Provincializing racial capitalism: The refugee humanitarian-development fix and the social reproduction of relative surplus populations in austerity Europe

Abstract

This paper explores refugee humanitarian-development projects in ‘transit’ countries as postcolonial modes of security within racial capitalism. Using as a point of departure the accommodation and cash assistance programs that emerged in Greece in the aftermath of the ‘refugee crisis’, it seeks to provide an understanding of ‘make live’ interventions that minimally support refugees’ social reproduction at the edges of Europe. The paper shows that behind the language of ‘dignified and win-win solutions’ for both refugees and hosting countries, development-led approaches to refugee hosting served the two-fold function of containing racialised outsiders and conferring in-group privileges to devalued European populations racialised as white. By outsourcing processing of ‘keeping out’ and ‘keeping alive’ to European peripheries under austerity, the development-humanitarian nexus brought relative surplus populations into the folds of local capital accumulation, while sustaining the global colour line. In analysing the refugee humanitarian-development nexus as a mode of containment that harnesses the social reproductive capacities of racialised life, the paper contributes to discussions on migration, social reproduction and racial capitalism in the following ways: first, it pushes migration scholars to think the humanitarian-industrial complex beyond profit-making and account for its role in upholding the postcolonial global order; it invites discussion on the function of the social reproduction of populations that are not primed for work within capitalism; and it expands the focus of racial capitalism beyond metropolitan centres and their (post)colonial borderlands, shedding light on how intermediary spaces become pivotal nodes of georacial stability through the economisation of migrants’ social reproduction.