Beyond Lessness and Privilege: Proposition for a Race-Critical Sociology of Uprootings and Regroundings

Following increasing critiques of the study of migration and integration, coupled with the observation that the concept of “mobilities” needs to be equally problematized as racializing, this conceptual paper proposes a race-critical sociology of uprootings and regroundings. Despite some advances made by critical migration scholars, we need to reflect on novel ways and terms for thinking about processes of mobility/migration and integration. Central thereby is the foregrounding of race. I propose the terms uprootings and regroundings to highlight how racism is lived, how whiteness is enacted, and how hierarchies based on race, racialization, and racism are constantly reproduced. These terms have the potential to move beyond the normatively charged concepts of migration and integration, while also holding other (sub-)disciplines accountable for how they usually disregard race. They do not assume a difference between migrants and other categories of transnationally mobile people but highlight how those categorized as migrants are always and across generations viewed as uprooted, while those covered by the privilege of whiteness can be mobile without being suspected of becoming uprooted. Moreover, thinking uprootings and regroundings together draws attention to who can feel belonging to certain grounds, whose presence in and across spaces is easily accepted versus in need of explanation and justification. Contributing to debates in migration studies, but also mobility studies, the sociology of European integration, and urban studies, the paper attempts to destabilize common ways of thinking and proposes a way forward, drawing on postcolonial, decolonial, and race-critical scholarship.