Living from the Nerves

2015 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeleine Reeves
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
State Power ◽  
The State ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Temporal Uncertainty ◽  
State Agents ◽  
Legal Uncertainty ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

While deportability has elicited interest as a legal predicament facing migrant workers, less attention has been given to the way in which this condition of temporal uncertainty shapes migrants' everyday encounters with state agents. Drawing on ethnography among Kyrgyzstani migrant workers in Moscow, I show that in conditions of documentary uncertainty 'legal residence' depends upon successfully enacting a right to the city and the personalization of the state. Alongside fear and suspicion, this space of legal uncertainty is characterized by a sense of abandon and awareness of the performativity of law. I explore 'living from the nerves' as an ethnographic reality for Kyrgyzstani migrant workers and as an analytic for developing a more variegated account of state power and its affective resonances in contemporary Russia.

The internalized vermin of exile in Montréal: Rawi Hage’s Cockroach

2016 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 168-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wisam Kh. Abdul-Jabbar
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Divided Self ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

This article argues that the protagonist in Hage’s Cockroach (2008) introjects the vermin as a representation of internalized antagonism. As the unnamed narrator struggles in an inhospitable city, he internalizes this unflinching feeling of estrangement through introjection. This process reveals how the loss of home entails the state of a vagabond who resists normalization and seeks the unruly life of the underground. The way the city of Montréal is portrayed as notorious for its indifference towards newcomers aggravates the condition of the divided self in exile, which necessitates the intrusion of the monstrous. In effect, not only does introjecting the cockroach signify a menacing presence but also suggests a decolonizing act of insubordination against a city whose hegemonic order, like its freezing weather, looms large.

Ziyou (Freedom), Occupational Choice, and Labor: Bangbang in Chongqing, People's Republic of China

2008 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xia Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Occupational Choice ◽  
Field Research ◽  
The State ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Rural Migrants ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Technologies Of The Self ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
The City

AbstractThis paper aims to examine the complicated processes and dynamics of rural migrant workers' occupation choice in post-Mao China among a specific migrant population, the bangbang (porters or carriers) in the city of Chongqing in southwest China. By employing ethnographic data from my year-long anthropological field research among bangbang and following the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, this paper explores the question of whether neoliberalism alone deliberately and vehemently transforms these laborers into self-reliant subjects. It argues that for rural migrants, the discourse on ziyou (freedom), as promoted by the state, plays a significant role in facilitating the migrants' subject formation, transforming them into self-reliant and enterprising laborers even as it makes them vulnerable to fierce exploitation. At the same time, bangbang turn this neoliberal rationality around and use it in their struggle for the security and aid refused to them by the state because it externalizes the “technologies of the self.” Bangbang internalize neoliberal techniques of governance that are framed as ziyou (freedom), not from social responsibility or patriotism but from disappointment with and distrust of the state.

scholarly journals Under the bridge in Tehran: Addiction, Poverty and Capital

Ethnography ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maziyar Ghiabi
Keyword(s):  
Drug Users ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
The State ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

The article provides an ethnographic study of the lives of the ‘dangerous class’ of drug users based on fieldwork carried out among different drug using ‘communities’ in Tehran between 2012 and 2016. The primary objective is to articulate the presence of this category within modern Iran, its uses and its abuses in relation to the political. What drives the narration is not only the account of this lumpen, plebeian group vis à vis the state, but also the way power has affected their agency, their capacity to be present in the city, and how capital/power and the dangerous/lumpen life come to terms, to conflict, and to the production of new situations which affect urban life.

“The Way of the Transgressor Is Hard”

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-91
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Political Context ◽  
The State ◽  
Latter Day Saints ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Economic Community ◽  
Joseph Smith ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

This chapter mentions HR 0627, which tenders an apology to the Latter-day Saints for the misguided expulsion of their Mormon ancestors from the city of Nauvoo and the State of Illinois in 1846. It recounts the years after the Mormons were expelled from Missouri in 1838 to 1839, in which the Saints developed the swamp land in the far west of the state into the thriving economic community of Nauvoo. It also looks into the argument about HR 0627's contention that the Saints were initially expelled from Missouri and welcomed in Illinois in part because Joseph Smith was a strong anti-slavery advocate. The chapter analyzes the problem related to HR 0627 that wrongly isolates Mormon expulsion from any larger political context. It also offers an alternative narrative that puts Illinois's removal of both Indians and Mormons in the context of gender, political culture, and ultimately American empire.

