>There's been some [internationalisation of labour]. The EU is legally a
single labor market, though European
>workers still aren't all that mobile. But there's been tremendous
>immigration to North America (and Australia too, right?) The working
>classes of New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto are very multinational. And,
>as Sassen argues, the suppliers of immigrants are often the very countries
>that are targets of foreign investment.
in terms of movement, it's been tremendous, especially in the last ten to twenty years.
hey, it's as if there's been an undeclared world war... (something I'm not ruling out simply based on prior definitions of what a 'world war' consisted of. neoliberalisation has been a world war of much wider dimensions perhaps.)
foreign investment, in the way you mentioned above, is simply a way of keeping those workers who would otherwise move in the one place and have them compete with workers in other countries. it does the same work as does regulating immigration, but is increasingly not flowing to those countries deemed politically unstable. and, emigrations increase as the IMF has sought to impose austerity, which is one of the more important elements in converting conflicts into wars, as in Indonesia.
in terms of whether such movement is legalised (even legitimated) or not, there are stark contrasts to the post-WW2 period, as is the increasing time spent in refugee camps, as well as the introduction of automatic incarceration of refugees. moreover, there has been an expansion of the use of guest work laws, a restriction of the definition of refugees, cuts in immigration quotas, a shift in the proportions of skilled, family reunion and refugees towards skilled, etc, all alongside an increase, according to most accounts, of undocumented workers and constant and growing deportations. so, there has been a growth of movement (there are what, 67 million refugees last time I looked), but the ways in which people can move are regulated in such a way as to make them available for cheap labour, and so to confirm all the perceptions of threat. this is what undocumented work does, as do the laws which deny immigrants welfare for periods of time.
so, when I said that the internationalisation of capital had not been accompanied by an internationalisation of labour, it goes to how labour composes itself in this period, which is increasingly nationalistic, as evidenced by the ways in which unions continue to respond to globalisation with a call to protect 'our jobs' from 'other workers', whether that be from 'other workers' coming here, or 'other workers' someplace else underwritten by foreign investments (capital relocation). there ahs been very little attempt, other than in those sectors in which marginalised workers predominate, to organise across borders, and so to even attempt to establish cross-border conditions and wages which would at least challenge the strategies of capital relocation and national regulation.
I'm still wondering when we'll get over guild socialism.... I'm also wondering when analogies between the Berlin wall and that fence on the Mexican-us border will become visible.
below are excerpts from an interview with Maria Jimenez on the militarisation of the US-Mexico Border which I thought was interesting.
Angela --- rcollins at netlink.com.au
__________________________ The Militarization of the U.S.- Mexico Border Part 1 - Border Communities Respond to Militarization Interview with Maria Jiménez Houston, Texas [...]
Maria Jiménez is director of the Immigration Law Enforcement Monitoring Project (LEMP), a project of the American Friends Service Committee. Founded in 1987, it's goal is to reduce the abuse of authority in the enforcement of immigration laws. LEMP works with community based groups in four areas of the U.S.-Mexico border: San Diego; southern Arizona; the El Paso/New Mexico area; and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. [...] (Interview by Nic Paget-Clarke) -------- [...] A concrete case that I can point to is the young man, Ezequiel Hernandez, shot by the U.S. Marines on a drug patrol in Redford, Texas. In that particular case, we had been monitoring the activities of Joint Task Force 6 since their formation in 1989. We were highly critical of their involvement because of the implications of using the military in policing civilian populations. World-wide this involvement has always resulted in serious human rights violations and a deterioration of democratic institutions. [...]
The Militarization of the U.S. Mexico Border
In Motion Magazine: At what point did you realize you were going to start using the word 'militarization'?
Maria Jiménez: Immediately. The first thing I did when I was hired in April of '87 was to do document research of what the problem was. I wrote an article for the National Immigration Project newsletter called "The Militarization of the Border". It was immediate that the context of our work would be this. One, because of the large number of not only Border Patrol agents and INS concentrated on the border, but also numerous federal agencies. Currently about 46 federal agencies work on the border. Secondly, we had already begun to see sectors speaking about the use of the military directly. There were even some laws like the 1986 law which authorized the use of military bases for keeping undocumented people. [...]
The anti-immigrant sentiment was growing because of the changes in the global economy, the re-structuring in the country that was exciting the economic insecurity of residents of the U.S. There was the view that problems come from south of the border. Statistically, the Urban Institute in '94 indicated that out of ten undocumented people in the United States only four crossed the southern border, but the national view is that everybody who is undocumented comes through the southern border. Again the Urban Institute found that out of 100 undocumented people in the United States only 39%, the INS says 55%, are Mexican nationals. Yet 90% of the people arrested are Mexican nationals, and 85% of the resources to deal with "the undocumented problem" are placed in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border. That problem, the problem of the national perception of viewing the border as a war zone and immigrants as enemies and subsequently border communities - you can conclude when you have military patrols in your town that somehow somebody thought you were the enemies of this country -- that was why we were losing. [...]
In Motion Magazine: Why are there covert military operations in Redford?
