The Re-birth of Homo Oeconomicus: Self and Other, Immigrants and Robots

Chapter 2 examines how the competitive labour market constructs a specific reality in which a political and social subject is formulated, developed and transformed. It is within this intersection between the promise of clamping down on low-skilled migration and the structural need for migrant labour that we focus our attention on Homo Oeconomicus and reconceptualise this subjectivity along the lines of race and ethnicity as British Homo Oeconomicus and xeno Homo Oeconomicus. Contrary to recent proclamations of the death of Homo Oeconomicus and of assertions over the power of neoliberalism to eradicate racial discriminations, we focus on the symbiotic relationship between neoliberalism and racism and the former’s ability to adapt and thrive in social and political conditions which might appear as incompatible with its intellectual roots and political and economic objectives.