Notes

This file is meant to begin, not end neoliberalism/capitalism research and

allow students to get in some good debates against a critique they will likely
here often through out the year.

If you are looking for extra impact stuff, sustainability stuff and transition
stuff, a lot of it was put out as part of the economy core…
--- AFF ---
AT FW
 AT Epistemology
Epistemology doesn’t come first
Jackson, professor of IR – American University, ‘15
(Patrick Thaddeus, “Must International Studies Be a Science?” Millennium - Journal of
International Studies vol. 43, no. 3, p. 942-965, June)
diverse methodologies have different approaches to causation, to case comparison, and to
These

explanation in general; those differences mean different methodologies generate different , in turn, that scientific

kinds of valid claims with different epistemic statuses, and should not be regarded as poor
approximations to or deficient forms of one another. While neopositivists look for cross-case covariation as the truest mark of causation, critical realists look for dispositional
causal powers, analyticists apply ideal-typical models to disclose the specific features of individual cases, and reflexive scholars ground their claims in their own social locations. There is no reason why this plurality has to lead to relativism, but neither should it be

misunderstood as creating a simple, homogenous account of the world; translation challenges persist, and the result of a pluralist science is a variety of warranted
knowledge-claims. 22 But for all of this internal diversity, there are important commonalities among these varieties of scientific methodology that serve to distinguish them, as a group, from other forms of knowing. Following Max
Weber, we might characterise all four of these scientific methodologies as aiming at a ‘thoughtful ordering of empirical actuality’,23 or, to put it another way, as participating in a form of knowing that emphasises systematic claims, public criticism intended to improve
those claims, and a specific kind of ‘worldliness’ that excludes references to divine commands and magical forces. This is not to say that a claim has to achieve some specific level of systematicity, publicity, and/or worldliness in order to be regarded as ‘scientific’; the
commonality I am highlighting here is not a candidate for a demarcation criterion that would allow us to distinguish science from non-science in any kind of definitive fashion.24 Instead, I am suggesting that in the space marked out by these methodologies, qu estions
about a claim’s systematicity, its susceptibility to public criticism, and its worldliness are in some sense appropriate questions to ask. In effect, to regard ourselves as being engaged in scientific inquiry is to invite these questions, and to submit our claims to evaluation in
terms of these criteria. The kind of knowledge that is supposed to be produced by efforts to be as systematic, public, and worldly as one can be is knowledge of a particular kind: factual, propositional knowledge, or what we might call ‘knowing-that’.25 This is the kind
of knowing that Wittgenstein had in mind when he suggested, in the opening sections of the Tractatus, that the world ‘is all that is the case…the totality of facts, not of things’.26 It is what Aristotle called epistemic knowing: ‘universal, invariable, context-independent’
and ‘based on general analytical rationality’.27 It prizes relative impersonality in connecting claims to their warrants, in that the validity of a claim is not subject to idiosyncratic impressions but is instead articulated in a way that is understood as generally established.28
In Weber’s formulation, the goal of this kind of knowing is to produce a set of factual claims that even someone who did not share our values would find compelling.29 Here again it is important to note that this is not some kind of absolute standard that these

It is unclear to me that we ever have perfectly impersonal knowledge, or that any

methodologies necessarily meet.

claim whatsoever achieves anything like universal generality. But this is not the point. Instead, the point is that

epistemic claims advanced in the methodological modes of neopositivism, critical realism,

analyticism, and even reflexivity are accompanied by standards of validity that purport to be
something other than an arbitrary whim The logical condition of possibility for binding only on the speaker. Sandra

Harding’s suggestion that scientific knowledge’ is thoroughly marked by cultural

the accumulated body of what we call ‘

particularity and a colonial past is precisely the notion

, and her call for a ‘strong objectivity’ that brings previously marginalised perspectives back into the conversation,

that there is something illegitimate and untenable about this unacknowledged partiality And the .30

claim that some account of things is Eurocentric or androcentric is no more and no less reliant on
similar definitions and procedures shared by a community of speaker and audience than is the
claim that dyadic democracy and war frequency are inversely correlated the very form of —and as such,

the claim opens the possibility of questioning just how impersonally, epistemically valid it is.
‘Epistemically valid for me/for us’ does not make any sense, because the very idea of epistemic
knowing implies validity independent of any conceptual scheme even if the vocabulary , within which the claim is

is itself local and contingent.

made 31
AT Alt
 2AC – Inevitability
Capitalism is the best worst solution and structures all of modern society –
will inevitably re-emerge
Goldberg 18 (Jonah Goldberg. National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg is a bestselling
author and columnist and fellow of the National Review Institute. “The Suicide of the West,”
National Review, 4/12/18, https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/04/30/jonah-
goldberg-suicide-of-the-west-excerpt/)
And this is why Murray Rothbard went to such lengths to spell out precisely what he was endorsing when he championed the economics of capitalism. This was especially
necessary when he was writing in 1973, a time which was arguably the low point for capitalist theory. Mises died that year, all economists were said to be Keynesians, Nixon
closed the gold window, wage and price controls were fastened on industry as an inflation fix, and the US was locked in a titanic Cold War struggle that emphasized government
weaponry over private enterprise. Murray Rothbard, meanwhile, was hard at work on his book For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, an effort to breath new life into a
traditionally liberal program by infusing it with a heavy dose of political radicalism. It must have seemed like a hopeless task. The same year, he was asked to contribute an essay
in a series of readings called Modern Political Economy (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1973). He was to address "The Future of Capitalism" (pp. 419-430), the conclusion of which
might have seemed self-evidently bleak. But not to Rothbard. His contribution to the volume was lively, optimistic, enormously clarifying, and prescient to the extreme. Above all,
he used the opportunity to explain with great clarity what precisely he means when he refers to capitalism: no more and no less than the sum of voluntary activity in society,

Does that seem like a stretch? Rothbard explains that the term
particularly that characterized by exchange.

capitalism itself was coined by its greatest enemy Karl Marx, and ever since the term has
conflated two very different ideas: free-market capitalism, on the one hand, and state
capitalism, on the other. "The difference between them, Rothbard notes, "is precisely the difference between, on the one hand, peaceful, voluntary exchange,
and on the other, violent expropriation." This may seem like a small point, but the confusion accounts for why whole swaths of American historiography are incorrect, for example,
in distinguishing Alexander Hamilton's supposed sympathy for capitalism from Thomas Jefferson's sympathy for "agrarianism." Rothbard points out that Jefferson was in fact an
advocate of laissez-faire who had read and understood the classical economists; as an "agrarian" he was merely applying the doctrine of free markets to the American regional

As Rothbard explains,
context, even as Hamilton's mercantilist and inflationist sympathies are best described as a preference for state capitalism.

capitalism is nothing but the system that emerges in the framework of free exchange of
property and the absence of government efforts to stop it. Whether you are talking about
buying a newspaper from a vendor or a group of stockholders hiring a CEO, the essence of
the exchange is the same: two parties finding ways to benefit by the trade goods and
services. From the exchange, both parties expect to benefit else the trade would not have occurred. The global marketplace at all levels is nothing but the extension of the
idea of mutual betterment through peaceful exchange. In contrast to market exchange, we have its opposite in government intervention. It can be classified in two ways: either as
prohibiting or partially prohibiting an exchange between two people or forcing someone to make an "exchange" that would otherwise not take place in the market. All government
activity—regulation, taxation, protectionism, inflation, spending, social insurance, ad infinitum—can be classified as one of those two types of interventions. Taxation is nothing
more than robbery (Rothbard challenges anyone to define taxation in a way that would not also describe high-minded theft), and the state itself is nothing but a much-vaunted

the essence of statecraft is always

robber on a mass scale—and it matters not whether the state is conducting domestic or foreign policy;

coercion whereas the essence of markets is always voluntarism . In Rothbard's conception, it is not quite
correct to characterize support for free markets as either right or left. In 1973, he heard as
many complaints about the supposed greed unleashed by markets from the followers of
Russell Kirk as he did from the new left socialists. The right, in fact, was afflicted with a
serious intellectual attachment to pre-capitalistic institutional forms of monopoly privilege,
militarism, and the unrelenting drive to war. This was what Rothbard saw the political establishment of 1973 bringing to the US: the
march of the partnership between government and business that is nothing but the reinvention of political forms that pre-dated the capitalist revolution that began in the Italian city
states of the 16th century. The US conservatives were entirely complicit in this attempt to reverse the classical liberal revolution in favor of free markets in order to fasten an old-

socialism was, as Rothbard put

world monopolist system on society. In this, the conservatives resembled their supposed enemies, the socialists. After all,

it, "essentially a confused, middle-of-the-road movement." Its supposed goal of liberty, peace,
and prosperity was to be achieved through the imposition of new forms of regimentation,
mercantilism, and feudalism. Socialism seeks, in Rothbard's words, "liberal ends by the use of conservative means." ("Left and Right: The Prospects for
Liberty," Left and Right, I, 1, Spring 1965). Conservatives could be counted on to support the means but not the ends, and the result is something that approaches the current status
quo in the US: a mixed political system that combines the worst features of egalitarian ideology with corporate militarism—a system that leaves enough of the private sector

It was precisely the productive power of market, as versus the

unhampered to permit impressive growth and innovation.

dead-end of statist methods favored by both left and right, that led Rothbard to see that the gains
of capitalism could not finally be reversed. In addition, he may have been the first to anticipate the way in which the terms left and right would
eventually come to mean their precise opposite in the reforming economies of Eastern Europe. He was fascinated but not entirely surprised by the events in old Yugoslavia, where
a Stalinist system had been forced to reform into a more market oriented economy. In fact, he noted that the trend had begun in the 1960s, and extended all over Eastern Europe.
What was essentially happening, Rothbard wrote, was that socialism had been tried and failed and now these countries were turning to market models. Keep in mind that this was
1973, when hardly anyone else believed these countries capable of reform: "In Eastern Europe, then, I think that the prospects for the free market are excellent--I think we’re
getting free-market capitalism and that its triumph there is almost inevitable." Ten years later, it was still fashionable to speak of authoritarian regimes that could reform, as
contrasted with socialist totalitarianism that could not be reform and presumably had to be obliterated. Rothbard did not believe this, based on both theory and evidence. Rothbard
saw that all sectors in all countries moving either toward capitalism or toward socialism, which is to say, toward freedom or toward control. In the US, the trends looked very bleak
indeed but he found trends to cheer in the antiwar movement, which he saw as a positive development against military central planning. "Both in Vietnam and in domestic
government intervention, each escalating step only creates more problems which confront the public with tile choice: either, press on further with more interventions, or repeal
them--in Vietnam, withdraw from the coun-try." His conclusion must have sounded impossibly naïve in 1973 but today we can see that he saw further than any other "futurists" of

the advent of industrialism and the Industrial Revolution has irreversibly changed the
his time: "

prognosis for freedom and statism. In the pre-industrial era, statism and despotism could peg
along indefinitely, content to keep the peasantry at subsistence levels and to live off their surplus.
But industrialism has broken the old tables; for it has become evident that socialism cannot run an
industrial system, and it is gradually becoming evident that neomercantilism, interventionism, in the long run cannot run an industrial system either. Free-
market capi-talism, the victory of social power and the economic means, is not only the only
moral and by far the most productive system; it has become the only viable system for
mankind in the industrial era. Its eventual triumph is therefore virtually inevitable." Rothbard's
optimism about the prospects for liberty is legendary but less well understood is the basis for it: markets work and government do not. Left and
right can define terms however much they want, and they can rant and rave from the point of view of their own ideological convictions, but what must achieve victory in the end is
the remarkable influence of millions and billions of mutually beneficial exchanges putting relentless pressure on the designs of central planners to thwart their will. To be
optimistic about the prospects for capitalism requires only that we understand Mises's argument concerning the inability of socialist means to produce rational outcomes, and to be
hopeful about the triumph of choice over coercion.
 2AC – Transition Wars
The alt causes transition wars
Harris 02 (Lee Harris, Hoover Institution and Author of The Suicide of Reason, “The
Intellectual Origins of America-Bashing,” https://www.hoover.org/research/intellectual-origins-
america-bashing//TU-SG)

it is absolutely essential that revolutionary activities be justifiable on realistic premises. If they

For Marx

cannot be, then they are actions that cannot possibly have a real political objective — and therefore,
their only value can be the private emotional or spiritual satisfaction of the people carrying out
this pseudo-political action. So in order for revolutionary activity to have a chance of succeeding, there is an unavoidable precondition: The
workers must have become much poorer over time. Furthermore, there had to be not merely an increase
of poverty, but a conviction on the part of the workers that their material circumstances would
only get worse, and not better — and this would require genuine misery. This is the immiserization thesis of Marx. And it
is central to revolutionary Marxism, since if capitalism produces no widespread misery, then it also
produces no fatal internal contradiction: If everyone is getting better off through
capitalism, who will dream of struggling to overthrow it ? Only genuine misery on the part of
the workers would be sufficient to overturn the whole apparatus of the capitalist state, simply because, as
the capitalist class could not be realistically expected to relinquish
Marx insisted,

control of the state apparatus and, with it, the monopoly of force. In this, Marx was absolutely correct. No capitalist
society has ever willingly liquidated itself, and it is utopian to think that any ever will. Therefore, in
order to achieve the goal of socialism, nothing short of a complete revolution would do; and this
means, in point of fact, a full-fledged civil war not just within one society, but across the
globe . Without thisis catastrophic upheaval, capitalism would remain completely in control of the social
order and all socialist schemes would be reduced to pipe dreams. The immiserization thesis, therefore, is critical to Marx, for
without it there would be no objective conditions in response to which workers might be driven to overthrow the capitalist system. If the workers were becoming better off with

even socialists themselves were bitterly

time, then why jump into an utterly untested and highly speculative economic scheme? Especially when

divided over what such a scheme would be like in actual practice. Indeed, Marx never committed himself to offering a single
suggestion about how socialism would actually function in the real world.
AT Impact
 2AC – Self Correcting
Capitalism is adaptive – “staving off the inevitable” isn’t a bug, but rather a
feature
- Also a pretty good answer to the financialization stuff on sustainability

Kaletsky 11 (Anatole, editor-at-large of The Times of London, where he writes weekly

columns on economics, politics, and international relations and on the governing board of the
New York-based Institute for New Economic Theory (INET), a nonprofit created after the 2007-
2009 crisis to promote and finance academic research in economics, “Capitalism 4.0: The Birth of
a New Economy in the Aftermath of Crisis”
https://books.google.com/books/about/Capitalism_4_0.html?id=0Hj4J78RuwwC//TU-SG)

capitalism is a system built for survival. It has adapted successfully to shocks of every kind ,
Democratic

to upheavals in technology and economics , to political revolutions and world wars .

Capitalism has been able to do this because, unlike communism or socialism or feudalism, it has
an inner dynamic akin to a living thing. It can adapt and refine itself in response to the
changing environment. And it will evolve into a new species of the same capitalist genus if that is
what it takes to survive. In the panic of 2008—09, many politicians, businesses, and pundits forgot about the astonishing
adaptability of the capitalist system. Predictions of global collapse were based on static views
of the world that extrapolated a few months of admittedly terrifying financial chaos into
the indefinite future . The self-correcting mechanisms that market economies and democratic
societies have evolved over several centuries were either forgotten or assumed defunct. The language of
biology has been applied to politics and economics, but rarely to the way they interact. Democratic capitalism’s equivalent of the biological

survival instinct is a built-in capacity for solving social problems and meeting material needs. This
capacity stems from the principle of competition , which drives both democratic politics and capitalist markets. Because market forces

generally reward the creation of wealth rather than its destruction, they direct the independent
efforts and ambitions of millions of individuals toward satisfying material demands, even if these
demands sometimes create unwelcome by-products. Because voters generally reward politicians for making their lives better and safer,
rather than worse and more dangerous, democratic competition directs political institutions toward solving rather than aggravating society’s problems, even if these solutions
sometimes create new problems of their own. Political competition is slower and less decisive than market competition, so its self-stabilizing qualities play out over decades or

capitalism and democracy have one crucial feature in common: Both are mechanisms
even generations, not months or years. But regardless of the difference in timescale,

encourage individuals to channel their creativity, efforts, and competitive spirit into finding
that

solutions for material and social problems. And in the long run, these mechanisms work very well. If we consider
democratic capitalism as a successful problem-solving machine, the implications of this view are very relevant to the 2007-09 economic crisis, but diametrically opposed to the

Governments all over the world were ridiculed for trying to resolve a
conventional wisdom that prevailed in its aftermath.

crisis caused by too much borrowing by borrowing even more. Alan Greenspan was accused of trying to
delay an inevitable "day of reckoning” by creating ever-bigger financial bubbles. Regulators were attacked for letting half-
dead, “zombie” banks stagger on instead of putting them to death. But these charges missed the point

of what the democratic capitalist system is designed to achieve. In a capitalist democracy whose
raison d’etre is to devise new solutions to long-standing social and material demands, a problem
postponed is effectively a problem solved . To be more exact, a problem whose solution can be deferred
long enough is a problem that is likely to be solved in ways that are hardly imaginable today.
Once the self-healing nature of the capitalist system is recognized, the charge of “passing on
our problems to our grand-children”—whether made about budget deficits by
conservatives or about global warming by liberals—becomes morally unconvincing . Our
grand-children will almost certainly be much richer than we are and will have more powerful
technologies at their disposal. It is far from obvious, therefore, why we should make economic sacrifices on their behalf. Sounder morality, as well as
economics, than the Victorians ever imagined is in the wistful refrain of the proverbially optimistic Mr. Micawber: "Something will turn up."
 2AC – Cap Sustinable
Resources will never run out – people always switch to better resources
before old resources are exhausted
Pinker 18 – (Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University,
“Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress,” Viking, Chapter 10: The Environment,
2018) // S.Y.

Ecopessimists commonly dismiss this entire way of thinking as the “faith that technology will
save us.” In fact it is a skepticism that the status quo will doom us—that knowledge will be frozen in its
current state and people will robotically persist in their current behavior regardless of circumstances. Indeed, a naïve faith
in stasis has repeatedly led to prophecies of environmental doomsdays that never happened.
The first is the “population bomb,” which (as we saw in chapter 7) defused itself. When countries get
richer and better educated, they pass through what demographers call the demographic transition.11 First,
death rates decline as nutrition and health improve. This does swell the population, but that is hardly something to
bewail: as Johan Norberg notes, it happens not because people in poor countries start breeding like rabbits but because they stop dying
like flies. In any case, the
increase is temporary: birth rates peak and then decline, for at least two
reasons. Parents no longer breed large broods as insurance against some of their children dying, and women,
when they become better educated, marry later and delay having children. Figure10-1 shows that the world population
growth rate peaked at 2.1 percent a year in 1962, fell to 1.2 percent by 2010, and will probably fall to less than 0.5percent by 2050 and
be close to zero around 2070, when the population is projected to level off and then decline. Fertility rates have fallen most noticeably
in developed regions like Europe and Japan, but they can suddenly collapse, often to demographers’ surprise, in other parts of the
world. Despite the widespread belief that Muslim societies are resistant to the social changes that have transformed the West and will
be indefinitely rocked by youthquakes, Muslim countries have seen a 40 percent decline in fertility over the past three decades,
including a 70 percent drop in Iran and 60 percent drops in Bangladesh and in seven Arab countries.12Figure 10-1: Population and
population growth, 1750–2015 and projected to 2100Sources:Our World in Data, Ortiz-Ospina & Roser 2016d. 1750–2015: United
Nations Population Division and History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE), PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment
Agency (undated). Post-2015 projections: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Medium Projection (aggregate of
country-specific estimates, taking education into account),Lutz, Butz, & Samir 2014. The
other scare from the 1960s was
that the world would run out of resources. But resources just refuse to run out. The 1980s came
and went without the famines that were supposed to starve tens of millions of Americans
and billions of people worldwide. Then the year 1992 passed and, contrary to projections
from the 1972 bestseller The Limits to Growth and similar philippics, the world did not
exhaust its aluminum, copper, chromium, gold, nickel, tin, tungsten, or zinc. (In 1980 Paul Ehrlich
famously bet the economist Julian Simon that five of these metals would become scarcer and hence more expensive by the end of the
From the 1970s to
decade; he lost all five bets. Indeed, most metals and minerals are cheaper today than they were in 1960.)13
the early 2000s news magazines periodically illustrated cover stories on the world’s oil supply
with a gas gauge pointing to Empty. In 2013 The Atlantic ran a cover story about the fracking
revolution entitled “We Will Never Run Out of Oil. “And then there are rare earths like yttrium,
scandium, europium, and lanthanum, which you may remember from the periodic table in your chemistry classroom or
from the Tom Lehrer song “The Elements.” These metals are a critical component of magnets, fluorescent
lights, video screens, catalysts, lasers, capacitors, optical glass, and other high-tech applications.
When they started running out, we were warned, there would be critical shortages, a collapse of
the technology industry, and perhaps war with China, the source of 95 percent of the world’s
supply. That’s what led to the Great Europium Crisis of the late 20th century, when the world ran out of the critical ingredient in
the red phosphor dots in the cathode-ray tubes in color televisions and computer monitors and society was divided between the haves,
who hoarded the last working color TVs, and the angry have-nots, who were forced to make do with black-and-white. What, you
never heard of it? Among
the reasons there was no such crisis was that cathode-ray tubes were
superseded by liquid crystal displays made of common elements.14 And there’re Earths War? In
reality, when China squeezed its exports in 2010 (not because of shortages but as a geopolitical and mercantilist
weapon), other countries started extracting rare earths from their own mines, recycling them from
industrial waste, and re-engineering products so they no longer needed them. When predictions of
apocalyptic resource shortages repeatedly fail to come true, one has to conclude either that
humanity has miraculously escaped from certain death again and again like a Hollywood action
hero or that there is a flaw in the thinking that predicts apocalyptic resource shortages. The
flaw has been pointed out many times.16 Humanity does not suck resources from the earth like a straw in a
milkshake until a gurgle tells it that the container is empty. Instead, as the most easily extracted
supply of a resource becomes scarcer, its price rises, encouraging people to conserve it, get at the
less accessible deposits, or find cheaper and more plentiful substitutes. Indeed, it’s a fallacy to think that
people “need resources” in the firstplace.17 They need ways of growing food, moving around, lighting their homes, displaying
information, and other sources of well-being. They satisfy these needs with ideas: with recipes, formulas, techniques, blueprints, and
algorithms for manipulating the physical world to give them what they want. The human mind, with its recursive combinatorial power,
can explore an infinite space of ideas, and is not limited by the quantity of any particular kind of stuff in the ground. When one
idea no longer works, another can take its place . This doesn’t defy the laws of probability but obeys them.
Why should the laws of nature have allowed exactly one physically possible way of satisfying a
human desire, no more and no less?18Admittedly, this way of thinking does not sit well with the ethic
of “sustainability.” In figure 10-2, the cartoonist Randall Munroe illustrates what’s wrong with this vogue word and sacred
value. The doctrine of sustainability assumes that the current rate of use of a resource may be
extrapolated into the future until it rams into a ceiling. The implication is that we must switch to a
renewable resource that can be replenished at the rate we use it, indefinitely. In reality, societies
have always abandoned a resource for a better one long before the old one was exhausted .
It’s often said that the Stone Age did not end because the world ran out of stones, and that has been
true of energy as well. “Plenty of wood and hay remained to be exploited when the world shifted to coal,” Ausubel notes.
“Coal abounded when oil rose. Oil abounds now as methane [natural gas] rises.”19 As we will see, gas in turn may be replaced by
energy sources still lower in carbon well before the last cubic foot goes up in a blue flame. The supply of food, too, has grown
exponentially (as we saw in chapter 7),even though no single method of growing it has ever been sustainable. In The Big Ratchet:
How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis, the geographer Ruth DeFries describes the sequence as “ratchet-hatchet-pivot.
“People discover a way of growing more food, and the population ratchets upward. The method fails to keep up with the demand or
develops unpleasant side effects, and the hatchet falls. People then pivot to a new method. At various times, farmers have pivoted to
slash-and-burn horticulture, night soil(a euphemism for human feces), crop rotation, guano, saltpeter, ground-up bison bones,
chemical fertilizer, hybrid crops, pesticides, and the Green Revolution.20 Future
pivots may include genetically
modified organisms, hydroponics, aeroponics, urban vertical farms, robotic harvesting, meat
cultured in vitro, artificial intelligence algorithms fed by GPS and biosensors, the recovery of
energy and fertilizer from sewage, aquaculture with fish that eat tofu instead of other fish, and
who knows what else—as long as people are allowed to indulge their ingenuity.21 Though water is one resource that people
will never pivot away from, farmers could save massive amounts if they switched to Israeli-style precision farming. And if the world
develops abundant carbon-free energy sources (a topic we will explore later), it could get what it needs by desalinating seawater
 1AR – AT Financialization
Financialization impact empirically denied
Steven N. Kaplan 17, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the
University of Chicago Booth School of Business, “Are U.S. Companies Too Short-Term
Oriented? Some Thoughts,” May 2017,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2972117
U.S. companies are frequently criticized for focusing too much on the short run and not enough on the
long run. For example, Laurence Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, one of the largest money managers, wrote that “the effects of the
short-termist phenomenon are troubling . . . more and more corporate
leaders have responded with actions that
can deliver immediate returns to shareholders, such as buybacks or dividend increases, while
underinvesting in innovation, skilled workforces or essential capital expenditures necessary to sustain long-
term growth.”1 The Report of the Commission on Inclusive Prosperity (co-chaired by Larry Summers) similarly weighed in, “An
additional reason for the absence of inclusive prosperity is the changing nature of corporate behavior. Business leaders, government
officials and academics have pointed out that corporations have shifted their traditional focus on long-term profit maximization to
maximizing short-term stock-market valuations. One reason that economists have advanced for this transition to corporate short-
termism is the overwhelming shift to stock-market-based compensation for CEOs and other highly compensated executives at publicly
traded corporations.”2 In other words, these critics argue that US companies as a group destroy value by not
investing for the long run. More formally, the short-term argument can be summarized as follows. U.S companies as a group
underinvest in capital expenditures as well as research and development. According to the argument, this benefits the companies in the
short- term, but harms the companies in the long run where the short-term is usually defined as the current quarter or, perhaps, current
year or two, while the long-term would be more than five years out. Poor corporate governance and overly generous
pay plans for CEOs that reward short-term behavior are often cited as accomplices to short-
termism.3 The critics also point to empirical evidence to support their positions. For example, Graham et al. (2005) survey 401
financial executives and find that 78 percent would sacrifice long-term value to smooth earnings. Others point to corporate
dividends and buybacks. Lazonick (2014) shows that S&P 500 companies paid out over 90% of their net income in dividends
and share repurchases, leaving little available for investment in the long-term. Lazonick and others contend that companies buy back
their own stock to boost their share prices in the short run, regardless of the long-term impact. These
criticisms, however,
are not new. They have been raised, prominently, in some form or another since the late 1970s. In this paper, I
present those historical criticisms. I then consider the implications of sustained short-termism for corporate profits, venture capital
investment and returns, private equity investment and returns, and corporate valuations. In fact, there
is very little long-
term evidence that is consistent with the predictions of the short-term critics.4 1. Some Short-termist
History The criticism that US companies are plagued by short-termism and poor governance has a long history. In 1980, Harvard
Business School’s Robert H. Hayes and William J. Abernathy wrote an influential article criticizing American companies for being
too short-term oriented: “By their preference for servicing existing markets rather than creating new ones and by their devotion to
short-term returns and management by the numbers, many of them have effectively forsworn long-term technological superiority as a
competitive weapon. In consequence, they have abdicated their strategic responsibilities.” Similarly, Marty Lipton wrote in 1979: “It
would not be unfair to pose the policy issue as: Whether the long-term interests of the nation’s corporate system and economy should
be jeopardized in order to benefit speculators interested . . . only in a quick profit . . . ?” In 1992, Harvard’s Michael E. Porter repeated
the argument: “The U.S. system of allocating investment capital is failing, putting American companies at a serious disadvantage and
threatening the long-term growth of the nation's economy… Many American companies invest too little, particularly in those
intangible assets and capabilities required for competitiveness – R&D, employee training and skills development … The U.S. system,
first and foremost advances the goals of shareholders at the expense of the long-term performance of American companies. In global
competition, where investment increasingly determines a company's capacity to upgrade and innovate, the U.S. system does not
measure up.” And the short-term argument is being repeated today by the likes of Laurence Fink and Larry Summers. While some,
like Fink, focus on public companies, the arguments of Abernathy and Hayes, Porter, Summers refer to the overall U.S. economy. 2.
U.S. Corporate Profits It is clear from the previous section that critiques
of U.S. businesses as overly short-term
oriented have been with us for at least 35 years. And the criticisms have not changed much, if at all, in
their basic tenor. But, this has very strong implications for the short-term argument. It’s been more
than 35 years since the publication of the Hayes and Abernathy article, and 25 years since the appearance of Porter’s.
By any measure, today is the long-term that U.S. companies supposedly have underinvested in since the
1980s. Accordingly, the short-term logic implies that U.S. business should be performing poorly today.
But that is unequivocally not the case . Figure 1 reports U.S. corporate profits before tax as a fraction of GDP since
1951. Today, corporate profits are near all-time highs (over that post-war period). The uptrend began just
around the time of the Hayes and Abernathy article, and has continued since. The early 1980s is precisely the time that many
observers believe finance and the goal of shareholder value maximization became ascendant. It is also the time that Wall
Street and the financial sector began to grow substantially—both in the US and internationally. The early
1980s also coincided with the rise of management consultants who spread techniques across US firms and
across the world.5 In 1980, consulting firms were relatively new and relatively small. Today, McKinsey & Company has offices in
more than 60 countries; the Boston Consulting Group has offices in more than 40. And the early 1980s also coincided with an
explosion in information technology and globalization. Consistent with the increase in corporate profits, both Autor et al. (2017) and
Burkai (2016) explore explanations for the strong corporate profitability and, concomitant, weak labor share of GDP. Whatever its
source, the strong profitability of U.S. corporations is difficult for the short-termists to explain. It is obviously
not consistent with poor corporate performance over the long-term. Nevertheless, short-termists continue to
repeat the criticisms of the 1980s and 1990s. It is worth adding that the strong corporate performance also is
inconsistent with poor corporate governance overall, suggesting that criticisms of U.S. corporate
governance also are overstated. This is arguably the type of example that the quote by John Stuart Mill that begins this
paper had in mind.
 2AC – Cap Solves Space
Capitalism galvanizes the private space industry, that’s key to space
exploration – SpaceX proves
Spring 16 -- (Todd Spring, A Case for Capitalism, In Regards to Space Travel – The Policy,
Policy, 6-3-2016, accessed 7-3-2018, https://thepolicy.us/a-case-for-capitalism-in-regards-to-
space-travel-d77e50f8116e)
Although the project
In the news yesterday was an article about how Elon Musk plans to start sending men to Mars in the year 2024 — a mere eight years away.

may be ambitious — ridiculous even — if anyone can pull it off it is Elon Musk and his company
SpaceX. And regardless of whether he succeeds in his quest or whether he does not succeed, the
point will remain: At least he had the courage to try. For years, we have been waiting for
N.A.S.A. (or some other government-funded agency) to begin pulling up their breeches when it
comes to the manned exploration of our solar system…but thus far they have not been able to get
their act together. We have waited and waited, but as of yet nothing has come to pass but brief
mention of such travels here and there…like a wind with neither haste nor purpose. As of now,
N.A.S.A. does not plan on sending a manned mission to Mars until the 2030s — assuming, of
course, they get the government funding they need to undertake such a massive project.
Considering the recent cuts to deep space exploration, down nearly $300 million from 2016, I am
not certain what the condition of the program will look like in another two years…much less the
gap between now and the 2030s. Where, then — if the government and its agencies will not
provide us with the money for exploration — will we turn to slake our thirst for cosmic space
travel? SpaceX. Private corporations. Capitalism. Seeing this article in the news, reading day after
day the story of budget cuts to N.A.S.A. in regards to deep-space exploration and other related
programs, got me thinking about just how important it will be for private companies and
corporations to undertake these projects…such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and countless others
(read the full list here). The problem is that we have gotten it into our heads that Capitalism is the
root cause of our economic woes in the United States, perhaps failing to understand that such
policies are something like a double-edged sword: they could also be our salvation. This article provides a
great list of the pro’s and con’s of Capitalism. I would recommend you take the short passing of time it requires to read it through-and-through before continuing. Now then. I have
never been for for fully-unhindered Capitalism. I do not believe that the government should stay out of economic affairs entirely, for as provided in the article many of the con’s
relate to improper regulation (monopolization) as opposed to something fundamentally wrong, but I do not believe that any government should be going about shoving their claws
into every economic affair either. There must be a healthy balance, especially if Capitalism is to work as it is supposed to work. The same goes for any policy. The government

The more regulation, the more interference or

should be there to bolster competition between businesses…not favor one or bail-out the other.

amendment, the less it works…but this mix of regulation and free market must fall in the
“goldilocks zone” if the citizens of said society are to reap its full benefit. If not, like planets
about a star, the society shall either burn or freeze. One of those benefits is highlighted by Elon
Musk’s SpaceX: the intervention of privately-funded companies to do things that a traditional
government agency cannot. Namely, the exploration and eventual colonization of Mars in a
reasonable, step-by-step timeframe…unlike the “we will get to it eventually” mindset plaguing
the bowels of the United States government. Were not the policies in place to foster the growth of
private companies, our best chance at getting people out of Earth-orbit — the Bush-approved,
now-cancelled, insanely-expensive Constellation program — would have gone the way of
promises and well-wishes. It is my hope that Elon Musk and space entrepreneurs like him are not simply blowing steam, and that one day — perhaps even
within my lifetime — I could be on my way to a space hotel on the Moon, flying aboard a space airliner with the name of a private company plastered across the side.

Regardless, if we humans are to truly become a multi-planet species we must not hinder
economic growth with narrow thoughts. We must not become confused that the “problems down
here” and the “problem of getting out there” must be in conflict; they do not need to, and we must
not suppose they should. They are two separate issues with two unique sets of problems, and thus
this policy of taking resources from one to give to the other will only ensure that neither issue is
given that which it needs, or enough to fix what must be solved. Therefore I propose that we
support these pioneers of space travel in any way that we are able. Let us not forget that solving
the issue of “how do we get there” might just lead to the end of our “problems down here”.
 2AC – Cap Solves War
Capitalist bargaining prevents emerging wars – peaceful bargaining and
commitment
McDonald 10 – (Patrick J. McDonald, Ph. D., associate professor of international relations @
Department of Government @ University of Texas @ Austin, Capitalism, Commitment, and
Peace, International Relations, 36:2, 146-168, 04-18-2010, accessed 06-28-2018, https://www-
tandfonline-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1080/03050621003784911?needAccess=true)
The bargaining framework draws on a common story to characterize the process by which
political disputes between states can escalate to war (e.g., Fearon 1995; Powell 1999, 2006; Reiter
2003; Wagner 2000, 2007). Imagine two states disagree over how to distribute some resource, say
territory, between them. Both states want to maximize the portion of the resource they control.
They each possess two broad options by which to reach this goal. They could negotiate a
compromise arrangement whereby each gains access to some portion of the resource.
Alternatively, they could opt to settle the dispute with a military contest in which the victor
captures the entire resource. The balance of military capabilities between the two states then
shapes the war’s outcome. States possessing more military capabilities are more likely to win. This war option carries the risk of losing the entire disputed resource. Moreover, the use
of military force is inefficient as it imposes costs on all its participants. Consequently, a settlement provides a bonus by allowing states to avoid such costs. This bonus is large enough to compensate both

governments so that they are at least as well off had they gone to war. Explanations for why wars occur therefore necessitate
understanding the failure of states to reach a stable, negotiated compromise that avoids the costs
of war. Fearon (1995) focuses on two key impediments to peaceful bargains that avert war—
private information and commitment problems.4 Informational asymmetries about the balance of
military capabilities or resolve can make states overly optimistic about their likelihood of
prevailing in war. This optimism can encourage greater demands or a more intransigent
bargaining stance that leads an adversary to choose to defend its interests with military force. The
existence of private information coupled with incentives to misrepresent information can thus
impede states from identifying a potential settlement that that avoids the costs of war. Powell (2006) criticizes
the broad trend in the bargaining literature that has led to a concentration on informational problems as a cause of war and urges a new focus on commitment problems. The inability of

states to commit to living with a bargain prevents them from agreeing to one in the first place.
Accordingly, states go to war because they fear the political consequences of a peace in
which their bargaining power is successively negotiated away. The problem here is not the identification of a peaceful bargain that
leaves both parties better off than had they gone to war but the unwillingness of either to refrain in the future from demanding a renegotiation of the agreement once their bargaining leverage has improved. Powell
identifies five examples of bargaining failures caused by commitment problems. Four of these five—preventive war, preemptive war, bargaining over issues that change the balance of power, and a domestic version
of preventive war—can be traced to a common mechanism: a large and rapid shift in the balance of military or political power between bargaining entities. War breaks out in these situations when the temporarily
weaker side is unable to commit to refrain from exploiting the future improvement in its bargaining leverage caused by the shift of military power in its favor. His (2006:192–194) second key source of commitment

Because
problems integrates an aspect of the military balance often neglected in the bargaining literature: a government’s ability to procure societal resources for national defense.

governments do not own all the resources within their economy, they must also engage in
negotiations with their own citizens to secure access to economic resources that can be
utilized for national defense. Powell shows that states may opt to go to war to avoid paying the domestic costs, measured in terms of foregone consumption, of deterring an
adversary by preserving the military balance. By eliminating a military rival, victory in war creates a peace dividend

that allows a government to reduce the demands it places on societal resources.

Capitalism trade promotes international cooperation and peace

Burns 17 – (Sarah Burns, Department of Political Science @ Rochester Institute of
Technology, Society, The Capitalist Peace: a New Way Forward for American Foreign Policy,
10-24-2017, accessed 06-27-2018, https://link-springer-
com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs12115-017-0197-7.pdf)
Scholars have recently discovered Montesquieu’s unique capacity to answer important contemporary questions. As both a classical liberal and a pluralist he engages with the
tension between these two principles. While he clearly wishes to promote commercial expansion and political liberalization, he is also a strong advocate for respecting sovereignty
and cultural diversity. If we can agree that more stability, wealth, security and rights protections are obvious goods and the U.S. is ideologically compelled to promote these goods,
 One of the least invasive forms of liberalization is the promotion of trade relations
how should we proceed?

among states. Through commerce, the U.S. can apply pressure on leaders to create more liberal
principles; if not for the sake of their people, at least for the sake of economic development. By
focusing America’s desire to promote liberalization to the realm of economics exclusively, I think
we reduce the problem caused by the combination of liberalism and nationalism. Montesquieu
calls this theory doux commerce and currently scholars refer to it as Capitalist Peace Theory. The
theory goes as follows: As more nations engage in trade, the number of commercial goods,
increases. Commerce continuously expands and if countries facilitate economic freedom, this
increases the standard of living domestically. Each commercial activity leads to more, and traders move from one place to another seeking
new people to trade with and new goods to bring back to their country. As they do, they create communication among people because the history of commerce is that of
communication among peoples^ (Montesquieu 1989, XXI.5). And this, for Montesquieu leads to a gentler form of enlightenment. Communication leads to a softening of mores.
This process will necessarily corrupt pure mores, or any society that has closed itself off to communicating with others. It corrupts them because interaction gives people the

Montesquieu hopes to
opportunity to hear about different cultures and different laws. It stops them from thinking their laws are the best simply.

demonstrate that we all appeal to the same basic ideals and we simply access the truth about how
human beings should live through the prism of our particular culture (Howse 2006, 5). As we
communicate with each other, we begin to develop a fuller picture of how societies work and through that knowledge begin to see how societies should work. This knowledge
makes men gentle and it makes them more humane, only prejudice causes these to be renounced^ (Montesquieu 1989, XV.3). The reason Montesquieu thinks we are likely to
become gentler towards each other is because this is our natural way of interacting together. Prior to the existence of society, man lives peacefully with other humans. He knows he
is weak and this makes him fearful. Recognizing this same feeling in his fellow creatures, he develops a desire to live in society^ (Montesquieu 1989, I.2).7 Once in society he

This is why he advocates

forgets this natural gentleness. Montesquieu, therefore seeks to return man, as much as possible to his natural form of co-existence.

commercial relations: it is the most likely to gently increase the possibility of peaceful relations
among people throughout the world. This may simply make people more respectful of cultural difference, or it may lead to a change in mores. As
more nations engage in trade, the number of “movable effects” or commercial goods increases. Montesquieu presents a semi-capitalist portrait of commercial interaction. Unlike
mercantilists who thought of commerce as a zero-sum game, he sees trade as a means of creating an ever-increasing amount of wealth in the world. Commerce continuously
expands into new branches^ and these new branches create new things to trade (Montesquieu 1989, XIX.9). These exchanges can therefore increase domestic wealth if a state is
careful about its balance of trade. As this increases, the state develops the ability to give the necessary things to a greater number of its subjects^ (Montesquieu 1989, XX.23).

Montesquieu thinks this virtuous cycle should appeal to nations around the world, even those who
are ideologically reluctant. As they increase their trade with others and discover its benefits,8 they will be more and more inclined to focus their energy on
increasing trade and may copy the British in allowing Bits political interest [to] give way to the interests of commerce^ (Montesquieu 1989, XX.7). This connects everyone and
shifts the focus of all states to the buying and selling of these goods. It changes what is important because wealth, to everyone, is at least somewhat important. Consequences

The result of this form of interaction would be a world that has diverse ethnic, religious and racial
makeup but an international economic system where everyone is playing by the same rules:
liberal rules. Despite these differences, everyone is significantly more connected together, and
more interdependent causing leaders and people alike to continuously seek stable, peaceful
relations in order to continue to prosper. This is, in fact, somewhat like the world we have today. If one looks at the chart of countries with high
economic freedom, they are not all Western. The United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain, Georgia, Qatar, Columbia—these countries all rank very high or fairly high on economic
liberty. Conversely, Freedom House—which looks at political liberties and civil rights— ranks most of these states as oppressive. There are several other steps involved in the
evolution from natural interaction to the creation of the state which Montesquieu discusses as natural laws. At first, man is pre-rational. He has the ability the think, but he does not
have knowledge. His first thought is about his preservation. He feels his weakness and fears others, leading him to avoid others and seek peace. This is the first natural law. Man
also feels his needs, so the second natural law would inspire him to seek nourishment. Even though they fear each other at first, the mutual fear would induce them to approach one
another, and they would feel pleasure at the proximity of another being of their species. The pleasure of the opposite sex would induce them to come together; this is the third law.
They also eventually gain knowledge which differentiates them from other animals and gives them another reason to come together into society. This is the fourth natural law
(Montesquieu 1989). It should be noted that not all states benefit. Poorer states and states that have bad domestic policies (such as Spain or Poland) may not be benefitted by

If Americans therefore focused on promoting liberal economic

commercial trade (see Larrère 2000, 352).

institutions, rather than focusing on promoting political institutions it would solve a number of
their current problems while still fulfilling the objectives that are deeply rooted in the American
psyche. First of all, it would bring the cautious republican voice back into the conversation. Republicans always accepted expanding trade. They worried
about military intervention and liberal imperialism. Republicans advocate against telling other
people how to govern themselves to a meaningful extent because of the inconsistency of forcing
others to be free. They would help liberals avoid the steady creep of hopefulness that, while noble, may cause more harm than good. Second, stronger
republican ideology would allow Americans to maintain a leading place in the world both as a
model and big consumer. Third, it would benefit others. States with the highest level of economic
freedom—property rights and ability to engage in commerce—have a higher standard of living,
allowing Americans to see themselves as the benevolent force they think they are without forcing
other states to adopt democratic institutions. Fourth, it would make Americans have a smaller
footprint in the process of liberalization, sidestepping the allegation that they want to make others
copy their institutions. Americans should channel their deeply rooted impulse to improve the
world by promoting doux commerce rather democracy. At earlier stages in American history, the United States kept the competing
ideals of liberalism, nationalism and republicanism closer to the forefront of the debate, leading to a different approach to foreign policy. In finding a new

approach to foreign policy, it would be wise to revisit some of the philosophical foundations that
have shaped Western political thought that actually suggest communication and commerce over
conquest through military force.
 2AC – Cap Solves Enviro
Developments in capitalism have helped create solutions to environmental
problems
Pinker 18 – (Steven Pinker, Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at
Harvard University, “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and
Progress,” Viking, Chapter 10: The Environment, 2018)
Not only have the disasters prophesied by 1970s greenism failed to take place, but improvements
that it deemed impossible have taken place. As the world has gotten richer and crested the
environmental curve, nature has begun to rebound.23 Pope Francis’s “immense pile of filth” is the vision of
someone who has woken up thinking it’s 1965, the era of belching smokestacks, waterfalls of sewage, rivers catching fire, and jokes
since 1970, when the
about New Yorkers not liking to breathe air they can’t see. Figure 10-3 shows that
Environmental Protection Agency was established, the United States has slashed its
emissions of five air pollutants by almost two-thirds . Over the same period, the population
grew by more than 40 percent, and those people drove twice as many miles and became two and a
half times richer. Energy use has leveled off, and even carbon dioxide emissions have turned a
corner, appoint to which we will return. The declines don’t just reflect an offshoring of heavy
industry to the developing world, because the bulk of energy use and emissions comes from
transportation, heating, and electricity generation, which cannot be outsourced. Rather, they mainly
reflect gains in efficiency and emission control. These diverging curves refute both the orthodox
Green claim that only degrowth can curb pollution and the orthodox right-wing claim that environmental
protection must sabotage economic growth and people’s standard of living. Many of the improvements can
be seen with the naked eye. Cities are less often shrouded in purple-brown haze, and London no
longer has the fog—actually coal smoke—that was immortalized in Impressionist paintings, gothic novels, the Gershwin
song, and the brand of raincoats. Urban waterways that had been left for dead—including Puget Sound, Chesapeake
Bay, Boston Harbor, Lake Erie, and the Hudson, Potomac, Chicago, Charles, Eine, Rhine, and Thames rivers (the last described by
Disraeli as “a Stygian pool reeking with ineffable and intolerable horrors”)—have
been recolonized by fish, birds,
marine mammals, and sometimes swimmers. Suburbanites are seeing wolves, foxes, bears,
bobcats, badgers, deer, ospreys, wild turkeys, and bald eagles. As agriculture becomes more
efficient (chapter 7), farmland returns to temperate forest, as any hiker knows who has stumbled upon a stone wall
incongruously running through a New England woodland. Though tropical forests are still, alarmingly, being cut
down, between the middle of the 20th century and the turn of the 21st the rate fell by two-thirds
(figure 10-4).24 Deforestation of the world’s largest tropical forest , the Amazon, peaked in 1995, and
from 2004 to 2013 the rate fell by four-fifths .25 The time-lagged decline of deforestation in the
tropics is one sign that environmental protection is spreading from developed countries to the rest
ofthe world. The world’s progress can be tracked in a report card called the Environmental
Performance Index, a composite of indicators of the quality ofair, water, forests, fisheries, farms, and natural habitats. Out of
180 countries that have been tracked for a decade or more, all but two show an improvement. The wealthier
the country, on average, the cleaner its environment : the Nordic countries were cleanest;
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and several sub-Saharan African countries, the most compromised.
Two of the deadliest forms of pollution—contaminated drinking water and indoor cooking
smoke—are afflictions of poor countries.27 But as poor countries have gotten richer in recent decades,
they are escaping these blights: the proportion of the world’s population that drinks tainted water
has fallen by five-eighths, the proportion breathing cooking smoke by a third.28 As Indira Gandhi said,
“Poverty is the greatest polluter.” The epitome of environmental insults is the oil spill from
tanker ships, which coats pristine beaches with toxic black sludge and fouls the plumage of seabirds and the fur of otters and
seals. The most notorious accidents, such as the breakup of the Torrey Canyon in 1967 and the Exxon Valdez in 1989, linger in our
collective memory, and few people are aware that seaborne oil transport has become vastly safer . Figure 10-5
shows that the annual number of oil spills has fallen from more than a hundred in 1973 to just five in
2016 (and the number of major spills fell from thirty-two in 1978 to one in 2016). The graph also shows that even as less oil
was spilled, more oil was shipped; the crossing curves provide additional evidence that environmental
protection is compatible with economic growth . It’s no mystery that oil companies should want to
reduce tanker accidents, because their interests and those of the environment coincide: oil spills
are a public-relations disaster (especially when the name of the company is emblazoned on a cracked-up ship), bring on
huge fines, and of course waste valuable oil.
 1AR – Cap Solves Enviro
Cap solves environment, data proves. This card answers every warrant
Daniel Fernández Méndez 18 (Daniel FernáNdez MéNdez, Daniel Fernández Méndez is
lecturer in economics at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala and is Director of UFM
Market Trends, an economics/finance newsletter. He is a PhD candidate in economics at King
Juan Carlos University, and is a former Mises Institute fellow., 1-12-2018, "The Real
Relationship Between Capitalism and the Environment," Mises Institute,
https://mises.org/wire/real-relationship-between-capitalism-and-environment, Accessed: 7-1-2018
/)
"Capitalism is incompatible with the conservation of nature. Only the places with a strong state and restricted economic freedom can
achieve high environmental quality ratings." These statements have been repeated so often that most people consider them true
without giving them a slightest thought. Although these theories usually only explain one side of the coin, there are at least two
opposing theories: More development and greater consumption levels put pressure on environmental variables. There can’t be infinite
growth in a world of limited resources. Economic freedom also means that companies do not take into account the ecosystems that
they are destroying in order to grow their market share and profits. These views relate to political ecology and eco-socialism. Greater
economic freedom entails greater development, which in turn leads to greater environmental quality because consumers demand it.
Furthermore, the protection of property rights ensures that environmental externalities are minimized. This view relates to economics
and study programs that combine economics and environmentalism. To find out which group’s theory is closest to
reality, we analyze data on economic freedom and environmental quality. What Does the
Data Tell Us? When we combine environmental quality data with economic freedom data, we see that the story is
very different from what we are usually told. The countries with the most freedom are those
with the highest environmental quality. There does not seem to be a trade-off between
environmental quality and economic development — rather, it shows the opposite. If we rank the
countries from most to least free (by quartiles), we observe how the countries with the highest economic liberty
ranking are the same countries with the highest scores in the Environmental Performance
Index. fern1.png Source: Heritage Foundation. Yale.edu. There are no countries with a score lower than 35 points in the
Environmental Quality Index. The scatter plot shows how the relationship between economic freedom and environmental performance
is positive. Each point in the diagram represents a different country. fern2.png Source: Heritage Foundation. Yale.edu The regression
analysis shows that for every
one point increase in the Index of Economic Freedom, there is a 0.96
point increase in the Environmental Performance Index. The positive correlation could not
be clearer. However, the relationship between these variables is not static. In the end,
environmental quality could deteriorate as a result of laissez faire policies in the long-term.
To whether this is true, we examined the Environmental Performance Index with the
average of the Index of Economic Freedom for the last 15 years. Once again, each point in
the diagram represents a different country. fern3.png Source: Heritage Foundation. Yale.edu We can observe
how countries with greater economic freedom, throughout time, have a better environmental
performance. Exporting Pollution One possible criticism of the argument presented here could be the following: the
countries with greater economic freedom — and the most prosperous ones — are
“exporting” their polluting industries to the less free third world, while keeping non-polluting industries
in their country. Large companies based in the first world would take advantage of the failed
governments of the developing world, polluting there what they are not able to back home.
To see whether this is true, we would expect that the countries with a large influx of foreign direct investment to have a bad score on
the Environmental Performance Index. However, this is not the case. fern4.png Source: World Bank. Yale.edu The
criticism
seems to lack evidence. The relationship between both variables is non-existent, the level of
foreign direct investment fails to determine the level of environmental performance. We
cannot confirm that free — and rich — countries export their pollution by relocating
companies to less free countries. However, we can confirm that greater foreign direct
investment “exports” good environmental practices to developing countries. If we analyze foreign
direct investment from countries with a very high environmental performance — above 85 points in
the index — and countries with a very poor environmental performance —below 50 points in the
index — we see that the former hardly invests in the latter. Less than 0.1% of foreign direct investment from
“cleaner” countries goes to “dirtier” countries. Of the 25 “clean” countries, 14 do not have a single investment
in “dirtier” countries. Out of the remaining 11, only one exceeds 5% of its investments towards “dirty” countries. Only two
countries allocate more than 1% of their foreign direct investment to the “dirtiest”
countries. fern5.png Source: OECD. ONU (Unctad.org) In short, countries that destroy the environment do
so alone or with the investment of countries that also destroy their environment. Most of the
investment of “clean countries” goes towards other “clean” countries. Pollution is not “exported” from rich
countries to poor ones. What About Investment in Mining & Extraction? It is often said that
extraction industries tend to pollute and degrade the environment more than other sectors. Furthermore,
these sectors tend to have bad press. Therefore, it could be that total foreign direct investment has no relation to environmental quality,
but it could also be that foreign direct investment has a stake in extraction industries, having
a negative impact on the environment. fern6_0.png Source: World Bank. Investmentmap.org. This time we see a
line with a slight negative trend. However, if we perform a regression analysis (which is what this trend
line is based on) the relationship between the variables is not statistically significant — in
other words, there is no relationship between the variables. Even if there is greater
economic freedom in the recipient country, a large investment in extraction industries does
not degrade the environment. Correlation Is Not Causality The best criticism to this article
could read as follows: “very well, but the data exposed here does not prove anything, it only
shows correlations and does not show causality.” Indeed, causality is explained by a theory or a set of logical
relationships that aim to unite different events and give shape to a complex world that is perceived as chaotic. In other words, data
does not speak for itself, it is interpreted through theories. There
are theories explaining how the freest
countries, besides being the most prosperous, tend to take better care of the environment. In
the same way, there are theories that expose the contrary relationship: the greater the economic freedom, the more degraded the
environment. Both theories are based on opposing world views, what makes it interesting is
comparing these theories with the available data. With the data at hand, it seems that the
theory closest to reality is the one that claims that better economic freedom generates better
environmental results. This relationship is not irrefutable; good environmental quality depends on many other variables.
However, it is clear that as capitalism advances, so does the quality of the physical environment.
Conclusion With the data analyzed, we can see that capitalism suits the environment. The
greater the economic freedom, the better the environmental quality indexes. The “cleaner”
countries do not export their pollution by relocating companies. In fact, “cleaner” countries do not even invest in the “dirtiest”
countries.
AT Link
 2AC – Perm Generic
We need to combine the neg’s analysis with small policy actions like the aff
that create room for change
- AT Reformism
- AT Econ Links – spin the aff as helping workers (increases wages, conditions,
capabilities)

Hill 12 (Dave Hill Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, England. “Immiseration Capitalism,
Activism and Education: Resistance, Revolt and Revenge” http://www.jceps.com/wp-
content/uploads/PDFs/10-2-01.pdf//TU-SG)

