This paper attempts to understand contemporary composition of labouring classes in urban spaces with a focus on west Istanbul. As a metropolis hosting a sizeable number of Syrian refugees, internally displaced Kurds and low-wage Turkish population, Istanbul is a laboratory to examine the racialized character of hyper exploitation that surplus populations experience in labour-intensive sectors. Crucial to Turkey’s contemporary capital accumulation strategy, surplus value which is extracted from the labour power of hierarchically situated ethnic communities cannot be understood without critical race and political economy perspectives. This paper is based on the fieldwork conducted in multi-ethnic districts and workplaces in west Istanbul, where working poor from different ethnic backgrounds encounter each other in tension-ridden circumstances. The production spaces and reproduction sites create hybrid racialization dynamics along which fractures occur. This paper attempts to contribute to the study of racialization by looking at the phenomenon from the Global South.