Hammer studies racialized forms of belonging, and their historical origins and prevalence in contemporary cultural politics. Combining global, political, cultural and historical sociology with the sociology of race, her research investigates why, despite discourses of equality in contemporary European liberal democracies, racialized groups inhabit a space of contentious belonging. She argues that to understand the relationship between racialization – the colorline – and nation formation, we need to center Europe’s colonial histories, and the simultaneous construction of race alongside democratic struggles.