Ms Barbora Cernusakova
(Former)
Overview
In my research, I focus on operation of racial capitalism in the post-socialist context. Drawing on eleven months of ethnographic research among racialised Roma workers in the city of Ostrava in the Czech Republic, I work on an empirical exploration of a racialised “surplus population”. Engaging with recent research on the applicability of Marx’s category of the surplus population to society today, I make the case that, though Roma workers are integrated among wage labourers, they are contained in low-paid, stigmatised and precarious jobs, in a racialised condition of “under-employment”. This way I provide an alternative to the dominant trope in the media and political discourse that presents unemployment as a universal fact of Roma lives. Analysing the surplus population empirically, I look both at the operation of capital and also at interventions of the Czech state that facilitate and maintain it.
The main method of my research is participant observation, which I carried out while living in a racially segregated neighbourhood of Údol, and while working as a street cleaner and as a recycling operative, handpicking items on a conveyor belt, with a majority-Roma workforce.
External positions
Researcher, adviser, Amnesty International
Areas of expertise
Education / academic qualifications
- 2013 - Master of Laws, English Law, Birkbeck, University of London
- 2007 - Master of Social Science, Human Rights, London School of Economics & Political Science (University of London)
- 2000 - Master of Social Science, Political Science, Comenius University
Related information
Publication highlights
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Non-textual form › Web publication/site
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review