The International and the Local Worker: Understanding Multi-layered Processes of Racialisation in International Development Organisations
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This article seeks to examine how institutional hierarchies relate to processes of racialisation in development organisations that are multiracial. Complementing and building on existing literature focussed on race and development it shows how processes of racialisation help to produce and legitimate distinctions between local and international development professionals. It argues these divides cannot always be neatly mapped onto phenotype but are related to processes of racialisation tied to knowledge and class and this, in turn, helps to produce inequalities—power imbalances, pay differences and differential access to organisational benefits—between development workers. Therefore, while forms of racism and their material impacts shape the experiences of international staff of colour, there is another layer of racialisation at play that cannot be explained through existing racial categories but that draws on colonial ideas of epistemic superiority to create specific forms of racialisation within development organisations.
Author: Maya Goodfellow
Institution: City, University of London
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,290
Funder: Leverhulme Trust
Award: G5202973544
OpenAlex ID: W4403632074