°Working body #1
Three remarks on the relation between ‘economic migration’ and the processes of refugee determination. This is the first.
Alongside regimes of migration internment and deportation there are systems of finely tuned controls on so-called ‘economic migration’ - that is, controls on the duration, conditions and direction of labour flows across borders. The one cannot be thought without the other. Indeed, where refugee determination occurs without recourse to Australian (or Australian-funded) internment camps and (threat of) deportation, which is to say, where it occurs in camps administered by the UNHCR or organisations such as the IOM, the Australian Government operates a kind of ‘points system’, screening for those refugee applicants who might ‘fit’ particular criteria deemed important for the development of the Australian labour market.
Which is also to say, and more broadly: what binds the two processes - that of refugee determination and ‘economic migration’ policy - together is the concept of the national economy, competing within an inter-national economy. This national economy is perceived to be the premise rather than result of nationally construed accounting conventions, fiscal arrangements and, of course, the controls on the movements across those borders that sift each movement into legal and illegal, temporary and permanent, and various modulations of these. From the perspective of this ‘national economy’, the regimes of deportation and internment seek to excise those bodies deemed superfluous to ‘national productivity’ and, in so doing and in turn, define - or seek to impose and give shape to - a productive (national) body.
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Seen this?
http://v2v.cc/node/151
benjamin rosenzweig [March 1, 2007 @ 2:00 pm]
I tagged it some days ago, but have only downloaded about 80%, now that I look at Azureus. I seem to have encountered a firewall issue, maybe PeerGuardian is the problem, maybe something else. So, not yet. (Edit: PeerGuardian seemed to register it as a fake. Hmm. It also does this with melb indymedia. Now I have to figure out which specific IP it’s blocking.)
s0metim3s [March 1, 2007 @ 3:33 pm]
… do health and wealth have to do with each other?
Angela’s post, the first of “[t]hree remarks on the relation between ‘economic migration’ and the processes of refugee determination” states that “what binds the two processes - that of refugee determination and ‘economic…
What in the hell ... [March 2, 2007 @ 3:12 am]
Nate, I take it you’ve come across Randolph Bourne? I’m not sure how it would parse, but it might be of interest if you haven’t seen. (And on the question of the wealth of nations, there’s always Adam Smith. Warren Montag might be a good way into Smith.)
I finally got around to downloading the Bauman-Agamben presentations, and watching a bit of Bauman. It’s definitely worth a look. I like his discussion of the emergence of superfluous populations quite a lot.
But I’m not sure about the argument that “before” “global solutions” were sought to “local problems”, whereas “now” that is not the case.
I’ll have to watch the rest, and Agamben’s ‘response’. Though that reading of before/now seems to understate the dynamics of the Cold War in creating a sense of the relation between global and local and when one becomes conceived as a problem (for the other), and how. Anyway, I should watch the rest …
s0metim3s [March 2, 2007 @ 12:58 pm]
I second the recommendation of Bourne. The essay on the state, for sure, but also other of his pieces, most of which are collected in a book called The Radical Will. His pieces on democracy are problematic, but in the interesting way, like Balibar or Ranciere, rather than in the scary way, like Ulrich Beck or Laclau.
Bourne was a bit of an oddity for his time, clearly a Marxist even if he didn’t engage with Marx very much. His unique intellectual position in U.S. history has to do in part with being a student of Dewey that found inspiration from Nietzsche instead of Hegel. His takedown of Dewey for supporting U.S. entry into the war, and his radicalization by that event, is quite wonderful.
Eric [March 4, 2007 @ 3:09 am]
in the interesting way, like Balibar or Ranciere, rather than in the scary way, like Ulrich Beck or Laclau.
Heh. Laclau has an essay in (I think) the most recent Critical Inquiry, rousingly titled, “Why Constructing a People Is the Main Task of Radical Politics”. I’m too scared to read it, or maybe just have better things to do. The title was quite enough.
s0metim3s [March 4, 2007 @ 12:50 pm]