Racial Capitalism and Migrants
Course Description
DEVS 862-002
In recent years, the study of migration has moved to the centre stage of development policy and development theorisation. As the movement and numbers of migrants has increased globally, populist backlash against certain classes and categories of migrants has gained momentum with restrictive visa and border control regimes and rhetoric of hate. Migrant workers are faced with increased precarity and exploitation despite their labour being vital for local economies.
Using the theoretical lens of racial capitalism, this intensive seminar course will challenge you to rethink the interface between migration, unfree labour, and migration by undertaking an intersectional analysis of precarious work, racialization, and migration in the contemporary moment.
Racial capitalism is recognised both as a conceptual framework and a theory to show how differentiation of people along racial categories, and other markers of ‘difference’ to accumulate value. The course will debate how racialized hierarchy of (non)citizenship accentuates social inequalities and increases labour exploitation. We will discuss how the state aids racial capitalism by maintaining a racialized, gendered, and segmented labour market through neoliberal migration regimes.
By examining the intersections of gender, race, class, and masculinity, the course will provide cutting-edge theorisation about how these interfaces impact migration patterns, policies, societies, and, most importantly, the lived experiences of the migrants. The focus of the course will be North America and Europe as ‘receiving’ regions. It will adopt an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on literature ranging from political economy, migration studies, critical masculinity studies, and gender studies and diverse material including auto-ethnographies, photovoice, documentaries, and films in facilitating a nuanced theoretical grounding on this subject.
A mixed senior undergraduate/graduate level course with limited space for DEVS MA graduate students who may not take more than one such mixed course.