However, anger and the (Marxist) analysis are not enough . This analysis has to lead to activism . Activism of a
particular type, for the revolutionary transformation of capitalism into democratic socialism/ Marxism. I am

using the word `revolutionary’ here to denote major, societal, economic and political change, to
denote a transition from the current neoliberal cum neoconservative capitalism to democratic
socialism/ Marxism. Concerning `democratic socialism’, I want to make it clear that here I am not talking about parliamentarist social democracy, a social democratic
notion of parliamentary “socialism”, even of the temporarily benign welfarist redistributionist kind. By democratic socialism, I am trying to express that the goal should be the
political power of workers organisations, that the socialist democracy I, and revolutionary Marxists talk about and work/ agitate for, has a revolutionary class content. By `the
political power of workers’ organisations’; I am referring to organisations in Greece that currently exist in embryo, and were apparent and in existence in particular during the `hot
summer’ of 2011, and continue in various forms, such as self-help/ soup kitchens, `neighbourhood committees’, or `local assemblies’ or `popular assemblies’ together with
`workers’ committees’ running factories and enterprises that has/ have been taken over under workers’ control. In other countries in other times such area neighbourhood
committees and such factory/ enterprise committees might be called `soviets’ or `workers’ councils’ (see, for example, Maltby and Thomas, 2012; Catastroika, 2012; SubmediaTV,

2012. In this section of the paper I am indebted to Jette Kroman, 2012, for her comments on aspects of political theory/ analysis). Activism is translated into
and through a political programme, a series of demands/ policies . To realise those demands, to progress
towards them, requires a means, a vehicle, organisation. On the question of organisation there have been and are considerable debates, between, for
example, Anarchists, Anarcho-Syndicalists, the Occupy Movements, social democrats, and various types of Marxist-Leninists, for example about horizontal and vertical

there are
organisation, vanguardism, democracy from below, and democratic (or, indeed, undemocratic) centralism- about the form of party organisation. I recognise that

many theoreticians and activists who do not share a preference, an analysis, that leads to privileging the party form of
organisation. In the November 2012 edition of the Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies Issue 10, 2) there are, for example, two articles arguing/ exemplifying non-
vanguardist and non-vetical forms of organisation ( Neary, 2012; Neary and Amsler, 2012). Neary (2012) talks of horizontal non-hierarchical sets of perspectives in his education

related writing on (and indeed, participation in) The Edu-Factory Collective in Britain and the Universidad Nomada in Spain.In Greece in particular, some
Anarchist groups have played and continue to play a major historic and contemporary role in anti-
fascist/ anti- racist/ anti- Nazi and anticapitalist protest, resistance and rebellion. I am not going to rehearse here the considerable debate

between the horizontalist form of organisation of the Occupy, Indignados, UK Uncut, Tahrir Square organisation and their strengths and weaknesses. Instead, I

counterpose here the party form of organisation. In practice there is and must be cross-dialogue between the different schools of thought on
these issues. With Malott (2012) I am in favour of `building affinity with horizontal, non- hierarchical

anarchists and other radicals who do not believe in party politics or any form of working-class
centralization associated with socialist revolution’. This affinity is, of course, built in side-by side struggles against the cuts, against
fascists, on the streets, in meetings, in demonstrations. I do advocate the party form of organisation, with internal party pluralism (Mandel, 1970) to

put socialist policies into effect, organisation to seek and to take power. By internal party pluralism a party
comprising/ including/ embracing forces coming from different experiences and traditions,
and welcoming / facilitating the functioning of internal factions and tendencies – but united
firmly on the platform of the transitional strategy and `permanent revolution’ (Trotsky, L., 1931). The notion of
program needs to be linked directly to the notion of strategy – thereby expressing that I am arguing for a system of transitional
demands with the aim for the workers to topple the bourgeois state and take power. On the question of strategy,

that power may be taken, or won, through direct mass action or, through a combination of both direct mass action on
the one hand, and, on the other hand, through electoralism, the `parliamentary road to socialism’. If we talk about electoralism we have to be clear

that we welcome reforms, but from a clear, Marxist, critical position. Thus, in Greece, were Syriza to take office currently (in late 2012) through the
electoral system, it would take office but not power. It might or might not carry out some reforms, some `dented shield
strategy’ against the current austerity programme. But it would not be taking power. That power would still be held by the national and
EU/ international capitalist class and their organisations such as The Troika. It would only be taking power if it were to be

accompanied by mass action in support of mass nationalisations, workers control, and control
over organs of the state such as the police, armed forces, bureaucracies. One of the criticisms of the major socialist
successes of in Venezuela, and one of the lessons to be learned for Europe, is the resilience of national capitalisms and their international alliances and support systems (Denis,
2012; Gomez, 2012). While acknowledging the very major gains by the poor in Venezuela under 14 years of Chavez, this left critique of Chavez notes that `In the absence of a
break with the logic of capital, the main beneficiaries of oil revenues have been the local bourgeoisie and sectors of multinational corporations’ (Miranda, 2012). I want to

elaborate on the question of reforms and reformism.In terms of reformism, reformist political strategy is one way by
which the capitalist class incorporates left forces into capitalism and its institutions and pay-offs
and privileges. It is a way for the capitalist class to link the working class to the bourgeois state and capitalist system through parliamentarism. This is clearly a major
and century-old bourgeois strategy within the workers movement. The question of reform is a different, though linked, one: in

this current period of the intensification of class struggle, and intensification/ clarification of class
consciousness and organisation (to different degrees in different countries) it is one of class struggle by revolutionary
means to gain any in fact concessions from the crisis ridden capitalist class. As Kelsh and Hill (2006)
summarised, We support reforms and revisionist political and economic advances that seek to
improve the lives of workers , for example, anti-capitalist as well as reformist campaigns and
movements such as campaigns for tenants' rights, gender equality, race equality, and campaigns against SATS or the
privatization of schools. But, it is crucial to note, we do so from a critical position. We believe, along with Marx and Engels (1848/1985), that it is necessary
to "fight for the attainment of the immediate aims. . . of the working class" (p. 119). For, as Marx argues, " by
maturing the material conditions, and the combination on a social scale of the processes of
production , [the fight for the attainment of immediate aims] matures the contradictions and antagonisms of the
capitalist form of production, and thereby provides, along with the elements for the
formation of a new society, the forces for exploding the old one " (Marx, 1867/1967a, p. 503; Marx explains this in
chapters 8 & 9 of Wage-Labour and Capital, and chapter 15 of Capital volume 3). Yet we also believe, again following Marx and Engels (1985), that it is

necessary to "take up a critical position" in relation to reform movements, and to do so in order to educate the
proletariat - that class comprised of all who do not own the means of production and are therefore compelled to sell their labor-power to survive - regarding "the hostile antagonism
between bourgeoisie and proletariat" (p. 120). In doing so, we aim to provide knowledges that help enable (in relation to various sectional, local, and single-issue campaigns) the
development of class consciousness - knowledge of capitalist social relations - and awareness of the need to transform capitalism into socialism. On the question of strategy,
Trotsky clearly differentiated between three types of programme: the minimum (reformist) programme; the transitional programme (or policy that would break capitalism and
which seems feasible for layers of workers to support); and a maximum programme, towards which we might move, but would come into force after the demise of capitalism,
rather than as a set of immediately realisable aims- (Trotsky, 1938; Hill, 2012a). For Trotsky (1938, also set out in Hill, 2012a) The strategic task of the next period –
prerevolutionary period of agitation, propaganda and organization – consists in overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of the objective revolutionary conditions and

It is necessary
the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation.

to help the masses in the process of the daily struggle to find the bridge between present demand
and the socialist program of the revolution. This bridge should include a system of transitional
demands, stemming from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers
of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power
by the proletariat ….. The strategic task of the Fourth International lies not in reforming capitalism but in its overthrow. Its political aim is the conquest of power
by the proletariat for the purpose of expropriating the bourgeoisie….. The Fourth International does not discard the program of

the old “minimal” demands to the degree to which these have preserved at least part of their vital
forcefulness. Indefatigably, it defends the democratic rights and social conquests of the workers . But it
carries on this day-to-day work within the framework of the correct actual, that is, revolutionary perspective. Insofar as the old, partial, “minimal” demands of the masses clash
with the destructive and degrading tendencies of decadent capitalism – and this occurs at each step – the Fourth International advances a system of transitional demands, the
essence of which is contained in the fact that ever more openly and decisively they will be directed against the very bases of the bourgeois regime. The old “minimal program” is
superseded by the transitional program, the task of which lies in systematic mobilization of the masses for the proletarian revolution.
 2AC – Perm ReGlobilization
The alt fails – only perm access re-globalization
Bray and Bray 02 - a founding editor of Latin American Perspectives, was director of the
Latin American Studies Program at California State University and a professor of political
science at California State U, Marjorie Woodford Bray and Donald W. Bray (“Beyond
Neoliberal Globalization: Another World”, November 2002, SAGE, Available online from
https://www-jstor-
org.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/stable/pdf/3185005.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Ab164de5b77f340da34bfb4
9b685b6d4e, accessed 7-25-2018, AVP)
Corporations have the legal status of individuals, and this leaves their leaders mostly free from
responsibility for their actions. They constitute the new ruling class and have little or no commitment to the well-being of
anyone or any place. The market has been reified as the actor responsible for all eco- nomic transactions. Under current law the basic
duty of corporate manage- ment is to seek profits. If corporations are to continue to exist, requirements to protect the environment and
community well-being and to enforce core labor standards should be written into the laws of incorporation. They should have
privileges, not rights. Restructuring
must place the world under the control of its citizens and remove
the "citizenship" of corporations. The present degree of interdependence of world technology and
production precludes deglobalization or complete local self-sufficiency. The system is fragile and could
collapse at any time. A collapse would bring misery even deeper and more widespread than is
now experienced by the most poverty- stricken. Reglobalization not deglobalization is required,
and it can be accomplished in a way that will provide for considerable local control, including
autonomy for indigenous peoples. Desirable reglobalization will require a rethinking of many
values and practices. In the universities, all academic fields are due for revamping. Accounting, for example,
should validate positive social outcomes in a "new- world" accounting system. Social efficiency should be entwined with pro- duction
efficiency. Science should be weaned from its dependence on war- fare research. A larger segment of the social sciences should be
directed toward policy questions. Alongside market-based economics, a field of instrumental economics should go beyond the critical
perspectives afforded by the study of political economy to propose socioeconomic objectives and the politics of their attainment.
Companion fields to instrumental economics could be developed in public administration and political science. Political science has
already begun to go beyond the animals-in-a-cage "rational choice" approaches to address useful political outcomes. International law
and organization should become a premier field of study. Humanitarian law is already a percolating subject.
 2AC – Link Defense
You’re blaming the wrong people –capitalism is the problem, not immigrants
Socialist Alternative 6 (4/26/6, Socialist Alternative is the organization that spearheaded the
campaign to elect Kshama Sawant to Seattle City Council in 2013, the first independent socialist
elected in a major U.S. city in decades. We then led the successful campaign to raise Seattle’s
minimum wage to the highest in the country, providing a massive boost to the $15 Now campaign
that is spreading around the country. Kshama Sawant was successfully re-elected to the Seattle
City Council in 2015 as a Socialist Alternative member, without any corporate cash, despite half
a million dollars being spent on the campaign to unseat her. “Global Capitalism — Fueling
Poverty & Immigration” https://www.socialistalternative.org/2006/04/26/global-capitalism-
fueling-poverty-immigration///TU-SG)
Recent years have seen a massive wave of immigration to the United States from the third world, especially Latin
America. Politicians and corporate media personalities like CNNs Lou Dobbs continually attack these undocumented workers as illegal aliens and criminals. The

real criminals, however, are not immigrant workers, but the corporate chieftains and
politicians who, in their insatiable lust for profits, plunder the natural resources of poor
countries , set up sweatshops, and wage wars for oil and empire. It is their policies that create the grinding poverty and social breakdown throughout the neo-colonial
world which forces millions to flee their home countries in search of work here. While U.S. corporations earn record
profits, 128 million people in Latin America live on less than $2 per day (USAID.org). More than 130 million have no access to safe drinking water, and only one in six persons

enjoys adequate sanitation service (NACLA.org). Big business sets up shop in all corners of the world, searching for the
cheapest labor and slackest environmental regulations. They argue that in a globalized world we need free trade and capital should
be free to pick up and move to any country with the best market conditions – yet they oppose the rights of workers to move to

countries with more favorable labor markets . The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, under
Democratic President Bill Clinton, allowed U.S. companies to massively step up their assault on working people by laying off unionized workers in the U.S. and setting up
sweatshops across the Mexican border. NAFTA has spelled a complete disaster for workers in Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. U.S. workers have lost around 395,000 jobs, while
their new jobs pay on average 23% less. Simultaneously, poverty has exploded in Mexico, with two-thirds of the population now living on less than $3 per day. Millions of poor
Mexican farmers have been driven into bankruptcy after being forced to compete with subsidized U.S. agribusiness (which relies on the cheap labor of Mexican immigrants, who

Most immigrant workers don’t want to leave their country of origin. They
are often paid less than minimum wage).

would prefer to stay with their families, where they know the language and culture. The risks
they face coming to the U.S. are many : death in the desert, suffocation and starvation in shipping containers, or kidnapping and exploitation by
smugglers. Immigrants only come to the U.S. out of dire economic necessity. They come hoping to

make a better life for themselves and their families  a goal they share in common with U.S. workers. However, this
goal comes in direct conflict with the logic of capitalism and the desire of big business to
maximize profits . We can’t allow borders and nationality to divide us. In reality, workers of all
countries have more in common with each other than we do with the bosses in our own countries.
Although a U.S. worker and Bill Gates are both U.S. citizens, their lives are worlds apart. A U.S. worker and an immigrant worker are both likely living paycheck-to-paycheck,

Our struggle is international, a struggle against

struggling to get by, while Mr. Gates has billions of dollars to live in luxury.

corporations that seek to increase profits by pitting workers in different countries against
one another in a race to the bottom . If corporations can push down wages in Mexico and China – or among immigrant workers in the U.S. – they
are in a stronger position to demand U.S. workers make similar concessions in order to compete. We see this playing out daily, from

the auto industry to software development. On the other hand, if workers in Mexico or China win higher wages and benefits,

U.S. workers will be in a stronger economic position to demand better wages and benefits here.
 1AR – Link Defense
Immigration is not intrinsically bad – capitalism is the problem
People’s Tribune 16 (The People’s Tribune, formerly published by the League of
Revolutionaries for a New America, is now an independent newspaper with an editorial board
basedin Chicago. “Immigration is not the problem—capitalism is” http://peoplestribune.org/pt-
news/2016/02/immigration-not-problem-capitalism///TU-SG)
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) welcomed the New Year by raiding and terrorizing our communities. Though raids won’t stop immigration, they do

Immigration is not the

serve to terrorize our communities and keep them in check so that people don’t protest injustice and organize for their human rights.

problem—capitalism is . Capitalism is an economic system that cares only about exploitation and
extracting profits for the corporations. Worldwide migration is emerging today under the new conditions of
globalization of the market. Globalization is dismantling national borders and creating an international

production process that guarantees maximum profits for the global capitalist class. With globalization,
production of goods and services flow to the low-wage areas while labor naturally moves to countries where workers see hope for jobs and higher wages.

Consequently, the greater the globalization, the greater is the immigration. This is economic
reality. Globalizing production without globalizing the producer—that is, without allowing workers to migrate freely, does not work. Workers will continue
to migrate to survive, whether they are fleeing economic crisis, poverty or war. In doing so,
millions of workers are becoming aware of their class interests . Immigration sounds the
political death knell of the capitalist system . The slogan “Workers of the world, Unite!” takes on new meaning. The birthing
of a world class struggle brightens an otherwise dark and dangerous tomorrow.
 2AC – Link Turn Generic
Immigration is resistance against neoliberalism – specifically the plan
Lopez 14 – (Edwin Lopez Ph.D Assistant Professor of Sociology @ California State
University, Fullerton, Migration as Resistance to Global Capitalism: From Cause to Action in the
Migration of Central American Children to the United States Summer 2014, Perspectives on
Global Development and Technology, 2016, accessed 06-26-2018,
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/docserver/journals/15691497/16/1-
3/15691497_016_01-
03_s004_text.pdf?expires=1530040118&id=id&accname=id23458&checksum=1E4F418659812
CCB11EDC51BD49A7CF6)
Opposition to global forces (Burawoy et al. 2000), and to capitalist globalization in particular, has emerged as one of the most profound forms of resistance of our time, with people from the South or Third World
having, for years, forged a movement concerned with the ubiquitous form of global interdependence and inequality that follows. With the global justice movement comprised of diverse and distant agents who oppose
the social and environmental costs of free trade, privatization, and government deregulation, the push to denounce neoliberalism has been front and center. The targets of this resistance are more than often

Migration, however, is
transnational institutions that facilitate and advance global capitalist expansion. These include the World Trade Organization, World Bank, and the IMF.

hardly ever viewed as resistance. This is partly due to the way resistance activities are
understood in scholarship and popular thinking. Resistance to globalization, for instance, is
dominated with images of large-scale marches, rallies, occupations, strikes, boycotts, and
even coordinated violent uprisings. More, but less provocative forms, include news and
documentary activism, state reform policies, and forums (Starr 2005). In other words, generally accepted forms of resistance to
globalization (and resistance in general) are conscious, critical, and transformative (hooks 2000; Marquez 2001). This article asserts migration is resistance

under particular conditions: when the purpose behind people’s movement is to subvert or
seek alternatives to social inequality they are resisting a system that threatens their
livelihood. Because the system is global such migration is resistance to globalization. This position does
not attempt to challenge the definition of “global social movements [being] supranational networks of actors that define their causes as global and organize protest campaigns that involve more than one state” (della

On the contrary, because “national states are captured by transnational

Porta et al. 2006:18, emphasis in original).

capitalist forces” (Robinson 2009), the argument here is that resistance to globalization may
occur in the local. For instance, if non-supranational networks “consist of individuals, organizations, and eventually—if more rarely—other entities such as neighbourhoods” (Diani 2003:6,
emphasis in original) that have indirect ties with other nodes, then the web of global justice movement networks can include groups where “global connections” (Burawoy et al. 2000) are limited, loose, and lacking in
transnational consciousness (della Porta and Tarrow 2005). Extending this further, resistance to globalization does not require the presence of activists and organized protest campaigns, nor need it be revolutionary,
critical, or conscious. Yet, when resistance falls short of being open and dramatic it can be difficult to recognize. Invisible resistance, though, is not absent resistance, but more akin to Arundhati Roy’s (2004) position
on the idea of the “voiceless.” Roy explains, “we know of course there’s really no such thing as the ‘voiceless’. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” Local or neighborhood resistance

can be difficult to see. State repression seeks to silence migration as resistance to global capitalism it, while social
distance may preclude the more well-to-do from knowing it even exists. For people who study or are involved in the global justice movement, local resistance may be considered less significant when compared to the
kind engaged in supranational networks. Moreover, members of this same demographic may consider resistance void of direct action and transnational consciousness as not measuring up to resistance to

Migration as resistance to
globalization. Despite how some forms may be silenced or preferably unseen, this article contends local resistance to globalization is present.

globalization draws from an understanding that not all forms of opposition to inequality or
oppression are transformative. In other words, attempts to restructure society or even
understand how systemic oppression operates are not required for it to exist. Indeed, some
to most resistance movements may be considered “non-challenging,” that is, seeking change
by way of already established channels, rather than attempting to change the societal rules
of the game (Marquez 2001). Migratory resistance is, therefore, more in line with the kind
that is “seemingly invisible” or “resistance [that] is quiet, dispersed, disguised or otherwise”
(Vinthagen and Johansson 2013:4). Despite how non-challenging or unseen it might be,
migration, under particular conditions, is a response to the inherent inequalities of
capitalist globalization—to the “lived experience of globalization” (Burawoy et al. 2000).
Globalization is a complex process of ever-increasing interconnection. Central to this is production, and its shift from a world circuit of production to a global one created the conditions for a transnational capitalist
class to emerge and a transnational state to develop. Labor exploitation and more forms of wealth accumulation, such as privatization and austerity, are regulated through economic policies administered by the TNS
apparatus. Structural adjustment loans, for instance, are key given how they bring varying nodes of the TNS together to enforce agreed-upon conditions and carry out the process of resource extraction. The conflict is
that wealth accumulation in the interests of the TCC results in dispossession for the greater part of Third World denizens (Robinson 2004). Given ensuing hardships, technologies of social control are expanded and
created to maintain the economic system. This may include repression, violence, and criminalization in the name of public safety and even national security (Kirk and Okazawa-Rey 2000; Williams and Disney

Whispered voices of resistance were captured by journalists

2014). In Central America, this is the lived experience of globalization.

in their interviews of child migrants from Central America. Albeit anecdotally, these quotes exemplify how global forces impact the
local. What the children experienced cannot be separated from broader relations or external arrangements like 50 lopez Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 16 (2017) 34-59 those set in the SAL
conditions mentioned earlier. Based on ongoing research by this author, an analysis of one hundred news articles on the mass migration of unaccompanied child migrants show that violent crime and the emotion of

fear stood out as significant factors in their decision to migrate. Child migrants told stories of threats to their lives, losing loved
ones, and witnessing murders. Many also expressed a surety of death if they remained. In explaining his decision to migrate sixteen-year-old Raul of El Salvador said, Here, if
you don’t do certain things, your life is going to end anyway. And it’s better to try than to just stay and die. . . . It’s really horrible because you feel like your life is in danger. You feel like you don’t have freedom to
walk down the streets. And in my neighborhood, a couple of days ago, they already killed like two or three guys that are my age, because they didn’t want to join them [the gangs] (CBS Evening News 2014a). Raul
again stressed the very real dangers in his community and how it affected him, “I wake up every morning and I hope that it’s not gonna be my last day. . . . We don’t feel safe here. We don’t feel safe at all” (Ibid).
Fear was also present in stories told by children from Honduras. Humberto Vasquez, of the same age, said, “There are narcos everywhere” and “gangs ransack homes” (Wilkinson 2014). Fourteen-year-old Isaias was
even more succinct, “It’s a sin to be young in Honduras,” because, “they kill people all the time” (Carcamo 2014). Along with its direct link to more cultural elements (i.e. experiences, ideas, and beliefs), emotions

This connection supports the human

can “encourage people to take action” (Reed 2004:667), or in this context, fear can give direction to out-migration.

rights position that the children were indeed refugees fleeing violence and persecution. The
children’s voices, however, also allude to violence being compounded with additional
factors. Stories of extreme poverty and lack of opportunities were interwoven throughout,
making the status of economic refugee relevant and a nation-state paradigmatic
understanding of migration all the more convenient. A nation-state perspective, however, falsely elevates the state to the level of actor while
also failing to recognize the prevailing global political economy. Notwithstanding these limitations, a rejection of a culture of poverty approach does allow for a more sophisticated structural understanding. The
problem with push-and-pull factors for migration, though, is the dismissal of agency. The determinism behind strict structural factors for migration stands in direct contrast to the notion of subject, thus negating the
capacity of children to evaluate their circumstances and make decisions about whether or not to migrate. The concern with rigid migration as resistance to global capitalism 51 Perspectives on Global Development
and Technology 16 (2017) 34-59 push-and-pull explanations then has to do with the way people are rendered objects. Burawoy et al.’s (2000) explanation on this is quite fitting, “objectification can be a powerful
source of mystification, since we often believe we are in the grip of forces beyond our control which turn out to be quite fluid and susceptible to influence” (Pg. 27). The unoriginal proposal then is to consider both
agency and structure in migration, where micro-practices and macrostructures are linked (Pg. 28). What is more novel is to consider people’s agency in migration and how such movement is shaped by global-level
structures (Robinson 2004). To better explain migration as resistance, the concept of usurpation is used to explicate how people and groups respond to accumulation by dispossession. Weber’s concept of “social
closure,” as expanded by Parkin (2006), helps explain why people leave their home countries to immigrate to another. To begin, Weber’s understanding of social closure was strictly based on the practice of
exclusion, as a way to “maximize rewards by restricting access to resources and opportunities to a limited circle of eligibles” (Pg. 125). Parkin extended this to examine the way exclusion engenders resistance, what
he called “usurpation” or action on the part of the disadvantaged that seeks to recover the very resources denied to them by dominant groups. In other words, “usurpation is that type of social closure mounted by a
group in response to its outsider status and the collective experiences of exclusion” (Parkin 1979b:74). Social closure then encompasses both exclusion and usurpation given that one cannot occur without the other.
Another important element is that usurpation can take on varying forms and operate at different levels, “whatever the intended scale of usurpation it is a form of action that generally draws upon alternative standards
of distributive justice to those solemnized by the rules of exclusion” (Ibid). Drawing from this understanding, the argument here is that the pursuit for justice or attempts to access resources are not limited to the more
generally accepted forms of resistance, such as direct action or the aim of restructuring society. What is key to usurpationary action is what Parkin referred to as power “upward” or resistance to exclusionary power
“downward” practices. Parkin’s view of social closure is useful when it comes to thinking about migration as resistance. Accumulation by dispossession, for instance, is a form of exclusion given the aim of resource
extraction for the interests of an eligible few. This can manifest in the form of land seizures through privatization and defunding public services for private interests via austerity measures. Because these policies are
designed and regulated by varying nodes of the TNS (from local to supranational), such exclusion is systemic and supported by laws, the 52 lopez Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 16 (2017) 34-
59 police, and the military. With regard to children who live in communities with extreme poverty, the siphoning of psychic resources may be extraordinarily significant. For instance, children relegated as
superfluous due to their limited capacity to participate in the labor market may be subject to “non-exploitative oppression”, where their value to industry is nonexistent and can lead to a scenario where the
“oppressors would be happy if the oppressed simply disappeared” (Wright 2006:144). A negated sense of security and self-worth (i.e. psychic resources) could have dire consequences for the mental and physical

The outcome of this exclusion is usurpation, from which the aim of the excluded is
health of children.

to engage in action that will result in access to resources. For thousands of children from
Central America this action was migration. In response to the localized alienating
consequences of capitalist globalization, people leverage the resources available to them.
For the poor, their resources are their bodies and voices. Migration is the movement of
bodies. Under certain conditions migration is resistance to subordinating relations, a form
of “usurpation” or power “upward” response to exclusionary “power downward” practices.
This is especially obvious when we consider unauthorized immigration, where laws are
defied in the “hustle” (BondGraham 2010) across borders. Social norms are also transgressed when children migrate without adults. By
partaking in such movement, children violate rules that are especially significant among a middle-class citizenry that is likely to render them “guilty of not conforming to socialization models to which children are
compliant vehicles for the transmission of stable social worlds” (Stephens 1995:12). The mass migration of unaccompanied children in summer 2014 was usurpationary action to the “collective experiences of
exclusion” (Parkin 1979:74). The most intimate forms unfolded with direct threats on their lives and the loss of loved ones to the hands of narcos and gang members. This was compounded with extreme levels of
poverty and limited opportunities. Hometowns, though, are not islands. They are part of a broader national scene that is captured by global forces. This interconnection between the global and the local can be difficult
to see or even perceive. For example, when children expressed to news journalists why they migrated they did not point to globalization, rather they told stories of family members being killed and dead bodies that
lay on the streets. They explained how if they remained they would be killed for resisting gangs or refusing to sell drugs for narcos. Children also believed that lack of work and surety of poverty did not make for a
sustainable future. In other words, what the children expressed was their lived experience of globalization. This experience is one of exclusion facilitated by the process of accumulation migration as resistance to

Surgically applied by neoliberal policies,

global capitalism 53 Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 16 (2017) 34-59 by dispossession.

resource extraction from the commons is power “downward.” The other side of social
closure is power “upward.” Usurpation can manifest in a variety of forms. For instance, by
seeking “marginal redistribution” (Parkin 2006:126) of resources it can be non-challenging.
Usurpation then need not attempt to restructure society or dismantle the very institutions
that regulate class and social relations. Moreover, resistance is not always critical. People
may organize for better wages or access to land without understanding how systemic
oppression operates or the forces at play. Resistance is not always conscious. People may
respond to and defy the very mechanisms that perpetuate social inequality without
necessarily realizing it. Accordingly, resistance has the potential to be quiet and
unremarkable. Notwithstanding the limitations of such action, “invisible” resistance is not
only present, but also a form that responds to the lived experience of globalization. The
resources denied to the children in question were both material and psychic, and they
responded to such dispossession with resistance—the act of migration.
 1AR – Link Turn Generic
Immigration is resistance to capitalism – it’s sneaky and subversive
The Interationalists 6 (The Internatiolist Communist Tendency is a global organization
devoted to fighting capitalism. “Immigration and Global Capitalism”
http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2006-08-01/immigration-and-global-capitalism//TU-SG)

Workers are the dispossessed of history who have no alternative but to find a place to sell their labour power. Workers
who travel between countries and continents to do this are simply expressing the essence of
the working class , that ‘workers have no country.’ The migrations of today are not a temporary phase which will pass when global economic conditions stabilise,
they are a continuation of processes which have been underway since the dawn of capitalism and which will only end with the establishment of a higher order of society, namely

Workers who travel between countries are able to

communist society. The question is, how can a communist society be established?

learn the languages of other workers and to absorb communist ideas . They are able to spread these
ideas as they move. From the earliest times of the capitalist era political movements of the working class have been
influenced by migrant workers. The Communist League, for example, which issued the Communist
Manifesto, was a small group composed mainly of migrant workers with supporters in the Chartist movement and the
artisans of Paris, who met in London to produce the Manifesto. The international character of the Manifesto was shown in that it was immediately published in English, French,

Migrant workers are also more likely to show solidarity with workers of
German, Italian, Flemish and Danish.

other countries as they have lived and worked with them and speak their language . A simple
example of this is the fraternisation between English and German soldiers which occurred around Xmas 1914 in the early stages of the First World War. This was initiated by
German migrant workers, who had been working in Britain, spoke English and whose class solidarity outweighed the bourgeois nationalism which accompanied the start of the

It is essential that struggles of migrant workers against attempts by the ruling class to
carnage.

criminalise and victimise them, such as we have seen in the US, should be fully supported. These are simply
attempts to drive wedges between sections of our class to keep us under the yolk of capital. These
attempts have undoubtedly increased with the so-called “war on terror” which provides the smokescreen behind which a new wave of repression is being launched. It is for this

we consider the solidarity shown by US workers to their migrant brothers so important.

reason

Communists should welcome migrant workers today, as they have done in the past, and integrate them into a
common struggle against the bourgeoisie. Communists support free movement of
the working class since this can only produce greater unity and purpose
in our class . Migrant workers are able to give the political organisations of the working class
a true global character. They are thus able to bring nearer the day when this international class
throws off its chains and undertakes the task of building a communist world.
 2AC – Link Turn Narrative
The narratives constructed and used by the affirmative are intrinsically tied
with the western liberal framework – they further stock stories without
changing the dominant political and social discourses
Weber and Lopez 10 (Gloria Valencia-Weber came to the UNM law school in 1992 to
establish the Indian Law Certificate Program, which debuted two years later. Through Valencia-
Weber's efforts, along with others, the school's Indian Law program has become one of the top in
the country. Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, Candidate for New Mexico's 1st Congressional District,
“STORIES IN MEXICO AND THE UNITED STATES ABOUT THE BORDER: THE
RHETORIC AND THE REALITIES”, HeinOnline, 2010, accessed 7/24/18,
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1664647) //JC
IL.Framing Immigration Issues in Border Narratives Immigration represents a window through
which one sees how people live between cultures . In the movements of people between Mexico and the United States, we see the
Mexican and American economies and cultures as well as how individuals survive, aspire, and adapt... [After doing fieldwork in the 1960s] I realized that the border. . .

was a place of contrast between two cultures and economies, but it was also a place where people worked out everyday accommodations between those cultures.
It was a place where nationalists imposed their prejudices, but it was also a place where
pragmatists developed a spirit of solving problems and getting along. Jorge A. Bustamante President of El Colegio de la
Frontera Norte in Tijuana 11 Storytelling, of course, has a long and vibrant history. 12 Its place as a genre of legal academic literature is more recent, 13 and not uncontested.14

Delgado issued a challenge for academics of color to tell their stories and broaden the
Professor Richard

academic perspective to include the views of law professors of color. In Delgado's seminal article, he argued that counter-stories are a
powerful instrument to challenge the "dominant narrative."" That is, stories that are written by members of groups that have been
underrepresented by the academy can challenge the mindset of those who are unaware of injustices and privilege.16 Delgado claims that stories written by members of outgroups
can make visible what was previously invisible by raising consciousness and awareness of different experiences and perspectives.17 He demonstrates how people who experience
the same event can have completely different experiences of the reality of the event. Taking the challenge himself, he then went on to write stories.18 Other academics have
followed. The stories have been written to highlight feminist perspectives,19 racial perspectives,20 Latino perspectives,21 gay and lesbian 22 23 perspectives,2 and indigenous
perspectives. Legal writing andclinical teachers have effectively used this device to teach legal writing and legal practice skills.24 Law school clinical and legal writing teachers
have described this literature as "applied storytelling" and conferences have been developed to promote this type of legal scholarship. 25 This article responds to the call of

We agree with Delgado and others who

storytelling by proposing a framework for analyzing stories, particularly stories about real events.

maintain that stories shape how we understand reality and how we interpret events. We seek to
make the stories and the storytelling more transparent . Unlike the applied storytelling adherents, we do not necessarily explain
how to use storytelling methodology in teaching and in law practice; rather we want the readers and listeners of stories to become more sophisticated in the understanding of the

stories about the border reported in the media can appeal to emotion in the way
narrative. We want to show how

they are framed despite the appearance of neutrality. We would like for individuals to develop
enhanced consciousness about the intended audience and the symbolism inherent in the framing
of the story. We also want to encourage storytelling by individuals who live the experience. We think that the call of the stories should
be heard more deeply when the stories are nuanced lived experiences rather than stock stories . In
short, we want to help deepen the understanding of narratives. Word choices, metaphors, and images create mental frames that are used as storytelling devices. Some accounts are

collective narratives in the social and political discourse. These accounts

stories aboutindividuals, while others are

have political, economic, and social contexts that shape public attitudes. For example, in the U.S.,
narratives about immigration have a historical inconsistency. On the one hand, immigrants were "taking jobs" away from
Americans;o26on the other hand, they were doing "jobs Americans won't do." 27 Thus, contemporary societal accounts assert that immigrants either continue to take available jobs

People who tell these stories and narratives have a particular audience in
or provide relief from undesirable jobs.

mind - an audience that may or may not be aware of the political, economic, and social
connections that are essential for the audience's understanding. These published accounts can shape the receivers' reflective
attitudes about the issues. Finally, these stories can evoke powerful emotions that color audiences' understanding about the stories and the embedded issues. Economists describe
Mexico-U.S. migration as the result of interactive phenomena often referred to as the "push/pull" economic theory.28 This theory posits that economic factors in Mexico push
workers out, while economic factors in the United States pull them toward jobs. 29 However, economic theories do not explain how economic, legal, and social information about
migration is framed and communicated from individual to individual. These stories are important because they reveal factors that have impacted individual decisions made to

these stories are developed by policy makers to justify immigration

migrate or not to migrate. Oftentimes,

policies . Attention to the way these debates are framed is important. According to George Lakoff, frames are the mental structures that
help us to both understand and shape reality. 3 0 Mental structures usually operate below
consciousness, but appear in the words and metaphors we use to communicate our worldview. 3 1
These words relate to our underlying values in the debate. For example, in framing the debate about the movement of people

across borders, framing the issue as one of the problems of so-called illegal alienS32 conjures
up images of criminal behavior, rather than migration of people for a myriad of reasons. This
mental structure transforms immigrants into a class of criminal offenders/defendants, something
that is not consistent with the data about criminal behavior.3 3 Many immigrants to the United
States do not cross the border in violation of the law, but overstay their visas. 34 Because of this,
their presence in this country is most accurately described as foreigners with expired
authorization, 35 rather than the mental image that using the term "illegal" evokes. Other immigrants are
seeking refuge and asylum from oppressive regimes. 36 And yet other immigrants were brought in as children. Ascribing illegality to their presence

implies that they had some control over the decision. 37 As we will discuss later in this article, describing members
of transnational indigenous communities as "illegals," is inaccurate and misleading,
particularly when their presence as a tribal community living on the area of the border predates
the existence of the border. The framing of stories and the way they tend to shape public opinion and attitudes about issues may reveal a specific agenda
behind an immigration story. These framing techniques are best demonstrated through a matrix (see Tables below) that can help usthink about the word choices and images, the

Further, in trying to re-frame

political and social connections, the primary audience and the emotional response elicited by the immigration stories.

the stories and search for realities rather than rhetoric, the matrix can help us understand
the historical context , the relevant data, lived experiences and values that shape the content of the stories. 38 As you will find
below, "Table One Framing the Stories: Analyzing The Rhetoric" is a useful tool because it forces the reader or listener of the story to consider the key words and images that are
brought to mind as the story unfolds. The table can be used to help examine the rhetoric by identifying the key words, images, and metaphors. Then, the political and legal
connections, the audience and the emotional responses to those words, images and metaphors can be identified. For example, if the metaphor is of a Mexican "invasion" the
political and legal connections make one think of war or occupations. The legal connection is a connection to lawlessness. The primary audience is on the U.S. side of the border
and the emotional response invoked is likely to be fear. As an image, does the story present a dark skinned person of color of limited means or does it portray a European, light-
skinned individual? Consider the differences in a story portraying a migrant crossing a desert, or a tourist crossing the border to shop. With these images portraying a border story,
there are different political and legal connections to each story. The migrant crossing the desert may be desperate and perhaps dangerous. The tourist shopping represents economic
development. The emotional response to the migrant in the desert may be fear, sympathy, or compassion depending on the context. The tourist is likely to be non-threatening.

Sometimes, a story is framed to fit into a legal

Stories told by an individual or institution may have differing political perspectives.

category. For example, a story about a migrant seeking refuge and asylum from female genital mutilation may be portrayed as a victim of her culture. Contrast this with
portraying her as a feminist author who is persecuted for her political beliefs. Each of these stories is connected to a political or legal

framework, which could be part of a western liberal agenda. Thus, one should identify the
primary audience for the story. Was it composed for an audience within the U.S. or written for an audience in a
different country? It is possible for a similar story to be directed to individuals who might migrate or to working class individuals who are suffering economic hardship because of

factory closings in the U.S. For example, each group will receive a different narrative about the economic need for Mexican workers who will
be easily hired. Stories on both sides of the Mexico-U.S. border are directed towards policy makers or legislators and are framed according to these audiences. Of course, stories

also elicit emotional responses. They can provoke anger, fear, distrust, sympathy, or understanding, depending on the framing of the story and the audience. When
emotional responses connect to the political perspective, we need to inquire how the key words and images
affect emotional responses and how they can be used to further a particular perspective or agenda.
 2AC – Multiculturalism
Inclusion and diversity pushes immigrants to form their own identities and
subjects, leading to active leadership that runs counteractive to the
traditional neoliberal subject.
Simon-Kumar 14 (Rachel Simon-Kumar - School of Social Studies, Faculty of Arts and
Social Sciences, The University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand.
Ethnicities, 2014, Vol. 14(1) 136–159 DOI: 10.1177/1468796812466374 etn.sagepub.com) lz
the political rhetoric around citizenship for ethnic minority groups, particularly
Abstract In the last decade,

recent migrants, in Aotearoa/New Zealand has been influenced by two dominant paradigms. In the wake of the post-
neoliberalism advanced by the Fifth Labour Government (1999–2008) and the efforts to build an inclusive state, the idea of the

‘active citizen’ has evolved, encouraging ethnic migrants to contribute to their own communities
and to a wider New Zealand identity. Equally, broader discourses on the recognition of group-based citizenship have helped ethnic communities in securing a multicultural framing

he active citizen and the rights-bearing

of social rights. Based on qualitative analysis of interview and policy documents, this paper argues that t

citizen emerge from discrete paradigms that reveal a fundamental tension between policycentred
celebration of diversity and the political recognition of difference. Keywords Active citizen, Aotearoa/New Zealand,
difference, diversity, ethnic migrants, multicultural, post-neoliberal Introduction A dominant, if contested, paradigm for the construction and practice of citizenship1 in
contemporary multicultural, Western democracies recognizes group-based identity of cultural minority groups (see, among others, Gutmann, 1993; Kymlicka, 1996, 2009;
Modood, 2007; Parekh, 2000; Taylor, 1997). Echoing feminist literature that highlights the exclusions in conceptions of universal, liberal citizenship (see, among others, Fraser,
1997; Lister, 2003a; Pateman, 1989; Yeatman, 1994; Young, 1990), a group-rights framework sets a theoretical, and policy, corrective that recognizes difference. What have been

the parallel developments in the economic and

insufficiently introduced within this paradigm of multicultural framing, however, are

political institutions that have had equal bearing on the relationship between the citizen (including
the ethnic citizen) and the state. The emergence, in particular, of Third Way-led ‘post-neoliberal’,2 social investment, and inclusive paradigms in the
UK, Canada, and New Zealand since the mid-1990s has encouraged an accompanying, and influential, discourse of active citizenship.3

Defined by duties to the collective, be it volunteering or participation in local democratic

processes, the active citizen is an antidote to neoliberalism’s self-interested, individualist
consumer-citizen (Clarke, 2004; Kingfisher, 2002; Needham, 2003; Newman and Clarke, 2009) and a move away from social rights citizenship evoked by the
welfare state. Not unsurprisingly, in contemporary post-neoliberal societies, citizenship is increasingly framed by

the discourse of ‘duty and obligations’ as much as by that of ‘rights’.4 Both frames, in some ways, advance the
possibilities of belonging for members of cultural minority groups. The idea of group rights for ethnic people has influenced policy practice in several countries, allowing for,
among other things, public provisions in migrant and refugee education, celebration of religious festivals and wider debates on diversity (Canada and New Zealand are examples).

Active citizenship, on the other hand, offers scope for belonging through participation in, and the
collective creation of, a common good – one that stems from the recognition of difference (Honohan, 2007). Contextualized in the geo-politics of
Aotearoa/New Zealand, what I argue in this paper is that, despite their seeming compatibilities, both these paradigms lend to the development of two salient, if discrete, discursive

The lens of the ethnic citizen reveals the wider interplay

frames for articulating the norms of ethnic citizenship at the level of policy.

of post-neoliberalism and multiculturalism particularly as it articulates the possibilities and limits

of cultural difference and capitalism in the early twenty-first century.
 2AC International Law
International law-making institutions are shifting away from neoliberal
policy foundations – increasing government regulation in markets and
focusing less on property rights
Glinavos 08 - a Senior Lecturer in Law at the University of Westminster, Ioannis Glinavos
(“Neoliberal Law: Unintended Consequences of Market-Friendly Law Reforms”, Third World
Quarterly, Available from https://www-jstor
org.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/stable/pdf/20455096.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Ac3188cba4c27ebbb21db0
e69fd7b989e, Date Accessed 7-25-2018, AVP)
In the history of economic thought beginning with Adam Smith, law plays a key role as the guarantor of private property rights. The
market mechanisms and economic processes which lie at the heart of neoliberal theory are
premised upon the existence of private property. Neoclassical economic theory accepts that a clear definition and
allocation of property rights is necessary to the operation of market exchange and a necessary consequence of man's independent
economic rationality. Neoliberal thought, elaborating on neoclassical economics, combines two strands of classical theory, especially
as to the function of private property. On the one hand, it draws from the Austrian tradition that views market individualism as the
herald of individual freedom (Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Schumpeter) and, on the other, it draws from neoclassical economists who
emphasise the function of markets in promoting economic efficiency (Chicago School of Economics). Ha Joon Chang views
contemporary neoliberal theory as an 'unholy alliance' between these two strands of liberal thought, with neoclassical economics
providing the analytical tools and the Austrian libertarian tradition providing the moral and political philosophy. The result of the
combination of these two traditions is a shift in the perception of the state, from its benevolent function in the Keynesian era and from
a relationship of partnership between the state and the market to a relationship of opposition. According to this latter conception the
state is no longer an impartial arbiter and social guardian, but an organisation catering to self interested politicians and bureaucrats,
who are not acting in the general welfare but to the benefit of their client groups.2 The fate of a 'property rights only'
model of law reform and of the unregulated markets doctrine has, however, been affected by the general demise
of the Washington Consensus. From 1997 onwards the World Bank has largely abandoned the minimalist
conception of the state, where state involvement in the economy was seen as impeding efficient transactions and impairing the
extent and quality of investment (the main ideas of the Washington Consensus). By recognising the existence of a variety of
distortions, externalities and market failures the
Bank accepted in principle the need for intervention and
regulatory action. Hence the widespread criticism (see Joseph Stiglitz as an example) of privatisation carried out in an
institutional vacuum in post-communist Russia and the resulting criminal takeover of the economy.3 However, the Bank, like other
international financial institutions, still maintains the original position that the state ought to intervene as little as possible in the
market and that, when compared with state capture and corruption, market inefficiencies are more easily dealt with. This position
serves to limit both the reach and the purposes of legal reform, as the presumption of government failure often undercuts the case for
Consequently, even though there
state intervention, even where it would otherwise be warranted in order to enhance efficiency.
appears to be a shift from reforms focusing on property rights and contract law to reforms centered on
promoting the rule of law and market-supporting institutions, the reality of the state's capacity to intervene is still limited.
After all, the position of international organisations still is that growth is more likely to result from deregulation and liberalisation that
encourage foreign investment and not from government-sponsored development policies, despite all the evidence.4 As Rittich notes,
discussing Post-Washington Consensus reform proposals: In second generation reforms, change is clearly visible in the following
interconnected areas: 1) legal restraints upon the powers of the State; 2) greater emphasis on judicial process and institutions; 3)
expansion of the actors engaged in governance; 4) the turn toward soft law; 5) the recognition of non legal sources of normativity; and
6) the use of human rights. All mark a shift toward a much more fragmented and polycentric normative order, one in which the center
of gravity in respect of governance and regulation is no longer always located in the State.
--- Neg ---
Topshelf
 1NC Generic Long
<INSERT LINK>

Global capitalism is unsustainable – absent change it causes extinction and

turns case
Robinson 18 (William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global studies and Latin
American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “Accumulation Crisis and
Global Police State” http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0896920518757054//TU-SG)
relationship between militarization and capitalism. If military
Half a century later it is time to update our understanding of the

there has
Keynesianism referred to the purchase by the state of weapons systems and military equipment from defense subcontractors as a subsidy to private capital,

been in recent years, and especially since the events of September 11, 2001, a much more sweeping militarization of
the global economy and society. I suggest here that the concept of global police state captures the new historical moment. Such a global
police state is emerging as a response to the a crisis of world capitalism that is unprecedented, given its
magnitude, its global reach, the extent of ecological degradation and social deterioration , and the sheer scale of the

means of violence that is now deployed around the world. Global police state refers to three interrelated developments. First are the
ever more omnipresent systems of mass social control, repression, and warfare promoted by the
ruling groups to contain the real and the potential rebellion of the global working class and surplus
humanity. Second is how the global economy is itself based more and more on the development and

deployment of these systems of warfare, social control, and repression simply as a means of making profit and
continuing to accumulate capital in the face of stagnation – what I term militarized accumulation, or accumulation by repression – and that now goes well beyond military

increasing move towards political systems that can be characterized as 21st

Keynesianism. And third is the

century fascism, or even in a broader sense, as totalitarian. In referring to global police state I want to underscore how there
is an increasing convergence around global capitalism’s political need for social control and
repression and its economic need to perpetuate accumulation in the face of
overaccumulation and stagnation . Transnational capital has subordinated virtually the entire world’s population to its logic and its domination. In
this sense the world’s people live under a dictatorship of the transnational capitalist class, or TCC. The TCC as the hegemonic
fraction of capital on a world scale is not an internally unified or politically united group. It is delineated structurally by its grounding in global as distinct from national markets
and circuits of accumulation and to this extent shares a common class interest and outlook in advancing capitalist globalizat ion (for further discussion see, e.g., Robinson, 2004). I

transnational capital dictates the conditions under

mean here dictatorship in the literal (etymological) sense of the word, such that

which billions of people carry out their lives in the global economy and society. In this sense, it is a more
encompassing, powerful, omnipresence and deadly dictatorship than any other in history. At the same time, however, I mean dictatorship in the more figurative sense that, absent a
change of course, we are moving towards a political dictatorship of the TCC as it imposes and sustains its rule through a global police state played out differently in various parts
of the world. This dictatorship is reactive. We are seeing a breakdown worldwide of global capitalist hegemony. If the global working class and oppressed peoples were simply
passive there would be no need for such repression and control. Gramsci developed the concept of hegemony to refer to the attainment by ruling groups of stable forms of rule
based on “consensual” domination. Gramsci’s notion of hegemony (see, e.g., Gramsci, 1957) posits distinct forms of domination, in brief: coercive domination and consensual
domination. Hegemony involves the internalization on the part of the subordinate classes of the moral and cultural values, the codes of practical conduct, and the worldview of the
dominant classes or groups – in sum, the internalization by the oppressed of the social logic of the system of domination itself. In distinction to an outright dictatorship or military
regime, force and coercion in a hegemonic order are ever-present but may take a back seat to ideological control and other forms of cooptation. But now it is the revolt of the
oppressed and exploited populations around the world that is leading to the breakdown of consensual means of domination, compelling the TCC to impose increasingly coercive

major episode of crisis in the world capitalist

and repressive forms of rule. The Crisis of Global Capitalism Each

system has presented the potential for systemic change . Each has involved the
breakdown of state legitimacy , escalating class and social struggles , and military conflicts,
leading to a restructuring of the system, including new institutional arrangements , class relations,
and accumulation activities that eventually result in a restabilization of the system and renewed capitalist expansion. The current crisis shares aspects

of earlier system-wide structural crises, such as of the 1880s, the 1930s or the 1970s. But there are
six interrelated dimensions to the current crisis that I believe sets it apart from these earlier ones and
suggests that a simple restructuring of the system will not lead to its restabilization – that is, our
very survival now requires a revolution against global capitalism (Robinson,

the system is fast reaching

2014). These six dimensions, in broad strokes, present a “big picture” context in which a global police state is emerging. First,

the ecological limits of its reproduction. We have already passed tipping points in climate
change, the nitrogen cycle, and diversity loss . For the first time ever, human conduct is intersecting with and
fundamentally altering the earth system in such a way that threatens to bring about a sixth mass
extinction (see, e.g., Foster et al., 2011; Moore, 2015). These ecological dimensions of global crisis have been brought to the forefront of the global agenda by the
worldwide environmental justice movement. Communities around the world have come under escalating repression as

they face off against transnational corporate plunder of their environment. While capitalism cannot be held solely
responsible for the ecological crisis, it is difficult to imagine that the environmental catastrophe can be

resolved within the capitalist system given capital’s implacable impulse to accumulate and
its accelerated commodification of nature . Second, the level of global social polarization and
inequality is unprecedented . The richest one percent of humanity in 2016 controlled over half of
the world’s wealth and 20 percent controlled 95 percent of that wealth, while the remaining 80 percent had to make do with just
five percent (Oxfam, 2017). These escalating inequalities fuel capitalism’s chronic problem of
overaccumulation: the TCC cannot find productive outlets to unload the enormous amounts
of surplus it has accumulated, leading to chronic stagnation in the world economy (see next section).
Such extreme levels of social polarization present a challenge of social control to dominant groups. As Trumpism in the United States as well as the rise of far-

right and neo-fascist movements in Europe so well illustrate, cooptation also involves the manipulation
of fear and insecurity among the downwardly mobile so that social anxiety is channeled towards
scapegoated communities. This psychosocial mechanism of displacing mass anxieties is not new, but it appears to be increasing around the world in the face
of the structural destabilization of capitalist globalization. Extreme inequality requires extreme violence and repression that

lend themselves to projects of 21st century fascism. Third, the sheer magnitude of the means of
violence and social control is unprecedented , as well as the magnitude and concentrated control over the means of global communication
and the production and circulation of symbols, images, and knowledge. Computerized wars , drone warfare , robot soldiers ,

bunker-buster bombs , a new generation of nuclear weapons , satellite surveillance , cyberwar ,

spatial control technology , and so forth, have changed the face of warfare, and more generally, of systems of social control and
repression. We have arrived at the panoptical surveillance society, a point brought home by Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013,

and the age of thought control by those who control global flows of communication and symbolic

production. If global capitalist crisis leads to a new world war the destruction would simply be unprecedented. Fourth, we are reaching limits to
the extensive expansion of capitalism , in the sense that there are no longer any new territories of
significance to integrate into world capitalism and new spaces to commodify are drying up. The
capitalist system is by its nature expansionary. In each earlier structural crisis, the system went
through a new round of extensive expansion – from waves of colonial conquest in earlier centuries, to the integration in the late 20th and early
21st centuries of the former socialist countries, China, India and other areas that had been marginally outside the system. There are no longer any new

territories to integrate into world capitalism. At the same time, the privatization of education,
health, utilities, basic services, and public lands is turning those spaces in global society that were
outside of capital’s control into “spaces of capital,” so that intensive expansion is reaching depths never before seen. What is
there left to commodify? Where can the system now expand? New spaces have to be violently cracked open and the peoples in these spaces must be
repressed by the global police state. Fifth, there is the rise of a vast surplus population inhabiting a “planet of

slums ” (Davis, 2007) pushed out of the productive economy, thrown into the margins, and subject to
sophisticated systems of social control and to destruction, into a mortal cycle of dispossession-exploitationexclusion. Crises
provide capital with the opportunity to accelerate the process of forcing greater productivity out
of fewer workers. The processes by which surplus labor is generated have accelerated under
globalization. Spatial reorganization has helped transnational capital to break the territorial-bound power of organized labor and impose new capital–labor relations
based on fragmentation, flexibilization, and the cheapening of labor. These developments, combined with a massive new round

of primitive accumulation and displacement of hundreds of millions, have given rise to a new
global army of superfluous labor that goes well beyond the traditional reserve army of labor that Marx discussed.
Global capitalism has no direct use for surplus humanity. But indirectly, it holds wages down
everywhere and makes new systems of 21st century slavery possible .1 Dominant groups face the challenge of how to
contain both the real and potential rebellion of surplus humanity. In addition, surplus humanity cannot consume and so as their ranks

expand the problem of overaccumulation becomes exacerbated. Sixth, there is an acute political
contradiction in global capitalism : economic globalization takes places within a nation-state system
of political authority. Transnational state apparatuses are incipient and have not been able to substitute for a leading nation-state with enough power and authority
to organize and stabilize the system, much less to impose regulations on transnational capital. In the age of capitalist globalization

governments must attract to the national territory transnational corporate investment, which
requires providing capital with all the incentives associated with neoliberalism – downward
pressure on wages, deregulation, austerity, and so on – that aggravate inequality, impoverishment,
and insecurity for working classes. Nation-states face a contradiction between the need to promote transnational capital accumulation in their territories
and their need to achieve political legitimacy. As a result, states around the world have been experiencing spiraling crises of legitimacy. This situation generates bewildering and
seemingly contradictory politics and also helps explain the resurgence of far-right and neo-fascist forces that espouse rhetoric of nationalism and protectionism even as they

the fundamental
promote neo-liberalism. Overaccumulation: Capitalism’s Achilles Heel The turn towards a global police state is structurally rooted in perhaps

contradiction of capitalism: overaccumulation, which is interwoven with all six dimensions of global crisis discussed above. There is a vast
literature on capitalist crisis that I cannot reference here (but see: summary discussion and references in Robinson, 2014, Chapter 4; Kliman, 2011; Radical Perspectives on the

capitalist competition and class struggle push capital to reduce costs and/or increase
Crisis2). In sum,

productivity by increasing the organic composition of capital, which leads to the tendency for the
rate of profit to fall (Marx, 1978/1894). This tendency, the “most fundamental law” of political economy, is expressed as
overaccumulation crisis. The gap grows between what is (or could be) produced and what the
market can absorb . If capitalists cannot actually sell – or “unload” – the products of their
plantations, factories, and offices then they cannot make (“realize”) profit. They accumulate huge
amounts of surplus but do not find outlets to continue to profitably invest that surplus. Hence, if left
unchecked, the expanding social polarization that is endemic to capitalism results in crisis – in stagnation, recessions,
depressions, social upheavals, and war . Globalization has greatly exacerbated
overaccumulation. As capital went global from the 1970s onwards the emerging TCC was able to get around state intervention in the capitalist market and
undermine the redistributive programs that mass struggles of poor and working people had forced on the system in the 20th century. The extreme

concentration of the planet’s wealth in the hands of the few and the accelerated impoverishment
and dispossession of the majority means that the TCC cannot find productive outlets to unload
enormous amounts of surplus it has accumulated. A series of lesser jolts to the global economy, from the Mexico peso crisis of 1995, to the
Asian financial meltdown of 1997–1999 and its spread to several other regions, and then the dot-com busts and global recession of 2000–2001, were preludes to the 2008 collapse

The Great Recession – the worst crisis since the 1930s – marked the onset of a deep structural
of the global financial system.

crisis of overaccumulation. As uninvested capital accumulates, enormous pressures build up to

find outlets for unloading the surplus. Capitalist groups pressure states to create new opportunities for profit making. By the 21st century the TCC
turned above all to three mechanisms in order to sustain global accumulation in the face of overaccumulation . These were: financial speculation;

the plunder of public finances; and state-organized militarized accumulation. Deregulation of the
financial industry and the creation of a globally integrated financial system in recent decades have
allowed the TCC to unload trillions of dollars into speculation. The sequence of speculative waves in the global casino since the
1980s included real estate investments in the emerging global property market that inflated property values in one locality after another, wild stock market speculation leading to
periodic booms and busts, most notable the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2001, the phenomenal escalation of hedge-fund flows, currency speculation, and every imaginable
derivative, ranging from swaps, futures markets, collateralized debt obligations, asset pyramiding, and ponzi schemes. U.S. treasury bailouts of the Wall Street-based banks
following the 2008 collapse that was triggered by speculation in the housing market went to bail out individual and institutional investors from around the world, while the U.S.
debt was itself financed by these same investors from all over the world. According to a 2011 report by the U.S. government’s General Accounting Office (2011), the U.S. Federal
Reserve undertook a whopping $16 trillion in secret bailouts between 2007 and 2010 to banks and corporations from around the world. But then the banks and institutional
As opportunity for
investors simply recycled trillions of dollars they received in bailout money into new speculative activities in global commodities markets.

speculative investment in one sector dries up the TCC simply turns to another sector to unload its
surplus. The latest outlet for surplus capital at the time of writing (late 2017) seems to be the overvalued tech, or Information Technology ( IT) sector
(although the stock market as a whole was grossly inflated), as well as in Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies . Institutional investors, especially
speculative hedge and mutual funds, have poured billions of dollars into the tech sector since the 2008 Great Recession, turning it into a major new outlet for uninvested capital in
the face of stagnation. Investment in the IT sector jumped from $17 billion in the 1970s to $175 billion in 1990, then to $496 billion in 2000, on the eve of the bursting of the turn-
of-century dot-com bubble, but then climbed up again to new heights after 2008, surpassing $700 billion as 2017 drew to a close (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2017).

