"New Keywords: Migration and Borders" is a collaborative writing project aimed at developing a nexus of terms and concepts that fill-out the contemporary problematic of migration. It moves beyond traditional and critical migration studies by building on cultural studies and post-colonial analyses, and by drawing on a diverse set of longstanding author engagements with migrant movements. The paper is organized in four parts (i)

In this paper, the author proposes an analysis of the apparently contradictory attitudes towards transactional sexual exchanges, as they have emerged in public debate and informed legislation and policies in Italy over the past few years. The ambiguity towards commercial sex is linked to a specific dynamic of power, which denies sexual labour the status of work and makes it the object of repressive and criminalising policies, whilst at the same time habitually demanding sexual services in exchange for money, gifts or favours. The article shows how criminalisation functions as a prominent form for the control of subjects, related to the workings of sovereignty. In particular, the author considers the ways in which the criminalisation of prostitution and of undocumented migration, which compound in the figure of the migrant prostitute, represents a means for the exertion of sovereignty and relates to the centrality of desire, transgression and their disciplining in the contemporary context. However, closer examination of the subjective experiences of those who are supposedly excluded and criminalised, such as undocumented migrant sex workers in detention centres, reveals the incompleteness of disciplinary mechanisms.

No abstract

Το άρθρο εξετάζει την αλληλεπίδραση πολλαπλών καθεστώτων<br />υποκειμενοποίησης που σχετίζονται με τον εκτοπισμό και τον εντοπισμό, όπως αυτά επενεργούν στις εμπειρίες ζωής Νιγηριανών μεταναστριών εργατριών του σεξ. Το κείμενο διερευνά επίσης τους τρόπους με τους οποίους οι υποκειμενικότητες των γυναικών αυτών ενδέχεται<br />να υπερβαίνουν αυτά τα καθεστώτα. Μηχανισμοί (dispositifs), όπως αυτοί της μεταναστευτικής πολιτικής και της ανθρωπιστικής πολιτικής, της επισφάλειας και της θεσμοθετημένης υφαρπαγής στις νεοφιλελεύθερες οικονομίες, καθώς επίσης και αυτοί του φύλου και της συγγένειας, συνυφαίνονται μέσω περίπλοκων γενεαλογιών που δεν ανάγονται σε μια ξεκάθαρη διάκριση ανάμεσα σε υποκείμενα-θύματα και υποκείμενα-θύτες. Παρομοίως, η κινητικότητα και η στατικότητα ή η διάσχιση των συνόρων και η τακτοποιημένη ζωή δεν μπορούν εύκολα να χαρτογραφηθούν με όρους υπέρβασης ή περιορισμού: η μετανάστευση και η επιστροφή βιώνονται με τρόπο αμφίσημο, τόσο απελευθερωτικό όσο και περιοριστικό.

The paper puts the food regime model, as elaborated by scholars such as Harriet Friedmann and Philip McMichael, into articulation with the analysis of migration/border regimes, as proposed by critical migration scholars. If by now it is well established that the policies that regulate the mobility of migrant labour play a crucial role in enabling capitalist accumulation in contemporary global agriculture, few analyses have delved into the actual mechanisms which make this possible, and into their histories. The argument is developed by reference to the Italian case, showing how subsequent waves of substitution of Italian labourers with migrants, that began in the 1980s, have followed different patterns. It argues that these can be understood by reading them against the grain of the changes accruing in the transnational migration regime. Thus, precarisation and segmentation of the labour force in the farming sector are shown to have been actively fostered by policies which have made of undocumented or differentially included labour one of the pillars upon which globally integrated food production has relied for the past three decades. Whilst based on national-scale statistics and secondary literature, the analysis also builds upon a sustained presence and engaged participant research in some of the Italian agroindustrial enclaves that record the highest presence of migrant labour.