Racializing the Spanish Borderland. Neocolonial Rule, Patriarchal Lineage and the New Limpieza de Sangre

Melilla is a crucial laboratory of Spanish neocolonial rule. In this paper, we deploy our extensive ethnography in the North African Spanish enclave to argue that analyses of racialization in Spain must (1) be critically situated in the particular genealogies of Hispanic coloniality (as opposed to uncritically incorporating Anglo-Atlantic frames) and (2) foreground their inextricability from the broader formations of global apartheid and imperialism. We zoom in on the phenomena of “mestizaje” in the enclave, examining the neocolonial state intervention in marriage, the gendered and classed racialization of lineage, and the related, irreducibly heterogeneous patterns of belonging and subjection. We then point to the importance of the elimination of the interstice—the suppression of “the Other within”—to the coherence and stability of racial categories and multiculturalist governance. Contemporary racialization in Spain, then, appears as co-constituted by the border regime, patriarchal kinship, and liberal governmentality.