The gap between the productive economy, what the media calls the “real economy,” and “fictitious capital” – that is,
money thrown into circulation without any base in commodities or in productive activity – has
reached mind-boggling levels. Gross world product, or the total value of goods and services produced worldwide, for instance, stood at some $75 trillion
in 2015, whereas currency speculation alone amounted to $5.3 trillion a day (McLeod, 2014) and the global derivatives market was estimated at an astonishing $1.2 quadrillion

(Maverick, 2015). The “real economy” has also been kept sputtering along by the expansion of credit to
consumers and to governments, especially in the Global North and among new middle and professional layers and high-income groups in the Global
South, to sustain spending and consumption. In the United States, which has long been the “market of last resort” for the global economy, household debt is

higher than it has been for almost all of postwar history . In 2016 U.S. households owed nearly $13 trillion in student loans,
credit card debt, auto loans, and mortgages (Oyedele, 2015 ). In just about every OECD country the ratio of income to

household debt remains historically high and has steadily deteriorated since 2008 (OECD, 2015).
The TCC has also turned to raiding and sacking public finance, which has been reconfigured through austerity, bailouts, corporate
subsidies, government debt and the global bond market as governments transfer wealth directly and indirectly from working people
to the TCC. The global bond market – an indicator of total government debt worldwide – had already reached $100 trillion by 2011 (Obryn, 2015). Governments

issue bonds to investors in order to close government budget deficits and also to subsidize private
accumulation so as to keep the economy going. They then have to pay back these bonds (with interest)
by extracting taxes from current and future wages of the working class. Already by the late 20th century state income
brought in by bonds often just went right back to creditors. Thus the reconfiguration of state finances amounts over time to a transfer of wealth from global labor to transnational
capital; a claim by transnational capital on future wages, and a shift in the burden of the crisis to the working and popular classes. In the perverse world of predatory transnational
finance capital debt and deficits themselves became new sources of financial speculation that allow the TCC to raid and sack public budgets. Governments facing insolvency in the
wake of the Great Recession turned to bond emissions in order to stay afloat, which allowed transnational investors to unload surplus into these sovereign debt markets that they
themselves helped to create. Gone are the times that such bonds are bought and held to maturity. They are bought and sold by individual and institutional investors in frenzied 24-
hour worldwide trading and bet on continuously through such mechanisms as credit default swaps that shift their values and make bond markets a high stakes gamble of volatility
and risk for investors. The toxic mixture of public finance and private transnational finance capital in this age of global capitalism constitutes a new battlefield in which the global
rich are waging a war against the global poor and working classes. This becomes a critical part of the story of the global po lice state as resistance to this financial pillage mounts

such financial pillage cannot resolve the crisis of overaccumulation and ends up
around the world. Yet

aggravating it in the long run as the transfer of wealth from workers to the TCC further constricts
the market. Data from 2010 showed that companies from the United States were sitting on $1.8 trillion in uninvested cash in that year. Corporate profits have been at near
record highs at the same time that corporate investment declined (The Economist, 2016). As we progressed into the 21st century massive concentrations of transnational finance
capital were destabilizing the system and global capitalism ran up against the limits of financial fixes. The result is ever-greater underlying instability in the global economy.
Militarized Accumulation and Accumulation by Repression Yet there is another mechanism that has sustained the global economy and that pushes the system towards a global
police state: militarized accumulation. While it is true that unprecedented global inequalities can only be sustained by ever more repressive and ubiquitous systems of social control

the TCC has acquired a vested interest in war,

and repression, it is equally evident that quite apart from political considerations,

conflict, and repression as a means of accumulation . As war and state-sponsored repression

become increasingly privatized, the interests of a broad array of capitalist groups shift the political, social, and ideological climate towards generating
and sustaining social conflict – such as in the Middle East – and in expanding systems of warfare, repression, surveillance, and social control. The so-

called wars on drugs and terrorism, the undeclared wars on immigrants, refugees, and
gangs (and poor, dark-skinned, and working class youth more generally), the
construction of border walls,
immigrant detention centers, prison-industrial complexes, systems of
mass surveillance, and the spread of private security guard and
mercenary companies, have all become major sources of profit-making .
A cursory glance at U.S. news headlines in the first few months of the Trump government illustrated this militarized accumulation. The day after Donald Trump’s electoral victory,

given
the stock price of Corrections Corporation of America, the largest for-profit immigrant detention and prison company in the United States, soared 40 percent,

Trump’s promise to deport millions of immigrants. The stock price of another leading private
prison and immigrant detention company, Geo Group, saw its stock prices triple in the first few
months of the Trump regime (the company had contributed $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration and was then awarded with a $110 million contract to build
a new immigrant detention center in California; Le, 2017). Military contractors such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin
report spikes each time there is a new flare-up in the Middle East conflict. Within hours of the
April 6, 2017 U.S. tomahawk missile bombardment of Syria, the company that builds those
missiles, Raytheon, reported an increase in its stock value by $1 billion . Hundreds of private
firms from around the world put in bids to construct Trump’s infamous U.S.– Mexico border wall
(Robinson, 2017a). The attacks of September 11, 2001 were a turning point in the construction of a global police state. The U.S. state took advantage of

those attacks to militarize the global economy while it and other states around the world passed
draconian “anti-terrorist” security legislation and escalated military (“defense”) spending. The Pentagon budget
increased 91 percent in real terms between 1998 and 2011, and even apart from special war appropriations, it increased by nearly 50 percent in real terms during this period. In the
decade from 2001 to 2011 military industry profits nearly quadrupled. Worldwide, total defense outlays (military, intelligence agencies, Homeland Security/ Defense) grew by 50
percent from 2006 to 2015, from $1.4 trillion to $2.03 trillion (Robinson, 2017a). The “war on terrorism,” with its escalation of military spending and repression alongside social
austerity, has collateral political and ideological functions. It legitimates the new transnational social control systems and the creation of the global police state in the name of

The circuits of militarized

security. It allows states to criminalize social movements, resistance struggles, and “undesirable” populations.

accumulation coercively open up opportunities for capital accumulation worldwide, either on the
heels of military force or through states’ contracting out to transnational corporate capital the
production and execution of social control and warfare. Hence the generation of conflicts and the repression of social movements and
vulnerable populations around the world becomes an accumulation strategy independent of any political objectives. This type of permanent global warfare involves both low and
high-intensity wars, “humanitarian missions,” “drug interdiction operations,” “anti-crime sweeps,” undocumented immigrant roundups, and so on. Few developments in recent
decades, by way of example, have been so functional to the global capitalist assault on the working and oppressed peoples of the Americas – and so illustrative of accumulation by
repression – than the so-called “war on drugs.” This war constitutes the axis around which the vast program of militarized accumulation and capitalist globalization revolves in
Mexico, Colombia, Central America, and elsewhere in the Western hemisphere, a multi-pronged instrument of the TCC for primitive accumulation and capitalist globalization that
links the transnational military–industrial–security complex with neo-liberal reform and repression of social movements (Gilber, 2011; Hristov, 2014; Paley, 2014). And in the
United States, as documented in Michelle Alexander’s (2012) bestseller, The New Jim Crow, the farcical war on drugs has been a mechanism for the mass incarceration of surplus

As spin-off effects of military spending flow through the open veins

African American, Chicano, and poor white labor.

of the global economy – that is, the integrated network structures of the global production,
services, and financial system – it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between military
and non-military dimensions of a global war economy. In this regard and crucial to the global police state is the development of new
technologies associated with digitalization and what is now referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. The tech sector is now at the cutting edge of capitalist globalization and is
driving the digitalization of the entire global economy (see, e.g., Srnicek, 2017). Computer and information technology (CIT) first introduced in the 1980s provided the original

the fourth
technological basis for globalization. In recent years there has been another wave of technological development that has brought us to the verge of

industrial revolution, based on robotics, 3-D printing, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence
(AI) and machine learning, bio- and nanotechnology, quantum and cloud computing, new forms
of energy storage, and autonomous vehicles. Marx and Engels (1978/1848) famously declared in The Communist Manifesto that “all that is
solid melts into air” under the dizzying pace of change wrought by capitalism. Now the world economy stands at the brink of another period of massive restructuring. At the

heart of this restructuring is the digital economy based on more advanced information technology,
on the collection, processing, and analysis of data, and on the application of digitalization to
every aspect of global society, including war and repression. CIT has revolutionized warfare and
the modalities of stateorganized militarized accumulation, including the military application of
vast new technologies and the further fusion of private accumulation with state militarization.
The new systems of warfare and repression made possible by more advanced digitalization
include AI-powered automated weaponry such as unmanned attack and transportation
vehicles, robot soldiers, a new generation of “superdrones,” microwave guns that
immobilize, cyber attack and info-warfare, biometric identification, bio weapons, state data
mining, and global electronic surveillance that allows for the tracking and control of every
movement (see, e.g., Graham, 2010). Militarized accumulation and accumulation by repression – already a centerpiece of global capitalism – may become ever more
important as it fuses with new fourth industrial revolution technologies, not just as a means of maintaining control but as expanding outlets for accumulated surplus that stave off
economic collapse.

The alternative is to reject reformism and engage in collective grassroots

struggles to counter the contradictions of modern neoliberalism
Darder 15 (Dr. Antonia Darder is an internationally recognized scholar, artist, poet, activist,
and public intellectual. She holds the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral
Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University and is also Professor
Emerita of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. “Pointing the Way toward a More Socially Just World”
https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/2261-neoliberalizing-educational-reform.pdf//GHS-SG)
Toward A Coherent Political Vision Of Struggle Since no form of oppression is ever complete and history remains, as Freire (1998) often
reminded us, an unfinished affair, there aremany who today work diligently to raise concerns and to struggle against the
national and global impact of neoliberal policies on society and the environment. As is well documented in this
volume, there have been demands for educational change made by both union and community activists.

Immigrant rights groups have brought their concerns to the arena of educational debate. Student
union organizations at various universities have launched important challenges to the neoliberal
transformation of higher education. Unfortunately, at times, even these efforts have become inadvertently neoliberalized, in that they have
remained often isolated from one another, focused on single issues, and more attentive to
individual concerns. As a consequence, it has been tough to forge a larger political project for change, where collective solidarity and structural reinvention remain
ever at the center, even when tending to particularistic concerns. In the absence of such a political vision, seldom can local efforts alone lead to

systemic change of hegemonic structures that both reproduce and perpetuate gross inequalities. What this points to is the need for a
coherent vision of social struggle in this country and internationally, where systemic changes are, indeed, the
catalytic imperative that drives our various political efforts to reclaim collective control of
our schools, our labor, our communities, and our lives . Toward this end, Paulo Freire (1997) insisted that the oppressive system
of capitalist production could not be altered without simultaneous collective efforts to democratize

schools and the larger society—which, incidentally, is exactly what neoliberal reform strategies stifle through the logic of the marketplace and the quest
for economic supremacy that inform the politics of neoliberal reformism. Not surprisingly, Freire argued, instead, that we fight against reformism and

use “the contradictions of reformist practice to defeat it” (p. 74). To help counter these contradictions, Freire urged us to
construct within schools and communities what FOREWORD xv he called “ advanced forms of social organizations …
capable of surpassing this articulated chaos of corporate interests ” (p. 36). This again points to the
need to challenge coherently neoliberal policies that promote corporate deregulation, unjust practices of the free market, bootstrap
accountability, and rampant individualism. Furthermore, the underlying focus of our work at every level must entail a

critical challenge to the social and material structures of capitalism and the neoliberal adherence
to the false notion that a free-market equals democracy. The struggle for systemic social change is, indeed, made more difficult in the
current climate, where neoliberalism has made a farce of the democratic ideal of “civic engagement,” subterfuging the public good and the strength of our differences. To counter

this travesty, we must move in theory and practice beyond reformism , as Freire (1997) suggested, and embrace
through our daily praxis a larger political project for educational and societal transformation . This
demands from us a more profound sense of political affiliation and a reinvestment in the collective

power of social movement . Toward this end, we can strive to become more politically conscious and vigilant in
our responses to the world, so that we do not fall prey to the common contradictions of neoliberalism that easily betray our liberatory dreams. This
requires that we understanding, as did Freire, that no one exists outside the system (Darder, 2015); and as such, a purity of
politics or sectarianism are not the answer. Rather, we must enter into critical engagement with the complexities and

nuanced ways in which hegemony impacts our lives as educators and world citizens, as well as the many
social differences that exist among us, as a consequence of our cultural histories and material conditions of survival. Similarly, to prevent the structural

reproduction of oppression, so common to our world, also necessitates an ideological and epistemological
shift in how we make meaning , define problems , seek solutions , and enact institutional and
communal change . And none of this can transpire outside of an ethical and moral commitment to
democratic participation, the dignity of human rights, and the struggle for economic justice. Toward this end, our work in schools and
communities requires the solid integration of critical democratic principles, in cultural, political,
and economic terms. At the heart of such a concept is recognition that the process of liberation , whether in the classroom or the larger
society, can only be enacted through a coherent political vision of struggle , where neither unity nor difference is
sacrificed. Further, our collective strategies of struggle must also fully reflect and correspond to the

contemporary historical moment. Human emancipatory strategies are both longstanding and dynamic ,
defined by the historicity of their emergence. There can simply be no return to the good ole days even of the 60s, which were—if truth be told—often mired in a contradictory and
Eurocentric epistemology of assimilation, white privilege, patriarchy, individualism, and authoritarianism, even within progressive organizational contexts (Darder, 2015). Yet,

despite historical contradictions, we must nevertheless continue to forge collectively an

emancipatory vision of education and society—one that can point the way toward a more socially just world.
 1NC Generic Short
<INSERT LINK>

Capitalism leads to the rise of racist and facist powers along with
environmental destruction
Faber 18 (6/14/18, Daniel Faber is director of the Northeastern Environmental Justice Research
Collaborative in Boston. He co-founded the international journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
and is the author or editor of several books, including Foundations for Social Change. “Global
Capitalism, Reactionary Neoliberalism, and the Deepening of Environmental Injustices”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10455752.2018.1464250?needAccess=true//TU-
SG)

Introduction The systemic crisis of neoliberal capitalism is not only economic and ecological in nature, as is manifest in the
explosive growth in global economic and ecological inequalities, but is also witnessed as a growing crisis of legitimacy for traditional

political parties and ruling power structures that have long controlled the system. The political
manifestations of this crisis can be seen everywhere, especially in the United States with the election of Donald Trump to the
Presidency (Faber et al. 2017). It is also witnessed by the rise of authoritarian and proto-fascist forces in Latin America,

Asia, and the Pacific; the growing power of racist, anti-immigrant parties in Italy, and northern and east-central
Europe; and the weakening legitimacy of European labor and social democratic parties (and the challenges to the European Union itself, as seen in UK’s Brexit). The

larger, system-wide crisis of global capitalism is spawning a new subjective political voice in the
form of reactionary populism. Termed xenophobic authoritarianism by Inglehart and Norris, reactionary populism discourse typically
favors mono-culturalism over multiculturalism, national self-interest over international cooperation and development aid, closed
borders over the free flow of people, ideas, labor and capital, and traditionalism over progressive and liberal social values. Hence Trump’s
rhetoric seeks to stir up a potent mix of racial resentment, intolerance of multiculturalism,
nationalistic isolationism, nostalgia for past glories, mistrust of outsiders, traditional misogyny
and sexism, the appeal of forceful strong-man leadership, attack-dog politics, and racial and anti-
Muslim animus. (Inglehart and Norris 2016, 7) As such, Trump’s presidency represents the ascendancy of an even
more hardnosed brand of capitalism. The rise of rightwing populism is a response to the failures of what Nancy Ingehart and Norris (2017) terms
“progressive” neoliberalism to provide adequate economic security to broad swaths of the world’s working and middle classes. In the United States progressive neoliberalism was
predicated in good part on an uneasy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic Party, and many of the more mainstream organizations within new social movements working
on feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, antiracism, and LGBTQIA issues. This uneasy alliance revolved around an economic agenda for the deregulation of the banks
and financialization of the economy, free trade agreements, a rollback of the welfare state and some environmental measures, and the projection of U.S. military power abroad.

famously co-opted mainstream environmentalists and engaged in

Both the Clinton and Obama administrations

preemptive “containment” of costly and far-reaching environmental policy proposals. Both administrations
sought accommodation with the environmental and environmental justice (EJ) movements by allowing limited victories in specific instances of high-profile public mobilization. In
exchange the polluterindustrial complex would be rewarded with weaker regulations, generous subsidies and access to energy and other natural resources on federal lands, and

concessions to industry often came at the expense of other battles being

other forms of economic compensation. These

waged by grassroots environmental organizations around the country.

The alternative is to reject reformism and engage in collective grassroots

struggles to counter the contradictions of modern neoliberalism
Darder 15 (Dr. Antonia Darder is an internationally recognized scholar, artist, poet, activist,
and public intellectual. She holds the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral
Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University and is also Professor
Emerita of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. “Pointing the Way toward a More Socially Just World”
https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/2261-neoliberalizing-educational-reform.pdf//GHS-SG)
Toward A Coherent Political Vision Of Struggle Since no form of oppression is ever complete and history remains, as Freire (1998) often
reminded us, an unfinished affair, there aremany who today work diligently to raise concerns and to struggle against the
national and global impact of neoliberal policies on society and the environment. As is well documented in this
volume, there have been demands for educational change made by both union and community activists.

Immigrant rights groups have brought their concerns to the arena of educational debate. Student
union organizations at various universities have launched important challenges to the neoliberal
transformation of higher education. Unfortunately, at times, even these efforts have become inadvertently neoliberalized, in that they have
remained often isolated from one another, focused on single issues, and more attentive to
individual concerns. As a consequence, it has been tough to forge a larger political project for change, where collective solidarity and structural reinvention remain
ever at the center, even when tending to particularistic concerns. In the absence of such a political vision, seldom can local efforts alone lead to

systemic change of hegemonic structures that both reproduce and perpetuate gross inequalities. What this points to is the need for a
coherent vision of social struggle in this country and internationally, where systemic changes are, indeed, the
catalytic imperative that drives our various political efforts to reclaim collective control of
our schools, our labor, our communities, and our lives . Toward this end, Paulo Freire (1997) insisted that the oppressive system
of capitalist production could not be altered without simultaneous collective efforts to democratize

schools and the larger society—which, incidentally, is exactly what neoliberal reform strategies stifle through the logic of the marketplace and the quest
for economic supremacy that inform the politics of neoliberal reformism. Not surprisingly, Freire argued, instead, that we fight against reformism and

use “the contradictions of reformist practice to defeat it” (p. 74). To help counter these contradictions, Freire urged us to
construct within schools and communities what FOREWORD xv he called “ advanced forms of social organizations …
capable of surpassing this articulated chaos of corporate interests ” (p. 36). This again points to the
need to challenge coherently neoliberal policies that promote corporate deregulation, unjust practices of the free market, bootstrap
accountability, and rampant individualism. Furthermore, the underlying focus of our work at every level must entail a

critical challenge to the social and material structures of capitalism and the neoliberal adherence
to the false notion that a free-market equals democracy. The struggle for systemic social change is, indeed, made more difficult in the
current climate, where neoliberalism has made a farce of the democratic ideal of “civic engagement,” subterfuging the public good and the strength of our differences. To counter

this travesty, we must move in theory and practice beyond reformism , as Freire (1997) suggested, and embrace
through our daily praxis a larger political project for educational and societal transformation. This
demands from us a more profound sense of political affiliation and a reinvestment in the collective

power of social movement . Toward this end, we can strive to become more politically conscious and vigilant in
our responses to the world, so that we do not fall prey to the common contradictions of neoliberalism that easily betray our liberatory dreams. This
requires that we understanding, as did Freire, that no one exists outside the system (Darder, 2015); and as such, a purity of
politics or sectarianism are not the answer. Rather, we must enter into critical engagement with the complexities and

nuanced ways in which hegemony impacts our lives as educators and world citizens, as well as the many
social differences that exist among us, as a consequence of our cultural histories and material conditions of survival. Similarly, to prevent the structural

reproduction of oppression, so common to our world, also necessitates an ideological and epistemological
shift in how we make meaning , define problems , seek solutions , and enact institutional and
communal change . And none of this can transpire outside of an ethical and moral commitment to
democratic participation, the dignity of human rights, and the struggle for economic justice. Toward this end, our work in schools and
communities requires the solid integration of critical democratic principles, in cultural, political,
and economic terms. At the heart of such a concept is recognition that the process of liberation , whether in the classroom or the larger
society, can only be enacted through a coherent political vision of struggle , where neither unity nor difference is

sacrificed. Further, our collective strategies of struggle must also fully reflect and correspond to the

contemporary historical moment. Human emancipatory strategies are both longstanding and dynamic ,
defined by the historicity of their emergence. There can simply be no return to the good ole days even of the 60s, which were—if truth be told—often mired in a contradictory and
Eurocentric epistemology of assimilation, white privilege, patriarchy, individualism, and authoritarianism, even within progressive organizational contexts (Darder, 2015). Yet,
despite historical contradictions, we must nevertheless continue to forge collectively an
emancipatory vision of education and society—one that can point the way toward a more socially just world.
FW
 2NC Pedagogy First
Only our framework accesses public sphere dialogue – pedagogy key.
Giroux 12.
Henry Giroux – McMaster University Professor for Scholarship in the Public Interest and The
Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy. “Dangerous Pedagogy in the Age of
Casino Capitalism and Religious Fundamentalism.” February 29, 2012. http://www.truth-
out.org/news/item/6954:dangerous-pedagogy-in-the-age-of-casino-capitalism-and-religious-
fundamentalism
All over the world, the forces of neoliberalism are on the march, dismantling the historically guaranteed social provisions provided
by the welfare state, defining profit-making and market freedoms as the essence of democracy
while diminishing civil liberties as part of the alleged "war" against terrorism. Secure in its dystopian vision that there are
no alternatives to a market society, free-market fundamentalism eliminates issues of contingency,
struggle and social agency by celebrating the inevitability of economic laws in which the ethical ideal of intervening
in the world gives way to the idea that we "have no choice but to adapt both our hopes and our abilities to the

new global market." Coupled with an ever-expanding culture of fear , market freedoms seem securely grounded
in a defense of national security and the institutions of finance capital. Under such circumstances, a neoliberal model now bears down on

American society, threatening to turn it into an authoritarian state. The script is now familiar: there is
no such thing as the common good; market values become the template for shaping all aspects of
society; the free, possessive individual has no obligations to anything other than his or her self-
interest; profit-making is the essence of democracy; the government, and particularly the welfare state, is the arch-enemy of freedom;
private interests trump public values; consumerism is the essence of citizenship; privatization
is the essence of freedom; law and order is the new language for mobilizing shared fears rather than
shared responsibilities ; war is the new organizing principle for organizing society and the economy; theocracy now becomes the legitimating code for
punishing women, young people, the elderly, and those groups marginalized by class, race and ethnicity when religious moralism is needed to shore up the war against all social

order.[2] Given this current crisis,educators need a new political and pedagogical language for addressing the
changing contexts and issues facing a world in which capital draws upon an unprecedented convergence of
resources - financial, cultural, political, economic, scientific, military and technological - to
exercise powerful and diverse forms of control. If educators and others are to counter global capitalism’s increased
ability to separate the traditional nation-state-based space of politics from the transnational reach of power, it is crucial to develop

educational approaches that reject a collapse of the distinction between market liberties and civil liberties, a market economy and a market society. This suggests developing

forms of critical pedagogy capable of challenging neoliberalism and other anti-democratic

traditions, such as the emerging religious fundamentalism in the United States, while resurrecting a radical democratic project
that provides the basis for imagining a life beyond the "dream world" of capitalism. Under such
circumstances, education becomes more than testing, an obsession with accountability schemes, zero-tolerance policies and a

site for simply training students for the workforce. At stake here is recognizing the power of education in creating the

formative culture necessary to both challenge the various threats being mobilized against the very idea of justice and democracy while
also fighting for those public spheres and formative cultures that offer alternative modes of identity, social relations and politics.

The search for a new politics and a new critical language that crosses a range of theoretical divides must reinvigorate the
relationship between democracy, ethics, and political agency by expanding the meaning of the
pedagogical as a political practice while at the same time making the political more pedagogical. In the first instance, it is crucial to recognize that pedagogy has less

to do with the language of technique and methodology than it does with issues of politics and power. Pedagogy is a moral and political

practice that is always implicated in power relations and must be understood as a cultural politics that offers both a
particular version and vision of civic life, the future, and how we might construct representations of ourselves, others, and our physical and social environment. As Roger Simon
observes: As an introduction to, preparation for, and legitimation of particular forms of social life, education always presupposes a vision of the future. In this respect a curriculum
and its supporting pedagogy are a version of our own dreams for ourselves, our children, and our communities. But such dreams are never neutral; they are always someone's
dreams and to the degree that they are implicated in organizing the future for others they always have a moral and political dimension. It is in this respect that any discussion of
pedagogy must begin with a discussion of educational practice as a form of cultural politics, as a particular way in which a sense of identity, place, worth, and above all value is -
informed by practices which organize knowledge and meaning.[3] An oppositional cultural politics can take many forms, but given the current assault by neoliberalism on all
aspects of democratic public life, it seems imperative that educators revitalize the struggles to create conditions in which learning would be linked to social change in a wide
variety of social sites, and pedagogy would take on the task of regenerating both a renewed sense of social and political agency and a critical subversion of dominant power itself.
Making the political more pedagogical rests on the assumption that education takes place a variety of sites outside of the school. Under such circumstances, agency becomes the
site through which power is not transcended but reworked, replayed and restaged in productive ways. Central to my argument is the assumption that politics is not only about
power, but also, as Cornelius Castoriadis points out, "has to do with political judgements and value choices,"[4] indicating that questions of civic education and critical pedagogy
(learning how to become a skilled citizen) are central to the struggle over political agency and democracy. In this instance, critical pedagogy emphasizes critical reflexivity,
bridging the gap between learning and everyday life, understanding the connection between power and knowledge, and extending democratic rights and identities by using the
resources of history. However, among many educators and social theorists, there is a widespread refusal to recognize that this form of education is not only the foundation for
expanding and enabling political agency, but also that it takes place across a wide variety of public spheres mediated through the very force of culture itself. One of the central
tasks of any viable critical pedagogy would be to make visible alternative models of radical democratic relations in a wide variety of sites. These spaces can make the pedagogical
more political by raising fundamental questions such as: what is the relationship between social justice and the distribution of public resources and goods? What are the conditions,
knowledge and skills that are a prerequisite for civic literacy, political agency and social change? What kinds of identities, desires and social relations are being produced and
legitimated in diverse sites of teaching and learning? How might the latter prepare or undermine the ability of students to be self-reflective, exercise judgment, engage in critical
dialogues, and assume some responsibility for addressing the challenges to democracy at a national and global level? At the very least, such a project involves understanding and
critically engaging dominant public transcripts and values within a broader set of historical and institutional contexts. Making the political more pedagogical in this instance
suggests producing modes of knowledge and social practices in a variety of sites that not only affirm oppositional thinking, dissent and cultural work, but also offer opportunities
to mobilize instances of collective outrage and collective action. Such mobilization opposes glaring material inequities and the growing cynical belief that today's culture of
investment and finance makes it impossible to address many of the major social problems facing both the United States and the larger world. Most importantly, such work points to
the link between civic education, critical pedagogy and modes of oppositional political agency that are pivotal to creating a politics that promotes democratic values, relations,
autonomy and social change. Hints of such a politics is already evident in the various approaches the Occupy movement has taken in reclaiming the discourse of democracy and in
collectively challenging the values and practices of finance capital. Borrowing a line from Rachel Donadio, the Occupy movement protesters are raising questions about "what
happens to democracy when banks become more powerful than political institutions?"[5] What kind of education does it take, both in and out of schools, to recognize the
dissolution of democracy and the emergence of an authoritarian state? In taking up these questions and the challenges they pose, critical pedagogy proposes that education is a

Rather than viewing teaching as

form of political intervention in the world and is capable of creating the possibilities for social transformation.

technical practice, pedagogy, in the broadest critical sense, is premised on the assumption that
learning is not about processing received knowledge, but actually transforming knowledge as
part of a more expansive struggle for individual rights and social justice. This implies that any viable notion of
pedagogy and resistance should illustrate how knowledge, values, desire and social relations are always implicated in relations of power, and how such an understanding can be

The fundamental
used pedagogically and politically by students to further expand and deepen the imperatives of economic and political democracy.

challenge facing educators within the current age of neoliberalism, militarism and religious fundamentalism is
to provide the conditions for students to address how knowledge is related to the power of both
self-definition and social agency. In part, this means providing students with the skills, knowledge and
authority they need to inquire and act upon what it means to live in a substantive democracy , to
recognize anti-democratic forms of power, and to fight deeply rooted injustices in a society and world founded on systemic economic, racial and gendered
inequalities.
Impact
 1NC – Long
Global capitalism is unsustainable – absent change it causes extinction and
turns case
Robinson 18 (William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global studies and Latin
American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “Accumulation Crisis and
Global Police State” http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0896920518757054//TU-SG)
relationship between militarization and capitalism. If military
Half a century later it is time to update our understanding of the

Keynesianism referred to the purchase by the state of weapons systems and military equipment from defense subcontractors as a subsidy to private capital, there has

been in recent years, and especially since the events of September 11, 2001, a much more sweeping militarization of
the global economy and society. I suggest here that the concept of global police state captures the new historical moment. Such a global
police state is emerging as a response to the a crisis of world capitalism that is unprecedented, given its
magnitude, its global reach, the extent of ecological degradation and social deterioration , and the sheer scale of the

means of violence that is now deployed around the world. Global police state refers to three interrelated developments. First are the
ever more omnipresent systems of mass social control, repression, and warfare promoted by the
ruling groups to contain the real and the potential rebellion of the global working class and surplus
humanity. Second is how the global economy is itself based more and more on the development and

deployment of these systems of warfare, social control, and repression simply as a means of making profit and
continuing to accumulate capital in the face of stagnation – what I term militarized accumulation, or accumulation by repression – and that now goes well beyond military

increasing move towards political systems that can be characterized as 21st

Keynesianism. And third is the

century fascism, or even in a broader sense, as totalitarian. In referring to global police state I want to underscore how there
is an increasing convergence around global capitalism’s political need for social control and
repression and its economic need to perpetuate accumulation in the face of
overaccumulation and stagnation . Transnational capital has subordinated virtually the entire world’s population to its logic and its domination. In
this sense the world’s people live under a dictatorship of the transnational capitalist class, or TCC. The TCC as the hegemonic
fraction of capital on a world scale is not an internally unified or politically united group. It is delineated structurally by its grounding in global as distinct from nat ional markets
and circuits of accumulation and to this extent shares a common class interest and outlook in advancing capitalist globalization (for further discussion see, e.g., Robinson, 2004). I

transnational capital dictates the conditions under

mean here dictatorship in the literal (etymological) sense of the word, such that

which billions of people carry out their lives in the global economy and society. In this sense, it is a more
encompassing, powerful, omnipresence and deadly dictatorship than any other in history. At the same time, however, I mean dictatorship in the more figurative sense that, absent a
change of course, we are moving towards a political dictatorship of the TCC as it imposes and sustains its rule through a global police state played out differently in various parts
of the world. This dictatorship is reactive. We are seeing a breakdown worldwide of global capitalist hegemony. If the global working class and oppressed peoples were simply
passive there would be no need for such repression and control. Gramsci developed the concept of hegemony to refer to the attainment by ruling groups of stable forms of rule
based on “consensual” domination. Gramsci’s notion of hegemony (see, e.g., Gramsci, 1957) posits distinct forms of domination, in brief: coercive domination and consensual
domination. Hegemony involves the internalization on the part of the subordinate classes of the moral and cultural values, the codes of practical conduct, and the worldview of the
dominant classes or groups – in sum, the internalization by the oppressed of the social logic of the system of domination itself. In distinction to an outright dictatorship or military
regime, force and coercion in a hegemonic order are ever-present but may take a back seat to ideological control and other forms of cooptation. But now it is the revolt of the
oppressed and exploited populations around the world that is leading to the breakdown of consensual means of domination, compelling the TCC to impose increasingly coercive

major episode of crisis in the world capitalist

and repressive forms of rule. The Crisis of Global Capitalism Each

system has presented the potential for systemic change . Each has involved the
breakdown of state legitimacy , escalating class and social struggles , and military conflicts,
leading to a restructuring of the system, including new institutional arrangements , class relations,
and accumulation activities that eventually result in a restabilization of the system and renewed capitalist expansion. The current crisis shares aspects

of earlier system-wide structural crises, such as of the 1880s, the 1930s or the 1970s. But there are
six interrelated dimensions to the current crisis that I believe sets it apart from these earlier ones and
suggests that a simple restructuring of the system will not lead to its restabilization – that is, our
very survival now requires a revolution against global capitalism (Robinson,

2014). These six dimensions, in broad strokes, present a “big picture” context in which a global police state is emerging. First, the system is fast reaching
the ecological limits of its reproduction. We have already passed tipping points in climate
change, the nitrogen cycle, and diversity loss . For the first time ever, human conduct is intersecting with and
fundamentally altering the earth system in such a way that threatens to bring about a sixth mass
extinction (see, e.g., Foster et al., 2011; Moore, 2015). These ecological dimensions of global crisis have been brought to the forefront of the global agenda by the
worldwide environmental justice movement. Communities around the world have come under escalating repression as

they face off against transnational corporate plunder of their environment. While capitalism cannot be held solely
responsible for the ecological crisis, it is difficult to imagine that the environmental catastrophe can be

resolved within the capitalist system given capital’s implacable impulse to accumulate and
its accelerated commodification of nature . Second, the level of global social polarization and
inequality is unprecedented . The richest one percent of humanity in 2016 controlled over half of
the world’s wealth and 20 percent controlled 95 percent of that wealth, while the remaining 80 percent had to make do with just
five percent (Oxfam, 2017). These escalating inequalities fuel capitalism’s chronic problem of
overaccumulation: the TCC cannot find productive outlets to unload the enormous amounts
of surplus it has accumulated, leading to chronic stagnation in the world economy (see next section).
Such extreme levels of social polarization present a challenge of social control to dominant groups. As Trumpism in the United States as well as the rise of far-

right and neo-fascist movements in Europe so well illustrate, cooptation also involves the manipulation
of fear and insecurity among the downwardly mobile so that social anxiety is channeled towards
scapegoated communities. This psychosocial mechanism of displacing mass anxieties is not new, but it appears to be increasing around the world in the face
of the structural destabilization of capitalist globalization. Extreme inequality requires extreme violence and repression that

lend themselves to projects of 21st century fascism. Third, the sheer magnitude of the means of
violence and social control is unprecedented , as well as the magnitude and concentrated control over the means of global communication
and the production and circulation of symbols, images, and knowledge. Computerized wars , drone warfare , robot soldiers ,

bunker-buster bombs , a new generation of nuclear weapons , satellite surveillance , cyberwar ,

spatial control technology , and so forth, have changed the face of warfare, and more generally, of systems of social control and
repression. We have arrived at the panoptical surveillance society, a point brought home by Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013,

and the age of thought control by those who control global flows of communication and symbolic

production. If global capitalist crisis leads to a new world war the destruction would simply be unprecedented. Fourth, we are reaching limits to
the extensive expansion of capitalism , in the sense that there are no longer any new territories of
significance to integrate into world capitalism and new spaces to commodify are drying up. The
capitalist system is by its nature expansionary. In each earlier structural crisis, the system went
through a new round of extensive expansion – from waves of colonial conquest in earlier centuries, to the integration in the late 20th and early
21st centuries of the former socialist countries, China, India and other areas that had been marginally outside the system. There are no longer any new

territories to integrate into world capitalism. At the same time, the privatization of education,
health, utilities, basic services, and public lands is turning those spaces in global society that were
outside of capital’s control into “spaces of capital,” so that intensive expansion is reaching depths never before seen. What is
there left to commodify? Where can the system now expand? New spaces have to be violently cracked open and the peoples in these spaces must be
repressed by the global police state. Fifth, there is the rise of a vast surplus population inhabiting a “planet of

slums ” (Davis, 2007) pushed out of the productive economy, thrown into the margins, and subject to
sophisticated systems of social control and to destruction, into a mortal cycle of dispossession-exploitationexclusion. Crises
provide capital with the opportunity to accelerate the process of forcing greater productivity out
of fewer workers. The processes by which surplus labor is generated have accelerated under
globalization. Spatial reorganization has helped transnational capital to break the territorial-bound power of organized labor and impose new capital–labor relations
based on fragmentation, flexibilization, and the cheapening of labor. These developments, combined with a massive new round

of primitive accumulation and displacement of hundreds of millions, have given rise to a new
global army of superfluous labor that goes well beyond the traditional reserve army of labor that Marx discussed.
Global capitalism has no direct use for surplus humanity. But indirectly, it holds wages down
everywhere and makes new systems of 21st century slavery possible .1 Dominant groups face the challenge of how to
contain both the real and potential rebellion of surplus humanity. In addition, surplus humanity cannot consume and so as their ranks

expand the problem of overaccumulation becomes exacerbated. Sixth, there is an acute political
contradiction in global capitalism : economic globalization takes places within a nation-state system
of political authority. Transnational state apparatuses are incipient and have not been able to substitute for a leading nation-state with enough power and authority
to organize and stabilize the system, much less to impose regulations on transnational capital. In the age of capitalist globalization

governments must attract to the national territory transnational corporate investment, which
requires providing capital with all the incentives associated with neoliberalism – downward
pressure on wages, deregulation, austerity, and so on – that aggravate inequality, impoverishment,
and insecurity for working classes. Nation-states face a contradiction between the need to promote transnational capital accumulation in their territories
and their need to achieve political legitimacy. As a result, states around the world have been experiencing spiraling crises of legitimacy. This situation generates bewildering and
seemingly contradictory politics and also helps explain the resurgence of far-right and neo-fascist forces that espouse rhetoric of nationalism and protectionism even as they

promote neo-liberalism. Overaccumulation: Capitalism’s Achilles Heel The turn towards a global police state is structurally rooted in perhaps the fundamental
contradiction of capitalism: overaccumulation, which is interwoven with all six dimensions of global crisis discussed above. There is a vast
literature on capitalist crisis that I cannot reference here (but see: summary discussion and references in Robinson, 2014, Chapter 4; Kliman, 2011; Radical Perspectives on the

capitalist competition and class struggle push capital to reduce costs and/or increase
Crisis2). In sum,

productivity by increasing the organic composition of capital, which leads to the tendency for the
rate of profit to fall (Marx, 1978/1894). This tendency, the “most fundamental law” of political economy, is expressed as
overaccumulation crisis. The gap grows between what is (or could be) produced and what the
market can absorb . If capitalists cannot actually sell – or “unload” – the products of their
plantations, factories, and offices then they cannot make (“realize”) profit. They accumulate huge
amounts of surplus but do not find outlets to continue to profitably invest that surplus. Hence, if left
unchecked, the expanding social polarization that is endemic to capitalism results in crisis – in stagnation, recessions,
depressions, social upheavals, and war . Globalization has greatly exacerbated
overaccumulation. As capital went global from the 1970s onwards the emerging TCC was able to get around state intervention in the capitalist market and
undermine the redistributive programs that mass struggles of poor and working people had forced on the system in the 20th century. The extreme

concentration of the planet’s wealth in the hands of the few and the accelerated impoverishment
and dispossession of the majority means that the TCC cannot find productive outlets to unload
enormous amounts of surplus it has accumulated. A series of lesser jolts to the global economy, from the Mexico peso crisis of 1995, to the
Asian financial meltdown of 1997–1999 and its spread to several other regions, and then the dot-com busts and global recession of 2000–2001, were preludes to the 2008 collapse
The Great Recession – the worst crisis since the 1930s – marked the onset of a deep structural
of the global financial system.

crisis of overaccumulation. As uninvested capital accumulates, enormous pressures build up to

find outlets for unloading the surplus. Capitalist groups pressure states to create new opportunities for profit making. By the 21st century the TCC
turned above all to three mechanisms in order to sustain global accumulation in the face of overaccumulation . These were: financial speculation;

the plunder of public finances; and state-organized militarized accumulation. Deregulation of the
financial industry and the creation of a globally integrated financial system in recent decades have
allowed the TCC to unload trillions of dollars into speculation. The sequence of speculative waves in the global casino since the
1980s included real estate investments in the emerging global property market that inflated property values in one locality after another, wild stock market speculation leading to
periodic booms and busts, most notable the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2001, the phenomenal escalation of hedge-fund flows, currency speculation, and every imaginable
derivative, ranging from swaps, futures markets, collateralized debt obligations, asset pyramiding, and ponzi schemes. U.S. treasury bailouts of the Wall Street-based banks
following the 2008 collapse that was triggered by speculation in the housing market went to bail out individual and institutional investors from around the world, while the U.S.
debt was itself financed by these same investors from all over the world. According to a 2011 report by the U.S. government’s General Accounting Office (2011), the U.S. Federal
Reserve undertook a whopping $16 trillion in secret bailouts between 2007 and 2010 to banks and corporations from around the world. But then the banks and institutional

As opportunity for
investors simply recycled trillions of dollars they received in bailout money into new speculative activities in global commodities markets.

speculative investment in one sector dries up the TCC simply turns to another sector to unload its
surplus. The latest outlet for surplus capital at the time of writing (late 2017) seems to be the overvalued tech, or Information Technology ( IT) sector
(although the stock market as a whole was grossly inflated), as well as in Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies . Institutional investors, especially
speculative hedge and mutual funds, have poured billions of dollars into the tech sector since the 2008 Great Recession, turning it into a major new outlet for uninvested capital in
the face of stagnation. Investment in the IT sector jumped from $17 billion in the 1970s to $175 billion in 1990, then to $496 billion in 2000, on the eve of the bursting of the turn-
of-century dot-com bubble, but then climbed up again to new heights after 2008, surpassing $700 billion as 2017 drew to a close (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 2017).

The gap between the productive economy, what the media calls the “real economy,” and “fictitious capital” – that is,
money thrown into circulation without any base in commodities or in productive activity – has
reached mind-boggling levels. Gross world product, or the total value of goods and services produced worldwide, for instance, stood at some $75 trillion
in 2015, whereas currency speculation alone amounted to $5.3 trillion a day (McLeod, 2014) and the global derivatives market was estimated at an astonishing $1.2 quadrillion

(Maverick, 2015). The “real economy” has also been kept sputtering along by the expansion of credit to
consumers and to governments, especially in the Global North and among new middle and professional layers and high-income groups in the Global
South, to sustain spending and consumption. In the United States, which has long been the “market of last resort” for the global economy, household debt is

higher than it has been for almost all of postwar history . In 2016 U.S. households owed nearly $13 trillion in student loans,
credit card debt, auto loans, and mortgages (Oyedele, 2015 ). In just about every OECD country the ratio of income to

household debt remains historically high and has steadily deteriorated since 2008 (OECD, 2015).
The TCC has also turned to raiding and sacking public finance, which has been reconfigured through austerity, bailouts, corporate
subsidies, government debt and the global bond market as governments transfer wealth directly and indirectly from working people
to the TCC. The global bond market – an indicator of total government debt worldwide – had already reached $100 trillion by 2011 (Obryn, 2015). Governments

issue bonds to investors in order to close government budget deficits and also to subsidize private
accumulation so as to keep the economy going. They then have to pay back these bonds (with interest)
by extracting taxes from current and future wages of the working class. Already by the late 20th century state income
brought in by bonds often just went right back to creditors. Thus the reconfiguration of state finances amounts over time to a transfer of wealth from global labor to transnational
capital; a claim by transnational capital on future wages, and a shift in the burden of the crisis to the working and popular classes. In the perverse world of predatory transnational
finance capital debt and deficits themselves became new sources of financial speculation that allow the TCC to raid and sack public budgets. Governments facing insolvency in the
wake of the Great Recession turned to bond emissions in order to stay afloat, which allowed transnational investors to unload surplus into these sovereign debt markets that they
themselves helped to create. Gone are the times that such bonds are bought and held to maturity. They are bought and sold by individual and institutional investors in frenzied 24-
hour worldwide trading and bet on continuously through such mechanisms as credit default swaps that shift their values and make bond markets a high stakes gamble of volatility
and risk for investors. The toxic mixture of public finance and private transnational finance capital in this age of global capitalism constitutes a new battlefield in which the global
rich are waging a war against the global poor and working classes. This becomes a critical part of the story of the global po lice state as resistance to this financial pillage mounts

such financial pillage cannot resolve the crisis of overaccumulation and ends up
around the world. Yet

aggravating it in the long run as the transfer of wealth from workers to the TCC further constricts
the market. Data from 2010 showed that companies from the United States were sitting on $1.8 trillion in uninvested cash in that year. Corporate profits have been at near
record highs at the same time that corporate investment declined (The Economist, 2016). As we progressed into the 21st century massive concentrations of transnational finance
capital were destabilizing the system and global capitalism ran up against the limits of financial fixes. The result is ever-greater underlying instability in the global economy.
Militarized Accumulation and Accumulation by Repression Yet there is another mechanism that has sustained the global economy and that pushes the system towards a global
police state: militarized accumulation. While it is true that unprecedented global inequalities can only be sustained by ever more repressive and ubiquitous systems of social control

the TCC has acquired a vested interest in war,

and repression, it is equally evident that quite apart from political considerations,

conflict, and repression as a means of accumulation . As war and state-sponsored repression

become increasingly privatized, the interests of a broad array of capitalist groups shift the political, social, and ideological climate towards generating
and sustaining social conflict – such as in the Middle East – and in expanding systems of warfare, repression, surveillance, and social control. The so-

called wars on drugs and terrorism, the undeclared wars on immigrants, refugees, and
gangs (and poor, dark-skinned, and working class youth more generally), the
construction of border walls,
immigrant detention centers, prison-industrial complexes, systems of
mass surveillance, and the spread of private security guard and
mercenary companies, have all become major sources of profit-making .
A cursory glance at U.S. news headlines in the first few months of the Trump government illustrated this militarized accumulation. The day after Donald Trump’s electoral victory,

given
the stock price of Corrections Corporation of America, the largest for-profit immigrant detention and prison company in the United States, soared 40 percent,

Trump’s promise to deport millions of immigrants. The stock price of another leading private
prison and immigrant detention company, Geo Group, saw its stock prices triple in the first few
months of the Trump regime (the company had contributed $250,000 to Trump’s inauguration and was then awarded with a $110 million contract to build
a new immigrant detention center in California; Le, 2017). Military contractors such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin

report spikes each time there is a new flare-up in the Middle East conflict. Within hours of the
April 6, 2017 U.S. tomahawk missile bombardment of Syria, the company that builds those
missiles, Raytheon, reported an increase in its stock value by $1 billion . Hundreds of private
firms from around the world put in bids to construct Trump’s infamous U.S.– Mexico border wall
 The U.S. state took advantage of
(Robinson, 2017a). The attacks of September 11, 2001 were a turning point in the construction of a global police state.

those attacks to militarize the global economy while it and other states around the world passed
draconian “anti-terrorist” security legislation and escalated military (“defense”) spending. The Pentagon budget
increased 91 percent in real terms between 1998 and 2011, and even apart from special war appropriations, it increased by nearly 50 percent in real terms during this period. In the
decade from 2001 to 2011 military industry profits nearly quadrupled. Worldwide, total defense outlays (military, intelligence agencies, Homeland Security/ Defense) grew by 50
percent from 2006 to 2015, from $1.4 trillion to $2.03 trillion (Robinson, 2017a). The “war on terrorism,” with its escalation of military spending and repression alongside social
austerity, has collateral political and ideological functions. It legitimates the new transnational social control systems and the creation of the global police state in the name of

The circuits of militarized

security. It allows states to criminalize social movements, resistance struggles, and “undesirable” populations.

accumulation coercively open up opportunities for capital accumulation worldwide, either on the
heels of military force or through states’ contracting out to transnational corporate capital the
production and execution of social control and warfare. Hence the generation of conflicts and the repression of social movements and
vulnerable populations around the world becomes an accumulation strategy independent of any political objectives. This type of permanent global warfare involves both low and
high-intensity wars, “humanitarian missions,” “drug interdiction operations,” “anti-crime sweeps,” undocumented immigrant roundups, and so on. Few developments in recent
decades, by way of example, have been so functional to the global capitalist assault on the working and oppressed peoples of the Americas – and so illustrative of accumulation by
repression – than the so-called “war on drugs.” This war constitutes the axis around which the vast program of militarized accumulation and capitalist globalization revolves in
Mexico, Colombia, Central America, and elsewhere in the Western hemisphere, a multi-pronged instrument of the TCC for primitive accumulation and capitalist globalization that
links the transnational military–industrial–security complex with neo-liberal reform and repression of social movements (Gilber, 2011; Hristov, 2014; Paley, 2014). And in the
United States, as documented in Michelle Alexander’s (2012) bestseller, The New Jim Crow, the farcical war on drugs has been a mechanism for the mass incarceration of surplus

As spin-off effects of military spending flow through the open veins

African American, Chicano, and poor white labor.

of the global economy – that is, the integrated network structures of the global production,
services, and financial system – it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between military
and non-military dimensions of a global war economy. In this regard and crucial to the global police state is the development of new
technologies associated with digitalization and what is now referred to as the fourth industrial revolution. The tech sector is now at the cutting edge of capitalist globalization and is
driving the digitalization of the entire global economy (see, e.g., Srnicek, 2017). Computer and information technology (CIT) first introduced in the 1980s provided the original

the fourth
technological basis for globalization. In recent years there has been another wave of technological development that has brought us to the verge of

industrial revolution, based on robotics, 3-D printing, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence
(AI) and machine learning, bio- and nanotechnology, quantum and cloud computing, new forms
of energy storage, and autonomous vehicles. Marx and Engels (1978/1848) famously declared in The Communist Manifesto that “all that is
solid melts into air” under the dizzying pace of change wrought by capitalism. Now the world economy stands at the brink of another period of massive restructuring. At the

heart of this restructuring is the digital economy based on more advanced information technology,
on the collection, processing, and analysis of data, and on the application of digitalization to
every aspect of global society, including war and repression. CIT has revolutionized warfare and
the modalities of stateorganized militarized accumulation, including the military application of
vast new technologies and the further fusion of private accumulation with state militarization.
The new systems of warfare and repression made possible by more advanced digitalization
include AI-powered automated weaponry such as unmanned attack and transportation
vehicles, robot soldiers, a new generation of “superdrones,” microwave guns that
immobilize, cyber attack and info-warfare, biometric identification, bio weapons, state data
mining, and global electronic surveillance that allows for the tracking and control of every
movement (see, e.g., Graham, 2010). Militarized accumulation and accumulation by repression – already a centerpiece of global capitalism – may become ever more
important as it fuses with new fourth industrial revolution technologies, not just as a means of maintaining control but as expanding outlets for accumulated surplus that stave off
economic collapse.
 1NC – Short
Capitalism leads to the rise of racist and facist powers along with
environmental destruction
Faber 18 (6/14/18, Daniel Faber is director of the Northeastern Environmental Justice Research
Collaborative in Boston. He co-founded the international journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
and is the author or editor of several books, including Foundations for Social Change. “Global
Capitalism, Reactionary Neoliberalism, and the Deepening of Environmental Injustices”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10455752.2018.1464250?needAccess=true//TU-
SG)

Introduction The systemic crisis of neoliberal capitalism is not only economic and ecological in nature, as is manifest in the
explosive growth in global economic and ecological inequalities, but is also witnessed as a growing crisis of legitimacy for traditional

political parties and ruling power structures that have long controlled the system. The political
manifestations of this crisis can be seen everywhere, especially in the United States with the election of Donald Trump to the
Presidency (Faber et al. 2017). It is also witnessed by the rise of authoritarian and proto-fascist forces in Latin America,

Asia, and the Pacific; the growing power of racist, anti-immigrant parties in Italy, and northern and east-central
Europe; and the weakening legitimacy of European labor and social democratic parties (and the challenges to the European Union itself, as seen in UK’s Brexit). The

larger, system-wide crisis of global capitalism is spawning a new subjective political voice in the
form of reactionary populism. Termed xenophobic authoritarianism by Inglehart and Norris, reactionary populism discourse typically
favors mono-culturalism over multiculturalism, national self-interest over international cooperation and development aid, closed
borders over the free flow of people, ideas, labor and capital, and traditionalism over progressive and liberal social values. Hence Trump’s
rhetoric seeks to stir up a potent mix of racial resentment, intolerance of multiculturalism,
nationalistic isolationism, nostalgia for past glories, mistrust of outsiders, traditional misogyny
and sexism, the appeal of forceful strong-man leadership, attack-dog politics, and racial and anti-
Muslim animus. (Inglehart and Norris 2016, 7) As such, Trump’s presidency represents the ascendancy of an even
more hardnosed brand of capitalism. The rise of rightwing populism is a response to the failures of what Nancy Ingehart and Norris (2017) terms
“progressive” neoliberalism to provide adequate economic security to broad swaths of the world’s working and middle classes. In the United States progressive neoliberalism was
predicated in good part on an uneasy alliance between Wall Street, the Democratic Party, and many of the more mainstream organizations within new social movements working
on feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, antiracism, and LGBTQIA issues. This uneasy alliance revolved around an economic agenda for the deregulation of the banks
and financialization of the economy, free trade agreements, a rollback of the welfare state and some environmental measures, and the projection of U.S. military power abroad.

famously co-opted mainstream environmentalists and engaged in

Both the Clinton and Obama administrations

preemptive “containment” of costly and far-reaching environmental policy proposals. Both administrations
sought accommodation with the environmental and environmental justice (EJ) movements by allowing limited victories in specific instances of high-profile public mobilization. In
exchange the polluterindustrial complex would be rewarded with weaker regulations, generous subsidies and access to energy and other natural resources on federal lands, and

concessions to industry often came at the expense of other battles being

other forms of economic compensation. These

waged by grassroots environmental organizations around the country.

