Bringing together a range of illustrative case studies coupled with fresh theoretical insights, this volume is one of the first to address the complexities and contradictions in the relationship between migration, time, and capitalism. While temporal reckoning has long fascinated anthropologists, few studies have sought to confront how capitalism fetishizes time in the production of global inequalities—historically and in the contemporary world. As it explores how the agendas of capitalism condition migration in Europe, North America, and Oceania, this collection also examines temporality as a feature of migrants’ experiences to ultimately provide a theoretically robust and ethnographically informed investigation of migration and temporality within a framework defined by the political economy of capitalism.
Pauline Gardiner Barber
capitalism neoliberalism migration temporal scales spatial mobilities temporal forces capitalist transformation capital accumulation global inequalities political economy refugees displaced persons dispossession temporal designation global labor
"This volume explores an extraordinarily timely and theoretical issue in the study of migration: how the temporalities that mark the lives of migrants can be related to recent contemporary transformations in capitalism, and to changes in capitalist states in the direction of neoliberalism, within the discourse of the ‘free market.’ At a time when it is precisely the temporality of contemporary capitalism – will the current stasis and “new normal” of worldwide deflation stabilize or will it lead to major crisis, and how soon and with what rhythms? – the authors deal in a theoretically sophisticated way with the temporality of capitalism as it affects, and is affected, by transnational migration and the lives of migrants. The collection of essays as a whole examines new case studies within this context, and brings new concepts to the debates around the relationship between transnational migration and the political-economic conditions that constrain it." (Don Nonini, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
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