Political Science Department Workshop

The Politics of “Race, Ethnicity and Politics” with Yasmeen Abu-Laban

Monday, April 7, 2025

12:15 – 1:30pm

4357 Bunche Hall, UCLA

Relative to other disciplines, political science was slow to take up the study of race and ethnicity (and related areas like migration and Indigeneity). However, over the course of the twenty-first century the study of race, ethnicity and politics has become established in the discipline as represented in standing sections in the American Political Science Association, the Canadian Political Science Association, and the International Political Science Association amongst others, as well as in specialized journals, publications and courses. Moreover, the discipline has evolved from confining the study of race to voting and electoral studies in liberal democracies to increased engagement with critical race theory, settler colonial studies, and intersectionality. In this talk I will argue that despite these advances the study faces continued challenges stemming from what might be framed as the politics of “race, ethnicity and politics.” These challenges include marginalization within the discipline, an epistemology of ignorance that renders some topics seemingly unknowable, as well as backlash and repression from state and civil society actors. In our historical moment, when racialized violence shows no signs of abating, sustained and emboldened attention to the politics of “race, ethnicity and politics” is urgently needed.

Bio: Yasmeen Abu-Laban is Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in the Politics of Citizenship and Human Rights at the University of Alberta, and a Fellow at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research. She has served as President of the Canadian Political Science Association and Vice-President of the International Political Science Association. Her published research deals with themes relating to racism and anti-racism; migration policies and politics; surveillance, artificial intelligence and border control; and human rights. She is the co-editor with Michael Frishkopf, Reza Hasmath and Anna Kirova of Resisting the Dehumanization of Refugees (Athabasca University Press, 2024) as well as co-editor with Alain-G. Gagnon and Arjun Trembly of Assessing Multiculturalism in Global Comparative Perspective (Routledge, 2023). She is also the co-author, with Ethel Tungohan and Christina Gabriel, of Containing Diversity: Canada and the Politics of Immigration in the 21 st Century (University of Toronto Press, 2023) and is co-author with Abigail B. Bakan of Israel, Palestine and the Politics of Race (Bloomsbury/IB Tauris 2020). Together Bakan and Abu-Laban have also edited Human Rights and the United Nations: Paradox and Promise, due out with Routledge in 2025.