Diamond Ashiagbor discusses EU integration and European colonialism

The talk explored European integration, in particular in the creation of the ‘single market’ and the social dimension of that market, through the lens of European colonialism. It examined the emergence of regional (EU) social and labour law against the backdrop of decolonization, with Ashiagbor arguing that the EU market integration project, and the ability to embed that market in the ‘social’, owe much to the ‘racial capitalism’ of European colonial dominance over the territory and resources of other regions. Exploring the temporal and the spatial dimensions of EU integration, a key argument is that there has been no clean break between the colonial past of the constituent member states of the European Union and the neocolonial present of the European project.