States profit from the illegality they co-produce in migrant labor flows

Evidence

In my usage, ”illegality” is not only an actual state of legal status but also a condition of political subjectivity that places migrants outside the law. Thus, human tra≈cking as illicit trade in labor migrants becomes a useful and essential component of state-regulated labor migration. The illegality of labor flows is an industry that is sanctioned by the state and exploited in the production of capital. Thus, controlling the illegality that is reflected in the unlawful practices and informal regulations of governments allows the nation-state to manipulate the labor of migrants. For the field of migration studies, this shifts attention from the documentation of immigrants to the status accorded to such documentation by the state (De Genova 2002, 422-23). — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 666

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the author’s broader thesis on how states deliberately maintain migrant vulnerability — parallels the rationale behind the visa-oversay/deportability literature (De Genova). — connects to: Free trade treaties free capital flows while criminalizing the displaced people they create — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1409; States choose official labels for mass migrants that encode their intended outcome — Manuel Borutta and Jan C. Jansen, Vertriebene and Pieds-Noirs in Postwar…, 54; Immigration and the cash nexus created America’s wage-labor force — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 613
• SEED: An essay angle: the state as an active stakeholder in trafficking — how ‘sanctioned illegality’ becomes an economic engine rather than a policing failure.