The Order of Inequality. An Ethnography of Melilla

The project analyzes the socio-structural, urban and normative reproduction of social inequality in democratic-capitalist societies. It does so focusing on the case of the Spanish exclave of Melilla. On the basis of ethnographic-qualitative material, it reconstructs three borders or boundaries that shape inequality in the small Spanish town on the African continent:

1) The European external border and, in particular, the economic function of the European border regime in the contemporary capitalist world system. Here, the work also focuses on the micrological exclusionary mechanisms of the border regime.

2) The inner-city boundary between the affluent multicultural center of the city and the socially and infrastructurally disadvantaged Muslim periphery. To understand the reproduction of this segregation, the effective gendering, racialization and postcolonial continuities are of particular interest.

3) The border between the periphery and the “Cañada de Hidum” neighbourhood, stigmatized as a meeting place for jihadists and the drug mafia. In order to understand the production of this “problem district”, practices of policing, illegalization and also compensatory care networks are examined.

Overall, the work thus aims to develop a theory of the production of social inequality in Europe's democratic capitalism based on the case of Melilla.