The precarization of labor and social reproduction in Global North immigrant contexts: a theoretical analysis

Keywords: precarization of labor, social reproduction, immigration, racial capitalism, Global North
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

The present paper contributes to a theoretical discussion on the relationship between contemporary international migration processes and the precarization of labor and social reproduction. More specifically, I explore how racial capitalism, conceptualized as capital’s need to differentiate the working class in order to increase levels of surplus value extraction, reframes the theoretical discussion on labor, social reproduction, racial difference, and bordering regimes. Immigration and labor scholars have extensively discussed the precarization of immigrant labor in the Global North through regimes of illegality, deportability, temporary work, and increased control of immigrant workers. Conversely, scholarship on social reproduction has addressed its precarization in Global North contexts, although rarely centering the experiences of racialized immigrant families. Similarly, scholarship on racial capitalism has yet to demonstrate how racially differentiated social reproduction arrangements contribute to broader processes of capital accumulation. In this theoretical analysis, I start by unpacking the intimate relationship between racialization and immigration in Global North contexts, arguing that the precarization of immigrant labor is predicated in racial capitalism. In other words, non-citizen workers are racially differentiated from the national labor force in order to facilitate surplus value extraction. This, in turn, informs draconian bordering regimes and migration control programs. Subsequently, I contend that the precarization of social reproduction is the invisible underbelly of this process, both in places of origin and destination. As reproductive arrangements are widely determined by class and race, racialized precarious social reproduction sustains the precarization of immigrant labor in the Global North.