Reconsidering labor coercion through the logics of Im / mobility and the environment
2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 64; Issue: 6 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0023656x.2023.2254245
ISSN1469-9702
AutoresClaudio Bernardi, Amal Shahid, Müge Özbek,
Tópico(s)Urban Transport and Accessibility
ResumoABSTRACTThe 'new mobilities paradigm' formulated in the early 2000s allowed scholars of labor to explore the possibilities of the concept of im/mobility as an interpretive framework for understanding processes of work and labor. This paper contributes to the continued cross-fertilization between mobility studies and labor studies by exploring the theoretical and methodological prospects of focusing on assemblages of temporal- spatial practices that simultaneously compel and confine movement. The article suggests that means, processes, and extent of labor coercion can be understood by analyzing how people are compelled to move or are confined to specific sites temporarily or permanently. It discusses how employing space and im/mobility as conceptual tools uncover the role of diffused, hierarchical layers through which labor coercion emerges. In this regard, environment emerges as a significant factor. The paper examines how mobility becomes a line of flight from sites/fields of coercion, or locks people into new forms of coercive relations; the legal/ formal or informal frameworks that regulate or govern labor im/mobility within specific sites; and how the logics of deployment and coercion overlap and mutually reinforce one another. Ultimately, it aims to contribute to the calls for non-linear, newly spatialized histories of labor processes and labor coercion.KEYWORDS: Coercionmobilitylabormigrationimmobilityenvironmenthistory AcknowledgmentsPublication costs and part of the research for this article has been funded by the European Union – NextGenerationEU and by the 2021 STARS Grants@Unipd programme, research project ESSENTIA- The Mobility Regime across Mexico and United States: the case of farmworkers from Tabasco and Oaxaca (1930s-1970s)Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. This special issue is a culmination of discussions during a 2021 research meeting titled 'Sites and Intersections of labor im/mobility' and organized by the working groups 'Im/mobilizations of the Workforce' and 'Sites and Fields of Coercion' within the COST Action Worlds of Related Coercions in Work (WORCK), the research group 'Free and Unfree Labor' of the Italian Society for Labor History (SISLav), and the Mobility & Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies (MOHU) at the University of Padua. A writers' workshop brought together the authors of selected contributions from the research meeting for the preparations of this special issue in Vienna, in May 2022. The workshop was made possible through the funding provided by COST Action CA18205 Worlds of Related Coercions in Work-WORCK.2. Interview with Miguel Zavala López by Violeta Domínguez, 2002, 'Interview no. 1046,' Institute of Oral History, University of Texas at El Paso, pp. 1–41.3. Ibid., p. 14.4. Ibid., p. 40.5. Among the plethora of studies available, we suggest a handful of titles that are exemplary of the key approaches, see for instance Hoerder, D. (2002), Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium, Duke University Press; Fink, L. (2011), Workers across the Americas: The Transnational Turn in Labor History, Oxford University Press,; Lucassen, J., Lucassen, L. & Manning, P. (2010), Migration History in World History: Multidisciplinary Approaches, Brill; Mohapatra, P. (2007), Eurocentrism, Forced Labour, and Global Migration: A Critical Assessment, International Review of Social History, 52(1), 110–115. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020859006002823 (accessed April 20, 2022); Lutz, H. (Ed.) (Citation2008), Migration and Domestic Work: A European Perspective on a Global Theme, Ashgate Publishing.6. The research group '(Im)mobilizations of the Workforce' within WORCK is part of this recent exploration, in particular by targeting the spatial dimension of related coercions and by understanding the 'logic of deployment' through immobilization for writing new histories of workers' (im)mobilization. See https://worck.eu/organisation/wg3.7. The global labor history field has been extremely prolific over the past two decades, see for instance van der Linden, M. (Citation2008), Workers of the World: Essays Toward a Global Labor History, Brill; Lucassen, J. (Citation2006), Global Labour History: A State of the Art. Peter Lang.8. Beyond the lengthy literature we are provided today, global labor history is fundamentally rooted in research groups around the world such as the Association of Indian Labour Historians, the Brazilian network 'Mundos do Trabalho,' the Global Labor History Network, the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI), re: work. Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History, RELATT – Red Latinoamericana de Trabajo y Trabajador@s, and WORCK: Worlds of Related Coercions in Work, among many others.9. See Marshall, A. (Citation1895), Principle of Economics. London: MacMillan and Co in Hofmeester and van der Linden (Citation2019), Introduction, p. 3.10. The debate about free/unfree labor in relation to migrant workers has sprouted intense discussions around the issue of coercion, whereas the topic of freedom has received less attention and has largely been identified either with workers' agency, liberal freedom, or workers' autonomy. See respectively Stanziani (Citation2018), Labor on the Fringes of Empire: Voice, Exit and the Law. Palgrave. Doi: 10.1007/978-3-319 70,392–3; Quintana, M. L. (Citation2022), Contracting Freedom: Race, Empire, and U.S. Guestworker Programs. University of Pennsylvania Press; Boutang, Y. M. (Citation2002), Dalla schiavitù al lavoro salariato. manifestolibri [1st French edition, 1998].11. On coercive mechanisms in specific sites and their connections through fields, see the activity and publications of WORCK – Worlds of Related Coercions in Work, working group 2: Sites and Fields of Coercion, https://worck.eu/organisation/wg2.Additional informationFundingThe work was supported by the 2021 STARS@UniPd Next Generation EU.Notes on contributorsClaudia BernardiClaudia Bernardi is an associate professor in 'History of the Americas' at the University of Perugia, and PI of the project The Mobility Regime across Mexico and United States: the case of farmworkers from Tabasco and Oaxaca (1930s-1970s) at the University of Padua. She is board member of the Italian Society for Labour History-SISLav and coordinator of SISLav group "Free and Unfree labor". She is profesora visitante at Centro de estudios Históricos of Colegio de México (2023, 2024), guest-researcher at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut of Berlin (2022), visiting Fellow at the History Department of Ghent University (2018, 2021) and at the European Institute for Global Studies of Basel University (2016). She is visiting affiliate (2023) and postdoctoral Fellow of the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History at Harvard University (2014/15). Her first monograph titled Una storia di confine. Frontiere e lavoratori migranti tra Messico e Stati Uniti (1836-1964) won the Prize for First Work 2019 of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History-SISSCO. Contact: claudia.bernardi@unipg.itAmal ShahidAmal Shahid is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Political Studies, University of Lausanne, on the SNSF Eccellenza Project 'Moral and Economic Entrepreneurship: A Collaborative History of Global Switzerland (1800-1900).' Her sub-project focuses on the Basel India Mission. She completed a Ph.D. in International History from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. Her doctoral research focused on the colonial governance of famine relief in the North-Western Provinces of India between c. 1860-1920, with a focus on labor regulation. Her research interests include history of imperialism and colonialism, history of labor, and history of political economy. Contact: amal.shahid@unil.chMüge ÖzbekMüge Özbek is an assistant professor in the Core Program at Kadir Has University. She completed her Ph.D. at Boğaziçi University with a dissertation titled Single, Poor Women in Istanbul, 1850–1915: Prostitution, Sexuality, and Female Labor in 2017. She has articles and book chapters on female labor, urban space, and im/mobility in the late Ottoman Empire. She also published an article on the question of late Ottoman women's activism and the rise of nationalism in Middle Eastern Studies. Özbek is currently working on new research on fatherhood, the labor of childrearing, and affective labor in Late Ottoman middle-class families and on everyday mobilities in late Ottoman Istanbul. Contact: muge.ozbek@khas.edu.tr
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