Beverley Mullings

Research Interests

My research focuses is located within the field of feminist political economy and engages questions of labour, social transformation, neoliberalism, and the politics of gender, race and class in the Caribbean and its diaspora. I am broadly interested in the ways that evolving neoliberal regimes are recasting and transforming work, divisions of labour, patterns of urban governance and ultimately, responses to social and economic injustice. More specifically, I am interested in the long-term effects of neo-liberalization in the Caribbean on the ways that citizenship and belonging is imagined, and on the ways that social justice is articulated, particularly within work regimes. In the long run, I am committed to understanding how people located at the intersections of overlapping systems of oppression are affected by and respond to the exclusions produced by these transformations.

I am currently engaged in three major research projects. The first examines the relationship between emerging forms of neoliberal governmentality, the emergence of state-enabled diaspora formations and their impact on the ways that development is imagined and practiced in Jamaica. The second explores how the experiences of young people located at the intersection of racialized and gendered systems of oppression in Jamaica and Montréal challenge good urban governance ideals, and the possibilities that diasporic dialogue holds for the creation of a radically different relationship between young people and the cities where they live. The third project examines the political and economic implications of the growing orientation of development policy and practices towards the middle-class. Tracing the changing meanings, aspirations and transformative possibilities associated with being and becoming middle-class in Jamaica, this project explores the challenges and possibilities that middle-class subjectivities, practices and solidarities continue to pose to progressive post-plantation futures.

Some keywords that reflect my research interests include:

Feminist political economy, neoliberalism, governmentality, urban governance, work, social reproduction, diaspora, global middle classes, youth, Caribbean, Jamaica, sexism, racism, social justice.

Curriculum Vitae (PDF 69 kB)