The Tunisian device. Hyper-mobility and intimate labour in intra-African migration
- Autores: Germana Vinciguerra
- Directores de la Tesis: Antonio Robles Egea (codir. tes.), Serena Marcenò (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universidad de Granada ( España ) en 2022
- Idioma: inglés
- ISBN: 9788411955799
- Número de páginas: 225
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Antonio Robles Egea (presid.), Nieves Ortega Pérez (secret.), Valeria Cammarata (voc.), José-Francisco Jiménez-Díaz (voc.), Serena Marcenò (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Estudios Migratorios por la Universidad de Granada; la Universidad de Jaén y la Universidad Pablo de Olavide
- Calificación: Sobresaliente Cum Laude
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: DIGIBUG
- Resumen
The Tunisian Device.
Hyper-mobility and Intimate Labour in Intra-African Migration.
1. Introduction.
Over the past two decades, Tunisia, as well as the entire Northen Africa region and other sub-Saharan states, has assumed a central role in EU migration management policies. Such relevance is rooted in the country's supposed role as a transit area for flows coming from sub-Saharan Africa and heading towards Europe. In this vein, several scholars have observed how Tunisia has become a strategic analytical lens for understanding the politics of mobility in the Mediterranean (Tazzioli, Garelli 2016, 5). Despite the truthfulness of that, by changing perspective, that is, shifting the focus along intra-African routes, this study aims to show that Tunisia represents an important analytical lens for understanding the governance of mobility far beyond the Mediterranean, a research topic which remains fairly new in literature. Indeed, recent studies on migratory phenomena, despite the richness of the methodological approaches adopted and the multidisciplinary nature that characterises them, remain focused on South-North routes, losing, it is believed, the full understanding of the current mobility regime. While critically analysing the evolution of the Western securitarian paradigm on the one hand, and the transformations of contemporary capitalism on the other hand, this study observed from a Southern perspective what appears to be an unprecedented migration management strategy that does not consist of stopping or discouraging mobility, but on the contrary of producing and triggering it, in order to flexibly manage migration crisis in the attempt to produce ``economically needed and exploitable flows out of the ``turbulence of ``unwanted migration. A specific focus has been offered on female intra-African economic migration related to domestic and care work which seems to be particularly relevant albeit poorly analysed within the feminisation of African migration in general, and in African female economic flows to Tunisia specifically.
2. Theoretical background To focus on the relevance of intra- African migration meant, in this study, to critically analyse how Africas zones of crisis are strategically implemented, placed and moved to regulate migratory flows while, at the same, analysing the strategies of power whereby populations are differentially allowed to move along the current borderscapes. The phenomenon of migration is indeed not disheartened in absolute terms. It is rather shaped by different degrees and hierarchies of accessibility that allow for the discernment of a good mobility that contains tourists, skilled migrants, financial flows, weapons and a bad mobility made of illicit trafficking, refugees, unskilled workers, terrorism etc. which requires to be contained. In an attempt to analyse the discursive practices that have characterized the international migration policy debate since the 1990s, Antoin Pécoud for instance argued that the goal of current migration governance is to transform the chaotic nature of migration flows into an orderly process. Admittedly, many theoretical-political studies that address migration issues have largely explored the growing role of borders and their reconfiguration in the global space, as a means of reordering flows by filtering, blocking and suspending them. Unlike these perspectives, by analysing intra-African flows, the aim of this study is to theorise how, instead of ordering migratory flows, current migration governance in Africa aims to disorder them, reinforcing the rhetoric of their ungovernability and, consequently, the crisis as a technology of government. Narrowing the scope of the investigation on the Doctoral Thesis Summary Ph.D. candidate: Germana Vinciguerra Institution: University of Granada in co-tutorship with the University of Palermo (Italy)Tunisian case, it is argued that rather than decreasing or slowing down mobility, current migration governance seems to be increasingly shifting towards a production of hyper-mobility, accelerating and expanding flows both in spatial and temporal terms. In this vein rather than emphasizing how by means of the Tunisian device the movement of people or population is governed, I intended to analyse the perspective according to which people and populations are governed through mobility, not merely letting them move but making them move.
