Book Review: Migration Beyond Capitalism

This is quite a fascinating work on the question of neoliberal brutality and exploitation of migrant labour in the context of capitalist development. This book is crafted in the context of the 2015–2016 panic in Europe over migrants and the rightward trajectories of the United Kingdom and the United States. This book contemplates the impossibility of challenging neoliberal brutality, the dominance of the Right and abuses of working people within capitalist development. In this volume, Hannah Cross argues how migrant labour tends to benefit the middle and upper classes, while it is deliberately used to drive down working conditions among diverse groups in the sections of the labour market that are undervalued within the capitalist economic system. This alienates and ultimately disempowers the working classes, whatever their citizenship status. She also argues capitalism as a specific mode of production creates structural migration as people are compelled to move from one place to another for work, whether by concerted labour policies such as historically, the slave trade, colonial or apartheid-type labour regimes, or by guest worker programmes and more recent policies of ‘managed migration’. This book is specifically based on an approach to migration that puts the labouring class at the centre. It also considers the possibility of another world that is free of mass displacement and structural exploitation, which advances out of imperialism and vast global inequality. The book consists of eight wonderful chapters including an introduction.

Chapter 1 (Introduction) discusses the question of Migration politics and the left. It looks beyond capitalism as a strategy for the left, which it argues on the basis of three promises of the political economy of migration: cheap labour, national chauvinism and class prejudice. Furthermore, it addresses the issue of migration and capitalism as well as the left and migration politics. Chapter 2, Socialism, Marxism and Migration, discusses the approach to migration advanced by the Irish question to differentiate between the nationalism of oppressed and oppressing countries, accounting for the complexity of national liberation struggles while also recognizing that nations are not to be done away with as primarily social and political aim. The chapter analyses the social-democratic programme in its historical conception as a potential route to socialism, finding that it has become inextricably linked with an imperialistic nationalism. This chapter also discusses the notion of social democracy and its potential for transformation.

Chapter 3, Imperialism and Migrant Labour in the Capitalist World Economy, looks over the historical relationship between migration and capitalism showing the core significance of imperialism and militarism to the capitalist mode of production. The author argues that capitalism is the dominant mode of production in the world. Its militarism and control over the production, distribution and consumption of food have particular roles to play in evictions, borders, labour markets and class divisions that have created a system of migration. Migration channels are driven by factors that include colonial and other historical connections between regions and countries, proximity, family and community links, available work, ease of access or blockage of routes, recruitment by labour brokers and consideration of safety at the destination. Chapter 4, Borders, Militarism and Inequality, elucidates how borders do not just prevent immigration, but also determine the hierarchies between North and South, between different migratory movements and between workers in the national economy. This chapter further explores the history of the hard borders and their expansion within and beyond national boundaries, with particular focus on United States immigration controls, the European Union’s ‘long summer migration’ in 2015 and the role of borders in the making of the European Union. It argues that the relationship between borders and capitalism today resides in the militarism of the border industry itself and in the role of borders in organizing labour; both strands of migration management are growing sources of corporate profit.

Chapter 5, Wages, Organized Labour and Post-Work Utopianism, analyses the relationship between wage labour and economic growth. It exhibits that capitalist growth requires not only the conquering of social, economic and ecological barriers, but also infringements against the limitation of working people; surplus value is generated by overcoming such barriers and limitations. This chapter furthermore examines working conditions in global production, including an examination of migrant labour systems in China, the Gulf countries, India and the Global North. It also argues that migration is a deliberate device used by governments and global institutions to keep labour costs down as a precondition for economic growth. This chapter is also highlighted the working conditions in Global production system, where employment is increasingly insecure and casualized. Chapter 6, The Production of Class Antagonisms in Capitalism, scrutinizes the production of class antagonisms in capitalist development, focusing on Marx’s observation that the ruling classes intensify antagonism between migrants and native-born workers. It shows how racial ideologies present a form of social oppression which leads to the super-exploitation of subordinated groups and the disempowerment of the popular classes. This chapter addresses the question of anti-Irish racism, colonialism and development, and argues that race is a social construct that is not restricted to skin colour, but has also been applied to Roma, Jewish people and Irish people, and those from different often low-income regions and other oppressed groups. It manifests itself in far-right programmes of hate and exclusion, but its roots run deeply into the political classes of imperialist countries. This chapter further examines the history of anti-Irish racism in colonial development and shows how racial antagonism has developed in the neoliberal era, with a particular focus on state-driven community division in the United Kingdom.

Chapter 7, Strikes, Internationalism and Solidarity, appraises the progressive movements and activities that are showing such unity and energy at the grassroots. Following the historical outline of the international labour movement, it examines the contemporary renewal of labour protest as the working class has shifted southwards and has been reinforced in high-income countries. The chapter also examines the circumstances and outcome of labour protests in manufacturing, service and mining. The industrial action of labour movements, more often than not in spontaneous forms of organized labour outside the formal trade union structure faces formidable challenges. Chapter 8, A Socialist Approach to Migration, presents a socialist perspective of migration, in which countries have a simple and egalitarian registration process; the architecture of the world system no longer generates cheap labour and work is revalued according to the social needs of communities. It highlights the political economy of the condition for the abolition of the capitalist migration regime, labour-driven development on a national basis, rejection of the international law of value, and social and cultural development. In the context of labour beyond capitalism, Hannah argues, social transformation requires the use of technological development and structural change that relocate and reconfigure production in the interests of workers, not profit, to avoid the forced competition between workers of different countries. She further argues that the issue for economic transformation is not the generation of more wealth; it is how to use this wealth to ensure genuine development, which demands the recognition that the generation and distribution of wealth are based on social relations. Finally, this chapter argues for a programme for migration and on mechanisms to advance the quality of movement by means of regulating the labour market in the interests of all working people.

The book is quite engaging and can be used as a reference text for the scholars of social sciences in general and migration and labour studies in particular.