Uncertain States: Irregular Migrant Labour and the Question of Law

Tataryn, Anastasia ORCID: 0000-0001-5870-4877 (2015) Uncertain States: Irregular Migrant Labour and the Question of Law. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

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Abstract

In this thesis, I explore the phenomenon of irregular migrant labour in the United Kingdom (UK). My particular methodology examines political and juridical attention to so-called irregular labour migration including proposed remedies. I employ a three-fold methodology that is political, juridical and, with the help of Susan Marks’ notion of false contingency, incorporates philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy’s fundamental ‘ontological’ questioning via attention to ecotechnics. Through this methodology I contend that the phenomenon of 'irregular' migrant labour is symptomatic of the limits of legal categories. My work does not end there, however. Not only are the existing legal categories in immigration and labour law limited in their ability to address what is identified as irregular migrant labour, but the limit of the legal framework obscures the processes of neoliberalisation that maintain an economic market system dependent on persons in ‘irregular’ situations. A critique that stops at identifying the limit of law and legal categories is insufficient to address what is happening in the circulation of capital, production and reproduction. For this reason, I explore Jean-Luc Nancy’s work, in particular his term ecotechnics, in an attempt to bring attention, within discussion of legal categorical limits, to what is circulating and happening in labour migration considered to be 'irregular'.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	?? K1 ??
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	23 Oct 2015 10:45
Last Modified:	17 Dec 2022 01:16
DOI:	10.17638/02033339
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/2033339