 2NC – War
Specifically in the age of trump – capitalism is driving conflict escalation
Robinson 17 (4/19/17, William I. Robinson is professor of sociology, global studies and Latin
American studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “Global Capitalist Crisis and
Trump’s War Drive” https://truthout.org/articles/global-capitalist-crisis-and-trump-s-war-
drive///TU-SG)

The recent US attack on Syria and mega-bombing of Afghanistan come at a time when the Trump
regime is facing a mounting scandal over alleged Russian involvement in its 2016 electoral campaign, historically low approval ratings for an
incoming presidency, and a growing mass grassroots resistance movement. US rulers have often launched military adventures

abroad to deflect attention from political crises and problems of legitimacy at home. Beyond Syria and
Afghanistan, the Trump regime has quietly escalated military intervention throughout the Middle East

and has proposed an increase of US$55 billion in the Pentagon budget. It has threatened military
force in a number of hotspots around the world, including Syria, Iran, Southeast Asia, along
NATO’s eastern flank and in the Korean Peninsula. As rival centers of power emerge in the international system any such
military adventure could snowball into a global conflagration with
devastating consequences for humanity . Journalists and political observers have focused on geopolitical analysis in
there are deep structural dynamics in the global
attempting to explain rising international tensions. While such analysis is important,

capitalist system that are pushing ruling groups towards war . The crisis of global capitalism
is intensifying despite what we have heard from mainstream economists and elites giddy with
recent growth spurts and the inflation of stock prices. In particular, the system is facing what appears to
be an intractable structural crisis of overaccumulation and of legitimacy . Cyclical crises, or
recessions, occur about every 10 years in the capitalist system and typically last some 18 months .
There were recessions in the early 1980s, the early 1990s, and the early 2000s. Structural crisis, so called because the only way out of crisis is

to restructure the system, occur approximately every 40-50 years. A new wave of colonialism and imperialism

resolved the first recorded structural crisis of the 1870s and 1880s. The next structural, the Great Depression of the 1930s,
was resolved through a new type of redistributive capitalism, referred to as the “class compromise” of Fordism-Keynesianism,
social democracy, New Deal capitalism, and so on. Capital responded to the structural crisis of the 1970s by going

global. The emerging transnational capitalist class, or TCC, promoted vast neoliberal restructuring, trade liberalization, and integration of the world economy. The global
economy experienced a boom in the late 20th century as the former socialist countries entered the global market and as capital, liberated from nation-state constraints, unleashed a
vast new round of accumulation worldwide. The TCC unloaded surpluses and resumed profit-making in the emerging globally integrated production and financial system through
the acquisition of privatized assets, the extension of mining and agro-industrial investment on the heels of the displacement of hundreds of millions from the countryside, a new

wave of industrial expansion assisted by the revolution in Computer and Information Technology (CIT). Yet capitalist globalization has also
resulted in unprecedented social polarization worldwide. According to the development agency Oxfam, just 1 percent
of humanity owns over half of the world’s wealth and the top 20 percent own 94.5 of that wealth,
while the remaining 80 percent must make due with just 4.5 percent. Given such extreme polarization of income and wealth, the

global market cannot absorb the output of the global economy . The global financial collapse of 2008
marked the onset of a new structural crisis of overaccumulation, which refers to
accumulated capital that cannot find outlets for profitable reinvestment . Data from 2010 showed, for instance,
that companies from the United States were sitting on $1.8 trillion in uninvested cash that year. Corporate profits

have been at near record highs at the same time that corporate investment has declined. As this uninvested capital accumulates, enormous pressures build

up to find outlets for unloading the surplus . Capitalist groups, especially transnational finance capital, push states
to create new opportunities for profit-making. Neoliberal states have turned to four mechanisms in recent years to
help the TCC unload surplus and sustain accumulation in the face of stagnation. One is the raiding and sacking of public budgets. Public finance has

been reconfigured through austerity, bailouts, corporate subsidies, government debt and the global
bond market as governments transfer wealth directly and indirectly from working people to the TCC. A second is the expansion of credit to
consumers and to governments, especially in the Global North, to sustain spending and consumption. In the United States,
for instance, which has long been the “market of last resort” for the global economy, household debt is higher than it has been for almost

all of postwar history. US households owed in 2016 nearly US$13 trillion in student loans, credit card debt, auto loans and mortgages. Meanwhile, the global
bond market — an indicator of total government debt worldwide — had already reached US$100 trillion by 2011. A third is frenzied financial

speculation. The global economy has been one big casino for transnational finance capital, as the
gap between the productive economy and “fictitious capital” grows ever wider. Gross world product, or the total
value of goods and services produced worldwide, stood at some US$75 trillion in 2015, whereas currency speculation alone amounted to

US$5.3 trillion a day that year and the global derivatives market was estimated at a mind-
boggling US$1.2 quadrillion. All three of these financial mechanisms may resolve the
problem momentarily but in the long run they end up aggravating the crisis of
overaccumulation . The transfer of wealth from workers to capital further constricts the market, while debt-financed consumption and speculation increase the gap
between the productive economy and “fictitious capital.” The result is ever-greater underlying instability in the global

economy . Many now see a new crash as inevitable . There is another mechanism that
has sustained the global economy: militarized accumulation . Here there is a convergence around
the system’s political need for social control and its economic need to perpetuate accumulation.
Unprecedented global inequalities can only be sustained by ever more repressive and
ubiquitous systems of social control and repression . Yet quite apart from political considerations, the TCC has
acquired a vested interest in war, conflict, and repression as a means of accumulation. CIT has
revolutionized warfare and the modalities of state-organized militarized accumulation, including
the military application of vast new technologies and the further fusion of private accumulation
with state militarization. As war and state-sponsored repression become increasingly privatized, the
interests of a broad array of capitalist groups shift the political, social, and ideological climate
toward generating and sustaining social conflict — such as in the Middle East — and in expanding
systems of warfare , repression, surveillance and social control. The so-called wars on drugs, terrorism, and
immigrants ; the construction of border walls , immigrant detention centers , and ever-growing
prisons; the installation of mass surveillance systems, and the spread of private security guard and
mercenary companies, have all become major sources of profit-making. The US state took
advantage of the 9/11 attacks to militarize the global economy . US military spending
skyrocketed into the trillions of dollars through the “war on terrorism” and the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. The “creative
destruction” of war acted to throw fresh firewood on the smoldering embers of a stagnant
global economy . The Pentagon budget increased 91 percent in real terms between 1998 and 2011,
and even apart from special war appropriations, it increased by nearly 50 percent in real terms during this period. In the decade from

2001 to 2011 defense industry profits nearly quadrupled. Worldwide, total defense outlays (military, intelligence
agencies, Homeland Security/Defense) grew by 50 percent from 2006 to 2015, from $1.4 trillion to $2.03 trillion. The cutting edge of accumulation

in the “real economy” worldwide shifted from CIT before the dot-com bust of 1999-2001 to a military-security-
industrial-financial complex — itself integrated into the high-tech conglomerate – that has accrued enormous influence
in the halls of power in Washington and other political centers around the world. An emergent
power bloc bringing together the global financial complex with the military-security-industrial
complex appeared to crystallize in the wake of the 2008 collapse. The class interests of the TCC, geo-politics, and economics
come together around militarized accumulation. The more the global economy comes to depend on militarization

and conflict the greater the drive to war and the higher the stakes for humanity . The day
after Donald Trump’s electoral victory, the stock price of Corrections Corporation of America, the
largest for-profit immigrant detention and prison company in the United States, soared 40 percent, given Trump’s
 Military contractors such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin report spikes
promise to deport millions of immigrants.

each time there is a new flare-up in the Middle East conflict. Within hours of the April 6 tomahawk missile
bombardment of Syria Raytheon stock increased by $1 billion. Hundreds of private firms from around the world have put in
bids to construct Trump’s infamous US-Mexico border wall. Populist rhetoric aside, the Trump regime’s economic program constitutes

neo-liberalism on steroids. Corporate tax cuts and deregulation will exacerbate overaccumulation and heighten the power bloc’s proclivity for military
conflict. Politicized and increasingly autonomous generals and retired military officials that occupy numerous posts in the regime control the US war machine. The generals

may play a key role in geopolitical conjunctures and in the timing and circumstances around
which US intervention and war escalate. Yet behind the Trump regime and the Pentagon, the TCC seeks to sustain
global accumulation through expanding militarization, conflict, and repression. This gives a built-
in war drive to the current course of capitalist globalization. Only a worldwide push back from
below, and ultimately a program to redistribute wealth and power downward, can counter the
upward spiral of international conflagration.
 2NC – Enviro
Neoliberalism necessitates both domestic and international environmental
crises – these cause extinction and disproportionately impact immigrants
Faber 18 (6/14/18, Daniel Faber is director of the Northeastern Environmental Justice Research
Collaborative in Boston. He co-founded the international journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
and is the author or editor of several books, including Foundations for Social Change. “Global
Capitalism, Reactionary Neoliberalism, and the Deepening of Environmental Injustices”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10455752.2018.1464250?needAccess=true//TU-
SG)
there are two mechanisms related to the ecological crisis—one
Generally speaking, from the United States perspective

domestic, the other international—by which capital is reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and
facilitating capital accumulation. First of all, in the United States and the global North, capital is responding to threats posed by the growth of low-cost
imports from foreign competitors, as well as the need to boost the competitiveness of its exports abroad, by reducing the costs of doing business inside their home countries. Along

environmental protection measures are considered by many “dirty” industries to

with labor costs,

be some of the most burdensome . Companies therefore seek to protect profits not only by
“downsizing” the labor force but also by cutting “unproductive expenditures” on pollution control
equipment, environmental conservation, and worker health and safety. Simply put, the key to cost containment lies in
processes of capital restructuring that enables corporations to extract greater value from labor power and nature in less time and at a lower cost (i.e. to increase the rate of

this entails launching a renewed domestic political

exploitation of labor and nature). Under the reactionary neoliberal regimes

assault on the EJ movement, trade unions, environm more likely they are to experience arduous environmental and human health problems. The
weight of the ecological burden upon a community depends upon the balance of power between capital, the state, and social movements responding to the needs and demands of

, it is working-class neighborhoods, ethnic minorities, and

the populace. In capitalist countries such as the United States

poor communities of color that most often experience the worst problems . Environmental
inequality is now increasing faster than income inequality in the United States (Boyce, Zwickl, and Ash 2014).
Similar to the “domestic” strategy of reducing production costs by displacing ecological and public health hazards onto poor people of color and the
white working class inside the United States and other countries of the global North, corporations also reduce costs by adopting the

“international” strategy of exporting ecological hazards outside America’s national boundaries

(Pellow 2007; Faber 2008). The worsening ecological crisis in the global South is directly related to an

international system of economic and environmental stratification in which the United States and other advanced
capitalist nations are able to shift or impose the environmental burden on weaker states (Adeloa 2000; Li and Zhou 2017). In fact, one of the primary aims of the neoliberal agenda

The export of ecological hazards to the global South

is to facilitate the displacement of externalities by capital onto poorer nations.

reflects the economic logic of neoliberal policymakers aligned with the interests of transnational
corporations, which deems human life in the global South worth much less than in the North. If the poor and
underemployed masses of Africa become sick or die from exposure to pollution produced by domestic capital or exported from the North, it will have a much smaller impact on
the profits of international capital. Aside from the higher costs of pollution-abatement in the advanced capitalist countries, if highly skilled and well-compensated workers in the
global North fall prey to environmentally related health problems, the expense to capital and the state can be significant. Similarly, if African Americans living in Flint, Michigan
are so devalued that their “premature deaths” do not constitute a cost to the capitalist system, neoliberal policymakers will remain indifferent to the public health abuses inflicted

on the community by lead poisoning (Pulido 2016, 2). Although morally reprehensible, under the global capitalist system it pays for
business to shift pollution onto poor communities and countries. And this is precisely the goal of
neoliberals dominating global power structures. Given the willingness of neoliberal governments
in the global South to tradeoff environmental protection in favor of capital investment and
accumulation, the growing mobility of capital (in all forms) is facilitating the export of ecological
problems from the advanced capitalist countries to the global South and sub-peripheral
states . This export of ecological hazard from the United States and other Northern countries to the less-developed countries takes place as the following: (1) in the money
circuit of global capital, in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) in domestically owned hazardous industries, as well as destructive investment

schemes to gain access to new oil fields, forests, agricultural lands, mining deposits, and other
natural resources; (2) in the productive circuit of 12 D. FABER global capital, with the relocation of polluting and
environmentally hazardous production processes and polluting facilities owned by transnational capital to the
global South; (3) in the commodity circuit of global capital, as witnessed in the marketing of more profitable but also more dangerous foods, drugs, pesticides,
technologies, and other consumer/capital goods; and (4) in the “waste circuit” of global capital, with the dumping in the

global South of toxic wastes, pollution, discarded consumer products, trash, and other
commodified and noncommodified forms of “anti-wealth” produced by Northern industry. In effect,
international capital is appropriating ecological carrying capacity for the core by transferring
(“distancing”) externalities to the global South (Frey 2003). As in the United States, it is the poorest and most
politically repressed people in the South that bear the greatest brunt of the global ecological
crisis . In the age of reactionary neoliberalism susceptibility to the “negative externalities” of global capital is ever more deeply related to social positionality, that is, to where
a person or group of people are situated in multiple power structures centered on class, gender, race, ethnicity, citizenship, and more (Walker 2012). The various social positions or
“identities” held in these power structures intersect to create different social “axes” of advantage and disadvantage. A poor workingclass African-American woman in the United
States encounters multiple disadvantages in comparison to the control capacity exercised by a white, middleclass woman (or male) in Sweden. A poor woman that is part of the
Ogoni ethnic minority living in the Niger Delta of Nigeria is even more disadvantaged. In the United States communities that lack control capacity over politicaleconomic power
structures are typically made up of racial and ethnic minorities, as well as the white working class (Schnaiberg 1994). For instance, rural white women and their families in

Appalachia are especially harmed by extractive energy schemes such as coal mining (Bell 2013 ). For those members of the socially and
spatially segregated “underclass,” powerlessness is even more pervasive. America’s
undocumented immigrants , Chicano farmers, indigenous peoples, and other
dispossessed people of color are the ones being selectively victimized to the greatest extent by
environmental health abuses (Johnston 1994). As part of the country’s subaltern experiencing multiple
forms of political domination, economic exploitation, and cultural oppression, they are effectively
devalued in American society (Pulido 1996). The resulting environmental injustices take the form of
noxious industrial pollutants and hazardous waste sites being situated in poor African-American
communities in the rural South (Bullard 1994; Holifield, Chakraborty, and Walker 2017), or of undocumented Mexican
workers laboring in the pesticide-soaked agricultural fields of California, Texas, and Florida (Berkey 2017). In short, the
concentration of environmental and health hazards among the subaltern is creating ecological sacrifice zones —areas where it is simply

dangerous to breathe the air or take a drink of water (Lerner 2010). As such, ecological sacrifice zones serve as locations where capital
can substantially lower or ignore the costs of compliance with environmental regulations. In this light, environmental injustices are rooted in

power structures and models of capital accumulation that confer social class advantages
and racial/ gender privileges (Sicotte 2016, 13). And when analyzing environmental CAPITALISM NATURE SOCIALISM 13 inequality, we should
be aware that there are multiple political-economic forces at work that give the injustice a particular context and form (Holifield 2001). In the United States and the world economy
racism is a “constituent logic” of capitalism and, as stated by Pulido, “creates a variegated landscape that cultures and capital can exploit to create enhanced power and profits”
(Pulido 2016, 7; see also Ranganathan 2016). As we shall see, environmental racism facilitates capital accumulation in a variety of critically important ways, and is central to the
reactionary neoliberal project. As a result, poorer people of color face a “quadruple exposure effect” to environmental health hazards.

Neoliberalism causes global ecological destruction

Faber 18 (6/14/18, Daniel Faber is director of the Northeastern Environmental Justice Research
Collaborative in Boston. He co-founded the international journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism
and is the author or editor of several books, including Foundations for Social Change. “Global
Capitalism, Reactionary Neoliberalism, and the Deepening of Environmental Injustices”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10455752.2018.1464250?needAccess=true//TU-
SG)
Facilitating Global Capital’s Appropriation of Nature Belonging to the Popular ClassesUnder the new ecological imperialism brought
about by neoliberal globalization, the prosperity of transnational capital is becoming increasingly
predicated on the racialized appropriation of surplus environmental space from the global
South (Foster and Clark 2018). By expanding its ecological footprint and other forms of unequal ecological exchange, global capital
accumulation depends upon the confiscation of biomass production from the global South (Hornborg 2011). In other words, the expansion of wealth on behalf

of the United States, China, and the core European Union states under globalization fundamentally involves the use of greater quantities

of undervalued natural resources from other territories occupied by the global subaltern, as well as
the increased displacement of environmental harm (such as pollution) to those territories, and it is creating an
unparalleled ecological crisis of global dimensions (Jorgenson and Clark 2012). In contrast,
economic growth in the global South has been led by exports of energy, raw materials, and
consumer goods to the North. This turn toward export-oriented industrialization is being driven by (FDIs) and foreign lending provided by the United
States and other advanced capitalist countries, and is intended to facilitate the appropriation and development of domestic business facilities, energy supplies, and natural resources

Thus, global free trade is creating a new international division of labor in which, on one
by transnational investors.

hand, the South favors exports of cheap raw materials, energy, technology components, and
consumer goods to the United States, and on the other, the United States favors capital goods and services for
export within the North and to the South. In short, while the global South produces wealth in the commodity form, the United States produces
wealth in the “capital form” (O’Connor 2000, 162). Under processes of unequal ecological exchange the massive quantities of physical wealth now entering the United States (in

With international trade

the form of energy, raw materials, foodstuffs, and durable consumer goods) are greatly undervalued in the world economy.

largely under the control of Northern-based transnational corporations, the concrete and potential natural wealth found in
United States imports of energy and raw materials are in much greater proportion than the monetary (abstract) wealth that is exported back to the global South. Through

the United States appropriates the bio-capacity of the global South. This process also includes the
exploitative world trade relations,

exports of pollution, hazardous waste, greenhouse

damage done to the economies of the global South resulting from United States

gases, and other ecological hazards (Warlenius 2016). Moreover, the ecological debt arising from excessive use of the South’s
environmental space by transnational capital is accelerating in the new millennium, even as the economic debt owed

by many in the global South countries to U.S. banks continues to grow (Martinez-Alier 2007). The South’s economic
debt and the North’s ecological debt are symptomatic of the “unfair” trade-off brought about by neoliberal globalization, a facet that can only worsen under Trump’s “America
First” political philosophy. 22 D. FABER Defined in terms of global North versus global South, corporate-led globalization is seen as magnifying externally- and internally based

environmental injustices to the advantage of transnational capital. In much of the developing world access to natural resources is being
restricted by the transformation of commonly held lands into capitalist private property, that is, by the
“commodification of nature” (Goldman 1998). Those peoples in the global South who draw their livelihood directly

from the land, water, forests, coastal mangroves, and other ecosystems are becoming displaced in
order to supply cheap raw materials for local dominant classes and foreign capital. Laboring in service of this
new global order, but receiving few of its benefits, the popular majorities of the developing world—the poor peasants, workers, ethnic

minorities and indigenous peoples who make up the subsistence sector—struggle to survive by
moving onto ecologically fragile lands or by migrating to the shantytowns of the cities by the
million to search for employment. Often left with little means to improve the quality of their lives, the world’s poor (especially women) are being
forced to over-exploit their own limited natural resource base in order to survive (Shiva 2005). In much of the
Third World, these survival strategies by the popular classes in response to their growing impoverishment result in the widespread degradation and ecological collapse of the
environment. As a result, globalization-inspired development models are becoming increasingly unviable in the global South, giving birth to popular-based movements for social
and ecological justice, i.e. to an environmentalism of the poor (Martinez-Alier 2002).
 2NC – Space
Capitalism poses a threat to humanity in space – that undermines any
attempt to thrive off the rock
Kaminska 14 -- (Izabella Kaminska, editor of FT Alphaville, Ancient History @ UCL,
masters in Journalism @ London College of Printing, The dark side of space: how capitalism
poses a threat beyond Earth, Financial Times, 3-14-2014, accessed 7-3-2018,
https://www.ft.com/content/02aac296-a920-11e3-bf0c-00144feab7de)//JS
For a long time the idea of commercial space was an eccentric billionaire’s pipe dream. A fanciful desire of
those with a penchant for Isaac Asimov novels. Not so any more. Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been sending payloads to space on a commercially viable basis since 2010.
Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is on track to take its first fully paid-up customers into near-space by the end of this year, all of which was revealed by my colleague John Sunyer’s recent piece on property
space wars. And a company called Planetary Resources is making serious attempts to identify asteroids for commercial mining missions in the not too distant future. Small surprise then that the issue of extraplanetary

Above all, Bigelow is

property rights has been raised by the likes of Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, a company hoping to put private living quarters in space.

worried that if the capitalist west doesn’t go about annexing celestial bodies in the name of
private enterprise, some other nation will go empire-building in its own name instead. The
argument pro property rights is simple. What we’re approaching is a new Wild West period for
humanity. A time when anyone ingenious or intrepid enough to get themselves into space should
rightfully be rewarded with ownership and autocracy over the land masses they discover or forge.
Especially since this time around there are no native inhabitants, or at least none that we humans
can divine, to be displaced in the process. Call it the classic expansionist approach to property
allocation. Or as comedian Eddie Izzard once joked, stealing countries with the cunning use of flags. If you can claim it and defend it, it becomes yours. The problem with this
way of thinking is that the Wild West is a poor analogy for space exploration. First there’s the
access issue. Getting to the New World may have been harsh and costly, but it was still
exponentially easier – and thus more equitable – than getting to space. Second, when the pilgrims set sail for America, they never
looked back. Yes, they still depended on trade, but they did so on an equal footing with their trade partners because they had just as many valuable resources, if not more, to exchange. The American war of

The
independence was about shedding the yoke of the old land, which still desired to rule the colonies despite their self-sufficiency. The same clearly does not apply to the hostile territory of space.

chance that any colonist on Mars, the Moon or an asteroid will be self-sufficient enough to break
their dependence on Earth is infinitesimally small. To the contrary, private missions are likely to
remain dependent on national jurisdictions for launches and life support for decades if not
centuries. Is it a risk, then, that nation-states will see this as an invitation to go empire-building in
space instead? Unlikely. Article II of the UN Outer Space Treaty already sets out the parameters clearly: “Outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national
appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.” It is a treaty we should be thankful for, not least because it paved the way to a truly unprecedented era of international

If any sovereign state dared to break it, say by invading the

co-operation, resulting in, among other things, the International Space Station.

Moon, they would, without a shadow of a doubt, find themselves testing the international
community, and consequently the established nuclear power balance here on Earth. That means,
for as long as a space colony depends on Earth-based ties, the incentive for a nation-state to abide
by Earth-based rules remains. It’s game theory. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for private
enterprise. A power-hungry space baron could feasibly argue that the UN treaty does not apply to
them since they are not a sovereign state. Then there is also the caveat that the treaty only refers
to celestial rather than man-made bodies. This is what you could call the dark side of space
commercialisation. The point at which open access to space creates a Pandora’s box effect that in the name of competition compromises space co-operation and disrupts the power balance
we’ve achieved both in space and on Earth . The point when a power-hungry billionaire could find a legal path to

building his own Death Star. Elon Musk’s testimony to the Senate appropriations hearing on
March 5 speaks of the potential power play in hand. As he argued, US national security is being
undermined by the country’s dependence on Russian parts and launches, especially in light of the
latter’s de facto annexation of the Crimea region. It would be much better, says Musk, if the US
transferred more of its business to private enterprises like SpaceX. To Musk, access to space
should be treated the same way access to commodities is treated on Earth. The only problem with
this analogy is that private corporations competing for commodities still have to abide by national
rules. Commercial space enterprises, it seems, would prefer it if sovereign states became
dependent on private enterprise instead – the surest way of exposing Earth to the risk of a
megalomaniac that wants to rename Mars one day.
 2NC – VTL
Neoliberal ideology rests upon 3 fantasies that destroy value to life
Bal and Doci 18 (3/7/18, P. Matthijs Bal a professor at the Lincoln International Business
School, University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK; Department of Industrial Psychology and People
Management and University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa. Edina Dóci works at
the Department of Management & Organization, VU University Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the
Netherlands. “Neoliberal ideology in work and organizational psychology”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1359432X.2018.1449108?needAccess=true//TU-
SG)
Fantasmatic logic explains why the practices discussed above continue to
Fantasmatic logic of the workplace

exist, by revealing the underlying motives through which such practices appeal to and grip people (Glynos, 2008, 2011), and thus are actively maintained by them. We identify
three elements within neoliberal ideology which pertain to the “fantasy-level ”: the freedom fantasy, the logic of meritocracy
and social Darwinism, and the belief in growth and progress. Individual freedom as a fundamental value has always been at the centre of neoliberal thought (Freeden, 2003;

Neoliberal ideology appeals to people by emphasizing the importance of people’s

Harvey, 2005).

freedom to choose, and their ability to make decisions for themselves (Ayers & Saad-Filho, 2015; Bauman, 2000).
Individual freedom (and well-being) is ensured by the freedom of the market, the “deregulation of everything”, and the
liberation of the individual as entrepreneur (Bauman, 2000; Harvey, 2005). At the heart of neo-liberalism’s
freedom fantasy is the notion that neoliberalism is the exclusive guardian of freedom, defending it
from the interventionist and regulating state, paternalistic forms of organizing and oppressive
collectives. Thus, the role of the state shall be limited to ensuring freedom and a well-functioning market (Harvey, 2005). In the domain of work, (individual) freedom in
the neoliberal organization refers to the individual’s freedom to choose (and leave) their employer, the freedom to negotiate for oneself, the freedom to design one’s time
arrangements, and the freedom to manage and design one’s career and development at work (Harvey, 2005; Hornung, Rousseau, & Glaser, 2008). As opposed to the rigid and

bureaucratic burdens of collective action and state intervention, neoliberalism offers the freedom of flexible labour relations
and flexible time arrangements. The deal that the paternalistic organization used to offer to employees was “a power for patronage” bargain (Schwalbe et
al., 2000): the employee accepted their subordination to organizational authorities and interests and in return offered loyalty to the organization. The organization offered life-long

Neoliberal ideology offers freedom to the

employment and benefits in exchange for the work and commitment of the employee (Sims, 1994).

individual, which replaces patronage. In the centre of the freedom fantasy is the agentic and free
individual who can take care of her/himself, who is in no need of the state’s, the organization’s or
any authority’s protection. The price the individual must pay for this freedom is to accept
responsibility for their own employment and well-being (Bal & Jansen, 2016). If the individual fails to
succeed, it is their personal failure as “entrepreneur of the self” (Harvey, 2005; Kalleberg, 2009). The freedom fantasy implies
that neoliberalism has emancipated the individual from the heavy burdens of the bureaucratic, rigid relations of the paternalistic organization, trade unions and collective

Through this fantasy,

organizing, and instead, offers the individual the freedom to assert oneself on the market, compete with others and realize one’s interests.

neoliberalism “grips” the individual, and makes individualization, competition and

instrumentality seem appealing and desirable as it offers freedom to the people. The freedom fantasy is closely
related to the second fantasmatic logic that neoliberalism offers, the fantasy of meritocracy.

Meritocracy has been described as the notion that merit and talent should be the basis for how
people are rewarded in society and the workplace (Ayers & Saad-Filho, 2015; Castilla & Benard, 2010). Success is primarily the result of
willpower, hard work and an enterprising mind (and not of one’s largely inherited social, cultural and economic capital, Bourdieu, 1986). Thus, the fantasy of

meritocracy refers to the belief that all people get what they deserve (Littler, 2013). Meritocracy is
important in the context of neoliberalism, as its principle of fairness in the distribution of talents
and success in life legitimizes the status quo and the position of existing elites, as they have
deserved their position due to their innate talents and hard work . While research shows that actual
meritocracy is largely absent in contemporary society (Fine & Saad-Filho, 2017; Littler, 2013), the ideal of
meritocracy remains a powerful force in sustaining hegemonic, neoliberal ideology in society,
thereby underpinning the viability of current practices (Glynos, 2008). Hence, the ideas underlying
meritocracy constitute a fantasy, because at present resources are not distributed in line with each
individual’s talents and efforts as applied through their daily labour (Littler, 2013), but are increasingly
clustered at the top. Innate differences and structural power differences are often de-
emphasized in neoliberal ideology (Burke, 2013). By emphasizing the relationships between effort and
merit, neoliberal ideology ignores structural differences among people due to privilege, including
one’s social class, ethnicity or gender (Burke, 2013; Littler, 2013). The logic of meritocracy is closely related to Social
Darwinism (Tienken, 2013). Social Darwinism departs from the point of view of natural selection, and that the fittest will survive, or those
who are best able to adapt to changing circumstances in the environment (Tienken, 2013). The
fantasmatic logic of neoliberalism pertains to the natural selection between those who are able to
survive and thrive in the contemporary workplace and those who are unable to do so. The latter
group will be forced into suboptimal work conditions, such as temporary work, job
insecurity, low pay, few opportunities for developments and so forth . The evolutionary logic of social Darwinism
complemented with the idea of meritocracy offers a compelling rationale for the neoliberal organizing of society. Similar to how successful human

evolution depended on the survival of the fittest, for the sake of progress of human society
and for the sake of well-functioning organizations, the strong and capable must succeed.
Competition is thus seen as indispensable and fair, given that everyone has the same
chances to succeed in it (Harvey, 2005). Moreover, this fantasmatic logic does not only legitimize
individualization and instrumentalization, but makes these processes seem desirable. In a
competitive – but fair – setting, where the legitimate end goal is outperforming others and winning, everyone should be individualistic and instrumentally orientated.
Within this logic, where individual success is the guarantee of societal success, it is fair that other people become individualistic and instrumental in the journey towards one’s self-

realization.Besides people internalizing the drive to compete with others (and individualize and instrumentalize themselves and
the above mentioned neoliberal fantasies have yet another function. They legitimize
others in the process),

the notion that in a society organized around competition, there will always be “losers” .
Because the losers of neoliberal competition are the feeble who did not make use of their
freedom and opportunities, it is legitimate that they do not receive support and protection
from poverty and isolation (Harvey, 2005). They are the unfortunate but inevitable by-products of fair
competition. These fantasies therefore serve the purpose of soothing people’s conscious in the
face of social injustice and exploitation. In so doing, they prevent the contestation of power relations and collective mobilization, and ultimately,
ensure sustaining work practices (Glynos, 2008). In neoliberalism, there is another set of underlying beliefs, one that we identify

as the fantasy of growth and progress. This fantasy is twofold: it concerns a belief that when people exert
effort and become more “productive”, they will grow both in status and as a person, but it also
involves a belief that this growth is inherently good. The notion that an individual stops growing (in status or personally), or a society
not making progress anymore, falls beyond the scope of the fantasy. The explanation of this resides in the meaning of fantasy itself; a fantasy always

involves a desire for more , for accumulation of possession, status, or fulfilment (Žižek, 1989). On the societal level, this fantasy has been
institutionalized through the growth-economy; whenever a country stops having economic
growth, it immediately enters a recession, with all associated negative consequences, such as
mass layoffs and unemployment (Sedlacek, 2011). At the individual level, people depend on their market value for
survival and success in a society organized around competition, where traditional welfare state
structures, labour unions and social support systems are being dismantled (Harvey, 2005). In such a setting the
individual is susceptible to the fantasy of personal growth and becomes overly focused on their
individual progress and development, which is identical to continuously maintaining and enhancing one’s own market value. This way,
the individual instrumentalizes, commodifies and exploits her/himself. This is the mechanism through which fantasmatic
logic preserves hegemonic ideology: being gripped by the fantasy, the individual internalizes the ideology to the extent that it becomes integral part of the individual’s identity and
aspirations. This way, there is no need for exercising coercive power for the ideology to maintain its hegemonic position in organizations and society (Glynos, 2008). Furthermore,

the belief in growth and progress is yet another fantasmatic device that smoothens out the
ambiguities of neoliberalism. If the ultimate goal is to grow and progress, then the growth and
progress of a few is not only fair, but ultimately beneficial for society as a whole (Harvey, 2005). The
growth and progress fantasy thus makes a competitive, individualistic and instrumental stance in
society look reasonable and even inevitable: if it is the individual’s striving for personal growth and progress that makes society as a whole
well-functioning, then it is entirely legitimate and desirable that individuals care primarily about their own interests, strive to outcompete others and regard others instrumental in
this process.
 2NC Sustainability
Financialization causes inevitable coolapse
Tridico and Paraboni 18 (Journal Of Post Keynesian Economics 2018, Pasquale Tridico,
Department of Economics, Roma Tre University, Riccardo Pariboni, Department of Economics,
Roma Tre University, “Inequality, financialization, and economic decline”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01603477.2017.1338966?needAccess=true//TU-
SG)

Financialization , labor flexibility, and inequality The political and economic roots of the financialization process, that brought about a
new finance-dominated capitalism regime (Hein, 2015), along with the process of globalization, can be found in
the 1970s. However, they were manifested openly politically in the 1980s. The financial sector has been an early and eager promoter of deregulation in the 1980s in the United
Kingdom and United States under the Thatcher and Reagan administrations (Boyer, 2000; Petit, 2009), respectively, which Jessop (2002) identified as transition phases to the post-

new accumulation strategies emerged during that period. They involved

Fordist finance-led regime. Jessop (2002) argued that

multinational firms, international financial discipline, a more authoritarian state, and a form of
popular capitalism. The previous Fordist strategy was replaced by an internationally oriented and financially aggressive strategy, deregulated and concentrated
dually on Wall Street and in the City of London. Reaganomics and Thatcherism were strategies that aimed to restructure the accumulation system through the deregulation of the
financial system (Peck and Tickell, 1992) at the expense of the social compromise realized after the Second World War. Moreover, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Alan
Greenspan, who rose to oversee the U.S. Federal Reserve during the Reagan administration, believed that the world economy could expand greatly through the globalization of the

financialization—which refers to the rise of

financial sector (Greenspan, 2007; Semmler and Young, 2010). We will use here as a proxy for

financial claims and incomes with respect to the real sector—the “Market capitalization” (also known as market value), which is
the share price multiplied by the number of outstanding shares of listed companies in the stock exchange. Listed domestic companies are the domestically incorporated companies
listed on the country’s stock exchanges at the end of the year. Listed companies do not include investment companies, mutual funds, or other collective investment vehicles. A

Stock market
similar definition of financialization is used also in Nölke and Vliegenthart (2009), Engelen et al. (2010), and van der Zwan (2014).

capitalization is one of the major sources of business finance in most of advanced economies.
Hence it makes sense to refer to it as a proxy for financialization . Obviously also inward foreign direct investment are
sources of business finance, but of less magnitude than stock market capitalization. Figure 4 below describes the increase of financialization in advanced

countries between the 1980s and the eve of the financial crash in 2006. The only exception here (which however confirms our expectations) is Japan, which in
fact experienced stagnation, a feature that can be observed today in most of advanced economies since the end of 1980s. Japan had its main financial crash in the middle of 1980s,

the bubble burst and then financialization, which had reached high level, started to decline. A similar
path can be observed two decades later in the rest of advanced economies. Financialization increased along with instability . After the

burst of the financial bubble, financialization declined in most of the countries. In this context of financial bubbles and bursts, the effects on advanced

economies is dramatic in terms of economic recession and stagnation. Interesting enough, as Figure 4 shows, is the
reduction of market capitalization after the financial crash of 2007–2008. Financialization is connected with both a

redistribution of income in favor of profit-recipients and labor productivity slowdown . This is an

important point that finds empirical evidences and theoretical foundations. In his thorough overview, Hein (2015) singled out seven stylized facts connected to financialization that,
following a Kaleckian approach, impact directly functional income distribution: Increasing shareholder value orientation and increasing short-termism of management; rising
dividend payments; increasing interest rates and interest payments, in particular in the 1980s; increasing top management salaries; increasing relevance of financial as compared to
real investment and hence of the financial sector relative to the non-financial sector; hostile takeovers, mergers, and acquisitions; and liberalisation and globalisation of
international finance and trade. (Hein, 2015, pp. 924–925) Later on, the author also mentions the strong reduction of public intervention in the economy and the implementation of

we can add that financialization worsens

labor market deregulations, both occurred since the beginning of the 1980s. As also noticed by Hein,

income distribution—and in turn this affects labor productivity—also because: 1. It favors the aggressive
implementation of the “downsize and distribute” principle so that corporations’ managers have as the only objective to maximize
and distribute dividends for the shareholders at the cost of squeezing production and cutting wages.19 2. It favors an aggressive

short-term strategy of corporations’ managers interested mainly in the maximization of bonuses

and profits in the short term at the expenses of the wage bill. Financialization (a process that involves a set of
institutions and financial tools) and labor flexibility (a set of labor market institutions that increase freedom of entrepreneurs to fire and hire workers and to cut

wages) are two general categories of institutional forms that have been going hand in hand in

particular during the last two decades , although not everywhere, and that were introduced across the world by countries in different degrees to
guarantee the expansion of the globalization process that is believed by most of policy makers and governments to boost the national economy. We are interested here in assessing
if and to what extent financialization has affected the recent trends in productivity. This idea has been analytically invest igated, within the framework of a post Kaleckian
endogenous growth model, in Hein (2012a). As the author maintains, financialization might have, at first, a direct positive effect on productivity. However, also indirect effects are
financialization might negatively affect demand growth and, through the functioning of the
at work:

Kaldor-Verdoorn effect, also the dynamics of productivity. Moreover, financialization is likely to

weaken workers’ bargaining power and reduce the wage share. Given that a wage-push component is included in the
productivity equation, the overall effect can be plausibly expected to be negative . Indeed, there are several

theoretical reasons to expect a negative relationship between financialization and

productivity growth . It seems possible, in particular, to identify a causal link that goes from the
prominence attributed to shareholder value orientation—one of the main features of
financialization (see Lazonick and O’Sullivan, 2000)—to a decline in aggregate investment. The spectacular
increase in interest and dividend payments to rentiers not only implies a loss in firms’ internal
means of finance; it also makes the recourse to external sources to finance capital accumulation
more expensive and complicated, as highlighted by the Kaleckian principle of increasing risk. Moreover, the implementation of remuneration schemes
for managers based on the firm’s short-term performance on the financial markets is supposed to cause a slowdown in investment in capital stock, replaced by financial operations

As a natural consequence of an unsatisfactory investment dynamics,

as a major concern for management.20

productivity lags behind . This is one of the most relevant conclusions of Lazonick and O’Sullivan’s analysis, where it is noticed that U.S. corporate
managers in recent years have faced new challenges posed by international competitors mainly by downsizing firms and compressing labor costs; the same holds true for most of
the OECD countries. At the same time, they renounced attaining productivity gains through the reinvestment of profits and chose to pursue short-term profitability.

Financialization diverts assets and resources toward speculative rather than productive
investments with negative consequences on technological progress, which directly
influences labor productivity . Labor flexibility negatively influences labor productivity because
it allows for size reduction and employment squeezing: It reduces income opportunities and the
wage share, increases precarious jobs and destabilizes aggregate demand. At the same time, a flexible
labor market with compressed and low wages needs to be supplemented by credit consumption
and developed financial tools to sustain consumption, reinforcing a vicious circle. Deregulation of labor
markets, labor flexibility, capital mobility, and global finance allow easily for labor pressure, cost compression, and wage stagnation. Consecutively, households are

more and more pushed toward private indebtedness and credit consumption because their income
constraints increase consistently in a period of wage stagnation. In this context, income inequality
increases because labor , which is the most important production factor for income, is seen by the supply-side approach
as a cost to be compressed rather than as a fundamental part of aggregate demand to be
expanded . The negative relation between labor productivity and labor flexibility can also be identified in the perspective of the models of the new Keynesian economics,
which describes, at margin, work effort to be positively correlated with wages, so that unstable jobs, flexibility, scarce incentives, and low paid jobs push workers to put little effort
into their work. Moreover, this does not guarantee that firms and workers invest in training and education to improve the quality of human capital, with lower results in terms of
productivity, ceteris paribus, by the economic system (Salop, 1979; Shapiro and Stiglitz, 1984). From a nonmainstream perspective, similar arguments can be found in the works of
Vergeer and Kleinknecht. In Vergeer and Kleinknecht (2010), the authors perform a panel data analysis based on 19 OECD countries, for the period 1960–2004. Among their main
results, flexible labor relations are found to damage labor productivity growth through multiple channels21 (p. 393) and to disincentive knowledge accumulation. Interestingly,
Vergeer and Kleinknecht provide evidence that the labor productivity slowdown is not only due to the creation of precarious, deregulated, low-productivity jobs; the productivity
of existing jobs is negatively affected as well. Vergeer and Kleinknecht (2014) performed a similar exercise for 20 OECD countries, in the same time span (1960–2004) of Vergeer
and Kleinknecht (2010), substantially confirming the main findings presented there. Attention is drawn on the fact that easier hiring and firing procedures, leading to shorter job
tenures, prevent the formation of firm-specific, tacit knowledge and hinder the functioning of the routinized innovation model (Vergeer and Kleinknecht, 2014, p. 383). The
Employment Protection Legislation (the EPL 2013 is the index we will refer to) is the indicator of the OECD, which measures the level of worker protection in the labor market
and consequently the level of labor flexibility (it varies between 0 [very low protection] and 6 [very high protection]).22 This indicator shows the level of protection offered by
national legislation with respect to regular employment, temporary employment and collective dismissal—in other words, regulation that allows employers the freedom to fire and

hire workers at will (OECD 2004). A flexible labor market with compressed wages needs to be supplemented by
available financialization, credit, and developed financial tools to sustain consumption, which otherwise were compressed by low and unstable wages
(Brancaccio and Fontana, 2011). In this context, a large number of financial tools were invented to finance

consumption, postpone payments, extend credit, and create extra-consumption (Tridico, 2012).23 That said, it is
difficult to establish a causal relation: We cannot be certain whether financialization required labor flexibility or if increased labor flexibility brought about hyper-financialization.

A simple correlation (Figure 5) between these two complementary institutional forms of

neoliberalism seems more likely. Labor flexibility allows for the reduction of the labor costs and thus wage saving at the expense of wage earners, i.e.,
consumers.24 In such a situation, inequality increases and the aggregate demand could be restricted because consumption decreases. It is very interesting to notice an inverse
relationship between inequality and the EPL index (labor flexibility): the lower the EPL (higher flexibility), the higher the inequality (see Figure 6). Continental and Scandinavian
European countries have a higher EPL (lower flexibility) and lower inequality, while Anglo-Saxon and Mediterranean countries generally show the opposite values of higher
inequality and lower EPL (higher flexibility; see also Tridico 2013). In the following session, we will try to test the impact of the variable discussed (labor flexibility,
financialization, inequality, and wage share on labor productivity) using an econometric model on a sample of 26 OECD countries.

Environmental limits --- tech can’t overcome

Demaria 18 – (Federico Demaria, ecological economist at Environmental Science and
Technology Institute, 2-22-2018, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, “Why economic growth is
not compatible with environmental sustainability”, https://theecologist.org/2018/feb/22/why-
economic-growth-not-compatible-environmental-sustainability//TU-SG)
Economic growth is presented as the panacea that can solve any of the world's problems: poverty,
inequality, sustainability, you name it. Left-wing and right-wing policies only differ on how to achieve it. However, there is an
uncomfortable scientific truth that has to be faced: economic growth is environmentally
unsustainable. Moreover, beyond a certain threshold already surpassed by EU countries, socially it isn't
necessary. The central question then becomes: how can we manage an economy without growth? Enough is enough Kenneth
Boulding, the economist, famously said that: “ Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a

finite world is either a madman or an economist ”. Ecological economists argue that the economy is physical, while mainstream
economists seem to believe it is metaphysical. Social metabolism is the study of material and energy flows within the economy. On the input side of the economy, key

material resources are limited , and many are peaking including oil and phosphorus . On the output side,
humanity is trespassing planetary boundaries . Climate change is the evidence of the limited
assimilative capacity of ecosystems. It is the planet saying: 'Enough is enough!'. Mainstream economists - finally convinced by
the existence of biophysical limits - have started to argue that economic growth can be decoupled from the

consumption of energy and materials. Trade off Historical data series demonstrates that this - up to now
- has not happened. At most, there is relative decoupling - a decrease in resource use per unit of GDP. But, there is no absolute

decoupling which is what matters for sustainability: an absolute decrease of environmental

resources consumption . The only periods of absolute dematerialisation coincide with economic
recession. Trade should also be taken into account, to avoid externalisation of pollution intensive activities outside the EU. The current economy
cannot be circular. The main reason being that energy cannot be recycled, and materials only up
to a point. The global economy recycles less than 10 percent of materials; about 50 percent of
processed materials are used to provide energy and are thus not available for recycling. It is
simple: economic growth is not compatible with environmental sustainability . The list of nice oxymorons
is long - from sustainable development to its reincarnations like green economy or green growth - but wishful thinking does not solve real problems. Increase in GDP

leads to increase in material and energy use, and therefore to environmental unsustainability. No magic bullet
Technology and market based solutions are not magic bullets . Faith in technology has
become religious : scientific evidence shows that, based on past trends in technological
improvement, these are coming way too slowly to avoid irreversible climate change. For instance,
efficiency improvements lead to rebound effects, in the context of economic growth (the more efficient you are, the more you consume;
e.g. cars and consumption of gasoline). Renewable energy produces less net energy, because it has a lower EROI

(Energy Return on Investement) than fossil fuels. For this, and other reasons, it cannot satisfy current levels of energy

consumption, which therefore needs to be reduced. Most of the world’s fossil fuel reserves must be left in
the ground, unburned, to keep a global temperature rise to no more than 2°C. In fact, fossil fuels
should be called unburnable fuels. Science sometimes brings bad news. An article recently published in Nature Sustainability argues that: “No country
in the world meets the basic needs of its citizens at a globally sustainable level of resource use.” The question then is: How can the conditions for a good life for all within

planetary boundaries be generated? The uncomfortable truth to be faced by policy makers is the following: Economic growth is ecologically
unsustainable. The total consumption of materials and energy needs to be reduced, starting with
developed countries. De-growth strategy Economic growth might also not be socially desirable.
Inequalities are on the rise, poverty has not been eliminated and life satisfaction is stagnant.
Economic growth is fueled by debt, which corresponds to a colonization of the future. This
debt cannot be paid, and the financial system is prone to instability . For instance, scientifically it is
not clear how the European Union will achieve a low-carbon economy in the context of economic
growth, since it implies a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by
2050. In fact, climatologists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows have argued convincingly that: “[F]or a reasonable probability of avoiding the 2°C characterization of dangerous
climate change, the wealthier nations need, temporarily, to adopt a de-growth strategy.” Obviously, a transition from a growth society to a
degrowth one poses several challenges. However, the emerging field of ecological
macroeconomics is starting to address them convincingly. Happiness factor Happiness and
economics literature shows that GDP growth is not needed for well-being, because there are
other important determinants . High life expectancy is compatible with low carbon
emissions, but high incomes are not . Moreover, lack of growth may increase inequalities unless there is redistribution. In any case, the issue is
not whether we shall abandon economic growth. The question is how. Scientific debates around it are on the rise, but I am afraid policy making is behind. There are good signs:
critiques of GDP as an indicator of well-being are common, there are policy proposals and degrowth is entering into the parliaments. This is not new. For example, in 1972 Sicco
Mansholt, a Dutch social-democrat who was then EU Commissioner for agriculture, wrote a letter to the President of the EU Commission Franco Maria Malfatti, urging him to
seriously take into account limits to growth in EU economic policy. Mansholt himself became President of the European Commission after only two months, but for too short a
term to push a zero growth agenda. The time is ripe not only for a scientific degrowth research agenda, but also for a political one. As ecological economists Tim Jackson and Peter

Imagining a world without growth is among the most vital and urgent
Victor argued in The New York Times: “

tasks for society to engage in .”

 -- AT Green Cap
Green cap fails: Trump, social structure and Jevons paradox
Gunderson et al. 18 – (*Ryan Gunderson, Department of Sociology and Gerontology, Miami
University. **Diana Stuart, School of Earth Sciences and Sustainability, Program in Sustainable
Communities, Northern Arizona University. ***Brian Peterson, Department of Geography,
Planning and Recreation, Program in Sustainable Communities, Northern Arizona University.
****Sun-Jin Yun, Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Seoul National University., May
2018, "Social conditions to better realize the environmental gains of alternative energy: Degrowth
and collective ownership," https://www-sciencedirect-
com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/science/article/pii/S0016328717303828//TU-SG)
A commonly proposed technological solution1 to environmental problems, especially reducing
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is alternative or renewable energy development . However, there is growing

evidence that alternative energy substitutes for fossil fuel generated energy may not result
in a one-to-one substitute, and may even increase total energy use (one aspect of the “energy boomerang
eff ect”)(York, 2012, 2016; Zehner, 2012). The goal of this project is to address the underexplored practical issue that stems from research on this paradox: identifying policies and
political programs that may better realize the potential environmental gains of alternative energy development (York, 2016). While our goal is to explore how to more eff ectively

technology is not an autonomous mechanism

use alternative energy converters to reduce environmental harm, it should be made clear that

that will solve the environmental crisis. We agree with others that techno-optimism, the belief that “technological breakthroughs will serve as the
means to address each and every environmental problem that arises, allowing society to overcome natural limits and all socio-ecological challenges,” is an ideological response to
environmental problems (York & Clark, 2010, p. 481; see also Dentzman, Gunderson, & Jussaume, 2016; Foster, 2000; Foster, Clark, & York, 2010; Gunderson, Stuart, and

Petersen, 2018). There are at least three fundamental problems of techno-optimism in relation to human-nature
relations (York & Clark, 2010): (1) it overlooks the wide body of research showing that environmental
problems are influenced by social factors and are often partially caused by social-structural
conditions; (2) unintended additional environmental problems often follow techno-fixes; and (3)
techno-optimism ignores the paradoxical outcomes of techno-fixes, such as the better understood
Jevons paradox (the commonly found association between improved resource efficiency and
increased resource use) (e.g., Greening, Greene, & Difiglio, 2000; Gunderson & Yun, 2017; Foster et al., 2010: ch. 7; Polimini, Mayumi, Giampietro, & Alcott,
2008; York, 2006, York, 2010; York, Ergas, Rosa, & Dietz, 2011; York & McGee, 2016). One underlying reason for the ideological nature of techno-optimism in

environmental thought is that it ignores the social dimensions of technological innovation, adoption, and use

(Gunderson et al., 2018). Technological innovation is social because the values and interests of a given

society, especially of those in power, influence and “shape” the kinds of technical artifacts that
will be developed in a given society (e.g., Bijker, Hughes, & Pinch, 1987; Feenberg, 1999; Marcuse, 1964; MacKenzie & Wajcman, 1985).
Technology adoption is social because factors such as power, social structure, choice, and values
influence whether or not a given technological artifact or system will be taken up by a society (e.g.,
Cottrell, 1972). Along with its social impacts, technology use is social in at least two, and sometimes contradictory,

ways: (1) technology orients values and sets a range of ends that social actors and groups can
pursue (i.e., technology is not neutral and disinterested toward all ends) (e.g., Hornborg, 2009; Whyte, Gunderson, & Clark, 2017), yet, at the same time,
(2) societies can make choices about the diff erent ends within the range of options made possible
by a given technology (e.g., Cottrell, 1972; Feenberg, 1999; Veblen, 1939). At times, the alternative social futures made possible by technology are constrained
by existing social structures. Akin to the claim that there is a contradiction between the technical potential of adopting and using techniques that could reduce human toil, on the

there is currently a contradiction between the

one hand, and the social relations that stand in the way, on the other (Young, 1976),

technical potential of adopting and using techniques that have the potential to reduce
environmental pressure, on the one hand, and the institutionalized social relations that hamper
this technical potential(Foster,2002:101;Gundersonetal.,2018).Due to the social nature of technology use, if alternative energy development is to contribute to
significantly reducing environmental pressure, it must also be accompanied by social and policy changes. We argue that the energy boomerang eff ect is

predicated upon specific social structural conditions and, thus, may be able to be contained
through social-structural changes. To be clear, our aim is not to empirically demonstrate that existing social conditions have already contained the
energy boomerang eff ect. Instead, in line with the critical theoretical tradition, we attempt to bring new possibilities and questions to consciousness by playing off what is possible
with what is by adopting a two-dimensional form of thinking that assumes “that what is fraught with tension between its empirical reality and its potentialities” (Feenberg, 2004, p.