Hence, theorising a shift from a biopolitics of mobility to a biopolitics through mobility. Such a shift, while being currently undertheorized, yields at least two insights. Firstly, referring to strategies of power that acts through mobility rather than on mobility contribute to enrich our understanding of current migration management placing mobility, rather than just borders, as a method of investigation. In such a way, mobility is not only a side-effect of the border regime. Secondly, looking at the production of mobility as a way of governing migrant-bodies involves a further analytical and interpretive effort, juxtaposing the analysis of the securitarian paradigm with that of contemporary capitalism and, more specifically, how labour and life are being transformed within it. The point is drawn here in continuity with studies that question the centrality of the securitization process as the main analytical lens for observing actual migration governance. By this stand point, far from reducing mobility, borders acts as a way for regulating the relations between capital, labor, law, subjects and political power, far beyond geographic border spaces. Regulation however, seems to be far from any exercise of control. Rather it is configured with its opposite: uncontrol. As this study aims to show, the female body assumes a fundamental role in current production processes and thus also through the mobility regime. As the literature produced over the past 30 years shows, the retreat of welfare system, the progressive aging of the population in many Western countries, as well as the massive entry of women in the productive economy, have led to a global crisis of care which is increasingly satisfied by low-cost female immigrant workforce from the Global South. Care practices, which are a fundamental dimension of human existence has become, as Oxfam (2020) observed, the new gold to be extracted from the Third World. The supposed increase in female economic migration at the global level, often referred to under the slogan feminization of migration, is indeed part of a complex global transformation whereby the unpaid domestic and care work once carried out by the women of the household, is increasingly outsourced to more economically precarious women.In Global Women, Hochschild and Ehrenreich (2003) highlighted that the intimate labour that white, middle-class Western women are no longer willing to do, involves mainly coloured women from poorer countries. Even though their research has been carried out in the United States, other scholars identified similar trends in many other parts of the world showing that the main transformation in care relationships should be analysed not merely in terms of gender but also ethnicity and class. Unfortunately, despite the relevance of the African continent as an important geographic area that produces domestic labor (ILO 2010), to date Africa remains unexplored. By investigating the case of sub-Saharan women workers in Tunisia, this study shed light on the intricate intertwining of mobility practices in the processes of differential inclusion along the lines of class, gender, race and nationality affecting foreign domestic workers in the metropolitan area of Tunis and Grand Tunis.
3. Methodology Consistently with what was argued, the methodological approach relies on the classical tools of historicalconceptual analysis of Political Theory and the apparatus of contemporary Critical Theory on neoliberalism and bio-capitalism. In order to provide a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon under consideration, qualitative analysis has been combined with a quantitative approach. The quantitative analysis consisted in utilizing and researching a data-set as wide as possible in order to understand contemporary intraAfrican migration patterns. These datasets were selected based on their relevance and reliability for the study of migration in Africa and in Tunisia more particularly. As a result, data produced by the African Union, the International Organisation for Migration, the International Labour Organisation as well as other UN Agencies and International Organisations has been consulted. Nevertheless, consideration was also given to the extensivescientific production of renowned research centers on the continent as well as colonial-epoch documents and censuses from various countries, where available online. Moreover, data published between 2017 and 2020 by various NGOs were used for the analysis of female domestic work in Tunisia. The quantitative analysis made it possible to identify the main critical issues concerning foreign female domestic workers in Tunisia.
Consequently, the research was deepened through the exploration of a specific case study related to women workers from Côte dIvoire, in the urban area of Tunis and Grand Tunis. For this purpose, three periods of field research were conducted between 2022 and 2023, during which several semi-structured interviews were conducted with human rights activists and five different NGOs with significant experience in the domain of migration and human rights in Tunisia.
4. Conclusion Although in quantitative terms Tunisia plays a marginal role in intra-African flows compared to other North African countries such as Egypt or Libya, Tunisia continues to be widely defined as a hub for sub-Saharan migrants heading to Europe within a list that is progressively getting longer including countries ranging from Niger to Ethiopia, considered as transit areas for migrants moving towards North Africa and then to Europe.
