Questioning Citizenship and Using It as a Tool of Control
Sanjay Roy
MIGRATION is a flow of labour that reflects both a circuit of active labour and a circulation of reserve army of labour. Different regimes of accumulation and emerging growth poles define the nature of both circuit of capital and labour. ‘Footloose capital’ prefers ‘footloose labour’ as production structures are more dispersed and in a state of flux in the current regime of neoliberal globalisation. Such labour are workers on the move. They are like packets of labour power, undefined, docile and apparently without any political voice. This is the soft underbelly of the working class in different countries. The most vulnerable section of the workers, undocumented or invisible, devoid of any support from their employer or from their community. They are in a state of limbo distanced from their roots and stay as half-citizens in their place of work. This soft underbelly has been chosen as a test case to roll on the re-registration of citizenship through the backdoor. Bengal is the laboratory to test water this time.
The developments in our neighbouring country Bangladesh and the reactions in this side of the border in West Bengal creates immense potential for communal posturing of political forces. Bengali speaking people are equated to illegal Bangladeshi migrants equal to Muslims and the hunting of illegal migrants in Delhi-Gurgaon, Orissa and Jharkhand by their linguistic identity shows a particular pattern. No middle class, established, property owner with adequate social capital has been arrested for speaking Bengali, neither they have been considered suspect for their language. It is particularly migrant Bengali workers that defines the specific focus of witch-hunting. It serves two purposes: it first of all attempts to offer fresh life to the state government which reaches zenith of corruption and has left its hallmark in pulling down the state on all counts particularly in education, governance, employment and atrocities against women. The TMC government suddenly becomes the self-proclaimed torchbearer of Bengali pride and identity, and this is the same government that was utterly insensitive to the Bengali migrant workers who were expunged brutally from other states by their employers during the pandemic. And secondly for the BJP this is a move to consolidate their communal hindutva vote bank to retain their second place in the assembly election scheduled for the early next year.
MIGRATION
INCREASES
Globally cross-border migration has increased and according to the latest figures 5 per cent of the global labour force are migrants. Origin and destination regions as well as the pattern of work in which global migrants are involved into has undergone change. Globally migration before the Second World War was largely towards Europe, Canada, Australia and the US who absorbed huge inflow of labour to build railway tracts, or for work in plantation or mines. In the recent period similar absorption of migrant skilled and unskilled workers is being recorded in the construction sector, care, entertainment and sex work in Europe, Brazil, Hong Kong and Gulf countries. Within the country also in case of India and in many other developing countries inter-region migration has increased. In India in 1991 one-third of the population in urban areas were migrants and in 2011 it became half of the urban population. Even though the census figures are not available for 2021, several estimates suggest that internal migration has increased, particularly inter-state and intra-state migration for unskilled workers has increased which is of course a mark of greater mobility of the workforce.
But what this mobility offers to the process of capitalist accumulation? Everywhere in the country particularly in new growth centres employers look for non-local workers. Workers coming from other states uprooted from their communities are preferred over resident workers. It is assumed that they are more vulnerable, docile, ready to work for longer hours, not emboldened by community support, completely disenfranchised to report or lodge a legal complaint against the employer because of their ‘outsider’ status. They may even agree to work at lower wages because their reservation wage is low as they usually keep their families in native places. A flow of labour that suits neoliberal capitalist accumulation is what this increased mobility caters to. Few educated/skilled workers definitely attain greater vertical mobility because of their strategic position in production structure but they do not carry the label of ‘migrant labour’ in its derogatory sense.
A migrant labour is the one who is very much required for capitalist accumulation as factory workers, as mine workers, as agricultural labourer, as plantation worker as transport workers as domestic help, sex-workers, care and entertainment workers. But at the same time the denial of their contribution in the development process is actualised by periodic episodes of delegitimisation operationalised by the state. In case of India, they are poor, mostly from the lower caste, minorities, women who must forgo their home and identity and sometimes even names just to earn two square meals. The crisis of social reproduction pushes them out from their native villages and cities and make them hawkers of labour power. These are the workers who are sometimes identified as ‘biharis’, ‘bangalis’ ‘madrasis’ ‘mullahs/bangladeshis/pakistanis’ ‘chinkis’ in different contexts and in different times to delegitimise, denigrate and criminalise them.
CONTROL MECHANISM
The increased circulation of the reserve army of labour helps reducing the bargaining power of workers across geographies. The process of uprooting labour from their place of origin is nothing accidental rather systemic in nature. The uneven development of capitalism and the proliferation of employment opportunities follow the path of capital accumulation. Spatial distribution of labour follows the relative pace of accumulation. Regions where growth of jobs are relatively slow, they are the suppliers of this floating reserve army of labour to regions who demand cheap labour. Hence growth poles of capitalism attract labour and the circulation of the reserve army of labour help reducing average wage costs by creating a dual structure of employment. But this is nothing new. What is new is using citizenship as an instrument in disciplining the working class. Power is not always explicit in matured capitalist democracies because brutal use of power and exclusion can hardly be legitimised. One of the ways of exercising power and control is to define and redefine norms that constitute what is right and wrong or legal and illegal. The purpose of this tool is not always to punish someone, instead redefining norm makes someone vulnerable to punishment and that is the mode of control.
There are accepted norms and conventions to defining citizens and government spends taxpayers’ money to protect borders and restrict infiltration. Every country in this world has their defined norms of citizenship. But if the identity of citizenship is put to test multiple times with changing norms and eligibility criterion, it enables the state of pushing bona fide citizens under trial. The act of arresting hundred workers frightens others as well and that is the real effect of these arrests. It also helps employers to control their workers because the question on their legal identity that the state raises or may raise provides an additional lever of control over the migrant workers. This is not relevant only in the context of cross border migration, but this insider/outsider divide may take different dimensions based on caste, religion or linguistic identity even for internal migrants. Exclusion by setting norms legally, culturally or politically becomes one of the most important modes of control in right wing regimes. Making citizens or particular groups of people potentially vulnerable also creates space for paternalistic politics. One emerges as a saviour of the unprotected while not actually challenging the tyranny of power. This game is playing out in Bengal in the current political landscape where victimisation of Bengali workers as illegal Bangladeshi migrants or Rohingyas helps consolidating majoritarian Hindutva politics and on the other hand mobilisation based on linguistic identity creates space for paternalistic politics for the ruling party to recoup its faltering support base. It is high time for a left turn in Bengal!
