The Natural Border: Bounding Migrant Farmwork in the Black Mediterranean

by Timothy Raeymaekers

Overview

The Natural Border tells the recent history of Mediterranean rural capitalism from the perspective of marginalized Black African farm workers. Timothy Raeymaekers shows how in the context of global supply chains and repressive border regimes, agrarian production and reproduction are based on fundamental racial hierarchies.

Taking the example of the tomato—a typical 'Made in Italy' commodity—Raeymaekers asks how political boundaries are drawn around the land and the labor needed for its production, what technologies of exclusion and inclusion enable capitalist operations to take place in the Mediterranean agrarian frontier, and which practices structure the allocation, use and commodification of land and labor across the tomato chain. While the mobile infrastructures that mobilize, channel, commodify and segregate labor play a central role in the 'naturalization' of racial segregation, they are also terrains of contestation and power—and thus, as The Natural Border demonstrates, reflect the tense socio-ecological transformation the Mediterranean border space is going through today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501773648
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	02/15/2024
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Timothy Raeymaekers is Senior Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna, and Affiliated Researcher in the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Commodity Frontiers
2. Plantation Assemblages
3. Territorializing Labor
4. Impermanent Territories
5. Citizen Recognition
Conclusion

What People are Saying About This

Enrica Rigo

In The Natural Border, Timothy Raeymaekers expertly analyzes the actual infrastructures that underpin the expansion of a hierarchical and racist system of capital accumulation in Southern Italy, contributing to debates across critical geography, urban studies, and socio-legal studies.