‘Race’ to the bottom? : critical reflections on race relations in Malta over the past 20 years

Abstract

This paper seeks to reflect on how race relations have evolved in Malta since the turn of the twenty-first Century, and offers some reflections on how the nation has negotiated and constructed race relations and belonging following EU accession. Adopting a critical approach to discourse analysis, the paper documents key political, economic, demographic and sociocultural changes and explores how racialised border politics around the Mediterranean Sea migrant arrivals, and a determined shift in the economic model built on the importation of migrant labour, has impacted notions of belonging and new racial hierarchies in Malta. The paper concludes that whilst contemporary discourse around ‘Malteseness’ appears to be more inclusive, supported by an economic logic that, on the surface at least, appears to celebrate cosmopolitanism and plurality, the nation’s path to progress depends on a continuation of historical racial hierarchies, manifested for example, as exploitative work, racial profiling and violent practices of surveillance and control.