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June 18, 2006
From Citizenship in motion by Sandro Mezzadra over at the excellent Generation-online resource site:
The tendency toward decomposing citizenship is far from concerning migrants only: the reintroduction of a principle of tutelage (that is, historically and conceptually, a principle opposed to that of citizenship) has persistently characterised neoliberal policies. It inspired the demise of citizenship in matters of penal law and control and through the attempt to turn welfare into workfare; it gradually reduced the provision of services to citizens whilst subordinating it, for those who cannot acquire these services in the 'market', to paternalist logic. More generally, the principle of flexibility has been affirmed as the new key to labour relations and to the very right to work that was one of the main fields for the expansion of citizenship in the last century. This was done through concrete practices that have laid the groundwork for a reintroduction of devices of subordination and personal command in fields that in the past had been at least juridically protected by collective rights and guarantees.
The condition of both migrants and immigrants constitutes a privileged point from which to observe and investigate the trend towards selectively decomposing the figures of citizenship.
We can see this in terms of immigrants in the US with the the largest demonstration in California’s history in which well over half a million people marched through downtown Los Angeles on Saturday, March 25 this year in defense of immigrant rights and to protest the government attacks on immigrants, especially undocumented workers.
The march comprised in its overwhelming majority Hispanic and Latin American young working men and women---auto mechanics, dry-wall installers, assemblers, construction workers, nurses, garage attendants, street cleaners, waiters, bus boys, parking lot attendants, maids, janitors--- was representatives of Southern California's labor force.
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