Racialization: the genealogy and critique of a concept

Recently sociological analysis of what used to be identified as 'race' and 'race relations' has shifted to racism as an ideology and racialization as a process that ascribes physical and cultural differences to individuals and groups. While scholars have critically examined 'race' and 'race relations', the concept of racialization has received insufficient systematic attention. The purpose of this article is to trace the genealogy of concepts of racialization and deracialization and to demonstrate that the meaning of these designations has changed since their appearance in the late-nineteenth century to the emergence of racialization in contemporary debates on effects of racism; and to trace the different trajectories of racialization from the centre and from the periphery.