The Nobodies: Neoliberalism, Violence, and Migration

Abstract

In this article I suggest placing structural vulnerability within a complex web of capitalist relations and tease out some of the forces and processes that now produce at an unprecedented rate disposable people who have been displaced and dislocated from their means of survival by a rapacious capitalism. I explore some of the multiple sites of the production and commodification of these “nobodies” to illuminate the intricate relationship between neoliberal economic policies and practices, state-sponsored violence, and international migration. These phenomena point us toward an understanding of the historical dimensions and the power dynamics of profiteering off the poor through the production of their vulnerabilities and the commodification of their very being.