Call for Papers for Edited Volume

Marxism and Migration

Proposal Deadline: February 1, 2020

Editors: Genevieve Ritchie, Sara Carpenter, and Shahrzad Mojab

Introduction and Scope:

The present conditions of transnational migration are nothing short of alarming. Best described as a kind of social expulsion, these conditions range from migrant caravans and detained unaccompanied children in the United States to the thousands of migrant deaths at sea to the razing of self-organized refugee camps in Greece and to the massive internal and inter-regional dispersal of populations. At the very same time, technology firms are using refugee camps as testing grounds and migrants are targeted by the financial industry as an ideal investment and workforce. The chaos of migrations stretches globally yet differentially impacts countless communities. Migrants are simultaneously described as a dangerous threat, victims of state violence, culturally backward, and resilient workers, while activist talk of undoing border imperialism, decolonizing settler societies, or opening borders. We, therefore, find reason to pose the following questions: What are the historical continuities linking colonial dispossession to the displacements and dispossessions internal to the imperialist stage of capitalism? To what extent do the conditions propelling migration cohere with, and even support, the state practices of managing class interests through the threat of crisis? Lastly, to what extent has the ostensible crisis of migration assisted with the criminalization of activists resisting state violence? Marxism and Migration seeks to theorize these chaotic and uneven conditions by centering the global relations of class struggle.

The social relation of class struggle provides a framework for understanding and retheorizing the chaotic yet orderly conditions of global accumulation, displacement, and dispossession. We understand the capitalist social formation, with the bourgeoisie as its dominant class, as a set of dynamic social forces, relations, and forms of consciousness that privatize profit from socialized production. At the very same time, the bourgeoisie as a social class is internally divided and rivalrous, embedding a chaotic competition within the drive to maximize profit. Under such conditions the majority of people generate wealth for and are subjugated by a very select minority of people. Although the relations of class, determine the exploitation of working people, class struggle, as a social relation, encompasses myriad processes and practices of ideological repression, which include, without being limited to, hetero-patriarchy, racialization, illegalized migration, and white supremacy.

Placing patriarchal capitalism, imperialism, racialization, and fundamentalisms at the center of the analysis Marxism and Migration hopes to build a more coherent and historically informed discussion of the present conditions of migration, resettlement, and resistance.

Call for Papers:

We welcome chapter proposals on a range of themes and topics, including but not limited to:

• Migrant workers, global accumulation, and expropriation

• The relationships among the state, the market, and im/migration

• Genocide, displacement, dispossession, and imperialism

• Global relations of immigration and emigration, particularly taking up questions of settler colonialism and indigenous resistance

• Rethinking of the theoretical, methodological, historical, and/or gendered approaches to studying migration and class struggle

• Migration, militarization and the edifices (walls, prisons, militarized borders, etc) of global class struggle

• The material conditions of non-status or undocumented communities and relations of resistance

• Anti-racist and queer Marxist feminist approaches to im/migration

Submission Instructions:

Please submit a 500-word abstract (including a working title for the proposed chapter), and a short biography (100 words) to marxism.and.migration[at]gmail.com with the subject line “Edited Volume Submission.”

In addition to outlining the method, empirical or theoretical evidence, and conceptual framing for the chapter, the abstract should also include a discussion of how the proposed chapter relates to key literatures and the central themes of Marxism and migration.

Final chapters will be approximately 8,000 words, including footnotes and bibliography.

This call for proposals has been developed in consultation with a leading academic publisher. Following the initial selection of proposals, a full book proposal will be sent to the publisher for review. Upon acceptance, chapter authors will be sent detailed guidelines. Chapters must be original and should not be submitted for publication elsewhere.

Deadline for Proposal Submissions: February 1, 2020

Notification of Acceptance: March 1, 2020

Complete Chapters Due: August 31, 2020

Notification of Revisions: October 2020

Final Chapters Due: January 10, 2021

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