Comparing technological use and impacts in existing social conditions with what is possible in
87).

alternative social conditions sheds light on two themes highly relevant to futures studies. First, we
contribute to futures studies’ long-term interest in technological impact and forecasting. The critical theoretical approach stresses that technological design, use, and impact are

technology tends to reproduce existing social relations, some already

conditioned by society (e.g., property structure),

existing technologies have the potential to contribute to a more rational social order, and
technology design and use has the potential to radically change in diff erent social conditions (e.g.,
Feenberg, 1999; Marcuse, 1964). The second broader contribution to futures studies concerns the focus on environmental forecasting and anticipation, areas of study with a half-
century long interconnected history with futures studies (Granjou, Walker, & Salazar, 2017), connections that were recently made more
precise(e.g.,Granjou,2016,2017;Granjou&Salazar,2016;Groves,2017).It seems clear that any competent analysis and assessment of alternative social futures must be an analysis

by integrating the sociology of

and assessment of alternative social-environmental futures (Granjou, 2016; Granjou & Salazar, 2016). More broadly,

technology, research on the energy boomerang eff ect, ideas surrounding degrowth, and research
on community energy projects, the primary contribution of this project is identifying what kinds
of social conditions and policies would be better suited to realize the environmental gains of
alternative energy development.
Link
 AT Perm – Negotiation DA
Negotiation DA – the perm splinters resistance by accepting small demands
while leaving capitalism’s structure intact
Parr 13 (Adrian, Chair of Taft Faculty and Director of the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center,
holds a joint appointment in the Department of Political Science and the School of Architecture
and Interior Design, The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics, 2013, p.
5-6)

The contradiction of capitalism is that it is an uncompromising structure of negotiation. It ruthlessly

absorbs sociohistorical limits and the challenges these limits pose to capital, placing them in the
service of further capital accumulation. Neoliberalism is an exclusive system premised upon the logic of
property rights and the expansion of these rights, all the while maintaining that the free market is self-regulating, sufficiently and

efficiently working to establish individual and collective well-being. In reality, however, socioeconomic disparities have become

more acute the world over, and the world's "common wealth," as David Bollier and later Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri
note, has been increasingly privatized.12 In 2010, the financial wealth of the world's high-net-worth individuals (with invest- able assets of $1 to $50
million or more [all money amounts are in U.S. dollars]) surpassed the 2007 pre-financial crisis peak, growing 9.7 percent and reaching $42.7 trillion. Also in 2010 the global
population of high-net- worth individuals grew 8.3 percent to 10.9 million.13 In 2010, the global population was 6.9 billion, of whom there were 1,000 billionaires; 80,000 ultra-
high-net-worth individuals with average wealth exceeding $50 million; 3 billion with an average wealth of $10,000, of which 1.1 billion owned less than $1,000; and 2.5 billion
who were reportedly "unbanked" (without a bank account and thus living on the margins of the formal financial system).14 In a world where financial advantage brings with it

Neoliberal
political benefits, these figures attest to the weak position the majority of the world occupies in the arena of environmental and climate change politics.

capitalism ameliorates the threat posed by environmental change by taking control of the
collective call it issues forth, splintering the collective into a disparate and confusing array of
individual choices competing with one another over how best to solve the crisis. Through this
process of competition, the collective nature of the crisis is restructured [END PAGE 5] and privatized,
then put to work for the production and circulation of capital as the average wealth of the world's
high-net-worth individuals grows at the expense of the majority of the world living in abject
poverty. Advocating that the free market can solve debilitating environmental changes and the climate crisis is not a
political response to these problems; it is merely a political ghost emptied of its collective
aspirations .
 AT Perm – Subjectivity DA
The perm affectively cements neoliberal subjectivity.
Bloom 16 (Peter, “Cutting off the king's head: The Self- Disciplining Fantasy of Neoliberal
Sovereignty,” New Formations. 88, 8-29, July 2016)
Over the last half-century, traditional
definitions of power as predominantly linked to sovereignty are
being challenged. Indeed, the idea of a subject ruled by a personal authority is judged to be at best overly simplistic and at worst
both descriptively and normatively outdated. To this end, Derrida calls for a ‘messianism without a messiah’ while other post-
foundational thinkers, such as Laclau and Mouffe - urge people to question naturalised power structures and forms of authority.1
Foucault supposedly goes even further in this direction, seeking to reorient the study of power away from sovereignty per say and
toward a more sophisticated understanding of how the subject is formed within a complex network of disciplining norms and
practices. He thus proclaims: what we need is a political philosophy that isn’t erected around the problem of
sovereignty, nor therefore around the problem of law and prohibition. We need to cut off the king’s head.2 These
desires appear to have particular resonance in an era of neoliberalism where coercive rule by a powerful sovereign is
seemingly being replaced by forms of ‘ self-discipline ’. In this respect, the role of the state is not to rule
in the traditional sense but rather to implement, rationalize and cultivate a ‘proper’ market mentality
amongst the population.3 Nevertheless, the government has retained an important activist function for, at
least in principle, helping individuals navigate and succeed within this emerging neoliberal order .4 These
insights problematise the common notion that neoliberalism is eroding, rather than merely reconfiguring, sovereign power. They also
put into stark relief the need to better understand the intimate and complex contemporary relationship between discipline and
To this end, the concept of disciplinary power has been theoretically expanded to better
sovereignty.
account for the psychological ‘grip’ these disciplining orders hold over individuals.5 Similarly, any
attempt to do away with sovereignty cannot ignore its continuing concrete and affective power for contemporary subjects. These
concerns are perhaps especially relevant in a twenty-first century that has witnessed the rise of resurgent authoritarian regimes such as
in Russia and China, as well as similar policy initiatives like the war on terror that apparently exemplify direct sovereign power at its
CEOs are increasingly held up as cultural heroes - paradigms of innovation and
most potent.6 Similarly,
strong leadership .7 Historically, it must be asked then how disciplinary power is related to and
potentially supported by sovereign power within neoliberalism. This essay attempts to address this issue
through introducing sovereignty as an affective fantasy that ironically supports and strengthens neoliberal
processes of ‘ self-discipline ’, drawing specifically on the psychoanalytic theories of Jacques Lacan. Emerging scholarship
emphasising the social implications of a Lacanian approach has focused largely on the role of cultural fantasies for shaping
subjectivity and identification.8 Specific to sovereignty, Rhodes and Bloom have noted the continuing appeal of a ‘fantasy of
hierarchy’ linked to the psychological attachment individuals maintain toward an ‘ideal leader’.9 Such insights allow for a more
complex rendering of the affective role of sovereignty for producing and reproducing the current ‘self-disciplining’ subject. In
particular, it sheds light upon how the subjection to disciplinary power is strengthened by modes of subjectivation that continue to rely
upon an appeal to sovereignty. This paper reconsiders the relationship and importance of sovereign power for neoliberalism. It
proposes that the identification with a powerful sovereign provides individuals with ontological
security in the face of rather complex micro-processes of power and broader depersonalised forms of subjection
associated with neoliberalism. In this respect, individuals are affectively ‘gripped’ by sovereignty to
account for the complexity and incoherence associated with the concrete and discursive operation of disciplinary power. The
appeal of a sovereign fantasy lies in its promise of granting individuals a sense of ‘sovereign’
agency perceived to be lacking in their existence as ‘agency-less’ disciplinary subjects of
neoliberalism. Thus paradoxically, the less sovereign contemporary processes of subjection are the more sovereign oriented its
accompanying form of subjectivation potentially is. At the broader theoretical level, this analysis hopes to illuminate the dynamic and
mutually reinforcing interaction of subjection and subjectivation, as first proposed by Foucault
 L – Abolish ICE
The aff’s movement might seem revolutionary but it doesn’t assume the
nature of the law and remains trapped within liberal frameworks that uphold
neoliberalism
Paik 17 (Dr. A. Naomi Paik Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies, an interdisciplinary
scholar whose work examines the relationship between law and cultural politics, centering
racism, state violence, and the limits of citizenship to secure rights and social equity. Her book,
Rightlessness: Testimony and Redress in U.S. Prison Campssince World War II (UNC Press,
2016; winner, Best Book in History, AAAS 2018; runner-up, John Hope Franklin prize for best
book in American Studies, ASA, 2017). “Abolitionist futures and the US sanctuary movement”
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306396817717858//TU-SG)
Cautionary histories Sanctuary – of congregations and of local jurisdictions – stabilises access to substantive
rights and provisions; only people who can go to the hospital, take their children to school, and move in public space can take these abilities for granted. On a
practical level, it sets up potential confrontations between local and federal governments and offers a

first line of defence against immigration enforcement.48 Indeed, San Francisco has already sued the new administration, challenging
the constitutionality of its attack on sanctuary cities.49 Sanctuary policies – as proclamations of widely held public

values – can also operate in civil society to highlight the injustice of a raid, arrest, detention,
or deportation order and to consolidate public opposition under its banner, even if that
opposition ultimately fails to secure the targeted immigrant’s safe harbour . Indeed, Elvira Arellano’s
predicament and her effort to ward off deportation launched the NSM as a national movement. However, the fact that the US ultimately deported Arellano points to the limits of

many existing sanctuary policies leave much leeway for law enforcement to
sanctuary. As they stand,

circumvent their protections. Since the president took office, ICE has found ways to meet its
deportation orders despite sanctuary policies , which, while refusing cooperation, cannot ban ICE from performing its work on its own.
ICE agents have stalked courthouses, accosting people and crosschecking publicly posted bond

sheets against DHS databases. As ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice confirmed, ‘because many of the agency’s arrest
targets provide false address information, locating these individuals at a courthouse is, in some
instances, the agency’s only likely means of affecting their capture’.50 Furthermore, while city officials,
including police chiefs, have reaffirmed their sanctuary commitments even in the current climate
of intensifying hostility, some police officers have not . ‘Make no mistake about it’, Ed Mullins, the New York Police sergeants’ union
president, asserted, ‘the members of law enforcement in the NYPD want to cooperate with ICE.’51 As these

workarounds indicate, a core component of the deportation terror lies in the mundane
policing practices that create contact with ICE-friendly police officers, court cases, bond lists and
so on. The centrality of law enforcement in targeting immigrants also means that processes of
criminalisation and policing practices in general, not solely for immigrants, must be core arenas
in the fight for true sanctuary. The limits of sanctuary, however, emanate not just from external forces of the
state, but also from the movement’s history of espousing liberal frameworks that affirm the

legitimacy of law enforcement , thereby neutralising its ability to contest the invigorated terrors
sweeping the US. The religious congregations that physically harboured refugees and immigrants
have maintained their own selection requirements. Some participant churches in the 1980s screened refugees, providing safe harbour to
those who were ‘high risk’ with a story of abuse so compelling that it might influence public opinion on US foreign policy. While criticising the US state’s disregard of
Salvadorean and Guatemalan refugees as ‘illegal aliens’, these congregations nevertheless selected deserving refugees in ways that risked reproducing the logic of the system they

And while the scope of the NSM among churches has expanded to encompass anyone
challenged.

facing deportation orders, it, too, selects immigrants ‘whose legal cases clearly reveal the
contradictions and moral injustice of our current immigration system’. The chosen must be facing a deportation order and
have US citizen children, a ‘good work record’, and a ‘viable case under current law’.52 These criteria were important for the public relations component of the movements, which
called for the refugees of the 1980s to perform their plight as refugees and for the immigrants of the 2000s to perform the role of the ‘good immigrant’ and thereby expose US
policy failures. While existing local sanctuary policies can obstruct ICE, they nevertheless ultimately
prove insufficient safeguards for immigrants, given the far-reaching information
sharing between agencies and the ever widening definition of ‘criminal’ behaviour. Because
of the breadth of DHS’s reach, even the strongest sanctuary jurisdictions are still enmeshed in its infrastructure
and weakened by the use of shared federal immigration databases.53 Police regularly share the
fingerprints of anyone they arrest with the FBI, which then transfers to DHS databases. Thus, even if local
officials do not inquire into a person’s immigration status and ultimately drop the charges against an immigrant, ICE will still learn about the arrest. Many local

sanctuary policies also emphasise law-abiding immigrants and exclude those even alleged to have
committed a felony. Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance provides a telling example. Its provisions hold true ‘unless an agency … is acting pursuant to a
legitimate law enforcement purpose.’54 Specifically, its protections do not apply if an immigrant under investigation

has a criminal warrant, a felony conviction, a pending felony charge, or if s/he has been
identified as gang member in the police database . These exceptions to sanctuary are broad. An immigrant does
not have to be convicted to be excluded, and, as noted, the ‘aggravated felony’ has expanded to
include such minor contraventions as shoplifting. Furthermore, the gang database sweeps up
people not for gang activity but for signs of gang affiliation that, according to the Chicago Police Department (CPD),
include wearing baggy pants and untucked shirts, and merely associating with known gang
members.55 Toddlers have been included in similar databases ,56 and it is difficult to even know if you are included on
them.57 Resonant with terrorist watch lists that target Arab and Muslim people, gang databases purport to promote public safety from violent criminals, but in fact

racially profile Black and Latina/o people, who are vastly disproportionately represented.58 These
exceptions to sanctuary essentially communicate that immigrants with mere affiliation to
expansive definitions of crime have lost the privilege of sanctuary, that they are not
welcomed in the welcoming city . Furthermore, sanctuary policies often justify their protections in
terms of law enforcement objectives. Again, Chicago’s ordinance emphasises, the ‘cooperation of all persons, both
documented citizens and those without documentation status, is essential to prevent and solve
crimes and maintain public order’.59 It thereby binds its notion of sanctuary to the policing practices
that purportedly secure these interests. Yet policing in Chicago shows that ‘maintaining public
order’ involves violating the very communities the sanctuary ordinance purports to provide
with a safe haven . The CPD consistently operates through racist policing practices, from spectacular abuses
like the killing of unarmed Black teenager Laquan McDonald to the torturing of suspects in the ‘domestic
black site’ of Homan Square.60 Research by activist groups like We Charge Genocide, independent task forces and federal agencies have shown that racial
profiling, abuses of (lethal) force, and a culture of impunity pervade the CPD. The Chicago police are ten times more likely to shoot Black

people than whites61 and four times more likely to search the cars of Black and Latino/a drivers.62 In early 2017, the Justice Department released its 161-page
report on the CPD illustrating ‘a picture of a department that does not enforce the law, but frequently operates outside of it’.63 As its past and present demonstrate, the CPD does
not protect all Chicagoans. It has instead proven to be an assailant and taker of life, targeting Black and Latina/o people, who are cast as the threats that must be subdued in service

Many existing sanctuary policies operate within the framework of liberal democracy
of public order.

and law , even of law and order, conveying that immigrants should be included in our communities, but
implicitly conceding that their membership is provisional . By selecting certain immigrants or
carving out exceptions, religious congregations and local governments play into a dichotomy that
valorises ‘good immigrants’ against unspoken ‘bad immigrants’ , who do not deserve protection. Such liberal
versions of sanctuary challenge the US state’s exclusions, but only to expand the terms of inclusion,
neoliberal
rather than to disrupt their logic altogether. Indeed, they draw on terms of
subjectivity – law-abiding, hard-working, gainfully employed, and
normatively reproductive contributors to the economy (always at depressed
wages precisely because they lack the full protections of citizenship or documentation) – that are part of the
 Liberal sanctuary shores up the notion that undocumented
problem.

immigrants deserve inclusion in the community, but contingent on their

submission to the capitalist extraction of their labour and to the state’s
(racialised) criminal justice apparatuses . While sanctuary policies refuse cooperation with
ICE, in the final analysis they grant the state legitimacy over law enforcement. But any bind tying sanctuary to law
enforcement objectives negates the meaning and purpose of sanctuary, despite best intentions. As the history outlined above elucidates, what counts as a crime is not static, but is

criminalisation is a process that produces criminals as objects to be

constantly shifting, indeed, expanding. Put differently,

feared and therefore targeted for discipline, punishment, and removal via incarceration and
deportation. As the escalating criminalisation of immigrants, supposed terrorists, and even
sanctuary indicates, criminalised people ‘are unable to comply with the “rule of law” because US
law targets their being and their bodies, not their behavior’. As immigration scholar Lisa Cacho argues, such persons,
whose criminalisation is written on their bodies, ‘ do not have the option to be law abiding’,64 regardless of how hard-

working, family-oriented, and deferential to law enforcement they try to be. Thus, though many
immigrants and their advocates respond to federal deportation regimes by asserting that
they are not criminals, this defence does not destabilise, but affirms, the legitimacy of
criminalisation overall, even while demanding exception to it . The core paradox of liberal sanctuary lies here: being
a law-abiding, ‘good’ immigrant will not save you as long as the state can determine what it
means to be a law-abiding, ‘good’ immigrant.

Your movement is disconnected from the broader system – reform only

grants it legitimacy
Correia 18 (7/9/18, David Correia is the author of Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant
Struggle in Northern New Mexico and a co-editor of La Jicarita: An Online Magazine of
Environmental Politics in New Mexico. “Abolish ICE, But Don’t Stop There”
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/09/abolish-ice-but-dont-stop-there///TU-SG)

Some press outlets, however, see the #AbolishICE demands as little more than sound bite politics . According to NPR,
#AbolishICE isn’t a call to actually abolish a federal police agency, but rather merely “symbolizes Democrats’ opposition to Trump’s immigration policies, particularly the
separation of children and parents at the border. It’s a shorthand way to remind lawmakers and the public that Democrats don’t like how the president has demonized immigrants
— whether they entered the U.S. legally or not. It also expresses the fear and outrage among immigrant communities who feel that ICE is terrorizing their neighborhoods.”

Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal (D) dismissed the calls to abolish ICE as nothing more than a political slogan,
saying in an interview that “abolishing ICE will accomplish nothing.” Abolish ICE, in other words, and some
other agency will do the job . Blumenthal’s not wrong. The separation of children from their
parents is not a unique practice of ICE . The Trump administration will have a nearly unlimited
choice of agencies that could do the job of separating children from their parents, because
separating children from their parents is what police do every day, whether on the border or in
your town. According to Rutgers University’s National Resource Center on Children & Families of the Incarcerated, nearly three million children
in the United States have an incarcerated parent. And family separation by police is racialized, whether
by ICE or any other police agency. One in 9 African-American children has an incarcerated parent
as opposed to 1 in 57 white children. To engage in policing, whether by ICE or your local cops, is
to engage in the separation of children from their parents. So Blumenthal is right. Abolishing ICE won’t
solve the problem of family separation , but he’s not right about the solution. Police reform is not a tool of
transformation, but a means to reinforce the authority and legitimacy of police . Consider the
Albuquerque police department (APD). In 2014 the U.S. Department of Justice forced APD to engage in sweeping court-

ordered reforms. This is because APD wasn’t just separating parents from their children, it was killing them. Between 1987 and 1997, APD killed 31 people, more
than any other department of its size. Outrage led to reforms in 1997, and then police increased the rate at which it killed people. Between 2010 and 2014, APD killed nearly 30
people, culminating in the bloodiest year of all, 2014, when police committed nearly 21% of all homicides in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. But there were few calls to abolish

APD in 2014, just as there were few in 1997.Instead, it’s been wave after wave of reform in Albuquerque. And the post-2014 reform process
resulted in new use-of-force policies, and improved
looks a lot like 1997’s. Both focused on community oversight of APD, both

training and hiring standards. Is the current reform process any different than all the failed ones of the past? The federal monitor, the person charged with
overseeing the court-mandated reforms in Albuquerque, can’t say. There are new policies, and they’re tougher. But according to

the monitor these are improvements achieved “around the edges .” Every new policy is made
despite, not because, of APD. “ Begrudging progress ” he calls it. APD meets every new policy change
with “stiffened resistance.” Sounds like 1997 all over again; and is also what we would get at ICE if Blumenthal gets his
wish of reform there. It’s important to point out that this “improvement” at APD is just about policy — just what’s written on the page. What about APD practices? The court
requires tough procedures for holding officers accountable. APD must review use-of-force cases by officers. But APD skirts this requirement. The monitor notes “serious” failures
among supervisors to even acknowledge that force happens. Cops use neck holds and what they call “distraction” strikes (chokeholds and punches to the head). APD doesn’t
consider this “force.” This extends to the use of tear gas and flash-bang grenades, which APD also considers “non-use of force events.” And what about the use of K9s? In the
years between the beginning of court-ordered reforms in 2014 and the end of 2017, police dogs in Albuquerque bit 57 people, nearly 70% of whom were people of color. Six of the
people mauled by police dogs were under 19 years old, including a 16-year old child. APD doesn’t just separate children from their parents, it sends dogs after them. APD has a
backlog of use-of-force cases to review, and no plan to do it. The monitor noted recently that APD’s “Force Review Board” was unaware of this problem. This is because, at the
time of the monitor’s report, the Board hadn’t met in over a year. Maybe that’s for the best. When the Board convenes, it operates as a rubber stamp for officer misconduct. In one
report the monitor described “a serious use of force involving a handcuffed prisoner.” The Board accepted the “deliberate attempts to rationalize the use of force by the officer” and
adjourned without providing “counsel, reprimand, or discipline.” On paper, APD holds officers accountable. In practice, not so much. The monitor concluded that APD “has a
difficult time knowing an improper use of force when it sees it.” What APD says its officers do and what cops actually do on the street remain two different things. During one
recent court reporting period, the monitor found that APD sought to “walk back” its policy to review lapel camera devices following use-of-force events. APD adopted procedures
to investigate and adjudicate community complaints against police. But the court found a “substantial and persistent (and unreported) backlog of cases related to uses of force.”

So many backlogs, and perhaps the biggest backlog of all is the one full of the unfulfilled
promises by chiefs and mayors that reform will somehow “fix” the Albuquerque police department. But it’s
worth asking what we’d get with a “fixed” police department. It would be a department that doesn’t just kill more than most, it’s
one implicated in intimidating witnesses, harassing critics, violating its own policies, and ignoring court orders related to public records. It is a department that has left thousands
of rape evidence kits untested in police warehouses. Why, you might ask, is a police department so mired in controversy, so incompetent at fighting crime, so intransigent at fixing

while a particular agency such as APD or

what’s wrong, and so lethal to poor people of color, seen as so essential to the city of Albuquerque? Because

ICE might occasionally find itself the target of criticism for its practices, rarely is police as an
institution seen as the problem. Instead police, we are taught and told, is essential, whether at the
border or in your community. The idea that a community might be safer without the police, however, is dismissed as too radical. But there is significant
evidence that the institution of police as currently constituted does not enhance public safety and security. The 1972 Kansas City Patrol Experiment demonstrated that increased
police patrol does not reduce crime. When NYPD cops went on strike in 2014, crime reports (not just arrests) plummeted. Fewer police, not more, enhances public safety. If we
want to get tough on crime, we might start by getting rid of cops. But there are no calls for the abolition of APD in Albuquerque. Despite its long record of racialized violence
against the poor, APD receives broad support. Albuquerque’s new Mayor, Democrat Tim Keller, who campaigned on fixing APD, instead hired a 20-year veteran of APD as its

the calls to abolish ICE become a

new chief; and even worse promises to hire hundreds of new officers. This is what passes at getting tough on cops. If

call for reform, let Albuquerque be our guide. It won’t work . Police and policing do not serve the interests of
the communities being policed, and no amount of reform will change that fact. After all, what history of
community-minded, constitutional policing can APD or ICE point to as the reason for anyone to support expanding its ranks? What pattern of good-faith effort at reform can APD

No amount of reform will

show as evidence that reform in 2014 is somehow different than the failed reforms of the past? And we can extend this to ICE.

transform the sole purpose for the existence of ICE: the arrest, incarceration and deportation of
migrants, which will always include the separation of families?
 L – Adoption
Adoption is a method of capitalism to insidiously expand its reach
Stark 2018 (Barbara Stark. Professor of Law and Hofstra Research Fellow, Maurice A. Deane
School of Law, Hofstra University “When Genealogy Matters: Intercountry Adoption,
International Human Rights, and Global Neoliberalism”
https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/vantl51&div=7&g_sent=1&casa_token=
&collection=journals//TU-SG)
How Neoliberalism Transmogrifies Intercountry Adoption Neoliberalism promised to generate prosperity; new businesses
would be spurred by an influx of Western cash. In countries where the annual income is USD 800, however, Western agencies offering

fifty dollars for "facilitating" adoptions or as "finders' fees" 2 76 promoted baby-selling . 2 7 7 The
local people urging their friends or cousins to surrender their babies for cash to feed the others were
"entrepreneurs ." Professor Marianne Blair has documented widespread trafficking in sending countries,
including Cambodia, Guatemala, Nepal, Vietnam, India,278 and, on a smaller scale, in Haiti, Sierra Leone, Congo, and Uganda. 2 79 In addition, there
have been allegations of corruption in China, Russia, and South Korea.28 0 Some of these cases involved agencies lying to parents, telling them, for
example, that their children would be educated in America and would send for their parents when they were older.281 In other cases,
children were simply abducted.282 Programs were shut down, or put on hold, or other states imposed moratoria, refusing to accept
children from states that did not comply with the Hague Convention. 283 At their peak, however, intercountry adoptions also helped
legitimate neoliberalism and the globalization of capitalism. Briggs describes the political rhetoric when adoptive
parents were welcome in Latin America: Latin America did not need development, or access to birth control-
which the Christian Right redefined as cultural imperialism-it needed strong markets, relief from
the burden of providing social welfare measures . .. and the ability to send impoverished infants to families in the United
States who could care for them. Adoption was indispensable to the neoliberal economic and political

order . 2 8 4 Intercountry adoption reassured Americans. We could rescue at least a few of the most
vulnerable. We could take responsibility for saving children from terrible hardships, even as we avoided
responsibility for the larger economic and political factors that led to their surrender. 28 5
 L – Benefits
The aff’s use of benefits to convince people to immigrate creates a global war
for talent where there you don’t have value unless you produce economic
capital
Kennedy 16, Sean Christopher Kennedy, Department of Communication Studies Areas of
Specialization: Talent, Knowledge Economy, Neoliberalism, Distributed Cognition, University of
Kansas , (“The Politics of Talent: Inequality, Innovation, and Attribution”, August 31, 2016,
http://hdl.handle.net/1808/22365 AS)
Theincreasingly generous benefits offered by other nations, combined with the global mobility of
talented immigrants, suggest that in order to attract these individuals the US must be willing to
offer increasingly lucrative benefits and preferential treatment to the talented. Moreover, the competitive
conditions in which adjustments to immigration law occur creates an escalating process of
“borrowing,” in which each attempt to avoid being outbid precipitates a new round of increasingly aggressive bidding (Shachar and Hirschl 2013, p. 79). In the process,
the offer of membership within a national polity becomes a “recruitment tool” situated within a broader
“settlement package” offered to attract an elite group of potential migrants to settle within a particular state (Shachar and Hirschl 2013, p. 102-103). This precipitates a world in

which “ talents constitute a form of movable entitlement without formal citizenship” (Ong 2006, p. 16). As the
competition for talented immigrants heats up, the distribution of resources, care, and recognition becomes an increasingly unequal expression of the need to satisfy the talented in

states do not simply compete for “talented immigrants” from other countries, but must also
order to attract them. Indeed,

concern themselves with staving off the potential flight of the already existing talented people
within their own countries. As a result, therefore, the select group of people deemed talented exercise a
disproportionate degree of political influence because the global competition to attract them grants them international mobility (Brown and
Tannock 2009, p. 383-384). This creates a feedback loop in which those not deemed talented are consigned to

“permanent temporary” status and deprived of resources as neoliberal governance becomes

increasingly calibrated to the narrow attraction of talent
 L – Disease
Securitizing biological risks ties health to the protection of global capitalism.
‘Disease as threat’ narratives militarize responsibility for public health,
replicating past colonial structures to secure neoliberalism.
Mohan J. DUTTA, 15. Professor and Head of the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University
of Singapore, Adjunct Professor of Communication at the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University. Neoliberal
Health Organizing, 2015, p. 167-169.

The globalization of economies has produced accelerated patterns of movements of capital, goods, services,
materials, and labor, simultaneously resulting in the accelerated production and circulation of anxieties
constituted around these movements. Neoliberal organizing of health manifests itself in the
development and deployment of surveillance, management, and coordination networks that see health
primarily in the realm of threats posed by diseases dispersed through global networks, networks of bioterror,
emerging infectious diseases, and biowarfare (Salinsky, 2002). The response of health systems
therefore is formulated in the form of network structures of biodefense and homeland security,
performing functions of surveillance, information gathering, and information dissemination, constituted
around the economic logics of growth and efficiency. The protection of the economic opportunities of
globalization becomes the function of public health systems formulated in the narrative of
geosecurity and implemented in the form of programs controlled by the police-military
complex within structures of biodefense, biosecurity and geosecurity. With this emphasis on security, the
mandate for health depicts continuity with colonial implementations of public health administration
to manage erstwhile colonies, increasingly being set within the military metaphor of health, turning health into a
geosecurity threat for the new configurations of empire, and therefore, deploying military
interventions to address health issues. Consider the following depiction in a report issued by the U.S. National
Intelligence Council (NIC) that offers a picture of the global health threats posed by infectious diseases: New and reemerging
infectious diseases will pose a rising global health threat and will complicate U.S. and global security over the next twenty years.
These diseases will endanger U.S. citizens at home and abroad, threaten U.S. armed forces deployed overseas, and exacerbate social
and political instability in key countries and regions in which the United States has significant interests. (Gordon, 2000) [END PAGE
167] The protection of human health is seen as a function of the military, tied to the goals of
defending global capitalism against the threats to health and reflecting the colonial undertones
of health containment measures deployed by the instruments of empire. In this instance of the report published by
the NIC, knowledge about health is constituted in the realm of intelligence gathering to protect the
interests of national security of the United States. Framed as threats to the health of citizens at home and abroad
and to the health of the armed forces deployed overseas, infectious diseases are seen as contributors to social and
political instability in key strategic regions of significant value to the United States. International relations are
understood in the language of security, casting interpenetrating networks as targets of surveillance and management. The portrayal
of infectious diseases as threats to geosecurity deploys valuable health resources into the hands of the
military, placing the power of disease management under military structures and framing the
responses to disease in military interpretations. Moreover, the juxtaposition of epidemic narratives amid narratives of
war and bioterror heighten the concerns for geosecurity, foregrounding and necessitating a variety of military response strategies
(Aaltola, 2012). The interpenetrating relationship between health and the military constitute one element of the consolidation of power
in the hands of the global elite achieved through neoliberal transformations. The military emerges as a global
organizational structure for the management of health, simultaneously justifying the deployment of
resources to the military and the deployment of military strategies to address health issues. This
emphasis on the military framed within the realm of protecting geostrategic interests constructs health in the realm of
threats, simultaneously erasing questions of fundamental human rights to health. Similarly, in the president's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a significant proportion of resources are housed in the military in order to deploy military-to-
military interventions within the broader umbrella of protecting the geostrategic interests of the United States. Consider, for instance,
the workings of the U.S. Africa Command to address HIV/ AIDS prevention as a security threat in Africa. The U.S. Africa Command
(AFRICOM) is the result of an internal reorganization of the U.S. military command structure, creating one administrative
headquarters that answers to the Secretary of Defense and is responsible for U.S. military relations with 53 African countries.
AFRICOM recognizes that HIV/AIDS has an enormous impact on economic and political stability across the continent, and, by
degrading military medical readiness, weakens the national security of individual countries. HIV/ AIDS programming will be a key
component of AFRICOM's security cooperation and humanitarian assistance activities. (www.pepfar.gov/about/agencies/ cl
9397.htm) [END PAGE 168] Critical to the deployment of a militarized form of governance in addressing
health is the consolidation of power within elite structures, working through militarized systems of
governance to control disease to protect the economic interests of the status quo. The military, as an instrument
of power and control, functions within the narratives of security cooperation and humanitarian
assistance activities to assert its power and control in global governance. Intelligence gathering
emerges as an instrument for the generation of data to secure and protect zones of economic
function. This gathering of targeted intelligence and the deployment of targeted interventions
becomes particularly critical within the context of maintaining open zones of communication and
economic exchange within the neoliberal structuring of economic relationships. Knowledge and technical
interventions in this sense are constituted amid the paradoxical agenda of needing to protect boundaries and at the same time ensuring
transnational spaces of movement of capital, labor, services, materials, and markets. In this chapter, we closely interrogate the
meanings that circulate around the militarization of health, and attend to the communicative processes through which the militarization
of health is achieved. The surveillance
of spaces and the militarization of responses, I argue, are continuous
with colonial logics of controlling spaces in distant locales of imperial governance, and are
discontinuous from the colonial forms of governance because of the paradoxes of networked
flows in neoliberal governance.
 L – DREAM Act
Sweet [Neoliberal] dreams (are made of these) … who are [we] to disagree?
Ríos-Rojas and Stern 18 (Anne Ríos-Rojas is an assistant professor in the Department of
Educational Studies at Colgate University who grew up in the diasporic space located in between
San Francisco, California and Costa Rica. Mark Stern is an associate professor in the Department
of Educational Studies at Colgate University where he teaches classes on education policy and
social theory. “Do “Undocumented Aliens” Dream of Neoliberal Sheep?: Conditional
DREAMing and Decolonial Imaginaries”
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10665684.2018.1441764?needAccess=true//TU-
SG)

Everybody’s looking for something. Everybody is looking for an ideality, for something that is not yet here. Everyone is looking
for a dream , a future. We sleep, yes, to rest and repair our minds and bodies. But we also sleep to dream, to find, there in the furthest recess of our psyche, a resting
place for our desires, a reprieve from what can be an alienating reality. As a child of immigrants (Ríos-Rojas), growing up in a working-class home where money was often scarce
and legal-status uncertainties seemed to be everpresent, we turned to dreams to furnish our fantasies for other pleasures, other ways of being in the world, other futures.

Dreams were (and continue to be) those prickly things overwhelmed with hopeful longing and
desire that move us to feel that this world, this present, is no longer enough—they are, in some
ways, a refutation to the present as such. And that dreamy itch keeps things moving towards imagining a different future. It was indeed a dream
that propelled my (Ríos-Rojas) father to leave Peru and venture beyond a toilsome material reality towards a different potentiality. Like many migrants, he folded that dream, along
with a twenty-dollar bill, into his pocket and ventured towards the dream of America. He did not have much, so the story goes, but like many of his gender and generation at the

time, he had a dream. Dreams are both immigrants’ domain and methodology: a way of being and a means
of doing. We would be hard pressed to speak of a/n im/migrant1 subjectivity and the forward-looking performance of migration without referencing dreams and the utopic
desires fueling them.2 To dream is not just an itinerant event emerging when the mind rests and

desire speaks. Rather, it is an entire mode of being . The dreamer becomes and is the dream.
The children of immigration are the very enfleshment of the dream, embodying the (frustrated)
hopes and (deferred) dreams of parents and grandparents (e.g., Carcamo, 2015). Within what for many is a precarious material
present, the children of immigrants operate as futuriority, as the flesh through which one kind of

“future collectivity … registers as the illumination of a horizon of existence” (Muñoz, 2009, p. 25). How often we
hear in the testimonies of immigrant youth, “I am my parents’ dreams. Their dream lives on through me.” But embodying the dream has a catch ,

and that catch is historical context and ideological circumstance . Despite it being possible that im/migrant dreams have,

for some time, taken similar shape (cross-border journeys) and affective plot (the desire for a better life), the substance of those dreams gets

mediated by a very material and discursive present. Dreams are not neutral . Nor are they ahistorical or
transhistorical; they are subject to the ebb and flow of time and place and to the political order in which

they have the possibility to emerge. Dreaming matters, in ways both material and immaterial. And the urgency of how
dreams matter and what is at stake in the act of dreaming is being acutely felt within a moment in
which neoliberalism, as the present manifestation of colonialist legacies of white supremacy
and racial capitalism, reaches its long arm into imaginations, molding visions for what counts as
freedom, justice, and human life. Despite their revelatory potential to disrupt the present, dreams also have the possibility
to be utilized to reify the present — dreams both are and are not of one’s own creation.
Representing a contested topography where collective hope and possibility (for revolution, liberation,
freedom) are met by a dialectical disciplining will to define and determine the contours of what

is able to be dreamed—or, at the very least, what might be considered sweet dreams —offers a fluid
interpretive space whereby power, violence, and desire find symbolic and discursive projection. Individuals most certainly have their own dreams and, more significant for this

The dreams of
article, their own dominant imaginary dreams about what others should be dreaming. Herein lies the tension that we are concerned with in this article:

the oppressed, the violated, and im/migrant might not be acceptable within the criteria of dreams
that white supremacy, colonialism, and power desire. While we write inspired by the dreams of those who yearn for a more just world,
our point of analysis is in understanding how dreams, alongside the body (biopower) and the psyche (psychopower), function within
contemporary formations of neoliberal power to control, conduct, and constrain the lives of those
who yearn for something more, for something other. This project, then, is an analysis of dreams of
the neoliberal imaginary, or what Frazier (1993) suggests are the “taken-for granted assumptions about people’s needs and entitlements” (p. 9), and how those
dreams perform public pedagogy, legitimate policy, and construct and constrain what it is im/migrants and other dispossessed communities are thought to dream about. In our

current historical neoliberal im/migration moment, the theater for this tension has been nowhere
more pronounced than in the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act . Predicated on an
eligibility criteria put forth by the federal government, “illegal aliens”3 have the possibility to apply
for conditional permanent resident status so that they might be able to live out their American
Dream without having nightmares of imprisonment or deportation (Aguirre & Simmers, 2012). Rhetorically
persuasive, the name has suggested that the DREAM Act represents the sweet dreams of young
people brought to this country who want an education and to be contributing members of society.
The DREAM Act is for im/migrants who want to be productive, who want to make something of their lives, who
dream the dream of the DREAM Act. This is not meant, in any way, to dismiss these dreams
and those who have them . To the contrary, our analysis is about how power controls and disciplines the
limits of dreaming by tethering dreams to profit, legality, and belonging. To be clear, our concerns in
this project are less about the identities of DREAMers, per se, and more about those dreaming
subjects that come to be produced with and through The Normative Dream —how some dreams and
dreams are made to live so long as they
dreaming subjects come to be divested of life/humanity even as other

continue to mutate alongside capital . Rather than offer recommendations vis-à-vis the DREAM Act and the status of
we aim to shift the conversation, if only minutely, towards one that begins with a challenge to the
DREAMers,

very idea that to dream in neoliberalism is to dream at all. In the case of the DREAM Act, it has become the case
that having the dream of the DREAM Act provides the only possibility to dream. This is the only
kind of dream recognizable to the State. It is the dream of the DREAM Act that allows for one to be
transformed from being “illegal” and “alien” into a DREAMer: a political transformation from
beings who might not be able to dream at all (do those in power think that “aliens” can even dream?) to governed subjects
who know their place in the field of dream-possibility. To be transformed from “alien” to
DREAMer, as we argue, suggests a kind of political-speciestransformation. It is to cross a highly
policed and administered threshold. It is to become a new kind of political lifeform. Documented. Legal.
Acceptable . The DREAM Act, then, provides text and ecology for understanding how borderlands function both as geopolitical boundaries and demarcations of
humanness; the DREAM Act patrols and evaluates whether or not “aliens” can become humans with rights and dreams. Forming an assemblage with other technologies of
discipline, control, policing, and violence inflicted upon im/migrant communities, our position is that dreams represent a new frontier for regulation, a new space to colonize and
control, a new place to find imperial footing, and a new border to police. Dreams as the next colony, a new space of forced displacement and im/migration. Somniupolitics.

Dreampolitics. Using the tension between dreaming and legislation as a starting point, and building on contemporary
scholarship about biopower and psychopower, we aim to ask questions about what happens when im/migrant dream-

bodies come to be the site of neoliberal agenda-building, governance, and rule of law. What do
we make of that moment when neoliberal imaginaries not only intrude upon everyday (waking)
life, but also seep into dreams? In what follows, and following some of the rituals of sleep, we begin with thinking through questions about illegal and
alien life forms and the modes of dreaming that render certain life forms acceptable, worthy of life even. Are “aliens” thought to dream and, if so, what about? A “Once upon a
time” story about sleep and dreaming comes next in the sleep cycle, contextualizing sleep within a larger constellation of bio/psychopower and thinking through the relationships
among sleeping, dreaming, and neoliberal dogma. What are the possibilities of dreaming in a historical moment when sleep is positioned as an unproductive act in a time of
compulsory hyper-productivity? Finally, we end this article in a slow process of waking up, with resistance to the There Is No Alternative mantra of the neoliberal present.

resisting the
Following Anzaldúa, Freire, and other decolonial visionaries, we turn towards the utopic potentialities embedded in such a refusal, centering the claim that

dreams proffered by neoliberal capitalist modes of reasoning, however saccharin, is a “necessary

political act” (Freire, 1994, pp. 91–92) in our collective struggles for freedom, an expanded humanity, and the possibility of a decolonial “otro mundo”(Anzaldúa, 2009a,
p. 276, emphasis added). As Robin Kelley (2003) has acutely observed, dreaming becomes radical and freedom-oriented when it moves us to question received narratives that
tacitly determine what is seeable, doable, thinkable, and, indeed, imaginable. This article’s emphasis represents a means of questioning these received narratives about what we can
possibly dream and yearn for in a precarious and tumultuous present. This questioning, as per Kelley, allows for the liberating, radical potential of dreams—their ability to offer
openings into other more socially just worlds: what he calls freedom dreams—to propel us towards that edge between what is constructed as impossible within a determined
presentness (i.e., this is just the way things are and have been) and possible in the future (i.e., this is the way things could and should be). Dreams, when they disrupt our
relationships to the internalized capitalist/neoliberal logics of the normative, are armed with freedom-fostering potentiality. Speaking from this vulnerable moment, we write from a
location that recognizes that the radical fight today concerning critical education scholars/activists is all about dreams—what we might call a “biophillic-somnuphillic” struggle for
different forms of life and for the dream of what an education that values and expands what counts as a livable life could and should be. As the very much dreaming Maxine
Greene (1982) once wrote about the power of education in the face of the violence of a present that attempts at all costs to control what is possible and desirable: “But we are
educators and education has to do with new beginnings and reaching toward what is not yet. Whatever our locations, whatever our vantage points, we cannot help but lean into the

The term “alien” connotes an outsider, a foreigner, a

future” (p. 4). Dreaming like an “alien” Aliens: Unhuman or differently human?

thing that does not belong: biological matter that is out of place. The term alien also carries with it
the rather obvious suggestion that the excluded thing is clearly not human, and therefore, not to
be considered with any humanity (Ahmed, 2000). The alien, to draw on Ngai’s (2004) theorization, is the ultimate
“impossible subject,” “a person who cannot be and a problem that cannot be solved” (p. 5). Ngai traces the historical contours that served to give form to the
“illegal alien.” An Alien Genesis story, her analysis, deftly tracks the manner in which restrictive immigration policy served to spawn “the alien,” firmly implanting it in the
national imagination. Ngai centers her analysis specifically on the restrictive 1924 Johnson Reed Act as the primary policy move responsible for producing “a new legal and
political subject whose inclusion within the nation was simultaneously a social reality and a legal impossibility—a subject banned from citizenship and without rights”(p. 4).4 That

“bare
legal impossibility has translated into other forms of negation, producing lifeworlds that exist on the margins of the human. Drawing on Agamben (1998) theorization of

life”—a category or name given to those bodies who the State has literally taken outside of itself,
those who have been excluded through a processes that names a transmutation from the political
category of human (with recourse to things like rights) to non-human biological matter (aliens?) who the State expunges as a means
to reassert sovereign power by defining the contours of acceptability within its borders—Lisa Cacho’s
(2012) work extends Ngai’s analysis, illuminating how these legal impossibilities map onto everyday life to produce

bare forms of (almost) human life or what she terms “racialized rightlessness.” The “illegal
immigrant” is a negated personhood whose very presence is defined by a state of absence—a subject at
once the target of nation-states’ legal apparatus when positioned as “criminals” (presence by way of absence) and divested of the very protections required to exist, to live (an
absence that generates a presence). Without conflating histories of oppression, but in order to highlight the resonances and spectrum of violence done unto precarious communities,
we might say here that “illegal immigrants” (and other alien undesirables also subject to both legal and social forms of negation) have been and continue to be subjected to a
“social death” and, at times, a literal death, too (Mbembe, 2003; Patterson, 1985).5 In a similar register, but more explicit ly, allying forms of devalued personhood with blackness,
Weheliye (2014) details the racializing assemblages that have been productive of gradations between “the non-human, the not-quite human, and the human” (p. 3). As Sara Ahmed

Aliens allow the demarcation of spaces of belonging: by coming too close to home, they establish the very necessity
(2000) observes:

The techniques for differentiating between citizens and aliens,

of policing the borders of knowable and inhabitable terrains.

as well as between humans and aliens, allows the familiar to be established as the familial (p. 3). This
vast and growing critical literature directs our gaze to the fields of white supremacy and biopower—landscapes where all of life is assayed in ways that reproduce forms of
racialized threats, fears, and “debilities” (Puar, 2017). And they inspire the question: What does it mean to be evicted from the universe of the human? To be cast out as alien?
Extending this question into the territory of this current article moves us also to ask, Can the alien be returned to life or near life, to the realm of the (almost) human? In other
words, if alien subjects have been cast out from the sphere of the human, ejected from life, is there a way back home? And if there is a way back, what are the stakes and
conditions of that return to being considered human? A note on ALF: From alien life forms to acceptable life forms Pop culture, as an educative field of textual analysis attendant
to how ideas permeate everyday life, offers us an interesting place to begin thinking about these questions. The 1980’s television show ALF provides a notable commentary about
this return home as a return to (acceptable) life and the forms of bio- and psychopolitical inclusion articulating in the neoliberal present. For those unfamiliar with the show, ALF
stands for Alien Life Form. The show’s plot centers around a space-creature named ALF (his real name is Gordon) whose spacecraft crashed into the garage of a white middle-
class family in Southern California who then agree to hide him from the government’s Alien Task Force (which we might think about as a present-day INS). What we get from the
show is that, despite looking strange and being from a strange planet and occasionally struggling with the strange desire to eat Lucky, the family cat, aliens can be included as a

as an object of infantilized love that fulfills nationalist yearnings for

certain kind of family member—

inclusiveness and as a family-oriented subject that fits in well with the logics of
heteronormative capitalism . What we wish to elucidate with this example from 1980s pop culture is the way that ALF dramatizes a contemporary
political urge to diversify, to include. But, to be included, as Sara Ahmed (2012) and others have noted, is itself a salient (bio)powerful move that relies on notions of who is and is
not a deserving member (of institutions, society, the nation, the human world) that in turn inadvertently replicates logics that create and normalize other kinds of alienations (and
death). The family, as representing liberal whiteness, only accepts, or tolerates, ALF into the family unit so long as he performs the role of the “friendly alien” with the desire to
assimilate (i.e., resisting his “inherent” urge to devour the family cat). Should his behaviors and mores stray from dominant norms, he is subject to deportation and quite possibly,
elimination. However, within the ALF dreamscape, this same trans-planetary migrant subject, produced as “illegal alien” through the structures of legal violence and limits of
American citizenship, can be (re)imagined and (re)turned to humanity, to (almost) life, a worthy and virtuous almost-citizen-but-still-alien subject worthy of a particular kind of
life or dream. Thus, and thinking alongside Brown’s (2006) theorizing around tolerance as a means of contemporary power that “involves managing the presence of the
undesirable, the tasteless, the faulty—even the revolting, repugnant” (p. 25) one can read ALF as transitioning from Alien Life Form to a different kind of ALF, what we want to
call an Acceptable Life Form—a subject of bio and psychopolitical inclusion dependent on a particular kind of politics of respectability constituted by particular kinds of dreams.

This transformation, becoming an acceptable alien or an Acceptable Life Form

Aliens live or aliens die

(ALF), is predicated on a notion that acceptable aliens can, in fact, dream at all. Within the registers of power, to
want to become something—to become human, familiar, and ultimately familial within the nation—is contingent on an idea that one can imagine an otherwise, that one can have a
dream about something not yet, that one can be something that they are not yet. What, then, does it mean to think that aliens have the somatic interiority to be able to dream? Or,

what kinds of dreams must ALFs have in order to be granted somatic belonging and, thus, a status
otherwise than alien, even (almost) human? Philip K. Dick’s (1968/1996) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, which the title of this article echoes, invites us to
ask similar questions. Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter hired to “retire” androids/aliens who escape their enslavement by humans on colonized planets to form small maroon
communities back on a post-apocalyptic Earth. According to the “humans,” these androids have gone rogue and have stopped following human orders and, therefore, need to be
terminated. This is all legal because, of course, they aren’t human—they are alien-android-others, a version of bare life and as living in a state of exception from juridical law that
would hold anyone accountable for their murder (Agamben, 2004). However, Deckard begins to question the blanket distinction between human and android predicated on the
degree to which the marooning androids have the capacity to dream. If the androids are acting outside of their programmed purpose, something that should be ontologically
impossible, this must mean that they have begun to imagine an otherwise of life and, therefore, to transition into something different—something other than android/alien;
something almost human. It is here where dreams make up the normative spatial threshold where the human/android/alien differential takes place. If androids do indeed dream,
with all the implications of dreaming—imagining, hoping for, and attempting to claim a better life—they must thus be a form of life, which means that Rick’s job as bounty hunter
implies more than merely retiring an automaton; it means making the critical distinction between life (human) and death (android/alien). It is this political process of distinction as
to who gets labeled what and the productive power animating it, that merits pause. That androids/aliens dream raises questions about their proximate humanity. But it is not just
their dreams themselves (or their absence) that matter, that is under question; rather, the content of dreaming also is laid upon the proverbial table to be evaluated, analyzed,

intervened upon, prescribed. Prescriptive dreaming The politics of sleep apnea Concerned with the ways neoliberal ideologies have been
codified into non-economic spheres of moral valuations and the regulation of action that
result , Brown (2015) suggests that neoliberalism, “names a historically specific economic and political
reaction against Keynesianism and democratic socialism, as well as a more generalized
practice of ‘economizing’ spheres and activities heretofore governed by other tables of
value ” (p. 21). Discourses of productivity, efficiency, and monetization have become entrenched
within evaluative language and are leveraged as models of subjectification through which security
and life chances trade and the effects of which are experienced both bodily and psychologically.
Brown argues that, “neoliberalism governs as sophisticated common sense, a reality principle remaking

institutions and human beings everywhere it settles … more termitelike than lionlike … its mode
of reason boring in capillary fashion into the trunks and branches of workplaces, schools, public
agencies, social and political discourse, and above all, the subject” (pp. 35–36). From an economic paradigm to a form of
political rationality, neoliberalism , as Hardt and Negri (2000) argue in Empire, governs and “regulates social life from the

interior ” (p. 23): not only the body, but the psyche, too. The governing of how subjects— their behaviors, actions, and thoughts—map onto economies of security and
insecurity is the prevailing modality of power in contemporary societies. This blending of biopower, or the productive governing of subjects that coerces particular actions and
identities, and what Butler (1997) calls psychopower, or the infiltration of control and coercion as naturalized into the realm of the psyche, incorporates regulatory norms into both
the body and mind. Though much of the literature around biopolitics and psychopower is concerned with waking hours— labor, education, health—Crary’s (2013) attention in
24/7 to sleep provides foray into expanding the analysis within neoliberal capitalism. If the compulsion of the current moment is one of always needing to be productive, of making
oneself more marketable, of working more as a sign of greater virtue, at a material level, sleep represents something of an anomaly to the compulsion of neoliberal rationality.
Sleep is unproductive. It represents, as Crary (2013) argues, “the idea of a human need and interval of time that cannot be colonized and harnessed to a massive engine of
profitability, and thus remains an incongruous anomaly and site of crisis in the global present” (pp. 10–11). The body has to rest; the body reaches limits. Capital doesn’t:
deregulation as a state of geographic and temporal limitlessness.6 This tension of time and necessity might be one of the main reasons that discourses of sleep—from sleep science
and medicine to Tempur-Pedic mattresses to sleep tracking (using technology to measure how long and well you sleep)—have readily assumed centrality within popular
conversations. Like other bodily affects, such as depression (Cvetkovich, 2012), anxiety (Orr, 2006), or stress (Fisher, 2009), that have garnered cultural resonance in the
contemporary era, sleep, or lack of it, has become a discursive touchstone of cultural life. Framed as an individual and private problem to be handled through pharmacological
assistance (i.e., Lunesta or Ambien) or behaviorist mantras like those found in Arianna Huffington’s The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night At A Time, which
include Epsom salt baths, keeping gadgets out of the bedroom, and changing into “special clothes for sleeping” (cited in Morris, 2016, ¶15), sleep has become something that needs
to not merely to be had, but dealt with, to be intervened upon. This intervention marks a break from seeing sleep within a natural cycle of circadian rhythm and instead as a
political category regulated by and through various forms of power. Sleep as a political category works inductively to externalize the private interior workings of the body and
mind into the public realm. The workings of biopower and psychopower can be seen to regulate the possibilities of sleep (both just getting some and the psychic possibilities of
what happens during it (i.e., dreaming). At a very material and bodily level, people are exhausted and not sleeping enough. The stress of living precariously, the dictate to
entrepreneurialize and monetize all aspects of life, and the negation of public safety nets, stage a forlorn encampment of stress and fatigue—there is neither time nor safety to
sleep. Compounded by the rhetorically suggestive moralizations that, as Aaron Levy puts it, “sleep signifies laziness” (Levy & Dinges, 2008, ¶5) or, as Crary (2013) suggests,

The market has certainly

“sleeping is for losers” (p. 14), the degree to which one needs sleep is mediated by the degree to which sleep is constructed as vice.

capitalized on making sleep more efficient and effective which, as Cvetkovich (2012) argues in relation to Prozac and
depression, “masks the symptoms of a response to a fucked-up world” (p. 15). The internal is transformed

and disciplined to adapt to the violence of an outside world. Individuals are called upon to take
care of themselves, rather than transforming the conditions that regulate their lives. Sleep, and lack thereof as
due to the stress of precarious living, can be understood as another kind of process which Berlant (2007) calls “slow death”: a means by which bodies and minds slowly erode into
a state of fatigued hopelessness. Not sleeping, or medicated sleeping, becomes the only ways to survive—fatigue as a political objective to reduce possibility for political
resistance. Dreampolitics But it is not only fatigue that controls and regulates the tired body (e.g., Han, 2015). The intervention of, and into, sleep also is an intervention at the level
of the psychopolitico possibilities of sleep, namely, for this article, the possibility for dreaming. Whereas, in the wake of the Freudian (1965/1998) privatization and individuation

, neoliberal
of dreams (i.e., dreams as personal confessions of earlier memories/trauma or unrequited desire), that might be seen as a kind of opening or possibility

intervention is instead a kind of intensification in not only what one dreams for or about
(personal happiness!), but also how one comes to understand those dreams (Crary, 2013). For Freud, the interpretation of dreams
must be completed by the trained analyst, for it is only the trained analyst (i.e., scientist) who can “prepare” their patients in such a way that allows for unmediated access to
“involuntary ideas” that can be used as data for proper interpretation. As has been pointed out by feminists, most especially in relation to Dora, a female patient of Freud (e.g.,
Bernheimer & Kahane, 1990), there is a glaring power dynamic between analyst (masculine/knowing) and patient (feminized/pathologized) within the idealized therapeutic scene.

