From the Grup d´Estudis sobre Reciprocitat, (Reciprocity Study Group), we invite you to the seminar series Capitalisme Racial, Fronteres i Migracions.
Sixth session.
GER-OACU Seminar: Capitalisme Racial, Fronteres i Migracions
Wednesday June 18th at 12:30pm (half past noon) in room 409, Faculty of Geography and History.
This time we welcome Martina Tazzioli de la Universitat de Bolonya.
Her research is at the crossroads of Political Geography, Critical Migration and Border Studies and Political Philosophy. She is working on three projects. One on the memory of border controls and the struggles of migrants; a related project on countermapping and the legal geographies of border violence on the Central Mediterranean route; and a research project on social reproduction activities in camps, with a focus on Greece.
The title of the seminar is: ‘The Making of Migrants’ Wageless Life. Governing by Debasing’
Here is her abstract and biography:
Abstract:
This presentation engages with current debates on value extraction from migrants and claims that it is necessary to complicate analyses that insist exclusively either on profit-making activities at the border or that conceive migration in terms of wasted life. The presentation investigates modes of valuing grounded not only on turning migrants into cheap labour force nor (exclusively) in capitalizing on their forced immobility but, rather, on debasing life, which encapsulates psycho-physical debilitation and socio-economic devaluation. Drawing on feminist literature on social reproduction and on debates on value extraction in migration governance, I take into account scholarship on extractivism in migration governmentality and interrogate modes of value extraction beyond profit-making. Mobilizing the concept of “wageless life” (Denning, 2010), it contends that it is crucial to rethink exploitation in light of the obstructions to migrants’ autonomous social reproduction activities. Focusing on the Greek refugee context, it shows that migrants’ exploitation takes place also through the obstruction of their social reproduction activities. It argues that the systematic debasement and depletion of migrants should not be confused with the production of wasted or are life but, rather, it is constitutive of the frontiers of value through exploitation in migration governmentality.
Bio:
Martina Tazzioli holds a PhD in Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was Reader in Politics & Technology before joining the University of Bologna. Her research is situated at the crossroad of Political Geography, critical Migration and Border Studies and Political Philosophy. She is working on three projects. One on memory of border controls and migrants’ struggles; a related project about counter-mapping and legal geographies of border violence on central Mediterranean route; and a research project about social reproduction activities in camps, with a focus on Greece. She is the author of “Border abolitionism: migration containment and the genealogies of struggles” (2023). 2The Making of Migration. The biopolitics of mobility at Europe’s borders” (2019), “Spaces of Governmentality: Autonomous Migration and the Arab Uprisings” (2015) and “Tunisia as a Revolutionised Space of Migration” (2016).
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