Neoliberal capitalism has turned permanent migration into impermanent transnational subcontracting

Evidence

That Pakistanis are just one national group among many working in U.S.- occupied Iraq points to the complexity of global migration and the social and economic hierarchies created by globalization. In the neoliberal system of global capitalism, the impermanence of transnational work stands in for the temporary labor reserves traditionally held by international migrants that potentially become permanent inhabitants.≥ In this process, the meaning of labor migration itself has changed, partly through the dynamics of the migration industry, but also through the meanings attached to migrant workers themselves across the globe. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 25

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Milgrom/Roberts law-merchant material on how subcontracting and contract formalities structure transnational labor, and to the general theme of precarious global labor. — connects to: Right-wing neoliberals justify border closure through utility-of-human-capital logic — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 30; Neoliberal shocks drove urban refugees into mobile rural-urban livelihoods rather than resettlement — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1973; Capital moves freely while ecologically dispossessed people become stationary displaced — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 114