The “patient” is disempowered from being able to understand her own thoughts, desires, and
dreams. Thus, reliance is constructed upon a translator, trained in a scientific discipline and with political capital, to gain self-understanding, to be treated and transformed, to
be normalized to the conditions of society (to be productive, to be a good woman, and so on); this process is one of coercion. Dreams are being interpreted by power for power

because power knows what is good for people to dream about. The DREAM Act/Analyst. “Illegal aliens”/patients. Dreampolitics. Like the feminized
psychoanalytic subject, hysterical and needing treatment to assimilate into the demands of capitalist patriarchy, whose dreams/desires are unknowable to her, the “alien,” hysterical
and needing treatment to assimilate to the demands of neoliberal white supremacy and American hegemony, who is framed as literally lacking the (English) language necessary to

The DREAM Act is an analyst’s (power’s) interpretation

communicate at all, becomes a site of intervention and control.

of “alien” dreams . Less visionary and more prescriptive, the DREAM Act interprets the violence and precarity
done unto and experienced by “illegal aliens” into a regulatory set of desires and opportunities.
What “aliens” supposedly dream about are the neoliberal principles of productivity,
nationalism, and rugged individualism . The DREAM Act, here, is a manifestation of
power/knowledge. Power, that spectral entity that shaped the conditions for forced migration and civil wars, for narcoviolence and The School of the Americas, is
also the border police and knower of dreams. It is the enactor of violence as well as the gatekeeper of something less violent; the creator of precarity and the life-coach instructing
how to experience less. If dreams are about what is possible, about the possibility of imagining an otherwise, then to control and regulate dreams is to control what is thought to be

possible: biopower, psychopower, dreampower. What is possible, according the DREAM Act, is
neoliberalism . And if neoliberal time is such that sleeping and the closing of the eyes are
antithetical to the material and moral ethos of the day, then the DREAM Act must be an
interpretation of a dream that happened with eyes wide open.7 It is a symptom of a dogmatic relation to the present moment in
which normative sight, as has long been argued, is used as a means to enforce and control (e.g., Derrida, 1983). If dreams, as suggested above, are about the future, then without

The DREAM Act, then, is a future-as-present piece of

closing one’s eyes, it becomes difficult to imagine anything but the present.

legislation, a future-oriented biopolitic that seeks to ensure, as Hannah (2011) argues, “the survival of the
Same in the future, at the expense of an Other [Alien] ” (p. 1048). If biopower tries to produce governable lives, this is done
with most ease by eliminating, as Foucault (2003) suggested, “those that pose a threat to biological [and we might say psychological and dreamological] heritage” (p. 61). What
this small metaphorical movement thus brings into view are the neoliberal circuits through which “alien Otherness” is analyzed, (re)produced, and commodified for specified,
settlercolonial/imperial-cum-neoliberal, interests. In turning next to a contemporary example in Teach for America (TFA), we hope to illustrate how a sci-fi-inspired reading of
TFA might further render visible the effects of regulating policies on our dreams, desires, and hopes, lending greater insight into the somnupolitical dimensions of (neoliberal) state

power. In the following section, we analyze TFA’s recent move to “include” DREAMers into their teaching corps for what it reveals further
about dreams as inherently political acts, and in particular, what this (not so) science-fiction story
tells us about the dreams/desires of a neoliberal state reliant upon the exploitability and
disposability of alien labor . We might say, thus, that TFA is authoring its own brand of fantasy to validate its goals—narrating its own sci-
fi story about dreams, DREAMers, aliens, and their capacity to dream (or not) in the dominant (and dominating) registers of the (neoliberal)

nation. Retrofitting dreams; or making America great again Teach for documentation It was June of 2013 when Teach for America (TFA), after growing public ridicule about
many colonizing facets of its program and the demographics of its corps members, announced its move to begin recruiting DREAMers—

undocumented/DACAmented immigrant students eligible to obtain work cards and Social

Security numbers through President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. TFA, having already expanded its recruitment beyond seniors at
elite colleges by reaching out to mid-career professionals and military veterans to teach in low-income and rural schools, was now “reaching out” to DREAMers. TFA, its website
notes, now “dare[s] to DREAM” (Teach for America, 2013). This, however, was not TFA’s first incursion into the realm of dreaming and dream-making. In fact, TFA has been in
the business of dreaming for quite some time. As an institution and a movement, TFA has amassed an unprecedented amount of political and economic support predicated on the
contention that the work they do is that of the dream. Wendy Kopp (2003), founder and former CEO of TFA’s first book was very intentionally titled, One Day, All Children …

The Unlikely Triumph of Teach for America. Using the dream as a cultural and political referent, Kopp and the TFA Dream Machine
have been vigilant in appropriating and conjugating the affective consistency of the Civil Rights Movement into a kind of evangelical vision that has had real effects on the cultural

invoking (white)-savior motifs and post-racial

and political landscape of educational proselytizing. The TFA Dream Machine,

fantasies, has been in the business of conducting the conduct (e.g., Foucault, 2000) of its corps members and fervent devotees
by restricting and managing their desires, their very dreams. Notedly, DREAMers also reflect back a
contradiction, their presence at once a confirmation of and interruption to the very liberal
principles of equality and freedom central to the TFA/American Dream. Located as “aliens,” they inspire paranoia
and generalized insecurities about where the imagined boundaries of the nation begin and end. Their
alien-ness taps into conspiracy theories about invasion and unassimilated forms of life, storylines with a deep past and vivid present in American society; they are that something

DREAMers, as subjects cast as agential, productive,

against which “society must be defended” (Foucault, 2003). But then, as

and forward-looking, they serve as cultural icons for that which is understood to be
quintessentially “American .” In registering as a confusion in the national psyche, DREAMers thus represent a
paradox that can be resolved in primarily two ways: through the inclusion and retrofitting
of dreams/bodies so that they fit more smoothly within the present matrices of
neoliberal/modern power (a system that both values and, in turn, generates valuations that
conflate the human with capital) (Aguirre & Simmers, 2012) or through their eviction from the (national) Dream and eradication from the universe of the
human (and thus a re-return to alienated status). In this article, we have been concerning ourselves more pressingly with the former—the indexing and proscription of dreaming as
a node of contemporary governmentality. If we consider that central to biopolitical regimes is a concern with resolving and incorporating (in order to render them governable)
rather than eliminating alien bodies, we might read TFA’s move as a particular kind of strange encounter (Ahmed, 2000) that weds a fantasy/fear of exotic/other/alien life to a

inclusion of DREAMers, thus, as an intimate moment that sutures

democratic impulse to welcome. We might read TFA’s

capital, bodies, and acceptable alien life forms, a moment magnifying the deep-running imperial
logics of a system that has always made alien-ness a prerequisite for the reproduction and
expansion of (white) capital/property. Retrofittable subjects To retrofit, in the language of civil engineering, means to adapt and mold a structure so
that it has a “better” fit in relation to other structures and the environment. What is meant by “better” is that the structure is also “improved,” reinforced in ways that allow it to
more effectively withstand and adapt to seismic movements (i.e., earthquakes). Neoliberal biopower can thus, in plain terms, be understood as a modern modality for the
 the
retrofitting and engineering of forms of life that “fit well” and are “flexible” (and, by default, demolishing those that can’t be renovated or resist renovation) within

material structures of capitalist power, within a system that marks and makes distinctions between
productive and unproductive life (Aguirre & Simmers, 2012). Thus, TFA’s move to incorporate DREAMers into their
teaching force, we argue, needs to be understood in the context of global biopolitical formations responsible for the dual making and unmaking of life. In other words, TFA is

not just in the business of providing DREAMers with opportunities to dream, it is also in the
business of managing them (TFA as analyst). We could add further that TFA is in the business of something more profound and expansive in its reach—that
of transacting in a form of (productive) power that makes/re-makes marked distinctions between who is human, and thus deserving of humanity and life, and who is “alien,” and
thus vulnerable to consensual alienation and death, both symbolic and real. Sylvia Wynter (2015) certainly inspires this mode of reading, her work keenly attentive to the manner
in which Western notions of the human, or Man, came to be equated with universal humanity— overdetermined as “the being of being human itself ” (p. 31). Wynter’s project is
about laying bare the violence inherent in processes of normalization, urging us to consider its life and death implications. As Wynter argues, to exist within the boundaries of the
hu(Man), a homophone she uses to call attention to the ontological ways that human-ness has been constructed qua power (whiteness, patriarchy, coloniality), is life-giving. But to
exist, to be “dyselected” as other than hu(Man)—as racialized, colonized, sexualized, and Othered communities have been and continue to be throughout history—is to be
sentenced a life of radical precarity. According to Winter, symbolic life is that which came to be sutured to unceasing capital accumulation—the intrepid entrepreneur, the steady
jobholder, and, we might add here, the virtuous straight-A DREAMer student. All other forms of life not aligning with these capitalist logics—the non-breadwinning, the poor, the
homeless, the welfare queens, the drop out students, the non-DREAMers—are then by default relegated to symbolic death and become, as Rocco (2016) has recently argued in

for DREAMers, the criminal,

regard to the “technologies of racialization” that turn Latinx immigrants into “disposable subjects” (p. 100). In the optics of power,

amoral, alien dimensions of their belonging can be temporarily disavowed or retrofitted through their

participation in The (Sweet) Dream: American, TFA, military, and otherwise. But, tellingly, the
disavowal of that criminality and inherent alien-ness is possible only if they position themselves
and are positioned/coerced as entrepreneurial, self-empowered subjects capable of dreaming
entrepreneurial and self-empowering futures—that is, neoliberal sheep . At stake are questions of the human
and life/death. As “undocumented” students, the reclaiming of humanity and distancing from their

inherent criminality/illegality can be secured by a linking to other categories of personhood and

symbolic life forms (productive, self-sufficient, self-disciplining, and so on) that are preconditioned by and through the
dreams of the neoliberal nation-state and the desires of empire. That is, proximity to being human
is in direct ratio to mastery of disciplinary forms of dreaming.8 This coercion is the triangulation of neoliberal politics and
biopower that produce governable and acceptable subjects/aliens. It is important to further note that TFA’s “call to dream” for DREAMers comes at a time of massive deportations
and the increased militarization of the border that render that larger undocumented immigrant community (11 million—including the parents/family members of the DREAMers)
all the more vulnerable and as racially rightless. What do we say of their dreams? Moreover, we can interrogate the ways in which TFA exacts a form of biopower by rendering the

DREAMers
“life circumstances” of DREAMers profitable. In discussions about the decision to include DREAMers, TFA representatives typically reference

resourcefulness in the face of real limits, their drive, their flexibility, and their ability “to make
the impossible, possible” as valuable traits that we (TFA, the Nation) need to capitalize on. TFA can thus, in
this manner, speak of the transactional value of DREAMers vulnerable “life circumstances” without naming the material structures that have worked to produce that very

DREAMERS/ALFs comes by way of the devalorizing

vulnerability being lauded. Here, the valorizing of the dreams (personhood) of

Other dreams and forms of (unacceptable) life.9

The DREAM Act enforces a capitalist system by granting rights to only the
people that are deemed worthy by the state based on the usefulness to the
economy or the military.
Ribero 16, Ana Milena Ribero,Major in linguistic rhetoric PHD in Philosophy, composition,
and the teaching of English, accessed 7-11-18, Citizenship and Undocumented Youth: An
Analysis of the Rhetorics of Migrant-Rights Activism in Neoliberal Contexts
,https://repository.arizona.edu/bitstream/handle/10150/612597/
azu_etd_14477_sip1_m.pdf?sequence=1, published 10/07/2018 (JBH)
Still, DREAMer activism is largely framed by their initial support for the DREAM Act, a proposal based on neoliberal US foundational tropes that limit
DREAM Act’s
the ways DREAMers have been represented (and have self-represented) in their activism. Consequently, the
foundational tropes inform the ways I read and analyze DREAMer activism in this project.
Alluding to the “American Dream,” an individualistic utopia, the DREAM Act expounds the
neoliberal merits of individualism and meritocracy. With its focus on individual achievement, the DREAM Act
grants rights only to those deemed “worthy” based on an individualist, meritocratic system in
which young people must struggle to achieve individual capitalist success—measured by college
acceptance or military service—before they can benefit. This focus on individual progress and
capitalist success contributes to a bootstraps narrative of exceptionalism that ignores the structural
inequalities felt by the undocumented migrant community in the US. As 19 sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva
argues in his landmark text Racism Without Racists: ColorBlind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America , “Individualism
today has been recast as a justification for opposing policies to ameliorate racial inequality
because they are ‘group based’ rather than ‘case by case’” (35). Although immigration reform has
the potential to incorporate “group based” policies, the DREAM Act’s stipulations grant rights
only to those “exceptional” undocumented young people who achieve merits in US neoliberal
society. Thus, the DREAM Act benefits undocumented migrants in a case-by-case basis and
deters group-based solutions to migrant dehumanization.

The DREAM act creates a false dichotomy of the good and the bad
immigrant based on their economic viability or the military service and those
not valuable to the needs of the government are deemed socially dead
Cisneros 15, J. David Cisneros, department of Communication, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race, Multiculturalism, and
Neoliberal Exception in Barack Obama's Immigration Discourse † 9-1-2015,
https://academic.oup.com/ccc/article/8/3/356/3979288, 7-11-2018 (JBH)
Obama's logic here was a welcome check to those who would argue that the rule of law trumps
all other humanitarian considerations. Instead, Obama celebrated immigrants' contributions to the nation and argued that concern for
immigrants' welfare and attention to their expression of cultural citizenship should factor into decisions about immigration enforcement. However,
these stories, like those of economic entrepreneurs, also helped to establish the difference
between ideal and nonideal immigrants by representing another type of responsible self-
management, the highest expression of which was national service. Previous presidents also made explicit
reference to immigrant service members in their speeches (see Amaya, 2007; Beasley, 2004; Edwards & Herder, 2012). However, Obama's
stories were unique because they helped to define the neoliberal exception as the governing logic
of his administration's approach to immigration and citizenship. The image of the immigrant
service member functioned as what Ong (2006) called “exception to neoliberalism” and
“neoliberalism as exception” (p. 5). The service member represented one of the few ways to exercise prudential self-management and
responsibility outside of the explicit logic of the marketplace—an exception to neoliberal rationality calculated for the sake of national sovereignty. At the
same time, this was neoliberalism as exception because immigrants who embodied responsibility in a
way that presented a significant social benefit to the nation were the exception to concerns about
jobs, protectionism, and economic calculability. Apart from the stories referenced above, the emphasis on
responsibility as a neoliberal exception can also be seen governing immigration policies such as
the DREAM Act, DACA, and prosecutorial discretion. These policies rely heavily on the
dichotomy between responsible/good immigrants versus irresponsible/criminal/bad immigrants,
the former who are exceptions to concerns about national sovereignty and the rule of law and the
latter who are excepted from promises of neoliberal mobility and individualism. For example, the
administration's prosecutorial discretion policy was touted as part of an approach to targeting and deporting “criminal” immigrants, and the DACA
and DREAM Act both work on the idea that certain immigrants should be exempted from
deportation because of their embrace of neoliberal responsibility (Gonzales, 2010; Nevins, 2012). Obama (2010)
also tied comprehensive immigration reform to neoliberal values, arguing that “we should make it
easier for the best and brightest to come to start a business and develop products and create jobs”
(para. 38), and that undocumented immigrants “earn their way to citizenship” by paying taxes,
learning English, and “going to the back of the line” (Obama, 2013a, para. 30). Again that Obama drew
distinctions between desirable and undesirable immigrants should not be surprising, since it is an
inherent thread of presidential immigration discourse and policy; the important point to emphasize here is the way in
which these distinctions contributed to and participated in a cultural moment of neoliberal racialization. The trope of responsibility, like that of
entrepreneurialism discussed previously, was indexed to neoliberal forms of whiteness (Garner, 2012). Obama (2011) told the story of engineer and
NASA astronaut José Hernández, who encapsulated the figure of entrepreneur and national serviceman. Hernández was born in California, “though he
could have just as easily been born on the other side of the border, had it been a different time of year, because his family” of migrant farm workers
“moved with the seasons. Two of his siblings were actually born in Mexico” (para. 41). Despite the place of his birth and the educational and economic
challenges he faced, Hernández kept studying, and graduated high school. He kept studying, earning an engineering degree and a graduate degree. He
kept working hard, ending up at a national laboratory. And a few years later, he found himself more than 100 miles above the surface of the earth, staring
out the window of the Shuttle Discovery, remembering the boy in the California fields with a crazy dream and an unshakable belief that everything was
possible in America. That's the American Dream right there. That's what we're fighting for. We are fighting for every boy and every girl like José with a
dream and potential that's just waiting to be tapped. (para. 45–47)
Neoliberal values of individual responsibility and
entrepreneurialism provided the exception to nation-state logics of citizenship and belonging for
Hernández, for though he was born as a U.S. citizen, Hernández's real inclusion into the
American community came through his faith and success in achieving the American Dream (as an
entrepreneur and through his national service). The racialized image of the migrant farmworker performing stoop labor in the hot sun was transformed
into the engineer, entrepreneur, and astronaut through embrace of the American Dream and neoliberal values of hard
work, responsibility, and service. Hernández's embodiment of neoliberal subjectivity and a moral economy of whiteness helped to
insure his belonging more than did his actual legal status as citizen. On the contrary, Hernández's siblings had been born on the other side of the border, a
clarification that highlighted the exceptions to entrepreneurialism that turned on national sovereignty. Racialization also took shape through the
Criminal immigrants embodied an excess/absence of neoliberal
administration's rhetoric of criminalization.
characteristics because they worked too hard for too little, they stole jobs from other citizens, and
they crossed borders and went outside of the law for economic benefit. These undocumented immigrants were too
entrepreneurial (or not enough), too individual (or not enough), or too monocultural. This meant they did not really believe in the nation's precepts and/or
This dichotomy
that they threatened its sovereignty and economy, making them the target of police surveillance, prosecution, or deportation.
between exemplary and “criminal” immigrants points to what Lisa Marie Cacho (2012) termed
the “dilemma” of social value: the fact that the social value of one marginalized group is often
constructed through the “social death” of “an/other, and that other is almost always poor,
racialized, criminalized, segregated, legally vulnerable, and unprotected” (p. 17). These populations “are
excluded from law's protection, [but] they are not excluded from law's discipline, punishment, and regulation” (p. 5). While certain
undocumented immigrants, such as the DREAMers or immigrant service members, were
recuperated and given social value, the method of doing so revolved around the denial of value to
other racialized archetypes of immigrants, such as the unskilled worker, the criminal border
crosser, or the irresponsible immigrant become a public charge. So pervasive are these racialized forms of demanding
social value that they are found in the discourse of some immigrant activists, who through their efforts to assert their social worth normalize certain forms
This discourse granted social
of socioeconomic class and education as markers of the “model” citizen (Anguiano & Chávez, 2011).
value to certain immigrants who embraced responsibility and entrepreneurialism while
contributing to the social death of criminalized and racialized populations

DREAM is a neoliberal practice – trains more Hispanics to enter the

workforce and then exploits them for the economy
Aguirre and Simmers 12 – professor of sociology and chair of the Department of
Sociology at the University of California and graduate student respectively, 2012 (“The DREAM
Act and Neoliberal Practice: Retrofitting Hispanic Immigrant Youth in U.S. Society”, September
2012, Available Online from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41940944.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A8f2599917a42594f397987
9413b9d3ca, Accessed 7-10-2018, AVP)
The DREAM Act promises alien minors a "better quality of life" by offering access to education and
citizenship. At the same time, it promises to increase the potential pool of college-educated workers for
the high-earning jobs vital to the economic health of the nation. These jobs can generate the capital
required to maintain the U.S. social services infrastructure- and, in particular, the services that attend to the social and health needs of
an aging U.S. population. Therefore, if we ask how the DREAM Act will benefit the economic health of the
country, the answer is nested within the demographic changes the United States faces in the first half of the
twenty-first century. The number of Americans sixty-five years or older is projected to increase to 34.7 million by 2050 (Cheeseman,
1996; Vincent and Velkoff, 2010). By 2050, 60 percent of the American population sixty-five years or older will be comprised of
white persons, with Hispanics comprising 17 percent, African Americans 12 percent, and Asians 8 percent. Between 2010 and 2050,
Hispanics are projected to add more people to the U.S. population every year than all other racial and ethnic groups combined. As
the U.S. population ages, its dependence on social services and government-funded programs will
also increase, requiring a new economic strategy for maintaining adequate funding for those
services (J acobsen et al . , 20 1 1 ) . By 2050 a large segment of the population sixty-five years or older will consist of white
persons, and the working-age population (ages eighteen to sixty-four) will reach 255 million (Shrestha and Heisler, 2009). According
to Passei and Cohn, between 2005 and 2050 the number of elderly will increase more rapidly than either the number of children or
working-age adults. Immigration and births to immigrants in the United States will be responsible for all growth of other age groups
but will have little impact on the number of elderly, which is affected mainly by the aging of the post- World War II baby-boom
generation (2008: 7). As the baby-boom generation ages, the gap between the number of working- age people and seniors will widen.
That gap would be wider in the United States if immigration were to slow down, since immigrants tend to comprise a large segment of
the working-age population. The working-age population in the United States will shrink from 63 percent in 2008 to 57 percent by
2050 (Little, 2008). In 2050, it will be 55 percent minority, with more than 30 percent of the population comprised of Hispanics.
Contextual factors to consider are that Hispanics will account for 60 percent of U .S . population growth between 2005 and 2050 and
will make up 29 percent of the total population in 2050 (Passei and Cohn , 2008) ; in addition , by 2050 , 23 percent of the working-
age population will be comprised of immigrants , the majority of whom will be Mexican . So, how does one interpret this
demographic tsunami? A conclusion we can draw from the preceding data is that the Hispanic population's increasing
numbers makes it a leading candidate for producing workers that can maintain the economic
health of the U .S . population , especially the predominantly white elderly population (sixty-five years and older). Following
the neoliberal principle of market expansion for the public good, the DREAM Act can be
deconstructed as a neoliberal practice that requires the Hispanic population in the United States to
fill the need of business for exploitable labor. Hispanics have long been treated as second-class
citizens in the United States, neglected by educational institutions, and exploited by the labor
market (Aguirre and Turner, 2011). The DREAM Act will serve neoliberal interests by increasing the
number of Hispanics in the working-age population and exploiting them to maintain the economic position
of an aging whit population.

Policies like DREAM and neoliberalism are intertwined – policies just tinker
with the system and create hierarchies of social worth which immigrants are
put into
Green 11 — Linda Green, Professor of Anthropology, 11 ("The Nobodies: Neoliberalism, Violence, and Migration", Taylor &
Francis, 5-26-2011, Available Online from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01459740.2011.576726?src=recsys,
Accessed on 7-18-2018)

An examination of migration across the Americas and its relationship to neoliberalism, as both an economic
model and a mode of domination (Gilly 2005 Gilly, A. 2005 Neoliberalism as a mode of domination . Z Magazine 20 ( 5
): 34 – 37), reveals the multiple and brutal ways “disposable people” fit into a system in which violence,
fear, and impunity are crucial components. Immigration in this instance can be thought of as (1) a
consequence of a complex set of global economic doctrines and geopolitical practices that produce both
nobodies in the global south and low wage, dangerous, and non-union jobs in the United States; (2) a strategy of survival for millions
of Central Americans and Mexicans who have few alternatives for procuring a livelihood in their own country; and (3) a set of
punitive laws and practices that have reconfigured the US-Mexico border and beyond into a militarized zone—a space of death that
punishes those people who are dispossessed and dislocated by US state-sponsored neoliberal policies and ongoing repressive practices
(Green 2008 ——— . 2008 A wink and nod: Notes from the Arizona borderlands. Dialectical Anthropology 32 (1): 161 – 167). State-
mandated exclusionary policies and practices against migrants have a long and sordid history in the United States (Chacon and Davis
2006 Chacon, J. A. and M. Davis 2006 No One is Illegal Fighting Racism and State Violence on the US-Mexico. Chicago:
Haymarket). In their most recent iteration, federal and state immigration
regulations accentuate in practice a long-
existing discursive hierarchy of social worth based on skin color that puts minorities of class, gender, sexuality,
and color in their place, in social, spatial, cultural, and political-economic terms. And because of its historical particularities, to
borrow Gavin Smith's (1998 Smith, G. 1998 Confronting the Present: Towards a Politically Engaged Anthropology. Oxford: Berg)
term, Arizona turns out to be the “perfect” place for teaching brown-skinned people to know their place. A crucial dimension to this
dynamic is the bombardment by the mainstream media of innumerable examples of migrants' violation of the “rule of law” (Chavez
2001 Chavez, L. 2001 Covering Immigration: Popular Images and the Politics of Nation. Berkeley: University of California Press).
This notion is reinforced by the now hackneyed but useful framing of human beings as illegals. Thus, the logical response to migrants'
seemingly blatant transgressions of American law and order necessitates their increasingly brutal punishment and containment. This is
perhaps most fully executed in the state of Arizona. I am not suggesting a seamless articulation of interests between the state and the
capitalist class but rather, following David Harvey (2003 Harvey, D. 2003 The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press), I
examine the intertwined doubleness of the “logics of power that are neither solely political nor predominately economic but rather
institutional arrangements embedded within the state that have an influential role in setting to stage for the accumulation of capital”
(35). Next, I explore some of the multiple sites of the production and commodification of these nobodies/illegals through the story of a
Guatemalan migrant and others like him, to illuminate the complexly intertwined relationship that exists between neoliberal economic
policies and practices, state-sponsored violence, and international migration. I draw attention to two central, enduring contradictions
that are not easily resolvable in the Hegelian sense: first, how the simultaneity of migrants' exclusion from any hope of dignified lives
and livelihood in Guatemala becomes the crucial basis of their value and utility as illegals in the United States. Second, the collective
framing of all migrants—and increasingly Latino/Hispanics, whatever their documentation status—as “illegal aliens” becomes the
very basis of their social fragmentation and individuation. The most flagrant case in point is the recent passage (2010) of Arizona state
law SB1070 that makes it a crime to be outside one's house without documents and allows local law enforcement officials to stop
anyone for “probable cause.” The perceived wisdom of the liberal reform movement seeking “comprehensive
immigration reform” is that the existing system would need simply to be tinkered with. For example,
recent notions put forward in public discourse by the Hispanic Caucus in the US House of Representative
suggest that reforms include, among other provisions, a pathway for citizenship for the estimated 12 to 20
million people currently residing in the United States without documents through the creation of a
guest worker program to support through “legal means” the continuing need for an exploitable
labor force in more palpable guises. Although on the surface these provisions seem quite reasonable, perhaps even a first step,
these kinds of policies leave the vast reach of neoliberal market fundamentalism and state measures to
support it untouched and unaccountable; these continue to render the destitute of the global south disposable with migration as their
only option to survive. This triple lens illuminates how free trade agreements, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA; 1994) and the more recent Central American Free Trade Agreement (2005), have created the conditions for the United
States to become a magnet for cheap, exploitable, and illegal migrant labor. In both Guatemala and the
United States, these policies of exploitation and violence are considered well within the limits of the
rule of law. State-sponsored violence becomes integral to both dislocation and dispossession of millions of working people and
necessitates the further militarization of the US-Mexico border and beyond. Insofar as vast numbers of these dislocated and
dispossessed people crossing from Guatemala and southern Mexico are indigenous, as suggested by the anecdotal evidence of
humanitarian aid workers and scholars working along the Arizona-Mexico border, then these processes can also be thought of, in part,
as an ethnocide in which people are torn from their history, their kin, their sense of place, and their space. Moreover, in the United
States these policies and practices are publicly legitimated through the use of ethicides: “agents sprayed day and night through the
mass news media … that kill ethics and therefore any notion of history or justice” (Berger 2007:89)
 L – Econ
Using immigrants for the purpose of sustaining the economy is a tool of
capitalism
Selfa and Scott 6 (Lance Selfa is an editor of and contributor to International Socialist
Review. Helen Scott is associate professor and director of undergraduate English studies at the
University of Vermont in Burlington. “How capitalism uses immigrants”
http://socialistworker.org/2006-1/585/585_07_Capitalism.php//TU-SG)
IN HISTORY books, we're reminded that the United States is a "nation of immigrants," and that immigrants
played a key role in building the U.S. Yet right-wing politicians tell us today that immigrants are responsible for crime, economic decline and other
problems in the U.S. This love-hate view of immigration and immigrants stems from the role that

immigration plays in the capitalist economic system under which we live. The capitalist system is
international, with products manufactured and sold worldwide. Capitalists--the tiny minority that owns and controls the
international banks and multinational corporations-- rely on a global pool of labor . To enable the
capitalists to fill their demands for labor, this labor pool has to be somewhat mobile . The central
mechanism of control over the movement of labor is the nation-state. National border controls ensure that capitalism, through

its state, maintains control over labor, rather than allowing people to move at will. The North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the U.S., Canada and Mexico aimed to promote easy transport of goods and services across the three countries' borders. But NAFTA

explicitly bars free immigration.When economic growth produces a demand for workers that can't be satisfied
by the existing workforce, a "labor shortage" results. During the Second World War, women filled the labor shortage in military
industries created because millions of men entered the armed forces. It is likewise with immigration. When the domestic workforce can't fill

demands for labor that capitalists need, governments often promote immigration.
Immigration is not an accident . Nor do rich countries accept the world's poor out of generosity.
Labor migration is essential to the capitalist system . The purpose of immigration policy, then,
is to regulate the flow of labor--to control the borders so as to control the workers themselves.
Immigration laws serve capitalism in two ways. First, they ensure cheap foreign labor when the
domestic economy needs it. Second, they allow for greater control of the whole workforce. Most of the
advanced economies of the capitalist world were built on migrant labor. They have actively
sought foreign-born workers in some historical periods . The same countries have also
clamped down on immigration at other times. The U.S. government's previous bracero program shows clearly how immigration policy is
shaped to the needs of capital. The bracero program was initially implemented as a wartime emergency program in 1942 to fill a labor shortage in agriculture by importing farm
workers from Mexico. The program became the largest foreign-worker program in the history of the U.S., contracting over 5 million braceros to growers and ranchers over the

the government maintained control over the movements of these workers, and at any
next 22 years. Yet

time could (and did) restrict the numbers of Mexicans crossing the border and clamp down on
Mexicans in the U.S. The passage of workers from Mexico was crucial to the economy, but the
workers themselves, at any given moment, could be treated like unwanted criminals, refused
entry or deported. Reducing labor costs, a key aim of capitalists at all times, can be achieved by
paying lower wages. To this end, companies can either move production to sites with cheaper labor
supplies, or they can bring cheap labor supplies to production sites. A perfect illustration of moving production to the labor
supply is the maquila zone along the U.S.-Mexico border, created after the bracero program ended. Here, advanced country multinationals gain immigrant workers' skills without
having to pay to develop them. The social costs of child benefits and education have been provided by another state (in this case, Mexico). But if the workers come across the

What are the specific conditions that make

border to work as undocumented labor in the U.S., employers gain the same advantages.

immigrant labor especially attractive to business ? Immigrant workers are less likely to be
unionized , and an immigrant workforce is often more controllable . Employers use the threat of
deportation and criminalization to exploit immigrants ruthlessly and quell immigrants' efforts to fight for their rights.
Legal immigrants waiting for confirmation of citizenship are subject to this pressure , as well as
 The presence of a criminalized section of the workforce is crucial for the employers
undocumented workers.

to maintain their control. New immigrants often don't speak English and are desperate for work.
Employers exploit this vulnerability to the fullest--paying below-average wages, violating safety
standards and workers' rights.

Immigration policies preserve neoliberalism – the construction of model

citizens as economically driven people forces immigrants to conform to
neoliberal views
Shields et al 14 – Professor of Public Administration at Ryerson University (“Discounting
Immigrant Families: Neoliberalism and the Framing of Canadian Immigration Policy Change”,
RCIS, October 2014, Available online from https://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/rcis/RCIS-WP-
Root-No2014-7.pdf, Accessed 7-16-2018)
Given the changes in the broad policy direction identified above, thereis an active construction of an ‘ideal/model
immigrant” based on certain personality, cultural, and skill-based characteristics. This issue is also raised in the
academic literature. Bridget Anderson (2013; 2014), for example, contends that state policy establishes the category of
the “good citizen” who embodies the neoliberal ideals of self-sufficiency, hard-work, and
effective and efficient labour market participation. This sentiment is echoed by Pauline Barber (2008) who argues that
the Filipino community is seen in Canada in many ways as an ideal group of migrants because of their perceived willingness to work
long hours without complaint. Anderson (2013; 2014) extends this analysis of the state’s notion of the “good citizen” by
contrasting it with the idea of the “failed citizen”, and the “alien non-citizen”. These social constructs are juxtaposed
against the “good citizen”, and those newcomers who fall outside the “good citizen” norm are subject to
sanctions and other negative consequences for their deviance from expected standards. In other words, the “failed
citizen” – the citizen or landed immigrant who does not conform to prescribed neoliberal values and behaviours
– and the RCIS Working Paper No. 2014/7 6 “alien non-citizen” – the migrant with less than full legal status who is
criminalized and excluded because their very existence poses a challenge to the cohesion and uniformity of
the neoliberal state – have come to be portrayed as clearly articulating a vision of the undesirable migrant. Canadian immigration
policy is being redesigned to align with this new neoliberal vision.

The Aff describes immigrants in a way that emphasizes their utility – that is
neoliberalism at its finest
Roberts 10 — David J. Roberts, Urban Studies, University of Toronto, 10 ("Neoliberalizing Race, Racing Neoliberalism:
Placing “Race” in Neoliberal Discourses", No Publication, 2-18-2010, Available Online from https://onlinelibrary-wiley-
com.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/doi/full/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00747.x, Accessed on 7-18-2018)

Extending Harald Bauder's (2008) analysis of immigrant portrayals, where he outlines the connections
between immigration and utility, we also found that many stories in this paper celebrate the virtues of immigration and its
link to a successful Canadian economy. However, while Bauder's investigation of the economic‐utility perspective of neoliberal
restructuring of Germany's immigration policies is similar to our work, we more specifically engage with the racialized representation
of the immigration and its relationship to neoliberalization. In fact, neither the word “race” nor “racialization” ever appears in Bauder's
analysis. In other words, we are interested in the ways in which the discourses that Bauder identifies work to modify how race is
understood and experienced as a result of neoliberal policy reforms (and their corresponding discourses). Our analysis starts from a
similar place as Bauder by examining a strikingly similar set of discursive constructions of immigrants in the Canadian newsprint, but
works towards a different theoretical end. Through a focus on the utility and productive nature of immigrants
for Canada's growth, immigrants are depicted as adding significant utilitarian value to the Canadian
economy. This is, of course, a strongly neoliberal argument (Bauder 2008). Articles such as “Labour
shortage woes loom, research says” (Scoffield 2005), “New Canadians can keep the lights shining on the Prairie” (Simpson
2005), and “Ontario eyes brightest immigrants” (Howlett 2006) underscore the need for immigrants to shore up
Canada's economy. Immigrants are seen as a way to solve many of Canada's pressing concerns from low fertility
rates and an aging population, to the growing demand for skilled labor and doctors, to fuelling hot housing markets.
Racism and its accompanying stereotypes associated with immigrants (high fertility, non‐professional aspirations) are effectively
mobilized as desirable whereas historically these were seen as negative attributes of immigrants. These presumed features of the
potential immigrant population are part of a racist lexicon that was previously employed to denigrate immigrants. Now, the same
discourse is manipulated to present immigrants as a more “desirable” population (who at the same time know their place). A few
examples of this theme follow:
 L – Family Immigration
The Idea of family is central of the neoliberal-conservative project
Hamburger 18, Jacob Hamburger, Jacob Hamburger is a Paris-based writer and translator. He
runs the blog Tocqueville 21, which focuses on global democracy in the twenty-first century. The
Unholy Family, 1-28-2018, https://jacobinmag.com/2018/01/family-values-neoliberalism-
melinda-cooper, 7-26-2018 (JBH)
to understand why the idea of the family was so central to the neoliberal-conservative
project, Cooper argues that we need to begin by looking at the political climate of the late 1960s. At the peak of American Keynesian social democracy, an overwhelming
consensus existed in favor of the “Fordist family wage.” That the best way to ensure a decent standard of living was to

provide a livable wage to each male breadwinner at the head of a traditional heterosexual
family was an idea nearly everybody accepted. Of course, different variations of this idea were
advanced by opposing sides. Through much of the 1960s, the activist left and the liberal
center aimed to use the welfare state to extend this family wage to people previously
excluded from it, namely African-American male heads of household. Though many Republicans hoped to
eliminate welfare programs that they judged to be too generous, the right more or less conceded that “we are all Keynesians now.” The Fordist family wage, Cooper reveals, united
everyone from the anti-poverty activist Frances Fox Piven to the New Deal liberal Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the moderate Republican Richard Nixon. Even Milton Friedman —

a moderate welfare
whom Cooper describes during this period as a “pragmatist” willing to compromise with the left and center — was on board with the idea of

state that extended benefits to more and more male-led families. But if the consensus around
the Fordist family wage was remarkably broad, equally remarkable was its swift collapse
during the 1970s. The turning point, Cooper argues, was the failure of the Family Assistance Plan, a crucial
piece of legislation that aimed to replace much of the Great Society welfare programs with
what was effectively a guaranteed incomefor male-headed working households, inspired by
the work of Milton Friedman. Intended to be the culmination of the family-wage welfare state, the bill failed — largely thanks to Nixon’s unexpectedly
pulling his support from it as it made its way through Congress — and in doing so, it ultimately sounded the death knell of the Fordist consensus. A large-scale expansion of the

family wage was no longer on the table politically.The economic and cultural crises of the 1970s, both real and
perceived, soon created conditions that made it necessary to abandon the Fordist wage
system altogether and reimagine the role of the family in the American economy. Neoliberal
economists began to argue that “stagflation,” the 1970s-era combination of unemployment
and inflation, was primarily the result of the out-of-control expenditures and “perverse incentives” created by twentieth-century social democracy. No longer as
“pragmatic” as Friedman had once been, they advocated an aggressive policy to tackle the inflation crisis by

replacing as much of the welfare state as possible with private sector mechanisms. They believed that
by doing so they could create adequate pressure on individuals to work, thereby leading to economic growth. Cooper believes this project was

inseparable from that of contemporary social conservatives, starting with the former
liberals — like Moynihan, Irving Kristol, and Daniel Bell — who came out as neoconservatives in response to the New Left. The neoconservatives,
she argues, were firm believers in the Fordist family wage, and found those elements of
1960s radicalism that challenged accepted notions of family and sexuality deeply
threatening. In reacting against the counterculture, the neoconservatives provided a convenient explanation for the excessive welfare spending and inflation highlighted
by neoliberals. Not only did the counterculture encourage “hedonistic” spending beyond one’s means, as Bell suggested in The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism, but

neoconservatives also made the case that, under the influence of the radical left, the welfare
state was actively causing the breakdown of the American family by distributing funds to
people who did not conform to traditional norms (or who challenged dominant racial
hierarchies). More than two decades before Bill Clinton’s reforms, for example, Moynihan warned that single black mothers were becoming the “aristocracy of welfare
recipients.” Faced with what Cooper calls the “moral crisis of inflation,” neoliberal thinkers began to discover that the

language of family values was more than just an expedient way to sell an attack on the
welfare state to the public. Neoliberals did not always share the moralistic convictions of the
neoconservatives, nor the religious or traditionalist beliefs of others within Cooper’s
pantheon of “new social conservatives.” But they nonetheless recognized that their ambition to transfer
state responsibilities to the market required the enforcement of a strictly normative view of
the family. Privatization, it turns out, required a moral vision of what exactly the “private” is. With the help of social conservatives, neoliberals
reimagined the family as the basic unit of a market society. If under the Fordist system the
male-headed family was the recipient of welfare benefits, neoliberalism saw intra-family
care as a replacement for state transfers. Cooper views this shift as a return to the once-archaic “Poor Law” tradition of social policy, in
which family members were forced to assume financial responsibility for their dependent

relatives. Under the Clinton-era welfare reforms, for example, benefits to single mothers were replaced by childcare payments that required tracking down the child’s
biological father (a practice that soon became quite costly for a program designed to reduce spending). At the same time, the costs of healthcare and education were shifted from

Moralistic
the collective purse to the private family, where relatives could be made to care for one another without pay or share the burden of mounting student debt.

family values also became a major component of how a thrift-minded neoliberal public
policy determined who did and did not deserve a large variety of state-funded benefits. Cooper
cites, of course, the “workfare” reforms of the 1990s, which deemed a person deserving of welfare based on employment, and therefore capacity to be “responsible” for one’s
family. But she also finds less well-known examples of this sort of moral distinction, for example in the arguments of neoliberal theorists Richard Posner and Tomas Philipson

against public funding for AIDS prevention. By actively fighting the disease, the government effectively
encouraged “risky” behavior such as gay sex — though the authors claimed to have no
moral objections to homosexuality — and in so doing charged the public for the irresponsible acts of individuals. They recommended promoting
marriage and traditional sexual norms as a way of containing the costs of individual health choices to the family. This sort of moral logic, Cooper argues, has

become a fixture not only of health care, but of American policy thinking in general. Family
Valuesdemonstrates in exhaustive detail how conservative normativity pervades the neoliberal approach to education, housing, prisons, religion, and practically every other area of

our sociopolitical landscape. Though many supporters of neoliberalism over the years have claimed to be
indifferent to matters of family, morality, and sexuality — indeed, today’s libertarians of the Ron Paul variety consider
themselves radically open-minded on questions of individual behavior — Cooper shows that this misses the point. Neoliberalism could never be a

movement of pure deregulation, whether in economics or in morality. Just as the privatization of the economy
requires the political power of the state, the privatization of society more broadly requires the enforcement of a certain moral order. And so, Cooper writes, “neoliberals

must ultimately delegate power to social conservatives in order to realize their vision of a
naturally equilibrating free-market order and a spontaneously self-sufficient family.”
 L – Free Market/Democracy Reps
Representations of the US as a democratic state or truly representative only
serve to obscure and further capitalism
Titolo 12 (Mathew is the J.D., Ph.D, Visiting Associate Professor, West Virginia University
College of Law. “Privatization and the Market Frame”
https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/buflr60&div=16&g_sent=1&casa_token=
&collection=journals//TU-SG)
B. We Must Engage in a Sustained Critique of Our Reified Metaphors and Categories The events recounted above
did not occur in a political or cultural vacuum. Political and financial elites would not have
been able to enlist popular support for neoliberal policies without a powerful, unifying
storyline . The story is that free markets work for the common good, markets selfregulate, and the private sector
is inherently more efficient than government. As discussed below, privatization policy , like much American policy discourse, is grounded in a set of a

priori assumptions about the ontological nature of free markets and government
bureaucracy . 8 Free markets are by their very nature flexible, efficient, and self-correcting."
Government, by contrast, is a slow, lumbering beast that cannot do anything right (except policing and
punishing).o Both the market and government are separate things, separate objects, presenting themselves to us as solid, ready-made categories that form the springboard of our

Our language for comprehending modern political economy has not evolved to
policy prescriptions.'

register the new realities of neoliberal finance capitalism . Even prior to the crisis, concepts were trailing
behind the realities of contemporary governance, which had blurred public and private into new,
hybrid forms of governmentality. 72 The categories themselves need to be reworked or discarded altogether.7 3 <INSERT FOOTNOTE 73> 73. See,
e.g., HARCOURT, supra note 70, at 44 ("The categories of 'free market' and ' regulated ,' it turns out, hinder rather than help.

They are, in effect, illusory and distort rather than advance our knowledge . Ultimately, the
categories themselves-of 'free markets' and 'excessive regulation,' of 'natural order' and
'discipline'-need to be discarded."); see also RUBIN, supra note 72, at 1-3 ("[T]hese concepts are simply not the most useful or meaningful ones that we
could find to describe contemporary government."). <END FOOTNOTE 73> A common theme that emerges from the recent literature is that the present crisis was the result of a

Sustained criticism of the neoliberal project is long overdue in U.S.

deeply flawedand deeply held-worldview.7 4

policy circles, but especially in fields such as my own-law-where the neoclassical model has been so deeply imprinted on our teaching and scholarship for decades. As
David Westbrook suggests, critics of the neoclassical-neoliberal frame are unlikely to make much headway without first taking seriously the deep narrative and social power of the

we will need to suspend some key assumptions and bracket some of

frameworks they hope to replace.7 6 To do this work,

the grounding concepts of our neoliberal order. This Article contributes in one small area, privatization discourse, which is an embodiment
of the neoliberal frame. In Beyond Camelot: Rethinking Politics and Law for the Modern State, Edward Rubin provides guidance on how to undertake such a project.7 7 The

grounding concepts such as the " three branches of government ," " direct
provocative thesis of Beyond Camelot is that

democracy ," and " sovereignty " embody social nostalgia for a lost world that never existed. 78 Our
discourse on direct democracy, for example, sounds with strong historical echoes of an idealized ancient
Greek city-state.7 9 Rubin asks "whether the concept of democracy really serves as a good description of
the government we actually possess, or whether this concept, with its Ionic columns and its
sculptured architraves, is really a papier-miich6 facade that conceals a different actuality." " In other
words, " direct democracy " conjures images of the ancient Greek polis, an image of localized political community that

only obscures the structures of our modern administrative state . 8 Our modern forms of
government derive from medieval corporatism with its attendant forms of mediated governance; 82
but the allure of direct, citizen democracy remains in our frame as a powerful, illusory afterimage .8 3 <INSERT
FOOTNOTE 83> 83. See id. at 117. As Rubin describes it: The concept of deliberative democracy is closely allied to participatory democracy, and suffers from a similar affection

In a modern state, with its millions of people, thousands of interest

for the Aristotelian image of direct democracy... .

groups, and hundreds of administrative agencies, any sort of unified, collective debate is
inconceivable . . .. <END FOOTNOTE 83> Rubin is right to focus our attention on historically sedimented grounding concepts transplanted to alien contexts. He
argues that these "[r]eified, conceptually coagulatedmetaphors are engines of overinterpretation . . . [of] the data, and demand still
further explanations to maintain their rigid, awkwardly shaped boundaries." "84 " Coagulated metaphors" prevent us from seeing what

is right in front of us or may lead us to "overinterpret" what we do see to fit pre-existing

categories." Our normative commitments to grounding concepts such as democracy make it difficult for
us to see the anti-democratic realities of the administrative state for what they are: permanent features of the
modern world." This doesn't mean that we can't seek to reshape the contours of that world; but we ought not to approach the task by holding up the administrative state to the

." Rubin proposes that we begin to break the hermeneutic deadlock by

impossible ideal of the ancient Greek polis

bracketing the problematic concepts and working to replace them with "equally familiar"
concepts derived from another context.8 8 But why not just jettison the concepts and start from scratch? This has the immediate appeal that we will
no longer be trapped in the same problematic language that we're trying to escape. However, as Rubin points out, simply jettisoning the unworkable concepts raises other, more
serious problems. Chief among them is this: given that we are analyzing grounding concepts, it is true by definition that we have organized our normative and intellectual
commitments around these concepts. 89 That is why we call them "grounding" concepts in the first place. This means that by simply discarding the concepts we risk a failure to
communicate our criticisms effectively because of deeply held emotional commitments that have formed around those concepts. 90 Rubin argues, among other things, that we

attempt to honor the emotional commitments that cohere around these grounding concepts even as we critique them.' My argument here is that the neoliberal
worldview is replete with the same sort of coagulated, metaphorical, and value-laden constructs
that Rubin identifies. We will need to bracket ready-to-hand concepts such as "free market " if we are
to have productive conversations about privatization-and indeed about political economy more generally. If we fail to reflect critically on our

grounding language, even good-faith efforts to resolve our neoliberal policy woes may become entangled
in the value-laden, coagulated metaphors that cause the market freedom story to have wide
appeal. To develop alternatives will require that we "defamiliarize"9 2 our object of study-in this case, privatization-as a necessary first step towards clearing away the ruins
of a failed epistemic project so that we can begin to see the world anew. What would our privatization policy discourse sound like if we didn't allow anchor terms such as free
market to serve as the uncritical baseline? How might we approach privatization policy decisions if we bracketed the neoliberal frame? We won't know the answers to these
questions before we take some initial steps towards bracketing the old concepts. And that project in turn requires that we resist the temptation to be pragmatic. That is, we should
not expect that such a project will generate immediate policy prescriptions. It is no small matter to change grand narratives, even when there are powerful reasons why they ought
to be changed. Rather, our goal should be an incremental realignment in the way we think and talk about political economy. In short, we must become intellectual historians of our
own institutional present.
 L – Filipino Labor
Filipino labor has been commodiefied to represent the new extension of
capitalism through a international deployable labor scheme
Onuki 16 (Hironori Onuki, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, Faculty of Law,
Humanities and the Arts, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia. York Centre for
Asian Research, York University, Toronto, Canada, "The Neoliberal Governance of Global Labor
Mobility: Migrant Workers and the New Constitutional Moments of Primitive Accumulation"
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0304375415570198?journalCode=alta//TU-SG)
Under such a shift toward the neoliberal capital-oriented reorganization of social reproduction and care
industry, the scheme outlined in the JPEPA appears to initiate the reception of commodified migrant labor largely

on a temporary basis. Of crucial importance is the stipulation that Filipino candidates must acquire Japan’s kaigo
fukushishi certificate to work after their initial four-year term. While it is doubtful whether the intensive six-month language training in Japan

would sufficiently equip these Filipinos to work in Japanese-speaking caregiving environments, what is a more critical question is whether
these workers are able to pass the written exam in Japanese: in 2006, its pass rate was only 47 percent even among Japanese nationals.115 Although the introduction

of Filipino care labor to Japan under the JPEPA could be regarded as increasing migration and settlement,116
this prerequisite creates extremely high barriers, potentially preventing most of Filipinos from
settling in Japan. That is, the JPEPA has actually created a receiving procedure that compels Filipino
workers to become the sources of flexible and cheap labor , especially without Japanese licenses, to ameliorate the immanent
care labor needs. Furthermore, the commodification of Filipino care labor under the JPEPA scheme has been reinforced by

the Philippine state’s perception of the opening of Japan’s labor market as a “new” means to earn
Japanese currency that is essential in sustaining the national economy.117 Since the 1980s, the Philippines has

been known for the rising outflows of care workers and nurses , prompting Rhacel Salazar Parreñas to note that “[c]are
is now the country’s primary export.”118 Within the neoliberal shift in the Philippine state’s
transnational labor deployment strategy that emphasizes the “protection of overseas Filipino
workers” through the “professionalization of their occupations,” which in turn secures the
inflows of foreign currency to its national economy , the government standardized the national
certificate for “caregiver” in 2002. Here, Ruri Ito et al. expose how the discourse of the “innate gift” of
Filipinos to care has been penetrated into the Philippine state’s attempts to both “professionalize”
caregiving jobs that are deemed predominantly “unskilled” and to turn caregiving work
performed by Filipinos into an international commodity.119 Put differently, the Philippine state is
enthusiastic to professionalize caregiving work so as to enable the commercialization of Filipino
caregivers as an internationally deployable labor . It has done so through disseminating an image of
Filipinos as “family minded” and “gentle” and as individuals who possess inherent ability to
provide “high-quality” care. Thus, the transfer of Filipino care workers to Japan under the capital-
driven framework of the JPEPA constitutes these Filipinos as cheap workers and precarious
subjects in the Japanese labor market. If the inflows of migrant care labor to Japan are expanded through Japan’s EPAs with
Thailand and other states,120 the JPEPA scheme can be arguably seen as a basis for systematically establishing the

short-term rotating supply of commodified migrant care labor to fill Japan’s impending vacuum in
the gendered and socially “unfavorable” care provisioning sector.
 L – Food
The global food system has already been commodiefied – the aff only
supports corporate capitalist control
Kelley 18 (Samantha Stephanie Kelley, " Welcome 'Guests'? Migrant Labor Rights in the US
Guestworker Program"
http://udspace.udel.edu/bitstream/handle/19716/23583/Kelley_udel_0060D_13207.pdf?sequence
=1&isAllowed=y//TU-SG)

critiquing the existing neoliberal structure is that of the global food system
A burgeoning literature tethered to

scholarship . Scholars argue the global food system has some of the most successful MNCs worldwide. Indeed, within the global
governance of food, there are competing perspectives on how production “should be organized and
governed and for whom” (Newell 2009, 253). The concept of “food regime” historicizes and problematizes the
global food system, bringing a “structured perspective to the understanding of agriculture and
food’s role in capital accumulation across time and space” (McMichael 2009, 140). Several iterations of food
regimes have been transpiring since the time of tropical colonial food imports in the late 1800s (McMichael 2009,
141, 148). However, today’s globalized and systematized processes of production, trade, and marketing are

relatively new, only taking hold within the past five decades (Clapp and Fuchs 2009, 3). MNCs “have been central players in the
global integration of the food system’s modern era,” contributing to the emergence of
“corporate food regimes” under the auspices of the neoliberal world order (McMichael 2009, 141, 148; Clapp
and Fuchs 2009, 4). Such corporate food regimes have developed because of the “tendencies and structures of

advanced capitalism” (Lang and Heasman 2015, 182). Capitalism pushes commodification of durable products
able to withstand the constraints of time and space. Such methods have created a number of modern
day conveniences: processed food relieves us of the time and resources to do it ourselves (e.g., milled
wheat into bread); our food is preserved through industrialized canning and refrigeration; transportation

brings us food from different climates; and processes of pasteurization kill pathogens (Lang and Heasman
2015, 176-177). However, previous scholars have argued the corporate influence is not always benevolent. There are many

implications for growing corporate authority within the food industry, including adverse effects on food
security, incomes for small farms, labor rights, the environment, food safety, and consumer
choice (Clapp and Fuchs 2009, 6). Precipitating these implications is corporate concentration. Corporate
concentration is when a limited number of firms control a large portion of food production, distribution,
marketing, and consumption (FarmAid 2016). In fact, in today’s globalized world, “[a]t least one of the steps in the food chain – from

production, trade, processing, and packaging to retailing – is typically overseen by a major food
corporation” (Clapp and Fuchs 2009, 5).
 L – H1B
The affirmative framing of immigration and H1-B visas fortifies the US
neoliberal system
Mukherjee ’14 (Ishani is a Ph.D holder and professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago
“Framing the Globalization-Migration Debate: Continuing Impact of U.S. Economic Crises on
Indian H-1B Immigrant Professionals in America”
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ishani_Mukherjee/publication/269753520_Framing_the_Gl
obalization Migration_Debate_Continuing_Impact_of_US_Economic_Crises_on_Indian_H1-
B_Immigrant_Professionals_in_America/links/5880113108ae71eb5dbfb661/Framing-the-
Globalization-Migration-Debate-Continuing Impact-of-US-Economic-Crises-on-Indian-H1-B-
Immigrant-Professionals-in-America.pdf//TU-SG)

U.S. political economy is being altered to a large extent by the forces of neo-liberal globalization , skilled
The

labor immigration , and reverse-migration especially during this transitional phase following the recent economic recession. Because
immigration of H-1B workers to the U.S., particularly from India, has become an intrinsic element of
the nation’s and the globe’s economic workings, the agents of globalization, both for and against the process
have created rhetorical frames of pro and anti- immigration to deal with the issue. The construction
of frames or framing helps in creating discursive meanings and interpreting or challenging existing rhetorical frames, being “an
active processual phenomenon that implies agency and contention at the level of reality construction ” [17]. According
to Benford & Snow [17], frames delineate an issue by creating meaning significations, identify the problem,

establish who all are accountable, and also determine which issues should get primacy over others
[18]. So, if the brunt of the continuing U.S. economic crisis on professional and skilled Indian immigrants is considered the dominant frame, then the supporting frames address: (i)
the implications and consequences of a globalized and economically motivated rhetoric of skilled Indian immigrants in the wake of post-recession U.S. and (ii) the political
rhetoric of the government, as it deals with the skilled labor immigration issue in favor of a more ‘localized’ and nationalist economic infrastructure. Thought from a cultural

a more inclusive pro-globalization

perspective, the counter-frames are: (i) the frame employed by skilled immigrant workers, who propose

rhetoric that will safeguard their legal status in the U.S. “as the international economy becomes
increasingly globalized,” and as transnationalism emerges “as a perspective necessary for understanding the new and dynamic realities of immigration” [19];
versus (ii) the more traditional forms of assimilation, with the government and immigration experts

attempting to frame either “a set of strategies and policies to successfully incorporate immigrants
into the national social fabric and the larger political economy” of America, or to frame policies that would completely close
the doors of unchecked migration, if it posed a threat to the advancement of national economic growth [19]. In other words, the political frames employed are the pro and anti-
immigration frames; the economic frames employed are pro-globalization and anti-globalization (localization) frames; while, the cultural frames employed are transnationalism
The significance of such political and economic debates is established on the basis
and assimilationist frames.

