This country for me is not for living, only for working. Sonic Geographies of Racial Capitalism
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2022-03-22
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en
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In order to analyse labour relations under capitalism, solely focussing on working classes will not suffice. The concept of racial capitalism starts from the premise that the organisation of capitalist society extends along racialised lines, not only along class relations. In this thesis racial capitalism is used as a lens to better understand contemporary social hierarchies within capitalist labour relations. I analyse the migratory labour relation between Central/Eastern European countries (CEE) and the Netherlands by looking at the case of CEE migrant workers in Dutch agri-food industries, particularly concerning soft fruit production. This sector is highly dependent on seasonal, manual labour for which CEE migrant workers are predominantly hired. In doing so, the vast network of employment agencies, corporate retailers and the Dutch government extract value from and capitalize on seasonal labour migration. By using sonic methods, I have engaged with two soft fruit producing localities through a sensory ethnographic approach. I have applied field recording and participant observation as main research methods while working and living with colleagues from Poland. Using this approach I have found that racial capitalism manifests itself in the field work sites through: (i) racialised hierarchy and stereotypes of migrant workers, (ii) imaginaries of the ‘good migrant worker’ and the ‘lazy local’, (iii) disciplining labour regimes through temporalities and performance control, (iv) the disposability of migrant workers and their labour and the immaterial impact of a state of ‘not knowing’, and (v) the regulation and normalisation of precarity in working and living spaces of migrant workers.
Keywords: racial capitalism - CEE labour migration - sonic geographies – Dutch agri-food industries – sensory ethnography
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen