Panel 3d: Statelessness -- Saturday, 18 October 2003, 8:30 -10:30 a.m.
Chair: Manfred B. Steger, Politics & Government, Illinois State University
Discussant: Anne Manuel, Political Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Abstracts:
Katy Arnold, “Economic Exploitation, Prerogative Power and Globalization: Consequences for the New Working Class”
It
has been widely recognized that blue-collar work has changed in the United
States, along with the workforce performing these jobs. While Marx's theories
about labor exploitation have been widely discredited as irrelevant (partly due
to changed standards about wages), it would appear that not only is labor
exploitation openly practiced but its consequences make the "new working class"
incredibly vulnerable politically. Not only are they underpaid, but can be
subject to deportation or placed in holding cells indefinitely; that is, as many
workers become disenfranchised, they are subject to prerogative power rather
than democratic processes. Thus, the new working class is treated as bare life
rather than potential citizens.
In sum, I will argue that economic exploitation is relevant not only to
globalization of the economy but dictates of the nation-state and capitalism.
Economic exploitation of immigrants does not indicate something very different
from "native" workers, for example, and thus Slavoj Zizek is wrong to say that
the focus on the former detracts from the latter. Rather, it demonstrates the
complex interweaving of global processes, the corresponding increase of
administrative functions and prerogative power, and exploitation in a capitalist
economy. Further, this case also evokes racial and gender bias and exploitation.
First, the immigrants who are most often exploited are women and of color.
Second, the same is not only true for "native" Americans but frequent racial
comparisons are made, thus pitting the "groups" against one another and setting
off what Edna Bonacich has theorized as the split market theory of ethnic
antagonism.
Isabelle V. Barker, “Theorizing Citizenship in an Era of Labor Migration and Inequality”
This project analyzes citizenship through the lens of shifting conditions of
production and increased labor migration to the U.S. Though the U.S. immigration
policies enacted as national security measures have profound implications for
current and future domestic and international politics, in this dissertation, I
emphasize labor migration in an effort to unearth the deep historical shifts
regarding political economy and the fate of the modern nation-state as political
formation. In the context of neo-liberal restructuring of social spending,
increased transnational labor migration coincides with new norms of domestic and
international inequality. This begs the question: To what degree do modern
theoretical configurations of national citizenship legitimate inequality? To
address this question, I take up the terms of the "liberalism versus
communitarianism" debates. In considering these two seemingly competing
approaches to citizenship, I highlight their internal tensions regarding
national territory, political community, citizenship and equality. In turn, I
ask how the tensions in each shape how political community and citizenship are
imagined with regard to labor migration.
To delineate how national citizenship is imagined in contemporary politics I
look at international trade agreements between sending and receiving nations
regarding labor migration. I further ground this analysis by considering the
conditions of non-citizen labor within the United States. I argue that highly
gendered and raced domestic policies of sending nations and of the U.S. secure
non-citizen, paraprofessional workers to perform the flexible labor that is
central to the long-term healthcare industry in the U.S. These policies expose
the limits of configurations of citizenship that have been theorized to date. I
highlight the gendered and racialized narrative that has come to legitimate the
norms and structures of domestic and international inequality.
John R. LeBlanc, “The Politics of Statelessness: Edward Said and the Ambiguities of Liberal Nationalism”
The
War on Terror and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are two manifestations of the
modern suspicion of statelessness. In contemporary political discourse, the
stateless are radically 'other,' unknown and unknowable, and, therefore,
profoundly dangerous in at least three different ways. First, the stateless lack
the standing to negotiate on 'even' or 'fair' or 'just' terms. Second, the
stateless lack the resources to make and defend their claims via traditional
means (i.e., economic or military agency). Third, the stateless necessarily
resort to non-traditional means of resistance, of self-defense, of provocation,
thereby adding to the perception that they are radically other.
What is required of the stateless for formal recognition is to 'prove' that they
can be 'civilized' in terms already defined by those with states. The burden is
on the stateless to demonstrate that they are worthy of a state which is,
apparently, the summum bonum of modern political existence. Yet the fluid
condition of the stateless makes the kind of internal stability and coherence
necessary for entrance into the 'family of nations' a near impossibility. The
circle is unbreakable and
increasingly dangerous for all involved.
This essay proceeds from the idea that taking statelessness seriously means we
must attempt to theorize from the position of the stateless. On the twin
assumptions that the condition of statelessness has been complicated by
colonialism and that statehood seems to be the best source of agency for the
dispossessed, this essay situates the postcolonial critique of nationalism,
specifically as it is found in the work of Edward Said, within the discourse of
liberal nationalism, especially as articulated in the work of Israeli political
philosopher Yael Tamir. Said's postcolonial critique takes seriously the
influence of western political conceptions--especially regarding the forms of
the state--on non-western and diasporic or stateless communities. The emergent
hybrid conceptions of political community are often at odds with western
expectations and generate the need for the negotiation of cultural meanings.
Establish a space for these negotiations is the impulse behind liberal
nationalism. The liberal nationalist attempts to preserve the all-too-human need
undergirding nationalism--to practice and preserve one's way of life in the
context of others who share it--using political structures associated with
western-style classical liberalism. The apparent contradiction will, the liberal
nationalist contends, be mediated by liberal political structures (values,
processes, etc.). The classical liberal thinker, even one concerned with
nationalism, assumes that the state should be a goal and a positive agent in
preserving the political stability of a community. It is at this point that
Said's analysis, particularly his concern with the plight of Palestinians, asks
after the cooperation of the dispossessed and the stateless. Even as he might
express a skepticism about the liberal nationalist project, however, Said, from
his self-proclaimed position as an 'oppositional thinker,' embraces its language
when writing of the Israeli-Palestinian question. Bringing Said into
conversation with Tamir may yield a constructive sense of what it means to
negotiate statelessness in a world of technology-induced proximity.
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