of two factors, (i) around which issues are they framed and (ii) who are the agents responsible for
framing those debates. Although what is not evolving is the work of proper social movement organizations (at least not in the formal, organized sense), the
agency lies in the active involvement of the government and the skilled Indian immigrants in the pro and anti-immigration debate. If we build on Benford and Snow’s [17]

framing theorization, then this global- local dialectic can be considered an active framing process in
the sense that the role of the immigration-debate within globalization is an ongoing one even
post-recession, and it is interpretive in the sense that it gives rise to the possibility of counter-frames
that not only challenge the existing restrictionist immigration policies of the U.S., but also propose alternative
frames that may either advocate “free migration” [1] or more comprehensive immigration reforms that help to fortify the H1-B
holders’ legal and economic positions in the U.S. The rhetoric of transnationalism
proposes that the U.S. should maintain and encourage global and economically driven
immigration policies . It reiterates that migration is no longer a location-specific process and that as the world economic infrastructure shifts from a more state-
centered system to a globalized one, without strict trade barriers and limits to labor transmutability, “traditional immigrant issues such as

citizenship, political incorporation, and cultural assimilation are being rapidly transformed” [19]. The
fact that migrants are able to communicate with and between their sending and receiving societies with equal ease is made clear by our case study where the desire for permanent
 the H-1B holding Indian immigrants who want to fortify the U.S. economy
residency or citizenship acts as an extra impetus for

by applying the specific skills that they have imported from India and who also “are able to maintain strong economic, cultural,
political, and physical ties to their place of birth” [19].
 L – Heg
Hegemonic powers use global organizations like the IMF in order to persuade
other countries to adopt free markets and capitalist viewpoints, which
reproduces the neoliberalist system
Mueller ’11 Julie L. Mueller, Professor in the Political Science at University of New England,
2011 (“The IMF, Neoliberalism and Hegemony,” Global Society, July 11, Available Online at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13600826.2011.577032, Accessed 7/25/18, SK)
This shift to neoliberalism was completed in the 1980s under US leadership. Shortly after President Reagan took office in the United States, the staff
of the IMF produced a background paper on structural reforms that echoed Reagan’s preference
for economic liberalisation and supply-side economics. Although this proposal was met with hostility from the developing
countries, the Fund staff encouraged countries to adopt liberal structural reforms throughout the 1980s.54 This is an excellent example of how the IMF,
once its legitimacy was established, was used by the hegemonic powers to create norms that upheld and
reinforced the system. The increasing role of the IMF in suggesting policy to promote economic development in low-income countries
throughout the 1980s has been described as a classic case of “mission creep”.55 This was largely a result of the increasing number of low- and middle-
income countries that were borrowing funds and a corresponding decrease in developed-country borrowers. It also led to the problematic overlap of the
missions of the Fund and the Bank, as the Fund became increasingly involved in dictating fiscal policy.56 In Gramsci’s understanding of hegemony,
intellectuals play a significant role in creating homogeneity and self-awareness within the social
group.57 Augelli and Murphy note that in order for a social class to achieve and maintain supremacy, it must also capture the ideological realm: The
intellectuals of the hegemonic class must produce a philosophy, political theory, and economics which together constitute a coherent world-view, the
principles of which can be translated from one discipline to another ... [I]ntellectuals of the dominant class must prevail over the intellectuals of other
classes by developing more convincing and sophisticated theories, inculcating other intellectuals with the dominant world-view, and assimilating them to
the hegemon’s cause.58 One way the Fund helps legitimate these hegemonic norms is through its role as a
producer of authoritative scholarship upon which its own policy is based. The IMF supports a
particular research agenda that is dominated by neoliberalism. Neoliberalism began to emerge as early as the
mid-1970s, but gained political traction in the 1980s and became firmly entrenched after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. This ideology was
supported through organisations such as the G7, the World Bank, the World Economic Forum,
the Bank for International Settlements, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),
which later became the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the IMF. It was a movement that embraced the
notion of “free trade” as the main engine of economic growth for all states. Although this idea was largely institutionalised at the end of the Second
World War, it was not until the 1980s that it
became the single dominant focus of international economic policy,
and the East Asian financial crisis of 1997 was seen as the nail in the coffin of state intervention.
In addition, by the decade of the 1990s, the members of the G7 had achieved an unprecedented ability to influence, both economically and politically, the
affairs of the developing world, and institutions such as the IMF were the chief tool for accomplishing this.59
In the
Michel Camdessus, Fund Managing Director from 1987 to 2000, referred to the spread of liberal norms as a “silent revolution”.
developing world, there was a shift away from nationalistic trade policy and government
management of the economy and toward privatisation, free trade, and multilateralism. To a great extent,
the silent revolution of the 1980s resulted from a shift in economic philosophy toward a new classical synthesis in
which government has an indirect role in, but not a direct responsibility for, ensuring national
economic prosperity; in which private economic activity is promoted through good governance
and the development of physical and social infrastructure.60 The norms of this system include: the
predominance of the market over the state; pursuing development through privatisation and trade;
assuming personal responsibility for failure; and measuring development by national statistics,
like export growth and growth of GDP. This system reflects a moral value system that places a high value on individualism, the
need to prevent moral hazard, a belief that capitalism is the “best” economic system, and seeing freedom as

more important than equality. The IMF legitimates these norms through research,
surveillance, and advising states, and by being a key player in a transnational civil society.
Gramsci notes at length the important role that such intellectuals play in legitimating the governing norms of their social group: “The intellectuals are the
dominant group’s ‘deputies’ exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government.”61 They are the main organisers of consent
 intellectuals played a key role in
in civil society yet also carry out the administrative functions of the state.62 Gramsci believed
creating and upholding this hegemony. He saw them as “agents” of the dominant group in exercising both social hegemony and
political governance. As specialists they had a dual ethical and political function.63 Intellectuals play an important role as
economists within the Fund, state governments, private enterprise and in academia. Examples
abound of influential people who spent their careers moving seamlessly between the private
sector, academia, national policy making, and the IMF. One such example is Paul Volcker. His career began in the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York, in the 1970s he presided over the major reform of the Fund as the US Under Secretary for International Monetary Affairs, in
1979 was appointed Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, in the 1980s he worked at a private investment bank, more recently he was appointed by the
United Nations to investigate the Iraq Oil for Food scandal, and is currently heading the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board. Another less-
well-known example is Thomas D. Willett, an economist who was tapped from the academic world in 1972 to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary of the
Treasury for International Affairs and later served as Director of Research and Senior Advisor for International Economic Affairs for the US Treasury.
Willett later went on to work at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, and then returned to academia. A more recent example is the
current US Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, who served as the Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in the 1990s, followed by a
stint at the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2003 he became President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. During his tenure there he helped
engineer the bailout of Bear Stearns and AIG. In 2009 he became the US Treasury Secretary.64 Another excellent example is Robert Rubin, former US
Treasury Secretary. Prior to holding this position Rubin was employed at Goldman Sachs and subsequent to leaving the Treasury Department he went to
work for Citigroup. Intellectuals are present as economists at the IMF, where their power to determine the content and define the terms of the debate is
IMF and World Bank economists use income as a measure of
extremely important. For example, because
development, elites in developing countries can justify harsh economic policies by pointing to
rising GDP figures. However, the reality is that in many cases income distribution, as measured by the Gini coefficient, and human
welfare, as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), rarely change or improve only
slightly relative to the rising GDP. In Ghana, the Gini coefficient worsened from 0.352 in 1988 to 0.428 in 2009, although its HDI did
improve somewhat. In states such as Jordan, there is a large discrepancy between urban and rural areas in terms of social indicators, such as advanced
education, which may not be apparent from aggregate state data. Citizens with college degrees are concentrated in the larger cities, while rural towns,
such as Ma’an and Karak, sites of two “IMF riots”, have no college degrees.65 Likewise, in terms of HDI, the urban areas of Amman and Aqaba rank
significantly higher than the more rural areas of Ma’an and Karak. Amman and Aqaba were about 0.77, while Ma’an and Karak were about 0.72 and 0.74
respectively, according to US Department of State data in 2003. Evidence
of the coalescing of a true global civil society
that supports the hegemonic transnational elite class can be seen in many governmental and non-
governmental organisations. The annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which brings
together leaders in government, economic IOs, and business, puts forth an agenda that serves the
interests of these individuals and their constituents. Also, the Group of Thirty, a sort of alumni
association for former IMF and World Bank executives as well as finance ministers from leading
states, meets regularly and publishes influential opinion pieces that also promote this agenda. Carroll
and Sapinski demonstrate the consolidation of elites within what they call transnational policy-planning bodies, where there is an overlap in membership
of CEOs and such bodies.66
 L – High Skilled
Immigration has become an economic issue. Their affirmation of caps and
selection criteria normalizes the notion that immigrants must be high-skilled
Kennedy 16, Sean Christopher Kennedy, Department of Communication Studies Areas of
Specialization: Talent, Knowledge Economy, Neoliberalism, Distributed Cognition, University of
Kansas , (“The Politics of Talent: Inequality, Innovation, and Attribution”, August 31, 2016,
http://hdl.handle.net/1808/22365 AS)
US immigration policy debates offer a fruitful avenue for exploring economic discourse in general, and the
politics of “talent” in particular. Immigration is a key nexus point at which states direct global
population flows, using tools like the visa regime to manage the composition of their populations.
As Mark B. Salter (2006) contends, for example, [T]he management of international populations is conditioned presently by

nationality/statelessness, labor/leisure, health/disease, and normalcy/ risk. The loose structure of the global visa regime
represents an important aspect of this international control of bodies or control of international bodies (p. 177) US public policy debates over visa

caps and selection criteria, therefore, represent particular moments in which the ideal composition of
the US population is directly at issue. Increasingly, these debates have engaged and interpreted immigration
as an economic problem. J. David Cisneros (2014) argues that in President Obama’s immigration discourse, for example, “Good immigrants embody the spirit
of entrepreneurialism and economic innovation (as evidenced in Obama’s many stories), while bad immigrants depress the economy” (p. 90). The assessment of

immigrants in economic terms derives in part from immigration debates from the late 1980s
through the mid 1990s. During these debates, “politicians and the mainstream media successfully constructed an alarmist image that maintains that large-scale
immigration has had a detrimental impact on the U.S. economy” (Gerken 2013, p. 250). As a result of this presumption, the burden of proof rests with

pro-immigration advocates and current and prospective US immigrants to prove expanded

immigration will not harm the economy. As Cisneros highlights above, President Obama and many other backers of
expanding US immigration have responded by presenting their proposed immigration system as
only increasing the flow of “good” immigrants. Since this strategy implicitly accepts the presumption that
immigrants are generally an economic drain, its use has “confirmed and maybe even strengthened
the neoliberal agenda” of tying selection criteria to economic calculation (Gerken 2013, p. 245). In US policy debates,
expanded immigrant supporters have attempted to use “level of education and marketable job
skills” as a means of drawing “a sharp distinction between skilled and unskilled immigrants,” and thus distinguishing “good” and “bad” immigrants (Gerken 2013, p. 5). For
example, the Gang of Eight Senators’ 2013 bipartisan immigration 30 proposal awarded, “a green card to immigrants who have received a PhD or Master's degree in science,

Negotiating the economic utility of the particular

technology, engineering, or math from an American university” (Schumer et al. 2013, January 28).

immigrants to be admitted into the US, therefore, is a central and defining characteristic of
contemporary US immigration policy debates. The process of differentiating between good, “high-skilled” immigrants
and bad, lowskilled immigrants does not involve absolute calculations of utility. Indeed, understanding immigrants as disembodied
containers for a “bundle of technical skills that are fed into the economy” is counterproductive because it “inhibits our understanding of skill formation and the social relations of

Immigrants appear “high-skilled” only in the

productivity growth in post-industrial societies” (Brown, Green, and Lauder 2001, p. 13-16).

context of a particular “imagined economy” in which those skills appear essential to US economic productivity.
This is not to dismiss economics or assessments of skill as “mere social constructions” or “simply expressions of ideology” entirely divorced from materiality. Instead,

recognizing “high-skills” as embedded within a particular imagined economy highlights the

material, historical, and embodied quality of high-skilled discourse, and emphasizes the sense in
which discourse and materiality cannot be cleanly separated into distinct, autonomous realms. US
immigration policy debates, therefore, do not simply negotiate competing policy proposals, but also involve the location of those policy proposals within particular economic
imaginaries in which the remedies they offer appear plausible.

The discourse of their Aff excludes immigrants that aren’t highly skilled – it
is a form of neoliberal exception because it is completely based on
immigrants’ economic utility
Cisneros 15 — J. David Cisneros, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and affiliate faculty in the
Department of Latina/Latino Studies, the Center for Writing Studies , and the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, 2015 ("A
Nation of Immigrants and a Nation of Laws: Race, Multiculturalism, and Neoliberal Exception in Barack Obama's Immigration
Discourse", No Publication, 1-23-2015, Available Online from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cccr.12088, Accessed
on 7-10-2018)

Obama emphasized entrepreneurialism (rather than class mobility, cf. Demo, 2006) as key to immigrants' economic utility. Speaking
of DREAM Act eligible youth, Obama (2012a) stated, “If there is a young person here who has
grown up here and wants to contribute to this society, wants to maybe start a business that will
create jobs for other folks who are looking for work, that's the right thing to do” (para. 29, see also
Obama, 2012b). Stories of successful immigrants constructed a “moral economy” (Garner, 2007, p. 67) in
which highly skilled and entrepreneurial immigrants were valued as worthy of exceptional rights,
mobility, and ultimately citizenship because of their class, economic calculability, and embrace of
neoliberal subjectivity. And although visa categories had already been created by past presidents for highly skilled immigrants
and immigrant investors, the administration's proposal for reform included several more such provisions such as “‘stapling’ a green
card to the diplomas” of successful STEM graduates and creating a “startup visa” for job creators (“Fact sheet,” 2013). Some
immigrants were neoliberal entrepreneurs who helped to build the country and thus possessed human capital
and economic/cultural value, and other immigrants did not have that value, and thus they
represented fuel for the nation's economy, at best, or economic or political threats, at worst. I argue
that a “neoliberal exception” was the linchpin in such public discourse and policy about immigration. The neoliberal exception
describes “the interplay among technologies of governing and of disciplining, of inclusion and
exclusion, of giving value or denying value to human conduct” (Ong, 2006, p. 5). Here, exception
regulated the right and wrong kinds of immigrants by indexing neoliberal values. Stories of immigrant
entrepreneurs and immigration as an economic calculus seemed to dichotomize entrepreneurial and ordinary immigrants, the former
who remained exempt from concerns about national sovereignty because of their neoliberal value(s) and the latter who could be
exempted from neoliberal promises of economic opportunity and belonging because they raised protectionist fears about lost jobs or
threatened U.S. sovereignty. In Obama's discourse, this “graduated citizenship” did not turn on race or ethnicity (cf. Ong, 2006, pp.
78–79) but rather participated in the racialization of certain groups based on their economic calculability. Whiteness took shape
through characteristics such as “industriousness, community‐mindedness, fitting in to norms (not being different) and
[economic/societal] contributions” (Garner, 2012, p. 461), rather than through appeals to phenotype. Some exemplary immigrants
could become part of this moral economy, while others were racialized as “living within the shadows,” as not ideal at least in part
because they did not represent the proper neoliberal economic calculus.

Their [economy advantage/innovation advantage] descriptions of high skilled

immigrants and claims of competitiveness are inherently neoliberal
Agyemang et al 16 - Professor of Accounting at Royal Holloway, University of London, 2016 (“Immigration and
neoliberalism: three cases and counter accounts”, EmeraldInsight, 2016, Available Online from
https://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/AAAJ-09-2013-1470, Accessed 7-10-2018, AVP)

The immigration policies that we explore in this paper should be considered part of wider state apparatus
designed to harness and extract life forces according to market principles of efficiency and
competitiveness (Walsh, 2011, p. 862; Ong, 2006, p. 4). Under neoliberalism there is an erasure of immigrants as
social and moral agents; they are recast as primarily economic agents or commodities whose main
purpose is to benefit the economy (Pallitto and Heyman, 2008). By objectifying the immigrant as a
commodity, the immigrant is seen to hold resources (skills) that are “limited and separable from
their bodies: Seemingly skills can automatically be transformed into labour power and traded like oil” (Goldberg, 2012, p. 126).
Conceived of this way immigrants are immediately rendered available for economic measurement
and manipulation via a range of calculative technologies, including accounting. The ultimate effect of neoliberal immigration
practice therefore confounds prior understandings of citizenship. As Ong (2006, pp. 6-7) points out: […] citizenship elements such as
entitlements and benefits are increasingly associated with neoliberal criteria so that mobile individuals who possess human capital or
expertise are highly valued […] citizens who are judged not to have such tradable competence or potential become devalued and thus
vulnerable to exclusionary practices. Immigration
policy under neoliberalism is thus framed as a platform for
national competitiveness struggling over resources defined as skills and talent, and illustrative of what
Ilcan and Phillips (2010) refer to as “the neoliberal mentality”, an incessant extension of market logic and rules into all spheres of
social life (see also Gold, 2005; Li, 1992; Menz, 2009; Shelley, 2007). Brown
and Tannock (2009) describe it as a
“global competition for talent” (p. 381) defining people in terms of potential for profit maximization (see UK Government,
2006; Pottie-Sherman, 2013; Watt et al., 2008). In this manner neoliberalism articulates immigration as satisfying market efficiency
doctrines while practices develop into wider state apparatus controlling life (Foucault, 2003). Longazel and Fleury-Steiner (2013)
suggest “immigration law and politics under neoliberalism has been characterized by an
encouragement of increased immigration to satisfy economic imperatives on one hand and punitive laws,
which, on the other hand, criminalize these very populations” (p. 360). As neoliberal practice ignores the structural
realities that immigrants confront, our concern is that constructed panics divert attention from broader
structural inequities of neoliberalism and normalize neoliberal power relations. Market principles of
efficiency and competitiveness obscure that immigration is a complex social problem and a worked-out discourse and practice (see
Papademetriou et al., 2008; Watt et al., 2008).
 L – Human Rights
Human rights and adoptions serve to expand global capitalism
Stark 2018 (Barbara Stark. Professor of Law and Hofstra Research Fellow, Maurice A. Deane
School of Law, Hofstra University “When Genealogy Matters: Intercountry Adoption,
International Human Rights, and Global Neoliberalism”
https://heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.journals/vantl51&div=7&g_sent=1&casa_token=
&collection=journals//TU-SG)

How Neoliberalism Transmogrifies Human Rights Human rights have also been transmogrified. 267
Economic rights have been replaced by the promises of neoliberals at home and the Washington

Consensus abroad. 268 Civil and political rights, similarly, have been eclipsed. The equation of
"freedom" with "free markets" is just the beginning . In her line-by-line analysis of President Obama's second
inaugural address, Brown notes that " every progressive valuefrom decreasing domestic violence to slowing

climate change"-is lauded as "driving" economic growth . 269 Human rights have become
the means to strong markets . Moyn, traces the human rights movement "as we know it today" to the 1970s.271 Like Moyn, Klein
stresses the movement's "non-political creed." 272 Unlike Moyn, Klein focuses on "the rise in that period of the neoliberal version of 'private' capitalism,
with its now familiar policy prescription of privatization, deregulation and state retreat from social provision."2 7 3 As Professor Marks explains: [P]art
of the context for the consolidation of neo-liberalism itself was the emergence of the human
rights movement, with its non-political creed. For where the effects of neo-liberal reconstruction began to
bite, activists confined their criticism to the denunciation of abuses, leaving unchallenged the
conditions in which those abuses had become possible and even, in some sense, rational. 2 74 The
particular iteration of the human rights movement that Moyn and Klein discuss, in short, helped make
neoliberalism possible . 275 b.

Human rights law is legitimated through continue processes that obscure

capitalism and fracture resistance
Chimni 14 (B. S. Chimni is a legal scholar and academic. His areas of expertise include
international law, international trade law and international refugee law. Currently, he is
Chairperson of the Centre for International Legal Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New
Delhi. He had a two and a half year stint as Vice Chancellor of the West Bengal National
University of Juridical Sciences. He has been a Visiting Professor at the International Center for
Comparative Law and Politics, Tokyo University, a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law
School, Visiting Fellow at Max Planck Institute for Comparative and Public International Law,
Heidelberg, and a Visiting Scholar at the Refugee Studies Center, York University, Canada. He
served as a member of the Academic Advisory Committee of the Office of the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees for the period from 1996-2000. He is on the editorial board of
several national and international journals like Indian Journal of International Law, International
Studies, International Refugee Studies, Georgetown Immigration Law Journal & Refugee Survey
Quarterly. Chimni is part of a group of scholars who self identify as the Third World Approaches
to International Law (TWAIL) scholars. “The Rituals of Human Rights Bodies: A View from the
Global South” http://regnet.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/2015-
08/06%20Chimni%2C%20The%20Rituals%20of%20Human%20Rights%20Bodies.pdf//TU-SG)
The rituals of human rights law staged in human rights bodies encourage
The Rituals of Human Rights Bodies: General Features

methodological individualism and methodological nationalism. At the same time, they privilege legal
discourse over social science analysis. The prescribed script excludes from view deep structures
 of capitalism and imperialism on the one hand and collective resistance to human rights violations
on the other . The recommendations made to states therefore often amount to empty gestures. Some
features of the script and ritualized performance call for elaboration. First, a series of steps that are embedded in formal

prescriptions and informal conventions inform the review process in human rights bodies. These
range from prescriptions as to the length of documents to be submitted to the formalist narrative
of the state of human rights and the routine responses and recommendations. These institutional
practices entrench collective rituals that occlude serious analysis of human rights situations in
individual countries . But the continuous cycle of reports reinforces the impression of solemn
scrutiny of the human rights record of States. In reality, the review process represents “the
moment of institutionalization, routine, stasis .”21 The dull process is compounded by other
problems that sustain the charge that the examination of States’ reports is ritualistic. These include the delayed submission of reports (often
because of “reporting fatigue”); and in the case of the treaty bodies, the fact that the experts appointed are often neither independent

nor experts . Consequently, the questions asked are commonly “ill-informed” and recommendations
made are “vague or abstract.”22 Second, the National Reports contain an official history of the
evolution and enforcement of human rights law in different countries. These present a sanguine
picture of the human rights record – a record that is attributed to the work of an enlightened State.
They thus exclude the role of social movements in the framing, adoption, and realization of
human rights. The organized and collective efforts of civil society are rendered invisible . It
should not come as a surprise that 5 National Reports seek to produce this outcome. For even the most celebrated document of human

rights law, the UDHR, enshrines a statist perspective when it comes to the idea of resistance. The
Preamble to the UDHR notes that when human rights are not “protected by the rule of law,” man is “compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and
oppression.”23 The meaning of the word “rebellion” in the New Oxford Dictionary is “an act of violent or open resistance to an established government or leader.” This way of

framing the idea of “resistance” in terms of “rebellion” effectively delegitimizes social movements for championing human rights. In the viewpoint of the
UDHR, human rights must be accorded by States in order to prevent rebellions in the name of
human rights. But historically it is peoples’ movements that have led to the articulation and
institutionalization of human rights norms, whether an eight-hour workday or woman’s suffrage; these rights were not simply gifted by
enlightened States. The overall impact is to erase the history of social movements from official memory as these represent a threat to the established order. Against this

threat, official forums have encouraged the “NGO-ization” of dissent and resistance.
Dissent is to be channeled into official texts or “shadow reports.” Even here, influential
NGOs in the global north are reluctant to condemn blatant acts of imperialism . 24 Their
criticism of advanced capitalist states is carefully scripted to stay within accepted
boundaries of dissent. The result is that the work of NGOs may help to legitimize the
use of force against states in the global south . 25 The role of NGOs in the global
south is also circumscribed as these organizations are often funded by agencies in the global north
and are therefore reluctant to condemn acts of imperialism. 26 Third, the National Reports of western
liberal democracies produce a certain genealogy of human rights that tends to suggest that the
western world is the source of the idea and practices of human rights . Among other things, this move
helps in assigning western States a global guardianship role and also in distracting attention
from human rights violations at home (for example, of minorities and asylum seekers). The affirmation of the
relationship between western liberal democracies and human rights is today accompanied by the
ritualistic erasure of human rights initiatives in non-capitalist dispensations like, for example, in the early years of
the life of the former Soviet Union. These initiatives had considerable influence over developments in Europe and North America. As John Quigley argues, “the Soviet legislative
innovations of the 1920s provide a remarkable blueprint for legal reforms that entered Western law later in the twentieth century.”27 Soviet legislation in the 1920s was
remarkable for its progressive quality. To begin with, “laws on worker rights were perhaps the most radical.”28 These included the right to work, health insurance, disability
benefits, old age pensions, free education, paid maternity leave, low cost housing, and later annual vacations. 29 There was also “Soviet innovation in domestic relations” which
“was nothing short of dramatic. The Bolshevik government rewrote family law on assumptions of equality between woman and man, rejecting the law as it existed in the West.”30
It is true that the Stalinist period (and its aftermath) saw the negation of these developments and the imposition of an authoritarian regime that committed horrific crimes against
the Soviet people. The idea of mentioning the human rights innovations achieved in the first years of the Soviet Union is not to be irresponsible or provocative but to show how

the genealogy of contemporary human rights law, traced as it is to advanced capitalist countries,
is ritualized. There will presently be occasion to demonstrate this phenomenon in the National Report submitted by the US to the HRC. The significance
of the erasure of other genealogies means, among other things, the ritual privileging of civil and
political rights over social, economic and cultural rights. In this schema, economic, social and
cultural rights represent 6 domains of policy-making to which the vocabulary of rights is not
strictly applicable. This “methodological individualism” of civil and political rights helps
sever capitalism from its consequences . Frederick Jameson has thus aptly observed that “the substitution of the
political for the economic” is an attempt “to shift the debate from capitalism to freedom, from
economic exploitation to political representation.”31 Fourthly, and most crucially, National Reports are
essentially confined to States’ domestic human rights records. Methodological nationalism in the
writing and evaluation of reports removes imperialist practices, and the relationship between
capitalism and imperialism, from view. The impact of States’ policies and actions on the human rights
of peoples, groups and individuals outside their jurisdiction are not the subject of sustained or
routine scrutiny. There is no intrinsic reason why treaty bodies and HRC reviews should focus only or primarily on the domestic record of States while excluding
from inquiry their responsibility for violations of human rights abroad. For a moment imagine considering the human rights

record of colonial powers in the era of colonialism without taking into account violations of the
rights of colonial peoples. That the colonial powers did not think such a situation was anomalous
can be gathered once again from the UDHR. The UDHR proclaims the need “to secure [the]
universal and effective recognition and observance [of human rights], both among the peoples of
Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction” (emphasis added).
In Article 2, the UDHR states that “no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person
belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty” (emphasis added). The deep irony of proclaiming respect for the human

This shows how imperialism and proliferating but ritualized

rights of those under colonial rule escaped the framers of UDHR. 32

international human rights law can co-exist. At the same time, methodological nationalism removes acts
and practices of imperialism from view . The National Reports of western States never consider
the impact on human rights of rules and policies of international institutions that they control viz., the
IMF, World Bank and WTO, nor speak of the violations of human rights that occur as a result of their

invasions of other nations (e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan) or through humanitarian interventions (e.g., Kosovo) or the
use of force in the name of the “responsibility to protect” (e.g., Libya). To put it differently, the
absence of serious reflection on causes of human rights violations helps veil the relationship
between capitalism, imperialism and human rights violations . Fifth, there is the ritualization of
resistance through privileging international legal discourse over other avenues of resistance. Indeed,
according to Tony Evans, a significant strategy: of counteresistance and co-option is the professional and intellectual discourse of international law, which is presented as the

this voice has little to say about power and interests associated with the
authentic voice of human rights talk. While

dominant ideas of human interests, the legal discourse has succeeded in subordinating alternative
voices with an interest in exposing the causes of human rights violations. The hegemony of
international law therefore performs the task of “closure”, shifting human rights talk from the
political to the legal discourse, providing the space for forging a particular or singular view of
rights presented as legal canon. Although human rights international law is 7 presented as the greatest achievement of the postwar era, an alternative view
might therefore be that it acts as a mask for protecting interests associated with globalization . 33 Even

NGOs “are more concerned with documenting human rights abuses and engaging in legal redress
on a case-by-case basis, rather than seeking the causes of violations .”34 Thus, they “are drawn into
processes that reinforce and legitimate the law as the most effective, if not the only, means for
protecting human rights.”35 In the circumstances human rights law “cannot provide the necessary discursive
or strategic tools to mount serious resistance to globalization for those who are most vulnerable to
it.”36 At the same time, the documentation of human rights violations is available to justify inflicting
violence on societies – in the form of humanitarian intervention – that either resist the hegemonic powers or possess
geo-political or economic significance. In sum, legal discourse “sets the parameters for the future of human rights, leaving a sense of ‘closure’ that

exclude[s] further investigation of the philosophy of rights and, thus, marginalizing the politics of
rights found in dissenting voices.”37
 L – Immigration
Immigration policies lead to neoliberal multiculturalism
Shields et al 14 – Professor of Public Administration at Ryerson University (“Discounting
Immigrant Families: Neoliberalism and the Framing of Canadian Immigration Policy Change”,
RCIS, October 2014, Available online from https://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/rcis/RCIS-WP-
Root-No2014-7.pdf, Accessed 7-16-2018)
Multiculturalism, a cornerstone of the Canadian immigration landscape for the last four decades, is also being reconfigured toward a more neoliberal
orientation and designed to fit more closely with neoliberal immigration change (Griffith, 2013). Multiculturalism has been targeted for
change by neoliberalism because at its core, Will Kymlicka reminds us, it is about helping “to define the terms of belonging and citizenship” (2013: 101). Canadian

multiculturalism was given shape by social liberalism that has sought to incorporate newcomers from diverse
backgrounds to Canada by giving them a civic voice, recognizing their “legitimate” claims for respect and inclusion, and paving
seamless paths for newcomers and their children to full liberal-democratic citizenship. This form of multiculturalism requires the use of an activist state to survive (Kymlicka,
2013: 103). This activist state – in contrast to the neoliberal state – willingly invests public resources in nonprofit organizations that engage in immigrant settlement service and
cultural heritage expression, which give voice to underrepresented groups. In terms of family implications, this social liberalism form of multiculturalism was concerned with a

Neoliberal multiculturalism, however,

process of intergenerational accommodation and integration of immigrant populations around which family is central.

is about shifting the focus away from a rights and “accommodating difference” dialogue toward an emphasis on the need for newcomers to adapt
and to adjust to Canadian society and its established western “pluralistic” value system. This involves a tacit dismissal of the rights
claims approach and “activist” government it promotes. The reorientation gives emphasis to the duties and obligations newcomers have to

adapt to Canada and become productive members of society. This approach fosters a very narrow view of what constitutes social cohesion,
which is articulated as one of the core goals of contemporary immigration reform in Canada (Griffith, 2013). It is not insignificant that, in the British context, the cohesion agenda

neoliberal multiculturalism
has been employed to attack multiculturalism policy as divisive and promoting disunity (Burnett, 2008: 47). In this regard,

rejects the idea of two-way street integration in which both the receiving society and the
immigrants are changed in the process of accommodation, settlement, and integration. The
expectation is for a one-way street integration process in which the newcomers are solely
responsible for making the adaptations to fit into the receiving society’s system of established
values and institutions. There is, moreover, a distinctively narrow economic dimension to neoliberal multiculturalism. Here, the worth of
ethnicity is valued because of its transnational social capital and general commercial value; in a global
marketplace, multiculturalism is extremely useful for building commercial links overseas promoting

“free trade”. Hence, under neoliberalism, multiculturalism is Root et al. 7 transformed. It is no longer about creating “a tolerant national cit izen who is concerned for the
disadvantaged in her own society but a cosmopolitan market actor who can compete effectively across state boundaries” (Kymlicka, 2013: 110-111). As Kymlicka further
observes: Neoliberal multiculturalism for immigrants affirms – even valorizes – ethic immigrant entrepreneurship, strategic cosmopolitanism, and transnational commercial

linkages and remittances but silences debates on economic redistribution, racial inequality, unemployment, economic restructuring, and labor rights (2013: 112). The goal
has been to harness multiculturalism to commercial ends and manage the boundaries of acceptable diversity in society along paths
consistent with the core neoliberal values framework (Burnett, 2008: 46). In such a discourse, the focus is on the individual entrepreneurial

immigrant, immigrant resilience, and the immediate economic benefits of immigration. Absent is the idea
of the contemporary immigrant family and notions of cross-generational sustainability and nation-building.

The aff promotes a system of neoliberal domination of people that are not
productive to the capitalist industrial machine through the economy, this
trades human life for capital value
BROWN 16, Professor at U.C. Berkeley, teaches in political science and critical theory
[“Sacrificial Citizenship: Neoliberalism, Human Capital, and Austerity Politics,” Constellations,
Vol. 23, No. 1, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-8675.12166, March 2016,
p. 4-16,] (JBH)
In short, at the same time that links between the state, finance, and corporate capital are
intensified, concerted action by workers, consumers, and citizens is all but eliminated in fact, in
political discourse, and in the elite and popular political imagination. And when consumer, worker, and citizen
organizations are defanged by the law, these forms of identity and the antagonism they represent
soon dissolve, generating that “transformation of the soul” Margaret Thatcher identified as
fundamental to the success of the neoliberal project. These kinds of legal decisions combined with the neutralizing
strategies of governance aim at this effect, replacing such identities with that of human
capital. Conversion of the worker, the consumer, the activist citizen — all entities capable of
linking together into a social force — into isolated bits of self-investing human capital both
makes them more governable and integrates them into a project: economic growth, to
which they may potentially be sacrificed . The conversion breaks down barriers to this governance and integration; it also abets both.
To grasp how and why this occurs, however, we must return to the general problematic of neoliberal governance formations and consider in particular
two of its component parts, devolution and responsibilization. Devolution, Responsibilization and Shared Sacrifice Neoliberalism's
economization of the political, its jettisoning of the very idea of the social, and its displacement of politics by
governance diminishes all significant venues for active citizenship. One can see these three forces combined in the
metrics by which the costs of higher education are now appraised — on the one hand, in terms of the investment by consumers in their own economic
future, on the other hand in terms of the investment by the state in its economic future. These metrics occlude the historical concern of higher education
with developing or renewing citizens, knowledge, civilization, culture, or the public's capacity to govern itself. Another example of compressing
democratic citizenship and democratic justice into economic purposes can be seen in President Obama's 2013 “State of the Union” address, delivered
shortly after his re-election. In
a speech soaring with calls for social justice and ecological renewal, each
item in what many pundits saw as a revived progressive agenda was expressly legitimated by its contribution to economic
growth. Thus, while Obama argued on behalf of Medicare, tax reform, immigration reform, an end to Washington bickering and
brinksmanship, raising the minimum wage, fighting sex discrimination and domestic violence, and increased government investment in
science and technology research, clean energy, home ownership, education, each cause was framed in terms of its

contribution to economic growth or American competitiveness . “A growing economy that creates good,
middle-class jobs — that must be the North Star that guides our efforts,” Obama declared.23 “Every day,” he intoned midway through the speech, “we
must ask ourselves three questions as a nation.” And what were these questions whose answers would constitute supervenient guides to law and policy
formation, and to collective and individual conduct in the world's oldest democracy and most dominant nation? How do we attract more jobs to our
shores? How do we equip our people with the skills needed to do those jobs? And how do we make sure that hard work leads to a decent living?24
Success in these three areas, Obama promised, would in turn yield the ultimate goal of the nation and the government stewarding it: broad-based growth
for the economy as a whole. This
framing weighs all policy issues, including justice and planetary
survival, according to their GDP-generating capacities . Indeed, if one item on Obama's progressive agenda
turns out to deter (or even fail to stimulate) growth, it would apparently have to get scratched
from the program. This framing also reduces citizenship to participation in national growth
and thus to political passivity, continuous with (if more subtle than) G.W. Bush's infamous encomium to “shop, fly,
and spend” as consummate acts of patriotism in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. From a governance perspective, where what is
prized is teamwork in achieving the goal of growth rather than contestation and deliberation about norms, there is no place for agitated or agonistic
citizenship. Nor is there a place for citizen expression bound to interest groups and ad hoc mobilizations, both
of which are treated as failures of buy-in or consensus-building. However, while neoliberal political
rationality administered through governance eliminates the last classical republican traces of citizenship formulated as public engagement, it
retains even as it transforms the idea of citizen sacrifice. If citizen virtue is reworked as responsibilized
entrepreneurialism, it is also reworked as the “shared sacrifice” potentially required for a healthy or troubled but
above all a flexible economy. Such sacrifice may range from suffering the direct effects of job
outsourcing, furloughs or pay and benefits cuts, to suffering the indirect effects of
stagflation, credit crunches, liquidity or currency crises. It may be shared widely as the curtailed state investment in
education; it may be suffered individually as a “last-hired, first-fired” phenomenon; or, as is most often the case, it may be suffered disproportionately by
active citizenship is slimmed
a weak group or class, as is the case with furloughs or reduced government services. Whatever the case,
to tending oneself as responsibilized human capital, while sacrificial citizenship expands to
include anything related to the health of a firm or nation, or again, the health of the nation as firm. This
slimming and expansion are facilitated through the neoliberal supplanting of democratic
political values and discourse with governance, that consensus model of order that integrates all
into a supervenient project . Recall that governance replaces law with guidelines related to
project goals, conflicting class positions with “stakeholders,” class consciousness with team
consciousness, and political or normative challenges with a focus on the technical and the
practical. It is through such replacements and the reduction of national political purpose to
economic survival and growth that, for example, tax-paying workers become an acceptable revenue source
for the bailouts of investment banks managed by billionaires. This is also what legitimates slashing
public employee salaries and pensions or hiking student tuition in response to finance
capital meltdowns, state fiscal crises, and regressive tax policy. In short, neoliberal governance
converts the classically modern image of the nation comprising diverse concerns, issues, interests, and points of power
to the nation on the model of Walmart where managers are “team leaders,” workers are
“junior associates,” and consumers are “guests” — each is integrated into the smooth
functioning of the whole and bound to the single end of economic prosperity defined in
terms of investment climate and growth.

Capitalism requires immigrants to integrate into the capital industrial

machine
Wolff 16, Richard D. Wolff, Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is
currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School
University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
Earlier he taught economics at Yale University ,How Capitalism Perpetuates Immigration, 10-2-
2016, https://truthout.org/articles/how-capitalism-perpetuates-immigration/, 7-14-2018 JBH
Capitalism has a long, ugly history of scapegoating immigrants. The pattern has been repeated often. For
example, British capitalism’s drive to empire helped force the Irish, as colonial subjects, to
emigrate. Miserable colonial conditions, including horrific famines, drove many Irish to labor for
capitalists in England at wages lower than English workers had won. English workers raged against and clashed with
the Irish immigrants more than they struggled against the colonial system that had brought them.
British capitalists recognized a useful side effect of importing lower-wage workers. It differentiated employees
by national origin, religion and sometimes also ethnicity. Some English workers resented downward pressures on wages

and working conditions, overcrowded housing and neighborhoods, and overused and inadequate
public services. They often overlooked capitalists’ profit-driven organization of immigration, and
instead blamed immigrants themselves. British politicians reinforced such ways of thinking as they sought financing from those capitalists and
votes from English workers. Likewise, profit-driven media companies, the journalists they hired, and

compliant academics often promoted notions that immigrants represented net economic costs and
difficult social adjustments imposed on the existing population. Such notions deflected workers’ resentments about their
economic situations onto scapegoating immigration and immigrants. In short , immigration made a divide-and-rule strategy of capital

against labor all the easier to pursue. Adding insult to injury, some British leaders scolded English workers for their “intolerance” or “prejudice”
against the Irish. Such scolding lofted them “above” the fray of mutual recriminations among competing

English and Irish workers. Portions of the upper classes enjoyed celebrating themselves as more
“tolerant” and less “biased.” The British replicated their Irish history with others among their “colonial subjects” in Asia, Africa and South America.
The same applies to various French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, German and Italian colonial
exploits. A parallel history characterizes the US’s long experience with immigration, as well as
chattel slavery, to cope with capitalism’s recurrent labor shortages. After formal (officially
recognized) colonialisms had been overthrown in the 20th century, post-colonial economic
realities there changed slowly, if at all. Profound poverty plus economic backwardness, inequality and
continued subordination to former colonial masters kept emigration on many people’s agendas. Those who left to become immigrants

found in their new homes the same old divisions, hostilities and scapegoating. Modern times offer
more examples. The US repeatedly undermined basic living conditions in its de facto colony,
Puerto Rico, driving millions to move to the US mainland. There, they repeatedly encountered all
manner of discriminations, abuse and scapegoating. The US economic dominance of Mexico and
Central America as informal colonies — intensified by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) — produced the same result, but on a
much larger scale. US capitalists used Latin American immigrants as means to exert downward pressures

on wages and working conditions, with the usual anti-immigrant results. Following the European colonial pattern, some in the corporate
and governing US elite congratulate themselves for denouncing scapegoating, intolerance, etc. and
castigating those with such attitudes as “deplorables.” Since the 1970s, the remarkable relocation
of capital from its old centers in Western Europe, North America and Japan to the new centers in
China, India, Brazil and beyond has provoked new migrations. The industrialization of the new centers and associated political
and military conflicts have traumatically and quickly (in historical time) transformed the lives of millions and stimulated huge labor migrations — interregional and international.

Emigration traumatizes most of those driven from their homes, jobs, families and communities.
Extreme conditions push emigrants to leave, especially for foreign places they usually know little
about. The uneven development of capitalism, coupled with its drive toward colonialism, has
consistently produced the extreme conditions and extreme inequalities that sustain successive
waves of migration. A real “cure” for the horrific processes of migration lies in a real
confrontation of capitalism’s uneven development. For example, investment could be directed not to where private profit rates are
highest, but rather to areas that need that investment most. The rationale would be that poverty and marginalization pose a threat to peace (and thus to economic development as

by state authorities wherever

well), which outweighs private capitalist profitability in terms of social well-being. For another example, full employment —

private employment is insufficient — could become a funded priority everywhere in part as a

major counter to emigration. For yet another example, taxing extreme wealth could provide significant additional resources for investment in poorer areas.
At the same time, progressive taxation can likewise prevent the resources flowing to poorer regions from reproducing there the gross inequalities that historically accompanied
capitalist development. To get an inkling of the magnitudes involved, consider the 2016 Oxfam report which showed that the combined wealth of the world’s 62 richest individuals
exceeded the combined wealth of the poorer half of the world’s population (3.5 billion people). We could seriously address migration by redistributing that wealth. If redistribution
were combined with either a reorganized and regulated capitalism — or, finally, transition to a non-capitalist system less beset by inequality — still more could be accomplished.

Capitalism always entailed migrations of capital and labor. It also

Capitalism always entailed migrations of capital and labor.

entailed — as Marx’s, Piketty’s and others’ work have argued — a continual tendency toward
wealth and income inequality, coupled with recurring cycles of recession and depression. The masses of
people hurt by the cycles and inequalities have occasionally mobilized political coalitions to moderate or even temporarily to reverse them. For example, the Great Depression of

That coalition forced the New

the 1930s enabled a powerful mobilization from below by a coalition of labor unions, socialist and communist parties.

Deal policies onto President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Congress. From the 1930s to the
1970s, capitalism’s tendency toward wealth and income inequalities was temporarily reversed
and cycles moderated. President Ronald Reagan marked the re-emergence and return to dominance of private capitalism in place of the state interventionist
capitalism from the 1930s to the 1970s. This was accomplished by “deregulation and privatization” — the rollback of the New Deal policies. The government-led post-World War
II destruction of the Communist Party, then the socialist parties, and then the slower destruction of the labor unions secured the political and ideological conditions for rolling back
the New Deal. Private capitalism renewed its classic tendencies toward wealth and income inequalities, cycles, and the resulting migrations of capital and labor. The stale but

Contemporary struggles over

pernicious “debate” over immigration resumes because the underlying economic system reproduces the problem.

immigration replay an old pattern whose horrific consequences should long ago have spurred us
to turn toward the sorts of solutions mentioned above. Instead, we see and hear yet again about
building walls, expelling undocumented migrants, denouncing intolerant “deplorables” and so on. The stale but pernicious “debate” over
immigration resumes because the underlying economic system reproduces the problem. That
system’s leaders and supporters hope that the latest immigrants will eventually be absorbed by
profit-driven economic growth. They likewise hope that neither immigrants nor non-immigrants will blame the system for all their sufferings and losses
during such absorption. They have become accustomed to expecting that this generation’s immigrants, once

absorbed, will blame the next generation of immigrants. When tabulating the social costs of
capitalism, the repeated damage done by the migrations it has provoked looms large.
The aff legitimizes neoliberal concepts of merit. It creates a division between
the good and bad immigrant in which the good immigrant is at the same time
productive and self-serving.
Ehrkamp 16, Patricia Ehrkamp, Associate Professor of Geography, University of Kentucky ,
(“Deserving welcome? Immigrants, Christian faith communities, and the contentious politics of
belonging in the US South”, March 14, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12233AS)
The concept of merit is particularly salient in debates about immigration. In legal theoretical terms, nation-states,
as sovereign entities, enjoy the right to determine admission to their community of citizens and to
police the territorial borders of these communities (Walzer 1983). “We” as members, Walzer (1983:39) suggests, “do the choosing, in
accordance with our own understanding of what membership means in our community and what sort of community we want to have”. Tellingly, Walzer compares this

process of immigrant selection to the admission of applicants to an elite university: in both cases,
governing elites select and enforce the appropriate criteria for entry. Again, we understand this to
be a political process—one that, regardless of the language of fairness, reflects shifting societal
determinations of the worthiness of foreign “Others” and that tends to reinforce existing systems
of privilege that are both racialized and gendered (Kofman 2002; Sales 2002). US immigration history
demonstrates how conceptualizations of merit have changed over time and how they have served both to expand and to
enforce the boundaries of the polity. For example, Ngai (2003) notes that the establishment of national origins quotas in the 1920s,

and the subsequent emergence of the figure of the “illegal alien”, generated intense disputes about
fairness and merit: while nativists insisted on the criminality of illegal immigrants, others argued that deportation was unjust when applied in an arbitrary manner,
especially when it separated families and created hardships for otherwise productive and law-abiding residents. Immigration reformists urged

compassion for “relatively harmless and deserving people” (Ngai 2003:97) and were successful in instituting new administrative
procedures to legalize certain meritorious aliens. Importantly, such procedures applied almost exclusively to European and

Canadian immigrants and explicitly excluded immigrants from Mexico, who continued to be viewed as alien Others
undeserving of membership in the body politic despite demands for their labor. At the beginning of the 21st century, merit remains an unsettled issue. In
a context of proliferating anti-immigrant laws in the US and elsewhere, scholars have rightfully focused on state practices that marginalize, incapacitate, and subordinate

practices indicate
immigrants (e.g. Coleman and Kocher 2011; Gilbert 2009; Harrison and Lloyd 2012; Stuesse and Coleman 2014; Winders 2007). Such

deeply entrenched attitudes toward the foreign Other as a threat to “mainstream” values and
societal cohesion. Yet dominant groups also respond to immigrants as potential members of the
body politic (Chauvin and Garcés-Mascareñas 2012). Contemporary merit narratives depict immigrants as injecting
entrepreneurialism into a stagnant American economy; as renewing America’s commitment to
patriarchal “family values”; and as correcting the excessive individualism of American society.
Immigrants are viewed as better workers than native-born citizens and especially native-born
minorities; and they are described as being willing to do jobs that Americans are (supposedly) not willing
to do (Honig 2001). These positive stereotypes of the “good immigrant” are typically applied to authorized
immigrants and are related to a broader set of “model-minority” discourses. Immigrant advocates, though,
have sought to include unauthorized immigrants in good-immigrant narratives by highlighting,
among other factors, their economic contributions to localities through low-waged labor and their payment

of taxes. These advocates, moreover, often identify particular kinds of unauthorized immigrants as particularly
deserving, singling out, for instance, exemplary young people who have excelled in school but who have been denied access to state universities and to jobs, as
evidence of the unfairness of the current immigration system (Yukich [2013a] elaborates on this point, providing a detailed account of the “casting” of deserving individuals by the

New Sanctuary movement in the US). In short, immigrant advocates “must construct representations of immigrants and
their cause in ways that cohere with the core normative and moral values of the nation” (Nicholls 2013:84;
see also Marrow 2012). Writing in the US context, political theorist Bonnie Honig (2001) argues that this pattern of ambivalence toward

immigrants—which she describes as the interplay between xenophobia and xenophilia—has been central to the imagining of the
national self. The foreigner reinvigorates American society and rescues America from corruption;
the immigrant reminds Americans of the universality of the United States’ democratic principles
and affirms the choiceworthiness of American society. The immigrant, however, is also self-serving
 the insistence on elaborate
(for instance, sending earnings to families abroad) and instrumental in his/her desire to join the body politic. Hence we see

naturalization tests and rituals to confirm the sincerity of immigrants (see Gordon 2007). These various versions of
the “myth of immigrant America”, Honig suggests, ultimately position the national state at the center of future

democratic politics.

