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Exploring the Ambivalence of Liquid Racism
In between antiracist and racist discourse
The ongoing migration ‘crisis’ in European countries (2015 to date) has fostered different stances and practices within European nation-states, ranging from xenophobia to solidarity. In this context, two contradictory discourses seem to coexist: the national racist discourse and the humanitarian, antiracist one. This volume brings together studies investigating diverse semiotic strategies through which liquid racism emerges, which consists of ambiguities and contradictory interpretations due to the fact that racist views infiltrate discourse intended as antiracist. The volume includes critical and pragmatic analyses of texts coming from various sources, such as news articles, parliamentary discourse, political cartoons, video clips, advertising campaigns based on personal stories, and jokes. It is an outcome of the research project “TRACE: Tracing Racism in Anti-raCist discoursE: A critical approach to European public speech on the migrant and refugee crisis” (HFRI-FM17-42, HFRI 2019-2022, Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation).
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 341] 2024. viii, 294 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 9 February 2024
Published online on 9 February 2024
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1. Antiracist and racist discourse as antagonistic and overlappingArgiris Archakis and Villy Tsakona | pp. 1–40
- Chapter 2. Racist discourses of discrimination and assimilation in an antiracist corpusRania Karachaliou, Vasia Tsami, Alexis Lazanas and Argiris Archakis | pp. 41–70
- Chapter 3. Normalizing assimilation in antiracist (con)texts and (re)producing liquid racism: Argumentative inferences in Greek right- and left‑wing political discoursesDimitris Serafis | pp. 71–92
- Chapter 4. What culture? Supranational cultural norms in the construction of the cultural adaptation of refugee children by employees in an NGO for unaccompanied refugee childrenAntonis Sapountzis and Evangelia Zarmakoupi | pp. 93–117
- Chapter 5. Liquid racism, metaphor and the visual modalityStavros Assimakopoulos and Anna Piata | pp. 118–142
- Chapter 6. Migrant voices in ‘antiracist’ video clips in Greece: Eliteness as a form of liquid racismAnastasia G. Stamou and Konstantina Katrana | pp. 143–180
- Chapter 7. “The EU gave us a new beginning”: Liquid racism and affect in a curated migrant storyKorina Giaxoglou and Tereza Spilioti | pp. 181–201
- Chapter 8. “Wouldn’t it be better for me to earn my own money and pay taxes?”: Liquid racism and the ‘ideal’ refugee in UK charity representations of migrant storiesSofia Lampropoulou and Paige Johnson | pp. 202–224
- Chapter 9. A migrant’s public apology as an instance of internalized racism: A Greek case studyArgiris Archakis and Villy Tsakona | pp. 225–252
- Chapter 10. Racist and antiracist discourse in Greek migrant/refugee jokes: A multiliteracies teaching proposal about liquid racismVasia Tsami, Eirini Skoura and Argiris Archakis | pp. 253–276
- Chapter 11. EpilogueSofia Lampropoulou | pp. 277–282
- Notes on contributors | pp. 283–287
- Name index | pp. 289–291
- Subject index | pp. 293–294
“We could summarize three important learnings from this book: The first is to look with caution at any alleged antiracist discourse, the second is being critical and analytical when standing before well-intentioned antiracist practices, and the third is not taking for granted that what is being shown in a discourse, particularly in an antiracist discourse, is everything that is in it.”
Arturo Lance Porfilio, University of Valencia, in Sociolinguistic Studies Vol 19, No 3-4 (2025).
Cited by (6)
Cited by six other publications
Archakis, Argiris
2025. Review of Chouliaraki (2024): Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
Darics, Erika, Orrie Staschen, Matt Drury, Joanna Chojnicka, Maria Mazzoli, Jelte Olthof, Dimitris Serafis & Janina Wildfeuer
Panagaki, Nikoletta, Argiris Archakis & Villy Tsakona
Sagredos, Christos & Evelin Nikolova
Karachaliou, Rania
2024. Excluding the migrant Other via resistance and inclusion. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict
[no author supplied]
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.