The concept ‘cultural racism’ is influential in scholarship on East–West mobilities in Europe. Balibar coined this term by observing that an essentialisation of ‘cultural difference’ has replaced the ‘biologist focus’ of historical racism. A neat separation between the role of ‘biology’ in history and of ‘culture’ in the present, however, insufficiently grasps how both feature within repertoires of racialisation. Here, we examine this for the racialisation as ‘Eastern European’ in Germany – including by looking at its histories, contemporary trajectories and material effects. Drawing on qualitative research, we trace how ‘Eastern Europeanness’ is produced in two employment sites – elder care and sex work – in which women from Europe's East often work. We find that shifting attributions of bodily and valued-based difference or proximity are mobilised in imaginaries of ‘Eastern Europeans’ in these sectors. These ambiguities constitute a key continuity in the gendered racialisation as ‘Eastern European’, which sustains the extraction of cheap social reproductive labour over generations. This racialisation also has material effects: working in these professions takes a toll on the worker’s physical and mental health. On this basis, we propose a research agenda that thinks racialisation not only from its dichotomies but also from its ambiguities.
