Editoriale: lavoro, mobilità, migrazioni. Ripartire dal concetto di salariato imbrigliato/Work, mobilities, migrations: rethinking the notion of bridled labour

Abstract

This special issue revisits the notion of «bridled labour», introduced by Yann Moulier Boutang in his book De l’esclavage au salariat, published in France in 1998 and in Italy in 2002 (Ibid.). We are not interested so much in verifying in detail the book’s theses; rather, we wish to discuss some of its general presuppositions, in light of the most recent developments in social-scientific research on the relations between labour, mobility and migrations. More specifically, we wish to take up again the foundations of MoulierBoutang’s argument: the idea that the autonomy of mobility– that is, its status as a social fact unavailable to total control – constitutes a privileged epistemic viewpoint, from which to analysethe cycles of emergence and erosion of what the author defined as the «bridling» of labouronto the market. For MoulierBoutang, it was a matter of examining the mechanisms through which capital historically attempted to hamper the flight of workers from their job, and thus avoid the associated costs. The conflict between harnessing and flight, from this perspective, is therefore productive of social innovations as well. As MoulierBoutang’s book shows in great detail, across different places and times the harnessing of labourwas secured through a multiplicity of political and juridical tools (indenture, apartheid, enslavement, the criminalization of contract breach, indebtedness, laws against vagrancy, the territorialization of welfare and povery alleviation…). Their underlying logics, according to the author, can in turn provide a key to read the condition of contemporary migrant labour.

Keywords:

Autonomy of Mobility; Flight; Harnessing of Labour; Migrations.