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Article published In: Discourses on Racism and Resilience: Between power and resistance
Edited by Marjo Lindroth, Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen and Claes Tängh Wrangel
[Journal of Language and Politics 25:2] 2026
► pp. 175–193

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Racialised vocabularies of resilience

Inequality, body and mind, refusal

ORCiD logo with link | University of Lapland
ORCiD logo with link | University of Lapland
ORCiD logo with link | Swedish Defence University
Published online: 16 December 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.25102.lin
Abstract
In a global era characterised by prolonged crises, the seemingly neutral concept of resilience has gained central importance across political, academic and public discourses. This special issue sheds light on the often-overlooked racialised underpinnings and articulations of resilience. Through diverse empirical case studies across what has been called the Western racialised assemblage — spanning security policy and military thinking, EU governance, the internationalisation of labour markets and social justice activism — the contributions investigate how resilience is mobilised both to maintain and contest racialised power relations. Three themes can be discerned from the articles, highlighting how resilience operates as a vocabulary of rule: inequality, politics of the body and mind, and refusal. The issue enriches critical scholarship on both racism and resilience, calling for a deeper engagement with the complex and multifarious ways in which resilience both sustains and disrupts the racialised assemblage in which we live.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Racism studies and resilience
  • 3.Critical studies on resilience’s racialised underpinnings
  • 4.Resilience as a vocabulary of rule
  • 5.The dynamics of racialised resilience: Inequality, politics of the body and mind, refusal
  • 6.Descriptions of the articles
  • 7.Conclusions
  • References
References (63)
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