Migration as Economic Imperialism
Migration and Economic Imperialism
How International Labour Mobility Undermines Economic Development in Poor Countries
Migration as Economic Imperialism challenges the narrative set forward by the world’s leading economic development agencies, finance capitalists and western governments that international labour migration is beneficial to the entire world economy and is the primary means for the economic development of poor countries.
From the 1990s to the present, labour migration from the South and economic transfers have expanded dramatically. The rise of labour migration since the global spread of neoliberal capitalism in the 1990s has benefited rich states in the North, the Arab Gulf and countries integrated into global production networks with labour shortages.
Endorsements
‘Whether named colonialism, neocolonialism or globalization, imperialism still organizes much of the world economy. This book systematically locates labour migration within the capitalist imperialism that overdetermines it . . . thereby adding an overdue critical perspective to the study of labour migration.’
Richard D. Wolff, The New School, New York
‘In this insightful critique of the migration‒development nexus, Ness argues for rethinking migration as a benefit to sending countries. Through a global economic imperialism lens, he proposes that labor migration is one more peg in the extractive history of wealthy countries, further disempowering poorer sending countries. This meaningful intervention in debates about labour migration will be of great interest and will be read widely.’
Cecilia Menjívar, University of California, Los Angeles
Polity
Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class
Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class
The site of industrial struggle is shifting. Across the Global South, peasant communities are forced off the land to live and work in harsh and impoverished conditions. Inevitably, new methods of combating the spread of industrial capitalism are evolving in ambitious, militant and creative ways. This is the first book to theorise and examine the present and future shape of global class struggles.
Immanuel Ness looks at three key countries: China, India and South Africa. In each case he considers the broader historical forces at play - the effects of imperialism, the decline of the trade union movement, the class struggle and the effects of the growing reserve army of labour. For each case study, he narrows his focus to reveal the specifics of each grassroots insurgency: export promotion and the rise of worker insurgency in China, the new labour organisations in India, and the militancy of the miners in South Africa.
This is a study about the nature of the new industrial worker in the Global South; about people living a terrifying, precarious existence - but also one of experimentation, solidarity and struggle.
Pluto Press
Organizing Insurgency: Workers Movements in the Global South
Organizing Insurgency: Workers Movements in the Global South
Workers in the Global South are doomed through economic imperialism to carry the burden of the entire world. While these workers appear isolated from the Global North, they are in fact deeply integrated into global commodity chains and essential to the maintenance of global capitalism.
Looking at contemporary case studies in India, the Philippines and South Africa, this book affirms the significance of political and economic representation to the struggles of workers against deepening levels of poverty and inequality that oppress the majority of people on the planet.
Immanuel Ness shows that workers are eager to mobilise to improve their conditions, and can achieve lasting gains if they have sustenance and support from political organisations. From the Dickensian industrial zones of Delhi to the agrarian oligarchy on the island of Mindanao, a common element remains – when workers organise they move closer to the realisation of socialism, solidarity and equality.
Pluto Press
Choke Points
Choke Points: Logistics Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain
Global capitalism is a precarious system. Relying on the steady flow of goods across the world, trans-national companies such as Wal-Mart and Amazon depend on the work of millions in docks, warehouses and logistics centres to keep their goods moving.
This is the global supply chain, and, if the chain is broken, capitalism grinds to a halt. This book looks at case studies across the world to uncover a network of resistance by these workers who, despite their importance, often face vast exploitation and economic violence.
Experiencing first hand wildcat strikes, organised blockades and boycotts, the authors explore a diverse range of case studies, from South China dockworkers to the transformation of the port of Piraeus in Greece, and from the Southern California logistics sector, to dock and logistical workers in Chile and unions in Turkey.
Pluto Press
Global Rupture
Global Rupture: Neoliberal
Global Rupture makes a key intervention in debates on informal and precarious labour. Increasing recognition that informal and precarious labour is an enduring reality under neo-liberal capitalism, and the norm globally, rather than the exception has ignited debates around analytical frames, activist strategies and development interventions. This pathbreaking volume provides a corrective through drawing upon theoretically informed rich case studies from the world outside of North America, Europe, and Australasia. Each contribution converges on the enduring and expanding significance of informal and precarious work within the Global South—the most significant factor in preventing a worldwide decent work agenda.
Brill / Haymarket Books
Sanctions As War
Sanctions As War Anti-Imperialist Perspectives On American Geo-Economic Strategy
Sanctions as War offers the first comprehensive account of economic sanctions as a tool for exercising American power on the global stage.
Since the 1980s, the US has steadily increased its reliance on economic sanctions, or the imposition of extensive financial penalties for violation of given rules, to fight its foreign policy battles. Perceived as a less costly and damaging alternative to kinetic military engagement, economic sanctions have been levied against over 25 other countries. In the process, sanctions have destroyed thousands of innocent lives and wreaked inestimable damages to civil society.
To understand how sanctions function as a war-making strategy, this collection offers chapters that address the theory and history of economic sanctions as well as chapter-length case studies of sanctions exercised against the civilian populations of Iraq, Venezuela, and other nations.
Haymarket Books
Ours to Master and to Own
Ours to Masters and to Own Workers' Control from the Commune to the Present
From the dawning of the industrial epoch, wage earners have organized themselves into unions, fought bitter strikes, and gone so far as to challenge the very premises of the system by creating institutions of democratic self-management aimed at controlling production without bosses. With specific examples drawn from every corner of the globe and every period of modern history, this pathbreaking volume comprehensively traces this often underappreciated historical tradition. Ripe with lessons drawn from historical and contemporary struggles for workers’ control, Ours to Master and to Own is essential reading for those struggling to create a new world from the ashes of the old.
Haymarket Books
The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism
The Oxford Handbook of Economic Imperialism examines unequal commercial, trade, and investment gains at the international level and explores how countries and nations can have exploitative relations. The book contains thirty-four chapters written by academics and experts in the field of international political economy. The chapters in the Handbook look at the history of economic imperialism from the early modern age to the present. They demonstrate the persistence of economic imperialism in today’s postcolonial world and the enduring control wielded by great powers even after the end of formal empire. The book reveals how emerging powers are expanding economic control in new geographic and geopolitical contexts. The Handbook highlights the significance of economic imperialism in the structures, relations, processes, and ideas that help sustain poverty and conflict worldwide.
Oxford University Press
Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism objectively presents the prominent themes, epochal events, theoretical explanations, and historical accounts of imperialism from 1776 to the present. It is the most historically and academically comprehensive examination of the subject to date.
Springer / Palgrave
The Routledge Handbook of the Gig Economy
The Routledge Handbook of the Gig Economy Research on the growth of the precarious economy is of signifi cant interest as the economy increasingly becomes dependent on gig work. However, as platform and automated service work has grown, there remains a chasm in understanding the key aspects of digital labour.
This handbook presents comprehensive theoretical, empirical, and historical accounts of the political economy of informal work from the late 20th century to the present.
It examines the rich and varied analysis and critique of the informalisation of work, focusing on its most signifi cant theories, intellectual traditions, and authors. It highlights the political, social, cultural, and developmental impact of the deterioration of employment in the Global North and Global South, as well as the extreme threat posed to the planet by the growth of contingent work, poverty, and enduring and increasing inequalities produced and reproduced by the reformation of capitalism in the contemporary age of neoliberal capitalism. The period from the 1980s to the present is marked by the expanded extraction of surplus value from workers through the creation of non-standard jobs and the restructuring of work. A central component of the restructuring of work is the extension of gig employment through the development of algorithmic platforms which direct labourers to perform discrete tasks.
Routledge