Paper short abstract:

By referring to the communities of contract labor migrants from Asia,South Pacific and Europe in Hawaiian sugar plantations, I will conceptually explore the link between labor position and racialization processes.

Paper long abstract:

Sugar beyond enslavement: race and labor in Hawaiian plantations

Hawaii joined the sugar economy much later than the Caribbean, Brazil or other societies that relied on the labor of enslaved Africans for sugar production and processing. Hawaiian plantations depended heavily on imported labor, provided by indentured/contract workers from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Southern Pacific islands, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Norway, Sweden, etc., generating an idiosyncratic dynamic of racialization. In this paper I will address those racialization processes by using multiple sources: plantation records, collected oral history, early sociological studies on ethnicity in Hawaii, social literature on labor, and contemporary fieldwork. I will use these empirical references to explore conceptual work on the link between labor position and racialization processes.