Maria Jiménez: Again it's because of these perceptions that people have in the interior of the country. There's drugs in Washington D.C., why don't they put covert military operations in Washington, D.C.? The border is viewed as a war zone, where evil enters, as if economic problems ended and began at the border. Particularly the populations at the border are seen as suspect. I remember the words of Enrique Madrid, one of the residents of Redford who went to Washington, when he said, "My grandfather was one of the original founders of Redford". He had the charter that his grandfather had for the land at Redford. Generations grew up in Redford. He served his country in the military. In many different ways they built the community. Now all of a sudden there are covert operations, "My God we suddenly realized we were an enemy." The perception is that there are expendable populations in terms of what we would call democratic institutions. With all its sophistication, the military in the training of these Marines could not tell the difference between the good guy and the bad guy, so to speak. This shepherd fit the profile of a drug-runner. So if he fit the profile of a drug-runner then it means everybody on the border fits the profile of a drug-runner. There are stereotypic views that are concretized into policy and institutionalized. I think militarization deals with the historical relations of the border - the fact that these were lands violently incorporated in the United States. Also there is the persistent view of how some look at the people of Mexico - the prejudice that exists among the population. I think it deals more with the prejudice than the facts. Decisions are made by transnational corporations that are not democratic
In Motion Magazine: It does seem ironic that at the same time as we have free trade which you would think would make the border more open, the border is actually being closed. How do you explain that?
Maria Jiménez: I don't think it's an irony. I think it's a function of the global system in which the decisions are being made by transnational corporations and by entities that are not democratic. When we look at the function of mobility across the border we must look at that global system. The U.N. says there are five billion people in the world. Two billion are in the labor market, and of those something like 125 million are actually people who live outside of their countries of origin. The U.S. receives 1% annually of these migrants. Each year, since the '80s, there's been an increase in the number of refugees, people who move across international borders because of natural disasters or civil strife. There's also economic migrants, people who move to incorporate themselves into labor markets. Of these there are about a million a year. When you look at the scheme of globalization and restructuring one sees that the economic and political elites of the world have no problems in getting across borders. The CEO's, wealthy refugees - we saw the case of Kuwait - can easily come into the United States. If you are in a political elite you have no problem moving back and forth legally between countries. The militarized borders, the walls, the agents, are really to impede the mobility of the international working poor who attempt to cross borders. In that sense border politics for me is a strategic aspect of economic development policy apparent in our global system. It's a policy that seeks to create a world of low wages and high profits. When you regulate labor but do not regulate capital then you create the conditions of: 1) attempting to immobilize populations that are left in countries to which you can move your assembly plants and pay workers very low wages. And 2) if people can get across illegally into your country then the illegality creates the conditions for a group of people who are socially disenfranchised, politically disenfranchised, and economically vulnerable. They are placed in industries where again the motive is low wages and high profits.
>From Slave Patrol to Border Patrol
The only comparison I can make on the issue of mobility in the United States is during the slavery period in the South. I think one of the first police forces to be paid by governments were the famous slave patrols of the South. The function of the slave patrols was to impede the mobility of the slaves and to insure that if one did escape a plantation that person would be returned. This reinforced the existing social and economic structure. It's in the same sense that we have a Border Patrol and the INS. We have a police force whose function is to reinforce immobility, to reinforce the conditions that maximize profits and ensure low wages. I remember once our (INS) District Director was present at a presentation here . I said "Isn't it true that in terms of employer/employee relations, of labor/management relations, the only area enforced through the use of force, through the use of armed agents, is the one where the international worker is not authorized to work?" Of all the labor laws of the United States, violations of safety and health, violations of minimum wage, violations of the use of toxic entities in plants, of all the violations of laws between labor and management, none of these are enforced by a group of armed individuals who come to your work site to make sure that you comply with these laws. The only area is the area of the international worker - the authorized or unauthorized worker. That's why I think it's similar to the slave patrols of the South. Why is it so important in our economic system to have armed agents come into a work site to enforce this? That's what gives me the impression that it's a key area that ensures and reinforces the existing inequalities on an international level. It guarantees for the transnational corporate strategy the mechanism of low wages, high profits. That's why it's not illogical. It's illogical from our view because what we seek is justice for all sectors of the world politic. Many times I talk about the idea that the real issue in border politics is the issue of equality of border mobility. Border mobility is not equal. The wealthy can go all over the world without any problem.
In Motion Magazine: So the work of the Border Patrol is not so much to keep Mexican workers out of the United States as to keep them being available for work in Mexico?
Maria Jiménez: And highly exploited if they do cross. We saw this for example with the incident of the deaf people who were brought from Mexico to New York and who literally lived in slave conditions.
In Motion Magazine: What are the primary reasons that people cross the border?
Maria Jiménez: I think that the driving force is the conditions in the countries of origin -- economic deprivation and the closing of democratic practices and spaces. Most of Latin America has fallen under structural adjustment programs of international banking institutions which demand a reduction in government services, privatization and readjustment of land policies. Because these are very harsh measures, the apparatus of political repression grows. This creates the conditions for people to cross the border. In the case of Mexican immigrants there is the added facet that there over a hundred years of migratory streams. We have a lot of family connections that move people from one side over to the other side of the border. Many people will also return. The primary constant is economic disparity and the need in the U.S. for workers in certain areas of economic growth. Originally these migration patterns began because U.S. employers went to Mexico for contract labor. [...]
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