Third Critical Studies Conference

"Empire , States and Migration"

Name of the Session IV: Migration, Nation States and Citizenship (II)

The Collapse of State Socialism in the Former 'Soviet Bloc' and Global Labour Migration -József Böröcz
 
Special Economic Zones - The Emerging Scenario of Citizenship in India -Ishita Dey
 
The Refugee as a Mobile Subject - Paolo Novak
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The Collapse of State Socialism in the Former 'Soviet Bloc' and Global Labour Migration -József Böröcz  [ Full Paper]  

Abstract

The collapse of the Soviet-centred state socialist ‘bloc’ involved a number of interlinked, large-scale social transformations that have profound consequences for global flows of labour while being little integrated in scholarship on such flows. First, these changes saw the systematic removal of virtually all the institutional, legal and social protections for labour, built up during the 40-to-70-year history of state socialism in eastern Europe and northern Eurasia. By lifting the socialist states’ ban on the private appropriation of the labour of others, the entire population of the former bloc was re-inserted as a factor of production in the re-emering (semi-)periphery of global capitalism of the 1990s.  The demolition of the intricate and highly politicised systems of closely controlled, protectionist borders between the socialist bloc and the rest of the world re-introduced freedom of travel abroad as a citizenship right. Part of the geopolitical shift that produced that right, came powerful, new opportunities for the valorisation of former-state-socialist labour by global capital through massive layoffs due to the closure of former-state-socialist companies, forced trade, foreign direct investment, as well as the displacement of part of the labour force of the formerly socialist societies to the rest of the world. As a result, the former-state-socialist ‘bloc’ became both a sending and receiving region for foreign migrant labour, fraught with structural tensions, inequities and injustices comparable to, or in some instances even greater than, in the rest of the world. This paper assesses some of the implications of this transformation for the ways in which we think about global labour migration /1/ from the perspective of former-state-socialist-bloc labour, /2/ for citizen labour across the European continent, and /3/ for global labour movements/migration “at large.”

Bionote

Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Rutgers University;Currently Fellow, Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Studies, JNU, Delhi

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Special Economic Zones - The Emerging Scenario of Citizenship in India -Ishita Dey [ Full Paper]

Abstract

SEZs in India have produced differentiated meaning of citizenship in three significant ways; firstly through the legislative clauses and amendments. This essay will highlight some of the amendments that states like West Bengal, Maharashtra, Gujarat etc carried out in its state SEZ act to “attract investors” at the cost of rights of the people which shows how practices of citizenship is resplendent with policies of inclusion and exclusion in the state – citizen relationship. Thus the question that emerges is “citizenship” a status or is it a role? Secondly, the unique governance structure of special economic zones carries the potential of SEZs turning into sovereign mini-centres of power as the power of entry and exit is restricted and the permission to enter this well guarded city has to be obtained from the Development Commissioner, an officer appointed by the Central Government. Thirdly, the need for creating “economic zones” and to declare them “public utility services” with no index of security schemes for the workers shows that the main aim of the neo-liberal state “is to create a “good business climate” and therefore to optimize conditions of capital accumulation no matter what the consequences for employment or social well- being”(Harvey 2008: 25)[1] Thus when we talk about citizenship rights in SEZ, Harvey (2008)[2] reminds us that we need to remember “rights cluster around two dominant logics of power : that of the territorial state and that of capital”. He argues that even though we want our rights to be universal, the enforcement of rights requires the support of the state apparatus and it is in this sense “rights are fundamentally derivate of and conditional upon citizenship”[3].


[1] Harvey, David. 2008. Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a theory of uneven Geographical Development. London: Verso
[2] ibid
[3] ibid, pp55

Bionote

Joined as Research Associate in CRG May 2007. Her M Phil dissertation was on "Migration and Entrepreneurship: Chinese Community in Kolkata Primary areas of academic research interests are development and its impact on migration, social movements Food practices and consumption culture in 21st C Bengal.”  

 

        

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The Refugee as a Mobile Subject - Paolo Novak [ Full Paper]

Abstract

The modern institutional figure of ‘the refugee’ emerged in dialectical relation to the territorialisation of sovereign power. After the consolidation of the nation/state as organising form of governance across the world, the marginal space occupied by the refugee in the national order of things has functioned as an exception justifying and confirming practices of statecraft, particularly at intergovernmental level. ‘The refugee’, as the concrete embodiment of the boundaries of citizenship and statehood, reifies them, rendering concrete their (changing) meaning; as an institutional field of intervention, it allows the projection of regimenting institutional orders, across different scales of discourse and action. Not surprisingly, ‘the refugee’ is a key institution in the projection and dissolution of such regimenting orders.
This paper assesses the relation between the institution of 'the refugee' and forms of inter- and trans-governmental regimentation, focusing on the three-decades long displacement of Afghan refugees in Pakistan. It exposes the necessary incompleteness of such regimentation attempts by looking at its contents (protection and assistance practices).  Drawing on such analysis, it provides a relational and multiperspectival framework for the conceptualisation of the refugee as a multiply interpellated and multiply positioned subject.

Bionote

Paolo Novak teaches Development Studies at SOAS, London. His research is concerned with the relation between boundaries and the development project; with a particular emphasis on processes of re-scaling and re-regulation associated to globalisation, and on the relation between institutional labels and governance apparatuses.