Actor Details

Professor
Department of Political Sciences
Queens University

Research interests

(i) Citizenship and immigration; (ii) Anti-oppression politics; (iii) Comparative development and global political economy

Current research projects focus specifically on: (i) theorizing anti-racism: addressing tensions between Marxism and post-colonial theory (with Ena Dua); and theorizing intersections among class, race and gender; (ii) racialization in Israel/Palestine (with Yasmeen Abu-Laban); (iii) employment equity policy in Canada (with Audrey Kobayashi)

Brief biography

Abigail B. Bakan (Ph.D York University, 1984) is Professor of Political Studies at Queen's University, where she has taught as a Queen's National Scholar since 1985; she is also cross-appointed to the Departments of Gender Studies and Cultural Studies. She is currently Chair of Undergraduate Studies, and Convenor of the Gender and Politics field in the Graduate Program, in the Department of Political Studies. She is a member of the advisory board of the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

Publications on citizenship and anti-oppression politics include: Negotiating Citizenship: Migrant Women in Canada and the Global System (with Daiva K. Stasiulis) (winner of the 2007 Canadian Women's Studies Assocation book award); Employment Equity Policy in Canada: An Interprovincial Comparison (with Audrey Kobayashi) (2000); and Not One of the Family: Foreign Domestic Workers in Canada (co-editor with Daiva Stasiulis) (1997).

Publications in the areas of comparative development and global political economy include: Critical Political Studies: Debates and Dialogues from the Left (co-edited with Eleanor MacDonald) (2002); Imperial Power and Regional Trade: The Caribbean Basin Initiative (co-editor with David Cox and Colin Leys) (1993); and Ideology and Class Conflict in Jamaica: The Politics of Rebellion (1990).

Abigail Bakan has also published over thirty scholarly articles and book chapters. Journals include: Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society; Feminist Review; Atlantis; Labour/Le Travail; Canadian Race Relations Reports; Science and Society; Studies in Political Economy; Asian and Pacific Migration; Race and Class; Social Identities; and Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies.

Selected recent articles and chapters:

"The 'Israelization' of Social Sorting and the 'Palestinianization' of the Racial Contract: Reframing Israel/Palestine and the War on Terror" in Surveillance and Control in Israel/Palestine: Population, Territory, and Power, eds., Elia Zureik, David Lyon and Yasmeen Abu-Laban (Routledge, 2011), 276-294

"Israel/Palestine, South Africa and the 'One-State Solution'" (with Yasmeen Abu-Laban), Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, vol. 37, nos. 2-3 (December, 2010), 331-351

"Palestinian Resistance and International Solidarity: The BDS Campaign" (with Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Race and Class (July-September, 2009), 29-54

"Negotiating Citizenship: Authors' Reflections" (with Daiva Stasiulis), Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal, vol. 32, no. 2 (Spring, 2008)

"The Racial Contract: Israel/Palestine and Canada" (with Yasmeen Abu-Laban) Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture, vol. 14, no. 5 (September, 2008), 637-660

"Reconsidering the Underground Railroad: Slavery and Racialization in the Making of the Canadian State", Socialist Studies, vol. 4, no. 1, (Spring 2008), 3-29

"Marxism and Anti-Racism: Rethinking the Politics of Difference", Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society, vol. 20, no. 2 (April 2008), 238-256

"Affirmative Action and Employment Equity: Policy, Ideology and Backlash in Canadian Context" (with Audrey Kobayashi), Studies in Political Economy, no. 79 (Spring 2007), 145-166