Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

“Autonomy of migration” names a concept whose methodology enables a series of questions to be asked about the relationship between migration and capitalism, opening the horizon for a range of political perspectives on migration struggles taking place around the world and in the context of the alter-globalization movement . The persistence of movements of migration in the face of the militarization of borders and an elaborate, if not always coherent, migration regime in the United States and Europe constitutes a component within the analysis, to the extent that it focuses on the agency of migrants. The concept opens up the possibility to question the contemporary formation of capitalist socialization and its imperial, postcolonial, and, therefore, global foundations. The term autonomy of migration had, for a long time, a hidden presence in an interview with the French political economist Yann Moulier Boutang, published in Italian in 1992 and later translated into German. Through the concept, he spoke first and foremost of the “subjective factor” that had long been suppressed in many theoretical and political analyses and public debates about migration. Moulier Boutang insisted that the experts and agencies that concentrated on immigration failed to notice the autonomy of migration and instead attributed it to economic policy, insisting it was a matter of administrative regulation. ... log in or subscribe to read full text