This article explores the interconnections and continuities between racial inequalities in the contemporary labour market and the legacies of colonialism and racial distinctions woven into the evolution of market economy. It argues that race is embedded in the legal form by which labour is regulated. In its focus on the legal relations between individual subjects, namely, the contract of employment, the dominant legal form for governing work relations, the standard employment relationship, erases from view the broader social and economic structures within which the bilateral relationship exists—that is, the unpaid work of social reproduction and the colonial extraction which make paid work possible. The article identifies a number of ways in which race, racism and the legacies of colonialism are implicated in the evolution of market economy and latterly in the construction of the postwar welfare state and contemporary labour market institutions. First, in the racial capitalism of slavery. Second, in the colonial extraction and commodification of labour power from the global South for the benefit of markets in the global North. Third, in relation to migrant labour and racialised segmentation of the labour market.

中文翻译：

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劳动力市场建设中的种族和殖民主义与不稳定

本文探讨了当代劳动力市场中的种族不平等与融入市场经济演变的殖民主义和种族差异的遗产之间的相互联系和连续性。它认为，种族植根于规范劳动的法律形式中。在其关注个体主体之间的法律关系时，即雇佣合同，管理工作关系的主要法律形式，标准雇佣关系，从视野中抹去了双边关系存在的更广泛的社会和经济结构——即，社会再生产的无偿工作和使有偿工作成为可能的殖民剥削。这篇文章确定了种族的多种方式，种族主义和殖民主义的遗产与市场经济的演变有关，后来又与战后福利国家和当代劳动力市场机构的建设有关。首先，在奴隶制的种族资本主义中。其次，为了全球北方市场的利益，对来自全球南方的劳动力进行殖民开采和商品化。第三，关于移民劳动力和劳动力市场的种族分割。