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This is a call for papers on the politics of ethnic leveraging – a social and political process through which members of a status majority group elevate one minority group in a way that isolates and represses another.  Currently, we have five papers in progress that explore empirical examples of this phenomenon, and we are seeking additional contributions to our project.  We would particularly welcome empirical applications in Latin America, the Middle East/North Africa region, Eastern Europe/Eurasia, Asia, or Africa.  Our goal is to compile these papers for a special issue of a journal, to be submitted by Fall 2015.Ethnic leveraging is a concept that we have collectively developed to capture a relational form of boundary creation and maintenance – one that pits identity groups against each other in a way that values one group while downgrading another.  Leveraging is now common in European debates over immigrant-origin populations.  For instance, populist Dutch parties have publicly sympathized with gays who have been targeted by Muslims, claiming one historically marginalized group as part of the national community while stigmatizing another.  Similar processes are found in Britain and France, where Hindus and East Asians respectively are compared favorably to Muslims, and where Afro-Caribbeans have been elevated at the neighborhood level compared to South Asians. The process also operates in tandem with gender dynamics, such as when political elites reach out to Muslim women as victims of Muslim men.While Muslims are often the targets of socio-ethnic leveraging in contemporary Europe, examples of these processes can be found more widely. In the United States, East Asians are often referred to as a “model minority” in order to highlight the perceived inadequacies of blacks or Latinos.  And historically, between the late colonial and Jim Crow eras, privileged whites in the U.S. sought to build white racial solidarity across class lines by elevating previously low-status working whites by way of a pervasive and vicious devaluing of African Americans.  In Brazil and South Africa, mulattos and “Coloureds” have historically played the role of ethnic intermediaries: groups that are not equal to the majority, but whose status is partially elevated in order to justify the greater social and political downgrading of lower status groups like blacks.We seek to assemble a number of examples of this process, drawn from a variety of regions and historical periods.  Our wider aim is to identify the theoretical elements underpinning this process, and to develop the concept so it can be applied to a wide range of settings.We ask those who are interested to please send a 1-2 page proposal of your paper to Erik Bleich (erikbleich@gmail.com) Kimberly Morgan (kjmorgan@gwu.edu) by December 1, 2014.Current participants:Markus Balkenhol, Meertens Institute in Amsterdam and Utrecht UniversityChristophe Bertossi, Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Political ScienceErik Bleich, Middlebury College, Political ScienceJan Willem Duyvendak, University of Amsterdam, SociologyCrystal Fleming, Stony Brook University, SociologyTom Guglielmo, George Washington University, HistoryPaul Mepschen, University of Amsterdam, AnthropologyKimberly Morgan, George Washington University, Political Science