Exploitation and expropriation: the tangled web between refugee rights, capitalism, and race

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Rethinking Education in Emergencies: Critical Reflections on the Sector

Proposal

A starting premise for this paper is that the inequities we observe today in terms of the affordance of rights to some refugees or migrants and not others, can be understood through the logic of capitalism and its dependencies on political and social systems which racialize and subjugate (Robinson, 2000). Two key concepts—that of expropriation and exploitation—discussed by Nancy Fraser (2022) in her book Cannibal Capitalism—will be used to advance this argument. Specifically, the nature of education provision in many EiE settings is an indication of which groups will become exploitable versus which groups will be expropriated by capitalism’s demands for resources and labour. Often such determinations are made based on racialized narratives and justifications, deeply imbued within humanitarian and education systems themselves (Neely and Samura, 2011; Sriprakash, Gerrard and Rudolph, 2022).
The specific case of teachers of refugees and refugee teachers is used to explore this issue. Examples from a range of conflict-affected contexts, and the authors’ own empirical research carried out with teachers in these contexts are used to highlight how educational responses to various ‘emergencies’ create dualities and difference which allows for varying forms of exploitation and expropriation of teachers’ labour to be undertaken (Author, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2023). This includes, for instance, how teachers are identified, accredited, deployed, supported, compensated, and rewarded. Specifically, teachers from refugee backgrounds in such settings often have their labour fully expropriated by their inability to be formally recognised or compensated, because of the racialized systems they often find themselves in, while teachers of refugees (from hosting countries or regions) are more likely to have their labours exploited due to work with refugee students seen to be of ‘lower value’. In both instances, their work is often highly precarious, under significant surveillance, and extractive of teacher and community goodwill. Addressing these issues, then, requires explicit attention to anti-racist forms of social organisation which acknowledging and resisting such structures, and question whether the current discourse of inclusion within national systems is appropriate or desirable.
References:
Fraser, N. (2022). Cannibal Capitalism: How our System is Devouring Democracy, Care, and the Planet and What We Can Do About It. Verso Books.
Neely, B., and M. Samura (2011). Social geographies of race: Connecting race and space. Ethnic and Racial Studies 34 (11):1933–52. doi:10.1080/01419870.2011.559262.
Oddy, J. We Need to Start Talking about Race, Power, and Privilege in the Education in Emergencies Sector, 15th of November 2020, URL https://medium.com/@jlojlo/we-need-to-start-talking-about-race-power-and-privilege-in-the-education-in-emergencies-sector-51cf06ac202a

Author

• Ritesh Shah, University of Auckland