Genealogy in Law as a Technology for Categorizing, Contesting and Deconstructing Monoracialism

Contextualized by contestation and deconstruction of monoracialism, this article provides an assessment of how law, as a distinct tool and technology, conceptualizes and operationalizes race and ethnicity. The focus of the comparative project, by bringing examples from various countries and jurisdictions, is specifically on the morphology and dynamics of legal categorization. A separate discussion concentrates on conceptualizing groupness and membership, with distinguished attention on self-identification and “objective” criteria. The paper shows that although identity politics has dominated the past decades, ethno-racial self-identification is not the only operationalizing model legal regimes apply, especially with the recent boost in artificial intelligence, and bio-genetic research. Examples for the “re-biologization” of ethno-racial conceptualization are brought from a wide range of legal regimes, including citizenship, anti-discrimination, asylum, and indigenous law.