Final Report Summary - MIGPRO (Beyond cynicism and bare life: practices of citizenship against migrants' inclusive exclusion)
The project aimed to investigate emerging forms of citizenship, collective action and resource-management in relation to, and in contrast with, the apparatuses that govern migration in contemporary Italy. It took the 'autonomy of migration' approach (put forth by the scientist in charge of the project, Sandro Mezzadra, in dialogue with several other scholars and activists) as one of its starting hypotheses. According to such perspective, the manifold struggles in which migrant subjects engage entail the exercise of rights of citizenship, despite the fact that such rights are formally withheld from them. For this reason, migration would represent one of the key sites for political experimentation in the contemporary world, if at times its subjects would be unwitting. This frame of reference allowed the research and the analysis to move beyond the dichotomous categories of inclusion and exclusion, which are often employed to describe the condition of citizens and 'aliens'. Within this polarised, binary model, the notion of 'bare life' (initially revitalised by the work of philosopher Giorgio Agamben) is perhaps the most notorious gloss employed to indicate the status of those who are included within the domain of sovereignty by means of their exclusion - stripped of political life and relegated to a state of mere biological existence, whereby they can be put to death with impunity. And yet, subjects who are thought to be dispossessed of political existence have shown they are capable of reclaiming such space of recognition, starting from a diversity of statuses and subject positions, produced and reproduced within a system of governance which continuously fragments and divides subjects along multiple lines (not only the national, ethnic, gender, class and colour axes, but also legal, living and work statuses that might cut across those axes). Thus, the project interrogated the categories of citizenship, sovereignty, inclusion/exclusion, and resistance in the light of practices that defy a certain power regime.
At the same time, the researcher's analytical perspective combined such approach with a deeper investigation into forms of subjectivity and modes of subject formation, that took into account also the psychic, bodily and affective dimensions of experience and of modes of resistance. In this domain, the research asked how one could begin to understand and theorise emerging subjectivities which depart from widespread depictions of the post-modern condition, in Italy as elsewhere, as one characterised by a deeply engrained cynicism, by disaffection, alienation and social fragmentation. Thus, it took into account not only migrant subjects and their struggles, but also forms of solidarity that cut through the distinction between citizens and aliens, among others.
The acts of dissent which were the object of inquiry initially ranged from anti-racist demonstrations to labour strikes, pickets, blockades, and spontaneous revolts; from housing occupations to escapes from and rebellions in detention centres, hunger strikes or other forms of embodied resistance, including self-injury. Starting from such moments of rupture, the research also aimed to analyse the relationship of those singular events to long-term 'material practices that create the conditions of possibility of insurgence through clashes and solidarities’ - as proposed by Sandro Mezzadra in his essay ‘The Gaze of Autonomy. Capitalism, Migration and Social Struggles’ (2011). In this sense, the ethnographic method - and particularly the practice of participant observation and of intensive field research - represented a crucial tool for inquiry, and progressively narrowed down the scope of the project, to concentrate on localised, specific instances and practices that were followed closely and proactively by the researcher. At the same time, collection and analysis of written material from web and printed media, of scholarly contributions, and of interviews with privileged witnesses allowed to put such practices into a broader context, both historically and in terms of their relation with other forms of resistance.
Furthermore, by engaging with forms of resistance, the project simultaneously and necessarily proceeded to develop a more refined understanding of the techniques of power that such forms of resistance oppose. Hence, through the use of ethnographic methods and by consulting published sources, the research traced the workings, conflicts and articulations of - among others - laws and other discursive practices (such as policy documents or media accounts); of spaces such as camps and border-zones; of forms of policing; of patterns of labour deployment; of everyday acts of discrimination.
The research was carried out over the course of two years, from the summer of 2012 to the same period in 2014. The researcher's field investigations gradually focused on forms of resistance and solidarity that have developed against the conditions of extreme precarity experienced by migrant agricultural labourers across Italian territory. This context revealed particularly significant, indeed paradigmatic, as a site of inquiry for a number of reasons.
First of all, because it was precisely in this domain that the first struggles occurred against phenomena of labour exploitation and of racism (which are of course related) in the late 1980s, as a result of severe forms of violence and marginalisation, most notably in the region of Campania. Instances of protest have kept occurring ever since, in different parts of the country, from Piedmont to Apulia and Calabria. Struggle appears to be the only effective weapon to contrast ever-deteriorating work and living standards (from severe labour exploitation to dire housing and living conditions, from progressively more institutionalised forms of social apartheid and ethnicisation to the lack of any social welfare provision, and, in their more extreme manifestations, recurrent instances of physical aggression and verbal abuse), which invest an ever greater number of subjects.
