Abstract
As pointed out by the International Organization of Migration and the United Nations, international migration has increased since the year 2000 beyond all expectations. The expansion of global value chains and the extractive processes linked to them have modified the territories of origin, displacing and proletarianizing mobile populations as well as articulating mechanisms for the provision of cheap labor to their productive processes. At the same time, the capitalist systemic and climate crises, together with the increase in global food prices and the emergence of new armed conflicts, have driven population movements throughout the world-system. This chapter aims to provide a framework that, from a structuralist perspective, offers theoretical tools for analyzing international migration from a decolonial perspective. If historical capitalism colonized the territories of the so-called global periphery by establishing hierarchies among the world’s populations and subjecting their resources to the processes of accumulation in the core, current capitalism rests on these foundations, reproducing a coloniality of power that builds migrants as a global reserve army of cheap labor. In this global context, how should migration be understood? Based on Abdelmalek Sayad’s sociology of migration, decolonial thinking, and structuralist theories, mainly the world-system and the world-ecology, the chapter offers an interpretative macro-framework that will allow the development of studies that, understanding the global structure, do not overshadow the centrality of migrants and their agency processes in its formation.
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Notes
- 1.
Original text: “la epistemología eurocentrada esconde (…) cuidadosamente (…) sus propias ubicaciones geo-históricas y biográficas.”
- 2.
Original text: “faire un travail de colonisateurr ou un travail-de société d’immigration.”
- 3.
Original text: “más allá de la colonialidad del poder, del saber y del ser.”
- 4.
Original text: “a sua insaputa, come il vero decostruttore del soggetto epistemologico e politico occidentale.”
- 5.
Original text: “las otras formas de ser, las otras formas de organización de la sociedad, las otras formas del saber (…) en carentes, en arcaicas, primitivas, tradicionales, premodernas.”
- 6.
Original text: “la existencia separada del enunciante y el enunciado, el sujeto y el objeto.”
- 7.
Original text: “parler de l’immigration, c’est parler de la société en son entier (…) mais à condition qu’on ne prenne pas délibérément le parti de mutiler cet objet d’une partie de lui-même, la partie relative à l’émigration.”
- 8.
Original text: “Un postulado analítico y metodológico que lleva a tratar al mismo tiempo las condiciones en las cuales vive un (a) inmigrante, y las condiciones sociales que lo producen como emigrante.”
- 9.
Original text: “va vista come un comportamento collettivo di fuga, di rifiuto attivo e soggettivo di un livello dato di sfruttamento, di sottosviluppo e di assoggettamento.”
- 10.
Original text: “prejuicio de método que consiste en el hecho de acallar o minimizar la parte que las estructuras objetivas, es decir las relaciones entre las fuerzas que se confrontan, asumen en todas las relaciones sociales.”
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Molinero-Gerbeau, Y., Avallone, G. (2022). Decolonial Notes on How to Do Research on International Migrations in the World-System. In: Olivieri, C., Serrano-Muñoz, J. (eds) East Asia, Latin America, and the Decolonization of Transpacific Studies. Historical and Cultural Interconnections between Latin America and Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74528-8_3
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