Lecture – Reading the mediterranean border through racial capitalism

In this talk, Timothy Raeymaekers will present his monograph “The Natural Border: Bounding Migrant Farmwork in the Black Mediterranean” (Cornell 2024). Telling the recent history of Mediterranean agri-food capitalism from the perspective of marginalized Black African farm workers, the book argues that, 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—the book furthermore interrogates how political boundaries are drawn around the land and the labour needed for its production, what technologies of exclusion and inclusion enable capitalist operations to take place, and which practices structure the allocation, use and commodification of land and labour across global commodity chains – thus offering a new conceptualization of territorial boundaries from a critical political ecology and environmental justice perspective.

15 October 2024, 4.00-5.30pm
Online (WebEx)
Lecture in English

Registration here
 

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.

The lecture is part of the lecture series: “Border Realities: Beyond Nature and Culture”.

The series is organized by Lola Aubry (UniGR-CBS, University of Luxembourg) and Anne-Laure Amilhat Szary (Pacte, CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes).