PASSING AS "WHITE" AND THE EUROPEAN (UNION'S) SINS OF/BY (C)OMISSION

I'm afraid the great outpouring of official support for Ukrainian refugees is happening for at least three main reasons, none of them particularly "nice."

First, the EU's conscience collectif knows it could, and should, do something more effective but it just won't. That's just simply not what *Europeans* do. Nor is having a deeper involvement in a war against the Russian military machine, which is fighting in an area that was its own terrain until a generation ago, appear to be in their interests. A proxy war is always nicer, at least in the short run. They will have long and passionate conferences about how horrific the situation is, but nothing is more *European* than a combination of malign neglect and guilt over it. Sending troops or even hinterland tech help is out of the question. The EU is therefore sending weapons and their prayers. 

The peak of this hypocrisy took place when the European Parliament reacted to what is called, euphemistically, President Zelensky's  speech by videolink (in reality, a last-minute plea for actually tangible, useable HELP from a besieged capital city) . . . with a thunderous standing ovation.  The European Parliament has transformed an interstate political event into a theater routine where the audience will clap their hands, in an ever so "civilized" manner, if they like the performance, that is. Then they go home and, in the best of circumstances, have a passing thought of their privileges of still having gas--RUSSIAN gas, that is--for their heaters. 

Nice.

A couple of days earlier, Zelensky signed off from a conference call with several EU leaders with the disclaimer that "This might be the last time you see me." It all might appear to distant observers that the EU brass just don't get it. 

My sense is this slightly different: They do get it, they just won't do anything more. A staunch commitment to being a giant on clay legs. Sitting and trying to look sadly beautiful.

More moralistically speaking, that sin by omission is obviously unconscionable, so they displace their guilt into this. Also, part of this is that, with some basic provisions, Ukrainian refugees can be "integrated"--ever so tenuously, but still--into the complex and intricately oppressive power matrix of population control, normalization, disciplining and commercialization, the trademark of European neoliberal capitalism. They will now have all manner of numbers, registration cards, etc., in other words, they will be both muted and "tolerated."

Two, Ukrainians can pass as White (i.e., in the horrific racialization process that European integration has become, they can be treated, for now, with preference compared to west Asian or north African war refugees). To be noted is that that is a contingent process. It depends entirely on the racializing gaze to decide about the extent to which, and whether, passing happens. This is sort of working for Ukrainians for the moment. Later on, there will likely be serious friction. At a minimum, Ukrainians will be told (although I would be astonished if they haven't already been told) that their "Whiteness" is of the less "civilized", "#dirtywhite" variety. This is bound to manifest itself particularly at the point where some Ukrainian subjects will attempt to avail themselves to the finer parts of the privilege package of being in Schengenland that are reserved for #eurowhite subjects and come to direct competition with locals. The staunch application of "race" cognition to every social issue, especially those that involve transnational processes, is a *European* sin by commission if I ever saw it. 

Three, the influx of cheap(er) labor is almost always a good thing for, and at least implicity supported by, significant sections of host country capital. It fills menial jobs with people who have little by way of an ability to fight for wages / benefits, and their extended presence exerts a downward pressure on wage costs for capital overall. It also creates a plethora of small to tiny businesses that can be seamlessly integrated into production and service for Big Capital under disadvantageous terms of trade. And that disadvantaged labor and "entrepreneurial market" integration is especially likely to be the fate of young foreign women with children, a socially vulnerable population on multiple counts. And now it is possible to put a nice human face on it. BTW, the one million figure is 2,3% of the total population of Ukraine. The 125 thousand arrivals recorded in Hungary constitutes 1,3% of the population of Hungary, just a notch higher for Poland.

To be noted is that, while the enthusiasm and political-moral effervescence that the EU as a whole has showered on Ukrainian refugees, the asylum process and the requirement of integrating the newly arrived refugees, etc., is / will be very significantly more on the "shoulders" of the east-central European member states than the rest-of-the-EU. Those states that happen to have lower levels of accumulation (reflected in their globally medium-level per capita GDPs) than their west Schengen counterparts, and those are the ones that have shown the most revolting outbursts of #dirtywhite excesses in racist rhetoric, let alone "racially" motivated murders, in the last few years, especially in the context of the breathtakingly, openly racist official policies of the Hungarian, Polish, Lithuanian, etc. states vis-à-vis war refugees from west Asia and north Africa and their own Romani populations. In other words, the considerably wealthier, west Schengen states appear to be eager elegantly to undertake logistical, economic, social, identity-political, ideological, etc. burdens--not for themselves but for their eastern fellow member states. (That will most likely be the most difficult process, by the way, in Hungary and Romania, two countries with dominant, "national" (sic) languages that are not even members of the Slavic family, ergo with next to zero cognates with Ukrainian.) The generosity of undertaking burdens for others in the name of 'goodness' is not a particularly elegant gesture, I'm afraid.

And of course there is no way the enthusiasm will last forever. It never does. E.g., see the way in which Bosnians-Herzegovinans were repatriated from Germany after the wars.