When social movements collaborate with the state towards the right to the city: Unveiling compromises and conflicts

2021 ◽  
pp. 0308518X2098161
Author(s):  
Morgana G Martins Krieger ◽  
Marlei Pozzebon ◽  
Lauro Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
The State ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Exchange Value ◽  
Building Housing ◽  
Governmental Institutions ◽  
The Right ◽  
Operational Processes ◽  
The City

The right to the city represents a critique of the city as a place and an object of capitalist accumulation, in which priority is given to exchange value over use value. This critique references an ongoing and collective struggle for urban production to be radically democratic, as the expanded participation of city users would lead to appropriation, with social movements occupying a central role. This paper discusses the practices of urban social movements that cooperate with governmental institutions participating in and influencing the design and implementation of public policies. We focus on the possibilities of transformation towards the right to the city as well as the conflicts and contradictions that social movements face when partnering with the State. We carry out an in-depth investigation of two social movements involved in building housing units in Brazil as part of a federal government programme. By conceptually translating the right to the city into the economies of worth, we propose an original theoretical approach. Our study contributes to advance the understanding of the role of social movements that collaborate with governments without abandoning the goal of struggling for the right to the city. We add a pragmatic perspective to the radical conception of the right to the city by showing how different logics of action enable or hinder the possibility of the right to the city horizon. We propose that the prominence of the civic common world might transform operational processes mainly through self-management.

scholarly journals Walking as a Metaphor

Transfers ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Avishek Ray
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Public Transport ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
City Space ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

This article reflects on the dissenting act of mobility as articulated by migrant workers in India, who, during the nationwide lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, are walking back home, hundreds of miles away, in lieu of public transport. Their mobility—precisely, the act of walking—has thus acquired a metaphoric status, and laid bare the ideological practices of territorializing the city-space. This article argues that the migrant worker’s mobility, from within the axiomatic of the prevalent “mobility regime,” can be read as a powerful metaphor of our tensions within the global political-economic order that the pandemic has so starkly exposed. The article provokes less literal, but more literary, understandings of mobilities in general, in order to come to grips with the manifold contradictions, paradoxes, and counteractions in the way the world moves.

scholarly journals Acts for Refugees’ Right to the City and Commoning Practices of Care-tizenship in Athens, Mytilene and Thessaloniki

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 119-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charalampos Tsavdaroglou ◽  
Chrisa Giannopoulou ◽  
Chryssanthi Petropoulou ◽  
Ilias Pistikos
Keyword(s):  
Aegean Sea ◽  
The State ◽  
Right To The City ◽  
Military Bases ◽  
Mutual Help ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
Housing Projects ◽  
Work Health ◽  
The Right ◽  
The City

During the recent refugee crisis, numerous solidarity initiatives emerged in Greece and especially in Mytilene, Athens and Thessaloniki. Mytilene is the capital of Lesvos Island and the main entry point in the East Aegean Sea, Athens is the main refugee transit city and Thessaloniki is the biggest city close to the northern borders. After the EU–Turkey Common Statement, the Balkan countries sealed their borders and thousands of refugees found themselves stranded in Greece. The State accommodation policy provides the majority of the refugee population with residency in inappropriate camps which are mainly located in isolated old military bases and abandoned factories. The article contrasts the State-run services to the solidarity acts of “care-tizenship” and commoning practices such as self-organised refugee housing projects, which claim the right to the city and to spatial justice. Specifically, the article is inspired by the Lefebvrian “right to the city,” which embraces the right to housing, education, work, health and challenges the concept of citizen. Echoing Lefebvrian analysis, citizenship is not demarcated by membership in a nation-state, rather, it concerns all the residents of the city. The article discusses the academic literature on critical citizenship studies and especially the so-called “care-tizenship,” meaning the grassroots commoning practices that are based on caring relationships and mutual help for social rights. Following participatory ethnographic research, the main findings highlight that the acts of care-tizenship have opened up new possibilities to challenge State migration policies while reinventing a culture of togetherness and negotiating locals’ and refugees’ multiple class, gender, and religious identities.

Walking as a Metaphor

Transfers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 103-109
Author(s):  
Avishek Ray
Keyword(s):  
Migrant Workers ◽  
Public Transport ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
City Space ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

This article reflects on the dissenting act of mobility as articulated by migrant workers in India, who, during the nationwide lockdown amid the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, are walking back home, hundreds of miles away, in lieu of public transport. Their mobility—precisely, the act of walking—has thus acquired a metaphoric status, and laid bare the ideological practices of territorializing the city-space. This article argues that the migrant worker’s mobility, from within the axiomatic of the prevalent “mobility regime,” can be read as a powerful metaphor of our tensions within the global political-economic order that the pandemic has so starkly exposed. The article provokes less literal, but more literary, understandings of mobilities in general, in order to come to grips with the manifold contradictions, paradoxes, and counteractions in the way the world moves.

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