Abigail Bakan

Research interests

(i) Citizenship and immigration;
(ii) Anti-oppression politics;
(iii) Comparative development and global political economy.
Current research projects focus specifically on:
(i) theorizing anti-racism: addressing tensions between Marxism and post-colonial theory (with Ena Dua); and theorizing intersections among class, race and gender;
(ii) racialization in Israel/Palestine (with Yasmeen Abu-Laban);
(iii) employment equity policy in Canada (with Audrey Kobayashi)

Brief Biography

Abigail B. Bakan (Ph.D York University, 1984) is also a Professor of Political Studies at Queen's University, where she has taught as a Queen's National Scholar since 1985; she is also cross-appointed to the Department of Cultural Studies. She is a member of the advisory board of the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

Publications on citizenship and anti-oppression politics include: Negotiating Citizenship: Migrant Women in Canada and the Global System (with Daiva K. Stasiulis) (winner of the 2007 Canadian Women's Studies Assocation book award); Employment Equity Policy in Canada: An Interprovincial Comparison (with Audrey Kobayashi) (2000); and Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada (co-editor with Daiva Stasiulis) (1997).

Publications in the areas of comparative development and global political economy include: Critical Political Studies: Debates and Dialogues from the Left (co-edited with Eleanor MacDonald) (2002); Imperial Power and Regional Trade: The Caribbean Basin Initiative (co-editor with David Cox and Colin Leys) (1993); and Ideology and Class Conflict in Jamaica: The Politics of Rebellion (1990). Abigail Bakan has also published over thirty scholarly articles and book chapters.

Journals include: Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society; Feminist Review; Atlantis; Labour/Le Travail; Canadian Race Relations Reports; Science and Society; Studies in Political Economy; Asian and Pacific Migration; Race and Class; Social Identities; and Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies.

Selected recent articles and chapters

"The 'Israelization' of Social Sorting and the 'Palestinianization' of the Racial Contract: Reframing Israel/Palestine and the War on Terror" in Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory, and Power, eds., Elia Zureik, David Lyon and Yasmeen Abu-Laban (Routledge, 2011), 276-294

"Israel/Palestine, South Africa and the 'One-State Solution'" (with Yasmeen Abu-Laban), Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, vol. 37, nos. 2-3 (December, 2010), 331-351

"Palestinian Resistance and International Solidarity: The BDS Campaign" (with Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Race and Class (July-September, 2009), 29-54

"Negotiating Citizenship: Authors' Reflections" (with Daiva Stasiulis), Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal, vol. 32, no. 2 (Spring, 2008)

"The Racial Contract: Israel/Palestine and Canada" (with Yasmeen Abu-Laban) Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, vol. 14, no. 5 (September, 2008), 637-660

"Reconsidering the Underground Railroad: Slavery and Racialization in the Making of the Canadian State", Socialist Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, (Spring 2008), 3-29

"Marxism and Anti-Racism: Rethinking the Politics of Difference", Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society, vol. 20, no. 2 (April 2008), 238-256

"Affirmative Action and Employment Equity: Policy, Ideology and Backlash in Canadian Context" (with Audrey Kobayashi), Studies in Political Economy, no. 79 (Spring 2007), 145-166