Hierarchies of Worth

Hierarchies of Worth: Race, Scarcity, and the Politics of Costly Action. In progress.

States do not pay the same political price for every act of protection, aid, or punishment. They can spend enormous resources on some foreign populations and insist that much smaller costs are impossible for others. This book explains why.

In this project, I argue that international order does not only distribute power, it also distributes worth. Some populations are treated as people for whom sacrifice is reasonable. Others are treated as burdens for whom even modest costs are excessive. Race is central to that ordering, not as a fixed biological fact, but as a hierarchy through which publics and leaders judge who deserves protection, relief, or defense.

Economic conditions matter, but they are not an objective fact or constraint. Governments often say there is not enough money, housing, administrative capacity, or public patience. The question is why those limits emerge in some cases and disappear in others. My answer is that scarcity becomes politically decisive when it attaches to populations already seen as less worthy of sacrifice. The same logic applies to foreign policy interests. Strategic value can make costly action possible, but it does not operate on a flat moral field.

The book begins with refugee and asylum politics because that is where the problem is easiest to see. Europeans welcomed Ukrainians in 2022 after turning away Syrians in 2015. The United States protected Afghans and Ukrainians while deporting Haitians. These recent examples are not anomalies. Rather, they are examples of a broader structure that will define international politics throughout the rest of the 21st century.

That structure also shapes humanitarian aid, border enforcement, and economic sanctions. Across these policy areas, states decide whose suffering demands action, whose suffering can be ignored, and whose suffering justifies punishment. Hierarchies of Worth argues that these decisions are governed by a racialized international order that makes some costs politically bearable and others prohibitive.

In short, international politics is not only about what states can do. It is also about whom they can afford to act for.

Chapters

  1. The Hidden Accounting of World Politics
  2. The Structure of Worth
  3. How Scarcity Becomes Political
  4. The Cross-National Pattern of Welcome
  5. Racialized Border Authority in Practice
  6. The Color of Humanitarian Aid
  7. Racialized Punishment and Sanctions
  8. The Carter Administration and the Boat-People Cases
  9. Liberalism’s Racial Fault Line