At the same time, revolts and strikes have not led to structural interventions by institutions that would significantly improve the situation for migrants. In most instances these protest-events were spontaneous and localised, often small-scale, daily acts of resistance, and only in some instances did they grow to become full-blown revolts or mass strikes. In no case did they lead to forms of organisation (through unions or social movements) that could ensure the continuity of practices of resistance through time. Such difficulties also highlight the fraught relationship between citizenship and labour struggles, whereby claims focused on the specificity of the migrant condition are often regarded as divisive by the labour movement. Furthermore, the current conjuncture, in which the welfare system is being dismantled, also demands a re-conceptualisation of forms of struggle, where the relationship between citizenship and labour can no longer be taken for granted. The researcher's own work followed precisely the effort of activists to reach innovative forms of self-organised struggle, which would be able to overcome divisions.
Secondly, the extreme conditions that invest all aspects of migrants' lives in and around the agricultural sector throw into sharp relief a trend of precarisation, fragmentation and segregation which is progressively generalising and normalising, if in different forms and to different degrees, across various contexts. In this scenario, the proliferation of institutionalised, as well as of apparently 'spontaneous' (but always within the purview of some form of power) camp-forms - from shantytowns to tent-camps, container-camps and temporary housing projects for migrant labourers; asylum-seeker and refugee camps; and various 'exceptional' forms of humanitarian shelter for newly arrived migrants/asylum seekers - appears particularly significant. Whilst of course not all these sites have the immediate purpose of disciplining the migrant agricultural workforce, there often is contiguity between such forms of containment and the exploitation of migrant agricultural labour (where the latter is often the last resort, for those who lost their job due to the crisis, or the only choice, for those who have arrived in Italy in the last three years, given it pays the lowest salaries in the market). Camp-forms can be conceptualised as normalised-yet-exceptional spaces, where subjects 'in excess' (particularly on account of their cross-border mobility) are governed not by a sovereign power which suspends the norm, but by different, interlacing dispositifs that make use of the law or overlook and transgress it instrumentally, according to the needs of production (understood in the widest possible sense, as the production of subjects). Indeed, they signal the detachment of power from the law as its main prerogative, as this is implied in classical conceptions of sovereignty.
In this scenario, the struggle against precarity becomes one that invests all aspects of life (including the affective domain), demanding a radical re-imagining of modes of sociality, of solidarity, and of the production and distribution of resources, indeed of the very grounds for communal existence - which has only just begun to take shape, and which the project followed from close. Significantly, the struggles and demands of migrants in different domains commonly do not adopt the language of rights (unlike those put forth by citizen-activists), and thus the framework of citizenship, but often appeal to a common humanity. However, this does not speak so much to a humanitarian logic (where the latter underlies the camp-form itself, and is predicated on an understanding of humanity which strips it of all political prerogatives) as to a conception of human life as relational and co-constituted, as an expansive possibility to be constantly redefined.
The project actively contributed to the development of alternative modes of sociality based on notions of human justice and on a more equitable distribution of resources, both material and immaterial. It did so through the researcher's direct involvement in projects of solidarity with migrants, to which she contributed also through the specific expertise she has gained as a trained researcher. Furthermore, within these projects, the researcher was also able to set up modes of inquiry and knowledge production that are based on the method of co-research, and thus involve the subjects of the research in its development. Overall, the project contributes to a better understanding of some crucial issues in contemporary Europe, namely that of migration and its control, but also of agricultural production, among others, highlighting the urgent need to reach more equitable and sustainable forms of government and management in both domains.
At the same time, the researcher's analytical perspective combined such approach with a deeper investigation into forms of subjectivity and modes of subject formation, that took into account also the psychic, bodily and affective dimensions of experience and of modes of resistance. In this domain, the research asked how one could begin to understand and theorise emerging subjectivities which depart from widespread depictions of the post-modern condition, in Italy as elsewhere, as one characterised by a deeply engrained cynicism, by disaffection, alienation and social fragmentation. Thus, it took into account not only migrant subjects and their struggles, but also forms of solidarity that cut through the distinction between citizens and aliens, among others.
The acts of dissent which were the object of inquiry initially ranged from anti-racist demonstrations to labour strikes, pickets, blockades, and spontaneous revolts; from housing occupations to escapes from and rebellions in detention centres, hunger strikes or other forms of embodied resistance, including self-injury. Starting from such moments of rupture, the research also aimed to analyse the relationship of those singular events to long-term 'material practices that create the conditions of possibility of insurgence through clashes and solidarities’ - as proposed by Sandro Mezzadra in his essay ‘The Gaze of Autonomy. Capitalism, Migration and Social Struggles’ (2011). In this sense, the ethnographic method - and particularly the practice of participant observation and of intensive field research - represented a crucial tool for inquiry, and progressively narrowed down the scope of the project, to concentrate on localised, specific instances and practices that were followed closely and proactively by the researcher. At the same time, collection and analysis of written material from web and printed media, of scholarly contributions, and of interviews with privileged witnesses allowed to put such practices into a broader context, both historically and in terms of their relation with other forms of resistance.
