Denis OHearn - Migration, Racism and Labor Exploitation in the World-System

This book offers a historically sweeping yet detailed view of world-systemic migration as a racialized process. Since the early expansion of the world-system, the movement of people has been its central process. Not only have managers of capital moved to direct profitable expansion; they have also forced, cajoled or encouraged workers to move in order to extract, grow, refine, manufacture and transport materials and commodities. The book offers historical cases that show that migration introduces and deepens racial dominance in all zones of the world-system. This often forces indigenous and imported slaves or bonded labor to extract, process and move raw materials. Yet it also often creates a contradiction between capitals need to direct labor to where it enables profitability, and the desires of large sections of dominant populations to keep subordinate people of color marginalized and separate. Case studies reveal how core states are concurrently users and blockers of migrant labor. Key examples are Mexican migrants in the United States, both historically and in contemporary society. The United States even promotes of an image of a society that welcomes the immigrantwhile policy realities often quite different. Nonetheless, the volume ends with a vision of a future whereby communities from belowboth activists and people simply following their communal interestscan come together to create a society that overcomes racism. Its final chapter is a hopeful call by the late Immanuel Wallerstein for people to make small changes that, together, can bring real about real, revolutionary change.

Denis OHearn is Dean of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at El Paso. Several of his books have received major national and international awards, including his most recent book, Living at the Edges of Capitalism: Adventures in Exile and Mutual Aid (University of California Press, with Andrej Grubai). He lived for many years in Belfast, Ireland, and his seminal biography of the Irish hunger striker Bobby Sands, Nothing but an Unfinished Song: The Irish Hunger Striker Who Shook the World, is published in many languages, including Kurdish and Basque.

Paul S. Ciccantell is Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University and a former program officer for the Sociology Program at the National Science Foundation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research examines socioeconomic change over the long term, the evolution of global industries and the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of global industries, focusing particularly on raw materials extraction and processing and transport industries. He has published books with Johns Hopkins University Press, JAI/Elsevier Press and Greenwood Press, and more than 30 journal articles and book chapters.

Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz, Series Editor

Asia and the Transformation of the World-System

Edited by Ganesh K. Trichur (2009)

Mass Migration in the World-System: Past, Present, and Future

Edited by Terry-Ann Jones, Eric Mielants (2010)

Global Crises and the Challenges of the 21st Century

Edited by Thomas Reifer (2012)

Overcoming Global Inequalities

Edited by Immanuel Wallerstein, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Christian Suter (2014)

Social Movements and World-System Transformation

Edited by Jackie Smith, Michael Goodhart, Patrick Manning, John Markoff (2016)

The World-System as Unit of Analysis

Edited by Roberto Patricio Korzeniewicz (2017)

Global Inequalities in World-Systems Perspective

Edited by Manuela Boatc, Andrea Komlosy, Hans-Heinrich (2017)

Economic Cycles and Socials Movements

Edited by Eric Mielants and Katsiaryna Salavei-Bardos (2020)

Migration, Racism and Labor Exploitation in the World-System

Edited by Denis OHearn and Paul S. Ciccantell (2021)

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com

denis ohearn and paul s. ciccantell

PART I
Longue Dure

james v. fenelon

paul s. ciccantell and paul k. gellert

denis ohearn

PART II
Migration in the US

michael caldern-zaks

nancy plankey-videla

eric mielants

PART III
World Migrations Today

robert k. schaeffer

devparna roy

vandana swami

walden bello

PART IV
ConclusionThe Way Ahead

immanuel wallerstein