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- Convenors:
-
Katrin Kremmel
(University of Vienna)
Daniele Karasz (TU Wien-Vienna University of Technology)
Claire Bullen (University of Tübingen)
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- Discussant:
-
Nina Glick Schiller
(University of Manchester)
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This panel aims to push our analytical reading of how people make ends meet beyond migrant/non-migrant binaries. It critically examines entanglements of social provisioning, citizenship and migration regimes across diverse locations and historical moments.
Long Abstract:
This panel seeks to critically examine entanglements of provisioning, citizenship and migration regimes across time and space. We propose the analytical framework of 'social provisioning' (Jo 2015, Power 2004) to grasp the range of activities, both within and beyond the market, that individuals and groups undertake for their survival and reproduction.
Like all historical conjunctures, the current historical moment is marked by diverse, often contradictory dynamics (Clarke 2014; Calgar and Glick Schiller 2018), affecting possibilities for individuals and groups to provide for themselves and others. At different times and in different places, major critical situations - such as the European 'refugee crisis' and COVID 19 - transform opportunity structures for making ends meet. Equally, changing migration regimes which categorise people as non-migrants or different types of migrants differentially shape possibilities to source goods and services. However, by adopting 'migrant' as an analytical category as distinct from 'non-migrant', we can find ourselves replicating modes of social differentiation used by political actors and bureaucratic institutions and ultimately risk aligning ourselves with nationalist agendas. Further, the migrant/non-migrant optic may deflect attention from processes and relations that influence livelihoods of people of migrant and non-migrant background alike (Kaika 2012; Calgar 2016).
We are interested in papers that take the study of provisioning as a useful means to shed light on how meanings, values and identities are produced within broader socio-economic relations (Narotzky 2012: 77), and to ethnographically investigate the asymmetrical relations regulating people's access to resources while breaking down divisions between migrant and non-migrant categories.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Giuseppe Troccoli (Universidad Católica de Temuco)
Paper short abstract:
This paper traces differential resource circulation for workers living in Belize City and employed in the construction sector in terms of the various ways they live the city and participate in different aspects of its economic life, rather than through applying migration-based categories.
Paper long abstract:
The paper traces how workers navigate their place in an economic sector characterized by unstable and low income by focusing on how their common experiences of vulnerability, precariousness, and flexibility are differentially shaped. This presentation which is based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork (2015-2016) with Belizean and Central American construction workers in Belize City, Belize, juxtaposes their experiences of making a living in this city. Instead of taking the migrant/non-migrant dichotomy as an analytical starting point, the paper understands workers’ participation in economic life within this sector as embedded in wider aspects of economic relevance such as household formation, kinship ties, turf belonging, and legal status. These aspects that contribute to living in the same urban environment in different ways are pivotal to the differential allocation of resources and contribute to how workers understand themselves and signify their livelihoods. By considering provisioning as the integration of various aspects of people’s lives characterized by different social relations (Narotzky 2005) what emerges is that differential resource circulation is better understood in terms of the various lengths and ways of residing in the city, rather than through applying migration-based categories.
Antonio Umberto Mosetti (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the socio-economic practices of Barikamà, a Social Cooperative managed by African migrants in Rome, Italy, as they trespass the boundaries between formality and informality, between the categories of "migrant" and "non-migrant" and produce new values in creative connections.
Paper long abstract:
This paper observes the lives of African migrants in Rome, Italy, their struggles in a context of social, political, and economic marginalisation, adverse incorporation, and exploitation, and the transformative strategies that they enact in order to sustain their livelihoods and actively tilt the surrounding environment towards their needs, desires, and values, thus affirming their belonging and ownership of the new social reality. It uses dynamic conceptions of economic and social life that allow to understand the "embeddedness" of economic activities in social relations (Polanyi 1977[1944]) and to the formal/informal dichotomy in order to restitute the complexity and fluidity of ways in which people provide for their needs (Power 2004). Drawing on ethnographic accounts of the experiences of the West African men who have founded the Social Cooperative "Barikamà", the paper highlights social creativity in the face of crisis and within an adverse environment. It describes how people and groups are able to adapt their strategies for provisioning and to overcome vulnerability and critical conjunctures through the formulation of new values and new practices that create links with other people and with the urban fabric, creating ownership of places and manufacturing original assemblages in their participation in the social system.