Furthermore, by engaging with forms of resistance, the project simultaneously and necessarily proceeded to develop a more refined understanding of the techniques of power that such forms of resistance oppose. Hence, through the use of ethnographic methods and by consulting published sources, the research traced the workings, conflicts and articulations of - among others - laws and other discursive practices (such as policy documents or media accounts); of spaces such as camps and border-zones; of forms of policing; of patterns of labour deployment; of everyday acts of discrimination.
The research was carried out over the course of two years, from the summer of 2012 to the same period in 2014. The researcher's field investigations gradually focused on forms of resistance and solidarity that have developed against the conditions of extreme precarity experienced by migrant agricultural labourers across Italian territory. This context revealed particularly significant, indeed paradigmatic, as a site of inquiry for a number of reasons.
First of all, because it was precisely in this domain that the first struggles occurred against phenomena of labour exploitation and of racism (which are of course related) in the late 1980s, as a result of severe forms of violence and marginalisation, most notably in the region of Campania. Instances of protest have kept occurring ever since, in different parts of the country, from Piedmont to Apulia and Calabria. Struggle appears to be the only effective weapon to contrast ever-deteriorating work and living standards (from severe labour exploitation to dire housing and living conditions, from progressively more institutionalised forms of social apartheid and ethnicisation to the lack of any social welfare provision, and, in their more extreme manifestations, recurrent instances of physical aggression and verbal abuse), which invest an ever greater number of subjects.
At the same time, revolts and strikes have not led to structural interventions by institutions that would significantly improve the situation for migrants. In most instances these protest-events were spontaneous and localised, often small-scale, daily acts of resistance, and only in some instances did they grow to become full-blown revolts or mass strikes. In no case did they lead to forms of organisation (through unions or social movements) that could ensure the continuity of practices of resistance through time. Such difficulties also highlight the fraught relationship between citizenship and labour struggles, whereby claims focused on the specificity of the migrant condition are often regarded as divisive by the labour movement. Furthermore, the current conjuncture, in which the welfare system is being dismantled, also demands a re-conceptualisation of forms of struggle, where the relationship between citizenship and labour can no longer be taken for granted. The researcher's own work followed precisely the effort of activists to reach innovative forms of self-organised struggle, which would be able to overcome divisions.
Secondly, the extreme conditions that invest all aspects of migrants' lives in and around the agricultural sector throw into sharp relief a trend of precarisation, fragmentation and segregation which is progressively generalising and normalising, if in different forms and to different degrees, across various contexts. In this scenario, the proliferation of institutionalised, as well as of apparently 'spontaneous' (but always within the purview of some form of power) camp-forms - from shantytowns to tent-camps, container-camps and temporary housing projects for migrant labourers; asylum-seeker and refugee camps; and various 'exceptional' forms of humanitarian shelter for newly arrived migrants/asylum seekers - appears particularly significant. Whilst of course not all these sites have the immediate purpose of disciplining the migrant agricultural workforce, there often is contiguity between such forms of containment and the exploitation of migrant agricultural labour (where the latter is often the last resort, for those who lost their job due to the crisis, or the only choice, for those who have arrived in Italy in the last three years, given it pays the lowest salaries in the market). Camp-forms can be conceptualised as normalised-yet-exceptional spaces, where subjects 'in excess' (particularly on account of their cross-border mobility) are governed not by a sovereign power which suspends the norm, but by different, interlacing dispositifs that make use of the law or overlook and transgress it instrumentally, according to the needs of production (understood in the widest possible sense, as the production of subjects). Indeed, they signal the detachment of power from the law as its main prerogative, as this is implied in classical conceptions of sovereignty.
In this scenario, the struggle against precarity becomes one that invests all aspects of life (including the affective domain), demanding a radical re-imagining of modes of sociality, of solidarity, and of the production and distribution of resources, indeed of the very grounds for communal existence - which has only just begun to take shape, and which the project followed from close. Significantly, the struggles and demands of migrants in different domains commonly do not adopt the language of rights (unlike those put forth by citizen-activists), and thus the framework of citizenship, but often appeal to a common humanity. However, this does not speak so much to a humanitarian logic (where the latter underlies the camp-form itself, and is predicated on an understanding of humanity which strips it of all political prerogatives) as to a conception of human life as relational and co-constituted, as an expansive possibility to be constantly redefined.
The project actively contributed to the development of alternative modes of sociality based on notions of human justice and on a more equitable distribution of resources, both material and immaterial. It did so through the researcher's direct involvement in projects of solidarity with migrants, to which she contributed also through the specific expertise she has gained as a trained researcher. Furthermore, within these projects, the researcher was also able to set up modes of inquiry and knowledge production that are based on the method of co-research, and thus involve the subjects of the research in its development. Overall, the project contributes to a better understanding of some crucial issues in contemporary Europe, namely that of migration and its control, but also of agricultural production, among others, highlighting the urgent need to reach more equitable and sustainable forms of government and management in both domains.