For a Critical Theory of Logistics: How Logistics Creates and Reshapes Political Spaces
Giorgio Grappi, giorgio.grappi@unibo.it
From a discrete branch of transport and distribution activity, logistics has become a driver of global capitalism and a leading force behind institutional and political transformation. Different forms of «protologistics» (Bologna) and differentiated assemblages of space and connectivity have been present in the past in the deployment of armies or economic activities, as well as in the imperial constellations of power.
Nevertheless, from the so called «logistical revolution» on wards (Allen, 1994), logistics has taken the lead in the strategic global planning of capital. By reshaping the relation between circulation and production, through the introduction of new technical instruments and protocols, and producing «infrastructural spaces» along globally connected supply chains, logistics has become a site for a decentralized and coherent set of power (Easterling, 2015; Cowen, 2015). From performing specific tactical functions in order to implement decisions, logistics has increasingly become a political discourse that cut across political entities and institutions. Logistics introduces strategies of governance organized along «logistical flows»: a bundle of infrastructures, dispositions, administrative rules, objects and/or people on the move. By means of what I propose to analyse as «the politics of corridors», logistics is also shaping new political formations. Logistics produces and encounters in this way different kind of mobilities and migration. In my talk I will introduce logistics and then discuss the relation between logistical mobilities and the «politics of corridors», with particular attention to Europe.
The intertwining between labour market regulation and migration control
– An ethnographic perspective on the German customs authority controlling the minimum wage
Mira Wallis, mira.wallis@posteo.de
The starting point of my Master thesis was the introduction of a statutory minimum wage in Germany in January 2015 and the ongoing public debates about various exception clauses for certain social groups. The question whether or not refugees should be excluded from the wage floor once again fuelled the debate towards the end of the ‘summer of migration’ last year. This public debate takes place parallel to an already existing, historically shaped segmentation of the labour market with a large low-wage sector relying on cheap and temporally flexible migrant work. Pursuing an ethnographic approach, I am interested in the concrete practices involved in the implementation of the minimum wage – particularly with regard to migrant labour. My focus here lies on the role of the labour inspection unit, the so-called ‘Financial Control Black Labour” (FKS), which is responsible for the control of the minimum wage. As part of the German customs authority, the FKS possesses police-equivalent functions and is also pursuing so-called ‘abuse of social benefits’ as well as ‘illegal employment’ and thereby practically taking part in the detection of undocumented migrants.
I therefore ask how the institution conceives itself and what kind of subjectivization processes take
place in the official’s everyday work: who is perceived as a victim, who as a perpetrator? Subsequently, I examine how other actors such as labour unions and employers’ associations perceive the FKS.
In a broader sense my research therefore aims to address (1) the role that a socio-political instrument like the minimum wage plays in the stratification of the labour market and (2) the relation between control policies related to the labour market and migration control in the context of the current border regime as well as transformations of the economy.
The humanitarian warfare at sea and the disruption of the logistic of migrant crossing: politics of visibility and biopolitical captures
Martina Tazzioli, martinatazzioli@yahoo.it
In this presentation I engage with the military-humanitarian paper that engages with the military- humanitarian technology of migration management, arguing that it can be conceived as a technique for spying on and disrupting the logistic of migrant crossing. In particular, I will take into account the two military operations that are currently deployed in the Mediterranean – Eunavfor med- Sophia and the Nato operation in the Aegean: while these have been officially lunched to “fight migrant smugglers”, I will illustrate the kind of biopolitical warfare they are acting, both through direct blockages of migrant vessels and through activities of “intelligence at sea”. In the second part of the presentation, I will center on the politics of visibility that sustains this humanitarian-military technology for disrupting migrant logistic, analysing the temporality of European monitoring and mapping systems devised for curating future migration scenario and opening up new spaces of governmentality.