Neda Deneva-Faje (Babes-Bolyai University and SYNYO)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores Romanian Roma in their pursuit of making a living by combining industrial labour in Romania and seasonal work as migrants. It traces the mutually constitutive realms of working and living as a migrant and as a citizen in the process of social provisioning.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the structural conditions of labour, citizenship and migration regimes in Europe that place workers in precarious position both as migrants and as citizens. Drawing on the case of Romanian Roma, I show how industrial labour in supply-chain Eastern European factories offers precarious working and living conditions, despite the claim to regular and stable employment provided by the industry. Romanian Roma in the North Western re-industrialized town of Baia Mare work as industrial workers with regular contracts and access to social benefits. Yet, this does not result in stability, access to social benefits or indeed financial security in practice. Instead, workers often resort to seasonal transnational migration to make up for the limited income and balance the difficult physical conditions in the factory. Contrary to other examples of short-term migrants who combine informal employment in various localities, in this case we see how fulltime, regular standard employment simply does not provide enough for people to make ends meet. Migration then is a supplementing strategy, which demonstrates how local outsourcing provides unsustainable labour conditions. Economic activities in this case reflect the complex supply-chain processes in which Romanian Roma are navigating as workers both in their position as migrants and as citizens, which are mutually constitutive. In this process of provisioning through patching various roles, they assume a particular role as workers and citizens with claims based on deserving decent working conditions. This paper traces the construction of this meaning making process in the context of larger structural changes.
Katrin Kremmel (University of Vienna)
Paper short abstract:
In this paper, I zoom in on “volunteering” among people classified as asylum seekers. I conceptualize their “volunteering” as unwaged labor within provision arrangements for forced migrants. I situate my analysis historically by tracing the articulation of “volunteering” policies since the 1980s, targeting “migrants” and “non-migrants” alike.
Paper long abstract:
Emerging debates on “volunteering” in relation to forced migration largely conceive of “volunteering” as civic participation delivered by citizens of the Global North in the Global North with refugees as their beneficiaries. This focus positions “citizens” and “refugees” in an asymmetrical relationship, where the power to act lies with the former, while the latter is cast as destitute and in need. Further, these debates fail to historically situate “volunteering” as unwaged labor and therewith as part and parcel of provision arrangements for asylum seekers and refugees.
I counter these hegemonic frames by zooming in on two initiatives in Western Austria, which sought to engage people classified as “asylum seekers” in “volunteering” with the aim of “integrating” them into the local labor market. I look into the social processes through which the asylum seekers’ unwaged labor is constructed as “non-work” in binary opposition to “proper work”. I argue that “volunteering” comes to constitute a mode of provisioning for asylum seekers, in light of the dispossession of their right to work. I situate my discussion historically as I trace the emergence of “volunteering” as an object of knowledge production since the 1980s, which led to the articulation of policies aiming to strengthen the “civic participation” of “migrants” and “non-migrants” alike.
Joana Nascimento (University of Cambridge)
Paper short abstract:
Described as remote, economically fragile and threatened by depopulation, the Outer Hebrides have long required islanders to approach these challenges resourcefully. This paper considers how 'provisioning' can illuminate the collective and inclusive possibilities of local strategies and outlooks.
Paper long abstract:
The Outer Hebrides of Scotland are often described as remote, economically fragile and threatened by depopulation. For long, islanders' commitment to remain or return to the archipelago has required cultivating resourceful strategies to address the challenges of 'island life'. In this context, the concept of provisioning proved helpful to examine the social complexity and nuance involved in these processes.
As a perspective, 'social provisioning' emphasises 'the analysis of economic activities as interdependent social processes', revealing how 'people organise themselves collectively to get a living' (Power 2012:6). As Narotzky has pointed out, provisioning can also inform how we 'understand social differentiation, the construction of particular meanings and identities, and the reproduction of the social and economic system as a whole' (2012:77).
This perspective on economic life helped frame the strategies, approaches and outlooks I encountered during 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Outer Hebrides, examining the local significance of the Harris Tweed industry. Trademark-protected since 1910 and covered by an Act of Parliament, this textile can only be produced by islanders in the Outer Hebrides, but is exported to over 50 countries. In this context, 'islander' emerged as a more inclusive category than expected, encompassing 'locals', 'returners' and 'incomers' as they drew on shared local repertoires to address the challenges of island life. In this paper I discuss some of those dynamics, drawing on 'provisioning' to highlight how islanders not only aimed to sustain individual households, but also strived to protect 'the common good' and to make collective futures possible.