization of these inequalities. As she shows, CEE migrants occupy an ambiguous position within racial classifications: they are not fully recognized as white and therefore do not fully benefit from white privilege, yet they are also not recognized as racial minorities within the framework of anti-discrimination law. This liminal status renders their experiences of discrimination both pervasive and difficult to articulate.
Enlargement and Brexit: The Marginalization of CEE Migrants in the United Kingdom
The focus on the United Kingdom as a case study in chapter 4 provides a particularly rich illustration of these dynamics. As one of the primary destinations for CEE migration, the UK offers a revealing context in which to examine the intersections of race, law, and labor. Myslinska shows how CEE migrants have been simultaneously vilified in political discourse—portrayed as welfare abusers or security threats—and marginalized within progressive agendas that prioritize other forms of racial and social injustice. This dual marginalization is compounded by the limitations of anti-discrimination law. Through a detailed analysis of employment tribunal cases, Myslinska demonstrates how claims brought by CEE workers are often dismissed on the grounds that discrimination is based on their “economic vulnerability” rather than on their race. Linguistic differences and other markers of cultural distinction are similarly excluded from legal definitions of racial discrimination. As a result, the law fails to capture the specific forms of disadvantage experienced by this group, effectively rendering their exploitation invisible.
The conclusion reflects on the pervasive invisibilization of racism when it comes to CEE migrants and its deleterious effects for rights claims. They are regarded as being privileged by dint of their whiteness and their European citizenship and because they are beneficiaries of the EU’s “equalitarian efforts.” Yet Myslinska makes the point that their presumed privileges have invisibilized their unique subordinate status and the neocolonial relationships within Europe. In delving into the intricate and complex process of peripheralization of the East and the racialization of its people, Myslinska’s detailed work offers valuable insights into its historical roots and its bearing on the differential and subordinate inclusion within Europe that culminated with accession.
Racialization in Europe: Where Next?
The historical and structural thrust of the book leaves open, at least implicitly, new frontiers for scholars. One is the need for significant engagement with empirical, micro-level analyses of how racialization is experienced, negotiated, and contested in everyday life. Without more grounded, ethnographic, or sociological perspectives, the voices and agency of CEE migrants themselves remain somewhat under-explored. This silence risks reproducing a portrayal of these groups as primarily passive subjects of structural forces. Further, while the book usefully conceptualizes power predominantly in terms of domination and oppression, this can obscure the more complex and relational dimensions of power, including the ways in which legal systems can produce contradictory outcomes or open up spaces for contestation. A more nuanced engagement with these dynamics could have further enriched the analysis.
These issues point to important directions for future research, particularly in relation to the need for more empirically grounded and theoretically nuanced accounts of racialization within Europe. Ultimately, this book offers a powerful and timely intervention into debates on race, law, and inequality, challenging deeply entrenched assumptions about the nature of European integration. By exposing the racialized hierarchies that underpin the EU project, it compels us to reconsider the meaning of citizenship, belonging, and solidarity in contemporary Europe and to confront the enduring inequalities that continue to shape the continent’s political and social landscape.
Law, Migration and the Construction of Whiteness has important lessons for European policy making and politics. Amid growing Euro-skepticism both within and outside Europe, this book should call for a serious reflection on European political structures and their moral makeup that continue to fail its peripheries in the East and the South, seeding growing disaffection and cynicism. The fraught responses to the 2015 refugee crisis and the recurrent migration crises at the fringes of Europe are examples of the limits of EU solidarity and the damaging implications of externalizing or outsourcing these crises elsewhere.
