ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses critical discourse analysis and race/ethnicity. It focuses on race and racism as important sites of theoretical and practical intervention for a critical project invested in highlighting how discursive practices recreate social inequalities. The chapter offers an analysis and critique of this kind of seemingly progressive and harmless discourse as it permeates European Union institutions. It looks at some immigration policy developments, as well as recommendations for integration practices, as manifestations of an indirect racialization that systematically excludes certain groups as it targets them for inclusion. The chapter reviews the knowledge on the relationship between particular discursive practices and broader ideological systems with regards to race and racism – a relationship that is necessarily reciprocal, and constantly fueled with new tropes that serve naturalizing functions. In this sense, a critical cultural approach to discourse studies stands at an optimal position to perform a challenging, multilayered, and urgent task.