Besides being a profoundly Eurocentric concept based on the supposed attraction of Western countries, implying that middle- or law-income countries South to the EU cannot be destination but only transit countries, the very concept, as extensively argued, is not interesting for its meaning (or lack thereof) but rather for its performative use, its capacity to produce, through enunciation, normalising and hegemonic effects on migrants bodies and their spaces of livability. Hence, not simply its political use but also its biopolitical dimension. The relevance of the Foucauldian knowledge/power relationship of the Tunisian device emerged from here: the use of the expression transit country (characterised in its very nature by the impossibility of predicting ex-ante the flows both in temporal and spatial terms), highlights the unpredictability of migration, reinforcing the interpretation of Tunisian migratory space as ungovernable. Within a securitarian approach that has characterized Tunisia since the post-Ben Ali period, the current government take advantage of EUs support and funding in the management of flows, for the strengthening of its internal policy. Through the governmental (self)production of Tunisia as a transit country, Tunisia shirks its legal obligation to protect migrants rights and dignity, implementing a legal production of illegality. As it has been pointed, despite several bilateral agreements on free visa access between Tunisia and some sub-Saharan states like Côte d Ivoire allow migrants to enter the country regularly, for the majority of them it becomes almost impossible to extend the stay on legal basis. The process of mass irregularisation produces forms of suspension and abandonment that are no less violent than deportations or expulsions. As pointed, sub-Saharan domestic workers represent an emblematic case in the Tunisian context. Intimate labour in Tunisia indeed, has become an attractive economic sector similarly to other parts of the world. Moreover, it is likely that demand will increase given the decline in birth rate and a progressive increase in the population. Yet, the implementation of a biopolitics through mobility is strategic in the creation of a low-cost and exploitable workforce given the conditions of extreme vulnerability that characterizes sub-Saharan women in Tunisia. Through their irregular-ised conditions, subSaharan women domestic workers are subjected to a blurred surveillance system wherein movement is not repressed but coherently with the neoliberal regime, it is encouraged and exploited within contemporary capitalism. Coherently, it was also argued that the process of economic precariousness that affects the Ivorian community, could have a role in the growing phenomenon of trafficking affecting Ivorian domestic workers who appear to be the majority of foreigner domestic workers in the Grand Tunisia area and probably in the area of Sfax. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis on intimate work in Tunisia are currently extremely scarce. However, given the very serious forms of exploitation that emerged, there is the urgency of further research.5. Bibliography Duffield, M. (2007). Development, Security and Unending War: Governing the World of People. Cambridge, UK; Malden, MA: Polity.
Düvell, F. (2012). Transit migration: A blurred and politicised concept. Population, Space and place, 18(4), 415 427.
Ehrenreich, B. & Hochschild, A. R. (2003). Global Women. Nannies, Maids and sex work in the New Care Economy. London: Granta Books.
Foucault, M. (1997). Society Must be Defended. Lectures at Collège de France 1975-76. (David M. Trans.) New York: Picador. (Original work published 1997).
Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: lectures at the Collège de France, 197778. (K. A. Loparo Trans,), Springer. (Original work published 2004).
Foucault, M. (2008). The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France. Edited by Michel Senellart.
Translated by Graham Burchell. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. (Original work published 1979).
Kofman, E., Raghuram, P. (2015). Gendered Migrations and Global Social Reproduction. Migration Diaspora and Citizenship. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2013). Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor. Duke University Press.
Moyo, I., Laine, J. P., & Nshimbi, C.C. (2021). Intra-Africa Migrations. London: Routledge.
Parreñas, R. S. (2002). The care crisis in the Philippines: Children and transnational families in the new global economy (pp. 39-54). London: Grenta Books.
Tazzioli, M. (2014). People not of our Concern. Rejected Refugees in Tunisia. Radical Philosophy, (184).
Tazzioli, M. (2020a). The Making of Migration. Sage Publications Ltd.
Tazzioli, M. (2020b). Governing migrant mobility through mobility: Containment and dispersal at the internal frontiers of Europe. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 38(1), 3-19.
Tazzioli, M., Garelli, G. (2016). Tunisia as a revolutionized space of migration. Springer.