The immigration process is based in market ideal and participation in global

capitalism
Deckard and Heslin 16, Natalie Delia Deckard and Alison Heslin, Deckard has a Ph.D.
from Emory University, a M.A. from University of South Florida, and a B.A. from Columbia
University, She teaches courses in political sociology, globalization, migration, critical
criminology, and quantitative methods. Heslin is a professor of sociology at Emory (“The Politics
of Talent: Inequality, Innovation, and Attribution”, August 31, 2016,
http://hdl.handle.net/1808/22365 AS)
The market narrative endemic to neoliberalism has become ubiquitous in discussions of citizenship,
citizenship rights, and belonging (Fudge 2005; Somers 2008). Rather than the traditional citizenship model, in
which the rights of membership, participation, and equality are anchored in birthright and present
as claims made to the nation-state, neoliberal citizenship regimes locate the nexus of rights in
successful individual participation in national markets (Root 2007). In this way, the role of government in equalizing
the status of citizen is reduced, and the market is left to ensure basic levels of social and material
well-being (Somers 2008). This reduction in these rights has left citizens at the disposal of the neoliberal marketplace
for survival (Somers 2008), with decommodification through the welfare state no longer a realistic option.
Given the burgeoning importance of the market in regulating the life of the state, however, Shklar (1991) extends this conception of civic obligation to

include active participation in the labor force. Making an argument based specifically in the US context, she posits that one must be
an independent earner who supports oneself and one’s dependents in order to be recognized as a
full-f ledged citizen (Shklar 1991). Hemerijck (2001) notes the same trend in Western Europe, acknowledging the existence of a powerful social norm that dictates
that the ablebodied should attempt to avoid poverty through engagement in paid work rather than dependence on

the state. In this view, an obligation of citizenship becomes a refusal to rely on the social rights of citizenship
– the citizen must be an economically successful member of society. According to Somers (2008), and others less explicitly (Fudge 2005, Jenson 1997, Mooers 1999), the

nsition from a citizenship based on the theoretical moral equality of nationals to one in which
tra

moral equality derives from economic viability has led to the creation of a philosophy of ‘market
citizenship.’ In this system, highly inf luenced by the growth of globalization and the neoliberal
marketplace, the state’s role is to ‘help citizens to help themselves’ (Fudge 1997: 645) and the citizen’s largest
obligation, ultimately, is to be self-reliant – or at least to appear to be so. Good market citizens are economically
successful and pay more into the society than they cost. They do not compete for scarce jobs or positions in
institutions of higher learning, but rather create jobs and maximize their returns on what may be a
substandard education. Good market citizens support families and provide for children without depending
on any of the social rights of citizenship. Individuals who appear to succeed in these obligations actually succeed
in fulfilling the new obligations of citizenship and are therefore, exclusively, accorded the full
benefits of inclusion in the polity. Those who do not, however, are stigmatized (Walker and Bantebya-
Kyomuhendo 2014), economically and socially marginalized (Giroux 2006), and increasingly transitioned to the

supervision of the penal system under the growing umbrella of the carceral neoliberal state (Wacquant
2009; 2011).
 L – Iraq Oil
Focus on oil in Iraq spurs conflict as government’s militarized control over
the economy is bolstered and other international superpowers react hostilely
to any small depression in the economy. Reform fails because it’s slow and
controversial
Mahdi ’07 Kamil Mahdi, Senior Lecturer in the Economics of the Middle East at the Institute
of Arab and Islamic Studies at Exeter University, 2007 (“Neoliberalism, Conflict and an Oil
Economy: The Case of Iraq,” Arab Studies Quarterly, Winter, Available Online at
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/41859014.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A63e0e8ce682bf9d91071fb
a43211629a, Accessed on 7/24/18, SK)
Economic arguments advanced in support of a neo-liberal policy agenda tend to rely on little in
the way of analysis of Iraq's own economic conditions and the policy environment prevalent over
the prolonged period of war and sanctions prior to the invasion in 2003 and in its immediate
aftermath. These arguments were framed mainly by US officials, international organizations, policy think-tanks and advocacy groups. The
discourse upon which they were based have tended to offer a partial and selective interpretation of the historical
record, ignoring many specific attributes of the Iraqi economy and disregarding changes in
policy, economic institutions and prevalent conditions. Assessments by senior US officials underpinned their
government's declared economic agenda, usually downplaying the effects of prolonged sanctions and the military destruction of the infrastructure and
overemphasizing the role of failed non-market and interventionist economic policies.1 A wide gap exists between these assessments and the main
academic research on the Iraqi economic malaise, especially the work of Alnasrawi (1994 and 2002) who emphasizes the debilitating consequences of the
point to the monumental blunders of waging
Iran-Iraq war and the devastating effects of the 1991 war and the prolonged sanctions. These studies
war, theconsequent militarization of the economy and the harsh international response as the major
causes of Iraq's economic malaise, rather than inherent inefficiencies and failures of the
government's economic policy orientation. Similar conclusions are implied in other assessments. Al-Shabibi argues that given
the strategic vulnerability of a structurally oil-dependent economy, waging a war that further
exposes the country's weakest economic link amounts to major political folly (Al-Shabibi 1997). Similarly,
the Economy and Infrastructure Working Group of the US State Department's Future of Iraq Project, while identifying economic problems and
limitations resulting from the Iraqi government's low tax policy, deems the main consequence of this policy to have been the political one of foregoing
accountability.2 In the absence of much reliable data and lack of a conducive environment for research on the Iraqi economy, the discourse of mainly US
official institutions and policy establishments has attained wide currency especially in policy-making circles. Neoliberal policy agendas are also reflected
in comment straddling the academic and policy domains (Looney, August 2003; Foote et.al.2004), and they are presented completely uncritically in yet
more cases (Cohen and O'Driscoll 2002).
Studies and reports of multilateral financial institutions have also
leaned towards the assertion that the dominance of the state in economic activities and the
interventionist policies are a main cause of Iraq's present economic malaise (IMF 2003; UN/World Bank,
October 2003). While a critique of the economic role of the state is necessary, this expedient approach where policy agendas drove the analysis rather
than the reverse, is at odds with research into the economic and political environment, institutions and policies, and into what Owen (2006) describes as
Iraq's economic trajectory. Furthermore, the adopted approach ignored research into specific economic problems and issues arising in war situations and
failed to formulate appropriate post-war economic policies. Established
research identifies numerous characteristics of
war economies that call for better understanding and specific tailored policies to address the
rigidities of war economies. The prevalence of duality and parallel markets, the low responsiveness to price and exchange rate
adjustments, the behavioural emphasis on risk aversion, the inefficiency of markets in synchronising signals in favor of restructuring economies away
from war-time requirements and many other aspects of post-war economic management require nuanced and locally specific policies.3 In these
circumstances, externally imposed policy agendas and the tendency to dismiss policy advice, 4 even from the closest quarters with little reference to the
social and economic costs inevitably yield negative outcomes. Given the multiple and severe nature of the shocks suffered by the Iraqi economy and
society since the 1970s, beginning with oil boom and bust, political turmoil, destructive wars and the militarization of society, and the long period of
The full range of
sanctions, it would be impossible to determine the effects of any one aspect of past economic policies upon the outcome.
state intervention measures, including price regulation, subsidies, trade restrictions, discretionary
high welfare spending, development programs and public-sector owned or supported enterprises
are to be found under different economic systems and are part of the experiences of most
countries of the region, including non oil-exporting countries and a number of countries that had
not adopted widespread programs of nationalization. All these measures were part of the post-colonial economic and
political order that had privileged state-led national development strategies and economic policy regimes that relied upon industrial policies and
attempted to use sectoral and expenditure priorities as well as social policies to influence income and wealth distribution. Such were the experiences of,
among others, Egypt, Syria, as well as Iraq. The problems faced in implementing these strategies and the retreats from them have usually led to prolonged
periods of policy uncertainty. Reforms
in most countries of the region were slow and undecided, the agendas
being driven by competing domestic and international pressures. The thrust of the reforms
demanded by International Financial Institutions (IFIs) was focused on macroeconomic
adjustment, leaving the transformations necessary for meeting the conditions of adjustment to be
subject to domestic political balances among competing interests (Kienle 2001, 144), some of which are
generously aided by US and other external programs.5 In other words, much of the liberalization policy rhetoric was little
more than just that. To be sure, cuts in subsidies required by IFIs generated wider effects and opened the way to radical policy changes in property rights
(Bush 1999, 29-39), but competitive markets and equity considerations come as secondary objectives to that of strengthening property rights, and these
These reforms had to be negotiated
secondary objectives are not pursued beyond the changes that widen the scope for private capital.
through the tensions between on the one hand, a neo-liberal vision advocated by outside forces,
and on the other hand, the economic structures, livelihoods and institutions of the real world. Though
these real world structures and institutions were acknowledged not to have delivered the aspiration of "development," radical reform agendas lacked
strong bases of social and political support, especially since the business sector was also dependent upon state patronage and wary of external
competition. In other words, institutional and sectoral reform programs are subject to different political and
social pressures that do not always result in a coherent program. Attempts to reach consensus on a
coherent program are also confronted by the reality that the terms according to which a small
backward economy engages the international system do not permit effective regulation of open
externally oriented markets. This is what leads MacEwan (2001, 5) to argue that "the rise of a market-oriented policy is a major obstacle
to democratic economic development.”Iraq's economic system and its domestic and external economic policies have a
strong connection to the dominance of oil over the country's economy. Oil dependence is a historic structural
characteristic that cannot be altered by quick fixes and political decisions without destructive consequences. Attempting to radically change the
relationship between oil and the economy is a long-term strategic goal that is theoretically aspired to by oil exporting states generally, but one that has
eluded most of these states. Extensive literature covers the relationship between oil revenues on the one hand, and the politics, economics and societies of
oil exporting countries on the other. The literature tends to emphasize the processes through which oil production and revenues affect economics, politics,
institutional structures, social behaviour and even cultural attributes. This literature is well-known and major studies beginning with the pioneering work
of Mahdavy (1970) have informed analyses of the experiences of oil exporting countries. The economics side of the literature was subsequently enriched
by the literature of the Dutch Disease, the relationship between the exploitation of natural resources and a decline in the manufacturing sector (Corden
W.M., Neary J.P. 1982, Van Wijnbergen 1984), and it was also partly reflected in the study of Britain's de-industrialisation (Rowthorn and Wells 1987).
Development economics literature investigated the manner in which oil rents affect the economy at different stages after initial expenditure injections,
and over time as injection levels fluctuate (Gelb et. al. 1986). This literature also analyzed other country's experiences individually and comparatively
(Auty 1993, Gelb et. al. 1986, Askari 1990). There are also specific sectoral studies dealing with the impact of oil (Mahdi 2000), and studies of the effects
of different types of expenditure upon growth (Askari 1990). The influence of rentier economies predicated on rent revenues development on institutions
is also extensively researched in (Chaudhry 1997, and Karl 1997). A part of the rentier state literature focuses on the smaller states of the Arabian
Peninsula and Saudi Arabia where the pre-oil economies were either very weak or not greatly integrated (Beblawi 1990, Luciani 1990 and Luciani 1994).
The dominance of the state over the economy is highlighted as a structural feature, and the impact of
oil on the political process is taken up in detail in some writings (Ismael 1993, Crystal 1995, and Okruhlik 1999).
Beblawi (1990) also advances the notion of a rentier culture built on the expectation of success of rent-seeking behaviour, and all this literature
emphasizes the importance of oil in many different aspects of the economy and society. In analyzing the experiences of oil exporting countries, the
researchers mentioned above and also many others have generally deployed concepts and tools to specific situations in their wider historical contexts.
This is at variance with a new body of literature that attempts to abstract the histories of the countries concerned and to deduce general behavioral
patterns allegedly broadly applicable to political systems in oil exporting countries.6 In particular, this latter literature addresses questions of the
incidence of dissent and civil war, and of regime survival and the presence or absence of democracy in a statistical approach that uses pooled data from a
large number of very different countries over time. Some of the discussions of rentier states have postulated a relationship between authoritarian and
repressive rule on the one hand, and the availability of oil revenues on the other (Claes 2001, 114-21). However, even where such a relationship is
suggested, it is accepted that this can only be a complex one, depending upon several other characteristics of the countries concerned, including country
size, diversity of economic structure and social make-up, regional variations and the relative size of the oil sector (ibid.). While oil has been a factor in
Iraq's conflicts, dependence on oil revenues does not explain the outbreak or development of conflict . In
the Iran-Iraq war, both protagonists were oil-exporting states, but they had radically different positions regarding the financing of their war-time
economies, reflecting different relationships between the people and the respective regimes (Parasiliti 2003).7 One can therefore reject the notion that the
Ba'ath regime's militaristic behavior and its destructiveness can itself be explained in terms of Iraq's finances and the country's economic system.
However, it remains correct that oil revenues and the strategic importance of oil sway policy options and political and economic developments. > " Given
the complexity of the rentier state and Dutch Disease phenomena, the ahistorical approach tends to shed detailed research into social processes and the
dynamics of relevant factors in favour of investigations of apparent co-incidences. Conclusions about likelihood of events based on analyses of
international patterns in a specific recent period shed little light on our understanding of why such patterns may be reproduced in any specific case. The
generic descriptions of these patterns are even more questionable when they are taken to imply causation, and when a link is postulated between oil
revenues on the one hand, and poor economic management and arbitrary government on the other. A different way of approaching the question of the
rentier state is by acknowledging the specific nature and the limitations of oil revenues and the limitations of their role in the development process. This
The issue of finance is
would mean that the dominance of finance over the development must be addressed, as must the role of the state.
not a problem that can be solved by means of establishing fixed rules that prevent the distorting
effects of revenue fluctuations. To be sure, rules can theoretically be established for the
smoothing of oil financed government expenditure and for reducing the pressures on real
exchange rates, and at the same time separating the use of oil revenues from the arbitrary
intervention of politicians or from a political cycle (Stiglitz 2005). However, as Stiglitz himself acknowledges, the issue is
not so much a technocratic one, but more of a political and institutional one (ibid.). Moreover, as Streeten (1997, 230) argues, policies are substitutable
and avoidable, and conditions that are externally imposed may be met by a government which then uses "other policies [to] circumvent the intended
result of the condition" (1997, 230). While Streeten was referring to aid conditionality, the same principle applies to other imposed conditions or
constitutional hurdles. In other words, resort to fixed rules can be circumvented and the principle behind those rules can be subverted. The answer
ultimately lies in creating an active, lively and flexible policy environment, and policy-making institutions under the effective oversight of monitoring
bodies, a free media, political institutions and above all, an informed public. Simply
emasculating the state's policy-making
capability does not address the problem, but can complicate it instead. Fixed rules separating the
current from the development budgets were in operation in Iraq under the Development Board in
the 1950s, but they did not prevent government expenditure from serving powerful interest
groups, nor did they guard against a rentier effect on the economy (Mahdi 2000). Similarly, constraints on monetary
policy were effective through Iraq's membership of the Sterling Area until 1959, but that only confirmed an existing passive monetary policy (Penrose
and Penrose 1978, 257) without preventing inflation. Policies
that lay emphasis on the reduction of government
discretion and that stress the alienation of its economic and financial authority by means of fixed
and pre-determined rules do not address the economic problems of a rentier state and may in fact
accentuate them. The literature on oil-exporting countries helps us understand relevant problems and issues of development and can indeed
guide policy formulation. Yet, the variety of policies and strategies adopted by oil exporting countries is considerable, and they do not lend themselves to
uniform explanations of performance. Moreover, the criteria of measuring performance has frequently not been comparable. In particular, the so-called
"resource curse" has variously been interpreted as one of absolute impoverishment (Hausmann and Rigobon 2003), or relative poor performance in
comparison with resource availability (Auty 2001). Periods and coverage of data idiosyncrasies and to the damaging effects of wars and sanctions. Thus,
the phenomenon of the "resource curse," the Dutch Disease effects and the distorting effects of a rentier state are sometimes exaggerated or unduly
generalised, and taken out of a particular historical context and misinterpreted. As Chaudhry (1997, 187) notes, "efforts to stretch the theory of the rentier
state to fit the case often result in contradictory analytical trajectories that originate in the same set of initial observations." In particular Chaudhry notes
that the rentier state concept has been held responsible for both political stability and instability and that rentier states have variously been portrayed as
"strong" and "autonomous" or "weak" and "ineffectual" (Ibid, 188). In other words, it is necessary to go beyond the notion of a rentier state by adopting a
more intricate understanding of the state without ignoring the rentier phenomenon. The main conclusion to draw from these studies of oil exporting states
and economies is that
the role of the state and of economic policy are more not less necessary than in
non-oil economies, and that the task of economic management and regulation is more intricate for
it to succeed in effectively utilising available resources, diversifying the economy and enabling
the growth of productive business and private initiative. Contrary to these conclusions, neoliberal prescriptions for Iraq
promoted by IFIs continue to rely on notions of an adversarial dichotomy between state and market, leading to recommendations that incapacitate the
state's ability to develop appropriate policies.
 L – LGBTQ+ Immigration
The aff’s immigration policy is one of assimilation that stomps out difference
to power the global capitalist machine
Luibheid 08- Eithne Luibheid, 2008, a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of
California, Berkeley. “QUEER/MIGRATION An Unruly Body of Scholarship.” Duke University
Press, http://www.sfu.ca/~baw2/GSWS826/Luibh%E9id.pdf ,accessed 7-25 /AH

Most scholarship, policymaking, service provision, activism, and cultural work remain
organized around the premise that migrants are heterosexuals (or on their way to hecoming
so) and queers are citizens (even though second-class ones). Where do queer migrants figure in these frameworks
and activities? How do we conceptualize queer migration — which is at once a set of grounded processes involving heterogeneous social groups and a
series of theoretical and social justice questions that implicate hut extend beyond migration and sexuality strictly defined, and that refuse to attach to
bodies in any strictly identarian manner—in order to challenge and reconfigure the dominant frameworks? Queer migration scholarship, which has
flourished since the 1990s, takes on these and other ambitious questions.' An unruly body of inquiry that is potentially vast in scope, queer migration
scholarship participates in and contributes to wide-ranging debates that traverse multiple fields and disciplines. It has been fueled by the fact that
international migration and related transnationalizing processes have transformed every facet of our social, cultural, economic, and political lives in
recent decades. Sexuality scholarship has started to explore how "the age of migration" is centrally implicated in the construction, regulation, and
reworking of sexual identities, communities, politics, and cultures.^ At
the same time, migration scholarship, which
addresses immigration, emigration, transnationalism, diaspora, refugees, and asylum seekers, has
begun to theorize how sexuality constitutes a "dense transfer point for relations of power" that
structure all aspects of international migration.3 Queer migration scholarship, which explores the multiple conjunctions
between sexuality and migration, has drawn from and enriched these bodies of research — as well as feminist, racial, ethnic, postcolonial, public health,
and globalization studies, among other fields This special issue not only extends queer migration scholarship by reworking critical areas of research but
also establishes directions for future research. One group of essays explores how insights gained from trans studies demand a rethinking of queer
migration histories, theories, and methodologies. A second group argues for the importance of reconfiguring the temporalities and geographies within
which queer migration is usually explored, by examining how five centuries of slavery, imperialism, forced transportation of prisoners, and exile leave
legacies that shape present-day queer migration. A
third group reroutes debates about queer complicities with
neoliberalism into a careful consideration of the struggles that result for queer migrants.
Power, Knowledge, Identities, and Trans Scholarship Queer migration scholarship has
consistently explored how overlapping regimes of power and knowledge generate and transform
identity categories. Several fundamental insights have guided the research. First, queer migration scholarship has been greatly enabled by
understanding sexuality as constructed within multiple, intersecting relations of power, including race, ethnicity, gender, class, citizenship status, and
geopolitical location. Second, rather than inscribe migrants from extraordinarily diverse backgrounds within a developmental narrative of LGBTQ
identities, many scholars instead deploy the term queer to acknowledge that all identity categories are burdened by legacies that must be interrogated, do
not map neatly across time and space, and become transformed through circulation within specific, unequally situated local, regional, national, and
transnational circuits. Moreover, these transformations cannot be understood within progressive, unilinear, and Eurocentric models. Illustrating these
insights, Martin Manalansan shows that queer migrants frequently arrive in nation-states not to begin "assimilation" but to experience continued though
transformed engagement with nation-states and regimes of power that have already profoundly shaped their lives.* Manalansan thus challenges the
dominant, ethnocentric model that views queer migration as a movement from "repression" to "liberation," instead
highlighting the fact
that migrants experience "restructured" inequalities and opportunities through migration.
Moreover, as Bobby Benedicto argues in this volume, these transformations affect those who
stay "at home," not just those who migrate, and, in many 171 how normalizing regimes
produce heterogeneous, marginalized subjects and positionalities in relation to a valorized
standard of reproductive sexuality between biologically born male-female couples who belong
to the dominant racial-ethnic group and the middle class. Marginalized subjects include, but are not restricted to,
lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender people.^ The analytic lens of heteronormativity thus enables queer migration scholars to negotiate
complicated and competing theoretical and political mandates. These include analyzing migration by those who may identify as LGBTQ, but without
treating these categories as essential or transhistorical, and without failing to consider the complex, multiple relations of power in which the categories are
embedded; creating analytic space for those whose sexual and gender practices do not necessarily align with their sexual and gender identities; and
critically addressing hierarchies including race, gender, class, and geopolitical location in experiences of migration, in a manner that does not always
centralize—but that never leaves out—sexuality. Drawing on these analytic tools, queer migration scholarship often engages in a double movement. On
the one hand, scholars have contributed to understanding the experiences of migrants who identify, or become identified by others, as LGBTQ (or, as
discussed by the authors in this volume, tomboys, queens, matis, malungos, novios, and amigos, among others).^ Thus queer migration scholarship insists
on recovering, theorizing, and valorizing histories and subjects that have been largely rendered invisible, unintelligible, and unspeakable in both queer
and migration studies, and that reflect both "alienation from white gay communities" and "histories of multiple diasporas" forged through colonialism and
capitalism.^ On the other hand, much of the scholarship also makes clear that " queer migrants" in
many ways comprise "impossible subjects" with unrepresentable histories that exceed
existing categories.'-* This leads scholars to foreground and challenge regimes of power and
knowledge that generate structures of impossibility where particular groups are concerned, and to
examine how individuals negotiate them. Lessons drawn from analyzing power, knowledge, and identity include the importance
of refusing to treat queer migrants as discretely bounded groups to merely "add on" to existing sexuality or migration scholarship. Instead,
scholars insist, sexuality scholarship must rethink the role of migration (including as it connects
with transnational capitalism and neo-imperialism) in constructing sexual identities, communities,
politics, and practices. Equally, migration scholarship must analyze how sexuality structures all
migration processes and experiences— and how migration regimes and settlement policies
contribute to producing not only those who become variously defined as "queer," "deviant," or
"abnormal" but also those who become defined as normative or "normal" within a 172 binary
structure intimately tied to racial, gender, class, cultural, and other hierarchies."' Queer migration
scholarship thus highlights the fact that normative sexualities (not just those who are deemed
deviant) require historicization, are produced within relations of power, and change, including
through migration.i' The production of the valorized norm, however, is intimately tied to the abjection of queers and queerness. Two essays
in this GLQ special issue importantly extend these insights, by exploring what trans histories and theories bring to queer migration scholarship. Thus,
Clare Sears employs a "trans-ing" migration framework to interpret crossgender practices among Euro-American migrant men in mid-nineteenth-century
California, in the aftermath of its annexation from Mexico and the discovery of gold. According to Sears, cross-gender practices, which were most visibly
manifested in cross-dressing, performed varied cultural work. They enabled EuroAmerican men not only to experiment with and sometimes challenge
gender norms but also to assert racial dominance when cross-gender mimicry became deployed as racial parody. Moreover, she argues, even as some
Euro-American men experimented with gender, others produced political narratives of feminized men and gender illegibility that centered on Chinese
immigrants. These narratives, which naturalized the effects of structurally discriminatory laws, not only mobilized support for further anti-Chinese
exclusion but also allowed Euro-Americans to "contain" gender trouble "in the body of a racialized other." Trans-ing practices and discourses, in Sears's
account, therefore have multiple genealogies and involve not only moments of pleasure and experiences of profound dispossession but also the reworking
of complicated, multiple hierarchies in the context of empire, warfare, annexation, nation (re)formation, and multiple migration. Employing transgender,
transnational, queer, and immigrant cultural logics. Kale Fajardo's essay analyzes the coproduction of differently situated Filipino masculinities (queer,
transgender, straight, Filipino, and Filipino American) in ports and at sea. Through the figure of the tomboy — a "male-identified and/or masculine
female in the Philippines or diaspora who [has] sexual/emotional relationships with feminine females who identify as 'women'" — Fajardo examines not
only the moments when seamen identified Fajardo as a tomboy but also the stories they were inspired to recount and the interactions that occurred. Sea-
based transportation between regions and nation-states emerges as a powerful mechanism that connects embodied movement to changing articulations of
racialized and class-specific gender formations. The category of tomboy, which Fajardo traces through scattered sites, reveals these changing articulations
and their links to diverse forms of power. Fajardo particularly problematizes how urban-based lesbian feminists in Manila and the U.S. diaspora have
appropriated the category in a gender-essentialist manner that constructs tomboys as women. Other essays also articulate the concerns raised by these two
authors. For example, Benedicto grounds his analysis in a discussion of how the Filipino category of bakla may be variously glossed as "gay" or "trans,"
depending on who uses it and for what purpose. Like Fajardo, he delineates the relation between such categories and practices of colonialism,
racialization, and nation formation. Both Benedicto and Fajardo also foreground questions about how the categories circulate (or do not); who takes up
the categories, in what ways, and for what kinds of work; and what histories are thereby erased. Sears effectively sums up the contributions of these
essays, writing that trans discourses and practices have multiple, disparate, and contradictory effects that require careful specification. The essays invite
us to explore further what happens when we bring transgender and queer migration scholarship into critical conversation. Reconfiguring the
Temporalities and Geographies of Queer Migration Queer migration scholarship has been enabled by and contributed to the growing scholarship on
immigration, transnationalism, diaspora, and refugee movements, as well as scholarship about the role of space and spatiality, both material and virtual,
in constructing queer identities and communities.'2 Such scholarship has particularly built on migration theory's shift away from understanding migration
as primarily driven by rational actors making cost-benefit decisions within a pushpull framework, toward an understanding that overlapping, palimpsestic
histories of imperialism, invasion, investment, trade, and political infiuence create what Saskia Sassen calls "bridges for migration" between and among
nation-states.i-^ This shift has somewhat altered the temporal and geographic frames within which queer migration is conceived. The alteration is evident,
for example, in the decentering of nationalist frameworks premised on space-time binaries, developmental narratives, and static models of culture,
community, nation, race, gender, identity, and settlement.'* Instead, scholars increasingly attend to contradictions, relationality, and borders as contact
zones, and the construction of identities, communities, practices, hegemonies, and alternatives linked to local, national, regional, and transnational
circuits. The study of queer migration has participated in and enhanced scholarship about the emergence of multiple, hybrid sexual cultures, identities,
identifications, practices, and politics. These
are marked by power, contestation, and creative adaptation.
Although the nation-state, nationalism, and nation-based citizenship are 174 no longer the
unquestioned horizon for analysis, these categories have not disappeared. Instead, scholars have
theorized them as critical loci for upholding and contesting regional, transnational, and neo-
imperial hierarchies, and for producing forms of exclusion, marginalization, and struggle for
tranformation.'^ Indeed, sexuality scholarship has a rich history of engagement with questions of nationalism. Many scholars have
characterized modern nation-states and citizenship as heteronorniative in a manner that (as
described above) involves hierarchies based on not only sex and gender but also race and
class.i*' The calculated management of migration comprises a critical technology for
(re)producing national heteronormativity within global and imperial fields.'^ Thus, throughout the first
half of the twentieth century, nation-states including the United States and Australia implemented eugenic policies that encouraged migration and
settlement by families that both conformed to the normative sexual order and were (or would become) "white." Settlement and family formation by
migrants from colonized regions, however, was generally barred (although in the United States, temporary labor for low wages was often permitted).
Racial and neocolonial preferences have become less explicitly stated in recent decades, but
actual migration policies display continuing anxieties (and encode punitive practices) where
childbearing, cultural concerns, and possible economic costs among migrants racialized as
minorities and from neocolonized regions are concerned. Furthermore, although most nation-
states may no longer bar LGBTQ migrants, their presence nonetheless challenges and
disrupts practices that remain normed around racialized heterosexuality . National
heteronormativity is thus a regime of power that all migrants must negotiate, making them
differentially vulnerable to exclusion at the border or deportation after entry while also
racializing, (re)gendering, (de)nationalizing, and unequally positioning them within the
symbolic economy, the public sphere, and the labor market. These outcomes, in turn, connect to the ongoing
reproduction of particular forms of nationhood and national citizenship—which have ramifications for local, regional, national, transnational, and
imperial arrangements of power.'^ Heterosexuality is an unstable norm, however, which requires anxious labor to sustain.'^ Public discourses, like
migration policies, refiect heterosexuality's instability.20 Thus unwelcome migrants are often characterized as engaging in "unrestrained" childbearing,
which is seen to reflect their deviation from or imperfect mastery over mainstream heterosexual norms, resulting in the birth of "undesirable" children. Or
they are portrayed as the bearers of aberrant sexual practices, questionable sexual morals, and sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, that threaten
to "contaminate" the citizenry. On
the other hand, migrants are sometimes described as the upholders of
family values that promise 175 to remoralize a citizenry that has lost its virtue.^i Or, within
national heterosexual romance narratives, they are painted as passionately desiring the nation,
as shown by their migration; thus citizens depend on migrants to show that the nation remains
lovable.22 In these and other instances, heteronormativity animates both anti- and pro-immigrant imagery and discourses in ways that reiterate, yet
continually recode, sexual, gender, racial, and class distinctions and inequalities in relation to constructs of nation-state, nationalism, and the citizenry.
The heteronormative governance of migrants implicates the status of groups who hold official
citizenship but are nonetheless marked as suspect, subaltern, and second-class members of
the nation. For example, in the United States, same-sex partners still cannot legally immigrate
under the existing spousal reunification provisions of immigration law, and couples where one or
both partners are transgender experience extraordinary difficulties. Family, Unvalued describes how current laws
impugn the status of citizens who are lesbian, gay, or trans: "Solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, they find their relationships
unrecognized, their families endangered, their lives shadowed by dislocation and separation." The report concludes that these practices "assault human
dignity in an essential way."23 The assault is part of a wider network of queer experience involving the "social and political costs of partial citizenship
and the psychic and bodily costs of violence, which the habits of heterosexual privilege" produce.^^ Given
the diversity of queer
couples, these assaults materially articulate histories of racialization, sexism, neo-imperialism,
and classism, too.^^ Similarly, U.S. public representations of Mexican-origin women as unrestrained "breeders" of welfareconsuming
children, which consistently animate anti-immigrant discourses, not only racialize and hetcrosexualize them within colonialist imagery that legitimizes
violence but also deeply affect U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, who are continually treated as "aliens" even though they hold national citizenship.26 As
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo describes, these representations — materialized in punitive public policies in the areas of welfare, health care, voting,
education, and law enforcement, as well as immigration control—reject people of Mexican and Latino/a descent "as permanent members of U.S. society"
and reinforce "a more coercive system of labor."^^ They also legitimize racialized homophobia and transphobia. In these and other instances, the ongoing
The anxious, ongoing (re)production
imbrication of exclusionary forms of national citizenship with immigration control is laid bare.
of national heteronormativity—including through border controls and immigrant management—
is connected with wider neocolonial and neo-imperialist processes, historically and at present, as
queer migration studies has started to document.^** Historically, for example, "simultaneous efforts to shore up and bifurcate
categories of race and sexuality in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were deeply intertwined."^^ According AN OniROtY BOOY OF
SCHOLARSHIP 177 Kath Weston's essay, which foregrounds the centuries-long history of forced transportation and exiling of prisoners within
European empires, also builds theoretical bridges. Focusing on the British penal settlement of Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Weston
explores how a politics of surmise, and the transformation of everyday activities into actionable offenses, shaped the colonial administration's policing of
"unnatural offences." Moreover, she traces how such policing reconfigured the political ecology of the entire archipelago, in ways that connect the
queered bodies of prisoners to transformations in bodies'of land, water, labor, and administration. Weston acknowledges differences between colonial
detention regimes in the Andaman Islands and present-day strategies legitimized by the so-called war on terror, but nonetheless insists that "contemporary
security states trail behind them a history" that must be engaged. Weston concludes by calling for critical dialogue between LGBTQ studies and political
ecology studies, to enable a more capacious understanding of how disciplinary formations directed at (queered) bodies can reshape, even devastate, the
environments in which they operate. Also working within expanded geographic and temporal frameworks, two further essays explore how contemporary
nation-states and national regimes become contested and reconfigured in the face of queer migration. Audrey Yue describes how Australian immigration
policies have historically encoded a preference for "family," which enabled the reproduction of heterosexualized, racialized, and colonialist forms of the
nation-state and the "good citizen." In 1985 Australia became one of the first countries to allow migration by same-sex couples. Yet
the logic of
"intimacy" that guided these efforts was expected to assimilate admitted lesbians and gay men
into transnational capitalism while sustaining the core values of Eurocentric nationalism. Gay
Asian men, who make up the largest regional group of entrants under Australia's provisions for same-sex couples, must negotiate these logics. Their
efforts are partly shaped by the fact that most enter as the partners of significantly older Caucasian men. Stereotyped as rice and potato queens, these
couples simultaneously conform to and unsettle dominant norms of intimacy. As Yue argues, they show the gap between official representations of
normatively intimate families and the realities of creative survival strategies for diasporic gay Asian men. They thereby raise important questions about
when and how intimacy may provide opportunities to reconstruct or subvert dominant forms of nationalism and citizenship, which remain embedded
within wider relations and longer histories of inequality between Australia and Asia. Adi Kuntsman's essay engages with the migration of Russian Jews to
Israel across a long history of forced displacement, exile, and death to explore how 178 nationalism becomes reconstructed. Kuntsman focuses on one
ethnographic incident: an antigay poem published in a leading Russian Israeli newspaper, condemning the 2002 Pride parade in Jerusalem for allegedly
endangering the Israeli nation. The poem achieved its rhetorical effect by evoking Soviet criminal jargon and gulag memoirs that describe same-sex
relations as disgusting and monstrous. Gulags, Kuntsman argues, influenced Russians' views of same-sex relationships, although that history has yet to be
systematically examined. Following Judith Butler, Kuntsman theorizes the poem's homophobic speech as a form of performative violence that
constituted, rather than simply expressed or devastated, the subjectivities of "queers," "Russian immigrants," "Jews," and "Israelis." At the same time, she
complicates the performative by routing it through Avery Gordon's notion of haunting. In the interchange between Russian queers and nonqueers about
the poem, she suggests, the histories of the Soviet gulags and the Nazi death camps were evoked and deployed, showing how the affective presence of
ghosts "meddles" with queer and nonqueer migrants' struggles to construct their belonging to Israeli nation and citizenship. Kuntsman concludes that hate
speech must be understood as a form of affective sociality that entails living with and speaking through ghosts. (Kuntsman's examination of how ghosts
unsettlingly reveal the sedimented, violent histories that subtend the present is, from a different perspective, explored by Benedicto.) Taken
together, the essays foreground how geographies and histories of empire, global capitalism,
slavery, coerced labor, forced transportation, and exile have materially shaped queerness,
migration, and queer migration, both past and present, including through the effects of haunting. In
the process, nationalisms and nation-states emerged and continue to be dramatically reconfigured. A crucial implication of these essays is that the
distinction between "freely chosen" economic migration and "coerced" migration by political refugees, which continues to underpin migration
scholarship and policy in the global north, urgently needs to be rethought to account for how most migrations in fact straddle choice and coercion. Queer
Complicities The
final group of essays works within these expanded temporalities and geographies to
explore how queer complicities with neoliberalism affect contemporary queer migration.33
Lisa Duggan's concept of homonormativity has shaped recent debates on queer complicity;
according to Duggan, homonormativity is "a politics that does not contest dominant
heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but AN OriROLY BOOY OF SCHOLARSHIP
179 upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency
and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption."^'* As
Duggan describes, homonormativity is intimately connected with neoliberal capitalism and
associated modes of governmentality that operate through economy and culture as linked
domains. Jasbir K. Puar extends Duggan's formulation by showing that homonormativity
colludes with hegemonic forms of nationalism, including as it is deployed for capitalist
profiteering and neoimperialism. For example, U.S. nationalist discourses claim exceptional
openness, tolerance, and sexual liberation. According to Puar, these "highly contingent forms of
nationalism" accrue their "greatest purchase through comparative transnational frames rather than
debates within domestic realms."^^ Many U.S. queers support this nationalist discourse, which
seems to promise inclusion in the nation-state. Yet the discourse is being used to authorize
imperialism, warfare, and torture in the Middle East. Moreover, since queers .of color and those
perceived as "foreign" experience heightened surveillance and violence under these nationalist
rubrics, this kind of homonationalism (as Puar describes it) both reflects and reinforces racial,
cultural, and other hierarchies within queer communities, with significant consequences on local,
national, and transnational levels. Other dominant nationalisms, not only in the global north but also in the south, selectively use
LGBTQ issues to reposition themselves within transnational circuits, global hierarchies, and dominant relations of rule.36 U.S. homonationalist
discourses of sexual freedom position queer migrants in complex ways. As Chandan Reddy describes, the LGBTQ migrant finds herself or himself
situated "in the contradiction between the heteronormative social relations mandated for immigrants of color by the state's policies and the liberal state's
ideology of universal sexual freedom."-^^ The LGBTQ person seeking asylum because of persecution on account of sexual orientation, gender identity,
or HIV status faces even more acute contradictions. This is because asylum involves "a moment of transnational judgment when the decision-makers of
one nation decide not only on the credibility of the individual asylum claimant, but on the errors or strengths of the protection of rights in the country
from which the claimant flees."''^ Successful asylum claims generally require generating a racialist,
colonialist discourse that impugns the nation-state from which the asylum seeker comes, while
participating in an adjudication process that often depends on constructs of "immutable" identity
refracted through colonialist, reified models of culture shorn of all material relations.'''^ The queer
asylum seeker's contradictory positioning is further exacerbated by the fact that "asylum . . .
keeps migration exclusion morally defensible" in the global north.'*'' In other words, the granting
of asylum to select individuals — who must be few enough in number not to threaten
dominant systems, but sufficient to lend credence to claims of first-world humanitarianism
and democratic freedom—legitimizes exclusionary, repressive immigration control systems .
The system thus positions queer asylum seekers in conflict with those seeking admission through
the immigration system. Moreover, it "reinforces the self-congratulatory posture inherent in the geopolitics of asylum" while erasing the
fact that the global south is actually host to a majority of the world's refugees and asylum seekers.*' Gay asylum claims have been

taken up by mainstream LGBTQ and human rights organizations in sometimes problematic

ways, including to reinforce their claims for civic status and legal protections within liberal,
neoliberal, or homonormative frameworks .'*^ Xhis process reflects a larger problem about how
queers with relative privilege may appropriate queer migrant figures to serve various
agendas, without understanding or critically engaging with the politics of contemporary
migration. In these cases, queer migrants provide the material ground for dialogue among others,
while becoming silenced. Thus, queer migrants disappear "in the very exchange that
depends on [them] for its moral weight."*^ Asylum issues thus exemplify how
homonormativity — queer complicities with dominant neoliberal, imperial, nationalist,
racialist, and heterosexist logics — generates acute dilemmas where queer migration is
concerned. Yet asylum also makes plain that these issues have to be addressed. Quite simply, queers facing violence and persecution demand
justice and transformation. Through the lens of queer migration, four essays in this volume analyze queer complicities with contemporary neoliberal
I interrogate neoliberal accounts that
logics, and the multiple registers of violence and inequality that they uphold. In my essay,
construct "illegal" immigrants simply as individual lawbreakers and undesirable people. Instead, I
argue that illegality is a political status produced and imposed through shifting relations of power
embedded in histories of empire, capitalist expansion, racism — and heterosexism. Focusing on same-sex
couples' efforts to have their relationships recognized as a basis for legal immigration to the United States, I highlight the central role of sexual regimes in
constructing the distinction between legal and illegal; explore how sexual regimes always function in relation to hierarchies of race, gender, class, and
geopolitics in producing the il/legal distinction; and argue that these intersections must be addressed by the campaign for recognition of same-sex
couples. I
also examine how recognized couple relationships provide a technology for the state and
its assemblages to manage the risks associated with immigration and to transform legally
admitted immigrants into "good" neoliberal citizens — while threatening those who do 181
not measure up with potential illegalization. These dynamics enable the further
reconceptualization of the il/legal distinction as an ongoing (rather than one-time) production and
raise important questions about citizenship, surveillance, discipline, and normalization for those
struggling for the recognition of same-sex couples within immigration law. I conclude by questioning whether
and to what extent sexuality may provide a locus for renegotiating the distinction between legal and "illegal" immigrants and its associated logics of
violence. Benedicto's
exploration of queer complicities with neoliberal logics that produce violence
is routed through a global analysis, which scrutinizes the role of location — and spectralization
— in constructing sexual identifications, identities, communities, and politics. His article examines how
young, urban, middle- and upper-class Filipinos living in Manila are "marked by a longing for and a sense of belonging to an imagined gay globality." As
Benedicto argues, these men's desired relationship with global gay modernity is haunted by the specter of the bakla, a highly contested identity category
that is "sometimes read as a synonym for gay but is more accurately, though no less problematically, depicted as a sexual tradition that equates
homosexuality, transvestitism or effeminacy, and lower-class status." His subjects' "arrival... in the present of gay globality . . . [is] predicated on the
abjection of the bakla and on the wishful relocation of its image to a different space-time." Benedicto argues that these efforts at banishing the bakla are
haunted by colonial desire and enact class and gender violence while extending neoliberal logics and relationships to construct an exclusionary form of
global gayness in Manila. By contrast, Filipino gay men who migrate to New York City find that systemic racism excludes them from Western gay
globality. In that situation, recuperating the figure of the bakla enables them to create spaces of belonging and world making. Benedicto concludes that
for elite gay men in Manila, affective understandings of global space-time, underpinned by dreams of mobility and imaginative planetary geographies,
remain haunted by the spectral presence of the bakla as a "past" that needs to be continuously exorcised — but that persists in returning. The men's
experience of being haunted, Benedicto suggests, presents an ethical demand to step off "the linear path" and address "the violent hierarchies we
ourselves reproduce in the process of gay world making." Contesting neoliberal exclusions from a different angle, Carlos Decena draws on ethnographic
work with Dominican immigrant gay men living in New York City to challenge the ways that "coming out" is frequently harnessed to neoliberal
constructions of the sovereign, individual, self-realized gay subject—while refusal to follow the normative model of coming out remains perceived as
"backwardness" and "lack of liberation," which is stereotypically associated with communities of color. Decena posits an alternative framework for
theorizing coming out, through the concept of the "sujeto tacito" (tacit subject). In Spanish, the sujeto tdcito is not spoken but can be ascertained through
the conjugation of the verb in any particular sentence. Using interviews to develop his theoretical framework, Decena argues that coming out includes not
simply spoken disclosure but also information that gets read off bodies, social networks, and other sites. Moreover, he recognizes that others' readings of
these sites may exceed the intentionality of any of his informants' strategies for trying to manage that information. He shows that his informants negotiate
their presentation of self within opportunities and constraints that include racism, class position, gender, and geopolitics, and, often, the structure of the
public secret collectively maintained for varied reasons. Ultimately, the concept of sujeto tdcito shifts the analysis of queer migrants' identities and
subjectivities away from individualizing, developmentalist narratives that serve neoliberal logics and toward an investigation of the "complicities,"
"asymmetrical power relations," and jeopardies that structure social relations. Decena concludes that "in a neo-liberal world that exalts the atomized and
unmoored individual and in LGBTQ communities that celebrate self-making by clinging to the promise of coming out as the romance of individual
liberation, tacit subjects may make us more aware that coming out is always partial, that the closet is a collaborative social formation, and that people
negotiate it according to their specific social circumstances." Maja Horn's essay also intervenes in dominant paradigms that normalize certain forms of
queer life while rendering other queer lives as invisible, unthinkable, or merely symptomatic of "lagging development." She focuses on the exhibition El
doble, which took place in the Dominican Republic and showcased the collaborative work of Nelson Ricart-Guerrero, a Dominican living in Paris, and
his French partner, Christian Vauzelle. As Horn explains, the Dominican Republic is frequently characterized as "lacking" in development, when
measured according to LGBT rights, public presence, and institutions. Although Horn does not minimize the struggles of Dominican LGBTQ people, she
insists that such developmentalist and Eurocentric measures do not allow us to conceive other forms of resistance, activism, and social justice. Moreover,
they do not allow us to apprehend why a queer migrant like Ricart-Guerrero would return from Erance to the Dominican Republic, or how his return
might contribute to queer transformation within the Dominican Republic. The El doble exhibition provides an opportunity to explore these questions. As
Horn explains, in this exhibit the artists examined experiences of otherness that were represented through same-sex relationships but had relevance for
everyone. They drew audiences into scenes of same-sex desire. AN UNRULY RODY OF SCHOLARSHIP 183 without compelling alignment or
identification. At the same time, by insisting on the other as a fieshly body, not just a soul, the artists forestalled efforts to generalize same-sex
experiences. Their strategies posited queer subjects as "neither fundamentally different from nor inherently the same as heterosexual subjects" while
negotiating constraints placed on the expression of homosexuality in the public sphere. The exhibit's enormous success, and its exemplification of how
migrants often remain deeply engaged with their countries of origin, compels us to rethink models of queer migration as simply a linear movement from
"repression" to "liberation," and of queer Caribbean subjects as invariably having an adversarial relation to their national "home" communities. Taken
together, these four essays theorize queer complicities with dominant neoliberal logics and associated structures of violence, particularly as they affect
queer migration. In so doing, the essays interrogate key theoretical categories within migration, sexuality, racial, ethnic, and allied bodies of scholarship;
propose inventive new possibilities for retheorizing queer lives and experiences; and explore the limits and possibilities of intervention. Unequal Regimes
of Living and Dying The essays included in this special issue rigorously and imaginatively extend the scholarship on queer migration by opening up the
promises and possibilities of further research into the critical areas described above. They provide innovative methodological tools, conceptual
They suggest that as long as the control of sexuality
vocabularies, and research and writing strategies to enable the work.

and the control of migration remain lashed together in service to dominant regimes of
power, queer migration scholarship must continue to explore lives that have become ignored,
invalidated, or violently abrogated so that the privileged may continue to garner privilege. As
each essay in a different way argues, what is fundamentally at stake in queer migration
scholarship and activism is the mandate to challenge and transform the relations of power
that operate through migration regimes to generate unequal regimes of living and dying at
multiple scales.'*'*
 L – Low Skilled Workers
Low skilled workers are the secret underbelly of capitalism
One Struggle 18 – (One Struggle is an anti-capitalist organization, "Imperialism Drives
Immigration So Capitalism Can Devour All of Us,"
http://onestruggle.net/2018/02/08/imperialism-immigration///TU-SG)

Imperialism is the natural expansion of capitalism. The constant need for growth and increased
profits sends capitalists beyond national boundaries in search of new markets and lower
production costs. Under the guise of economic development, USAID, trade agreements, Inter-American Development Bank, IMF, and the World Bank work in
conjunction with imperialist governments (US, Canada, Europe, etc) and multinational corporations to dominate countries into the

global economy. They destroy local economies and subsistence cultures with tactics like land
grabs, privatization and grain dumping. Military force and political manipulation are also used.
This drives ruined peasants and farmers to cities – where, conveniently, they can get jobs in
sweatshops that export goods to the US and other imperialist countries . And, because these jobs are
too few and pay sub-survival wages, many people desperate to make a living are driven to try
their luck in the US, to accomplish “The American Dream .” “One of the things that prompted
millions of low-wage workers to abandon Mexico over the last two decades was the signing of the
North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. With NAFTA, cheap imports, particularly agricultural products, flooded the Mexican market, leaving farmers and other

low-skilled workers without jobs.” (Liberation News) By destroying the self-sufficiency of people and societies,

capitalists force us to migrate. US imperialism violently dominates as much of the planet as

it can get its hooks into . It does so through ideological, political, and economic means (including war, the
extreme form of politics), all for the fundamental goal of extracting and accumulating surplus value (profit)

for the capitalist class. Capitalists require this . Keeping in limbo and terrorizing a section
of workers so they will work for even less than minimum wage, cuts production cost. They use
the desperation of this super-exploited group to drive down wages for the entire working class.
This means higher profits.
 L – Markets
The global market is just a means to expand capital and pillage and plunder
other countries
Jessop 18 (Bob Jessop is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. “The
World Market, ‘North-South’ Relations, and Neoliberalism”
http://www.alternateroutes.ca/index.php/ar/article/viewFile/22453/18247//TU-SG)
While foreign trade drove the world market in its infancy, its further development is radically
reinforced by the growth of large-scale industry based on machinofacture. This 'universalised
competition…established means of communication and the modern world market, subordinated
trade to itself, transformed all capital into industrial capital, and thus produced the rapid
circulation (development of the financial system) and the centralization of capital’ (Marx and Engels, 1976, 73; see also 1998, 331). Large-
scale industry is constantly driven to conquer new markets that have not yet been formally or
really subsumed under the logic of capital accumulation. Thus, having initially driven accumulation on a world scale, foreign trade
later became its product (1998, 235-6; cf. 1989, 58). Thus: “it is not commerce…which revolutionises industry, but industry that constantly

revolutionises commerce. Commercial supremacy itself is now linked with the prevalence to a
greater or lesser degree of conditions for a large industry. Compare, for instance, England and Holland. The history of the decline of
Holland as the ruling trading nation is the history of the subordination of merchant's capital to industrial capital” (1998, 331-2). The expanded

reproduction of capital demands ‘that countries in which the capitalist mode of production
is not developed, should consume and produce at a rate which suits the countries with the
capitalist mode of production’ (1998, 256). The capital relation thereby comes to dominate the world
market, which includes pre-capitalist, capitalist, and non-capitalist modes of production and/or
forms of labour. This is reflected in two tendencies that transform centreperiphery relations at different scales up to and including the world market: “The
surplus value produced at one point requires the production of surplus value at another point, for
which it may be exchanged. … A condition of production based on capital is therefore the
production of a constantly expanding periphery of circulation, whether the sphere is directly expanded, or whether more points
within it become points of production” (1986, 334–5). Indeed, “the more capitalistic production develops, the more it is forced

to produce on a scale which has nothing to do with the immediate demand but depends on the
constant expansion of the world market” (Marx, 1989, 101; emphasis added). Furthermore, the effective operation of the
world market “requires the full development of the credit system and competition on the world
market, the latter being the basis and vital element of capitalist production” (Ibid, 1998, 110; cf. 1989, 151). As the
limits of the domestic market are, for whatever reason, reached, it is only through the expansion of credit that capital can be employed profitably – by lending capital to other
countries, domestic capital can create a market for its commodities. This is illustrated in a passage that anticipates the pathological co-dependence of the US and PRC economies,

The whole credit system, and the over-trading, overspeculation, etc., connected with it, rest upon the
Marx writes: “

necessity to extend the range of, and to overcome the barrier to, circulation and exchange. This appears
more colossal, more classical, in the relationship between peoples than in the relationship between individuals. Thus e.g. Englishmen compelled to lend to foreign nations to have

While the world market is the ultimate horizon of

them as their CUSTOMERS” (1986, 343, italics and capitalization in original).

capital accumulation, integration proceeds in an uneven, combined manner that, using a contemporary scientific term, can be
described as fractal. For patterns of uneven and combined development occur in self-similar ways on many scales. Thus, while North-South relations can be
identified on a global scale (at the level of the world economy), there are similar trends at various geoeconomic scales, whether these involve territories, places, or networked
spaces of flows. In this context, Marx explored, for example, differences in the national intensity and productivity of labour, the relative international values and prices of
commodities produced in different national contexts, the relative international value of wages and money in social formations with different degrees of labour intensity and

The preceding analysis

productivity, the incidence of surplus profits and unequal exchange, and so on (e.g., Marx, 1996, 317-26). Colonialism and Imperialism

may give the impression that the world market emerged mainly through commerce, the
development of world money, the extension of the credit system, and the drive of industrial capital to expand its
export markets. This is misleading because, as noted above, for Marx, primitive accumulation was a crucial presupposition of the development and consolidation of the
CMP. This connection was already noted in his early work. As Lucia Pradella notes, “Marx’s notebooks show that he paid attention to the relationship between capitalism,

Direct slavery is just as much

colonialism and world history from the very beginning of his economic studies” (2017, 157). For example, he wrote: “

the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without
 is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world
cotton you have no industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it

trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry” (Marx, 1976a, 167). More generally, primitive accumulation
involved the creation of a formally free labour force by transforming slaves, serfs and
independent producers into wage labourers, enclosing the commons and dispossessing peasants,
accumulating treasure for investment through expropriation, looting, enslavement, conquest,
and murder at home and abroad (1996, 741). This process unfolded bloodily in overlapping waves and involved an increasingly refined machinery of
expropriation and exploitation. Marx considered that formal and informal colonies were “powerful levers for

concentration of capital” (1996, 741) and further observed that: “The different moments of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in
chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination,
embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But
they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organised force of society, to hasten, hothouse fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production
into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition” (1996, 739). This process had a fractal character, occurring on many scales, and in diverse ways. This is illustrated in Marx’s

analyses of England’sexploitation of Ireland (linked to the flow of the Irish rural poor into English factories and cities), the colonization of India (leading to
the First Indian War of Independence), theplunder of Mexico, the failure of the European nations to fully subordinate China because of the close ties between agriculture
and manufacturing (leading to the Taiping Rebellion by colonised peoples and the Opium wars), the ruthless exploitation in plantation colonies producing crops
exclusively for the export trade (such as the West Indies), the development of colonies on virgin soil in public ownership and settled by free immigrants (such as the United States

These different aspects of what would nowadays be called ‘North-South’

and Australia) (1996, 741, 751n, 755).

relations are an essential and revelatory dimension of his analysis of the formation and integration
of the world market. Indeed, Marx remarked that “[t]he profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois
civilisation lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable
forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked” (1979, 222).2
 L – Military Power/Foreign Policy
Military power and legitimacy is a guise to expand capitalism under the
notion of safety
Haigphong 16 (6/18/16, Daniel Haiphong is a socialist critic and contributor for the American
Herald Tribune, “US foreign policy is the military assertion of Capitalist supremacy”
https://ahtribune.com/politics/991-us-foreign-policy.html//TU-SG)
US foreign policy has received the least attention in the 2016 elections. When it has been mentioned, the majority of candidates have merely
repeated dogma such as "Russian aggression" and the existential threat of "terrorism." Only Donald Trump has deviated from the Washington consensus, questioning the
legitimacy of NATO and US belligerence toward China and Russia. Yet even his comments do not go far enough to expose the true motivations behind US foreign policy.

The carnage, chaos, and catastrophe of US foreign policy are driven by

the interests of capitalism . Investor wealth and capitalist profit are the motivating forces
of US foreign policy. US foreign policy can be divided into two different, but related, policies. The
first policy is direct military intervention by sanction, proxy, or invasion on sovereign countries.
The second is indirect military intervention through the deployment of military bases, command
centers, and intelligence operations to countries already under the boot of US
hegemony . Both policies are geared toward creating favorable conditions in the target
country for the supremacy of US capital . The US invasion of Iraq is the most blatant examples of the
mutual relationship between US foreign policy and the profit motive. Prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Iraqi government was the sole owner and distributor of the nation's

The destabilization of the Iraqi state opened the door to privatization

vast oil resources. . Over 80 percent of Iraq's oil is
currently exported out of the country under the terms of contracts wielded by corporations such as Exxon and Chevron. A quarter of Iraq's population now lives in poverty as basic
services have become a luxury. Additionally, it was estimated in 2013 that defense contractors raked in 138 billion dollars worth of contracts from Washington as a consequence of

the war. "Defense" and oil corporations require the destruction of the sovereign nations such as Iraq
to expand market share. Once a nation is compliant, US foreign policy shifts gears away from
direct military rule to indirect. In South Korea, for example, the US maintains an estimated 28,000 US
troops to prevent the reunification of the Koran state. The US has nearly 1,000 military bases
around the world. Most of the operations conducted by these military installations carry the
sole purpose of maintaining oppressive but compliant governments in Latin America, Asia,
and Africa . The most important measure of compliance is whether a government is run by puppets willing to do the bidding of US capital. If not, then the state in
question is subject to US-sponsored destabilization. At the present moment, there are two powerful nations that stand in the way of

full spectrum dominance of US capital. Russia and China have been the prime targets of US
foreign policy . US multinational corporations and banks see Russia and China as the
primary obstacles to unfettered global exploitation and profit accumulation . Russia's vast
energy resources are exported by state-owned companies such as Gazprom. China's socialist economy is
heavily comprised of state-owned industries. Through aggressive national development, China has become the largest economy in the world in
terms of purchasing power. Russia and China have attracted lucrative economic relationships with nations all

over the world. Russia has taken the initiative to form the Eurasian Economic Union which calls continental trade integration. Similarly, China has been developing an
economic infrastructure project called the "New Silk Road." This project, which most notably involves the development of a transnational railway connecting China to Russia and

the European market, is estimated to cost 1 trillion USD in foreign investment. The strategic plans of Russia and China have the
US scrambling all over the globe to ensure the world remains locked into the exploitative
grips of US multinational corporations . Washington's Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the TPP, is the counter response to the rise
of China. It includes provisions that allow corporations to sue participating states should their governments do anything to impede corporate profit. The US has

instituted a "pivot" to Asia to create the military conditions necessary for such a trade deal. The
US pivot has virtually encircled China militarily with partnerships in the Philippines, Guam,
Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The US has conducted a similar policy of encirclement with
regards to Russia. A ten day NATO exercise called operation Anaconda began on June 6th in Poland. The operation comprised of thirty thousand troops from twenty
four countries. Furthermore, the US has supported the reactionary proxy war in Ukraine that rendered the
country ungovernable. Military installations such as AFRICOM and NATO have as their main
targets Russia and China. In Africa, the expansion of AFRICOM to all countries on the continent
but two has come in direct response to China becoming the world's largest investor in African
wealth. The 2011 US-NATO war on Libya was conducted to prevent the Libyan government from moving forward with plans to unify the continent around a single gold
currency. Yet despite the commitment on the part of the US to deploy its military around the world to protect the interests of capital, the economic

system of capitalism remains mired in crisis . US GDP continues to slow and stall. US influence
around the world is increasingly being seen by millions as parasitic and a fetter on real
production. The US capitalist system has reached a stage of terminal decline, whereby its own need to revolutionize technology in order to increase profit has actually sent
profit into a downward spiral. Billions of workers globally either work in low-wage jobs or no jobs at all. This is the world that US foreign policy protects. A new world

will require a coordinated global movement led by the oppressed to suppress the forces of capital
that dictate US foreign policy.
 L – Multiculturalism
The aff is multiculturalism which blesses the government the ability to
regulate subjects as inclusive within the broader capitalist system and justify
interventions abroad
Mitchell 03 (Katharyne Mitchell is an American geographer who is currently Professor of
Sociology and Dean of the Social Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“Educating the national citizen in neoliberal times: from the multicultural self to the strategic
cosmopolitan”
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.461.7120&rep=rep1&type=pdf//TU-
SG)
multiculturalism is in the ways that it, as a concept, has been put into the service of the liberal
One of my main interests in

state. Although it has played a different role in each of the Western states that have adopted it as either an official, encouraged or merely tolerated philosophical framework, as
a general concept it has had a significant impact in nearly all school systems in Western Europe and North America in the last three to four decades (Parker 2002a; Schiffauer et al.

it currently being devalued and transformed in the context of

forthcoming). What ideological work does the concept do, and why is

increasing global and neoliberal pressures on national education systems? Multiculturalism functions as a
key national narrative of coherence and unification in countries with a large immigrant
population . The essence of the nation is difference, and what makes the state strong and
legitimate is its ability to unify these differences in a single project, that of nationformation. The
state engages in this project through its regulations of individual and (carefully delineated) group rights, such as
evidenced in the philosophy and practice (and legislation in the Canadian case) of multiculturalism. For Canada in particular, multiculturalism is an official state doctrine that has

It also represents an effort

allowed an uneasy truce to be formed between the original two colonizing powers, the British and the French.

to inculcate immigrants into a national ‘mosaic’, wherein difference is

professed to be welcome and even advantageous to the state (Kobayashi 1993; Mitchell
the concept of multicultural citizenship serves as an
1993). For Canada, and to a slightly lesser degree for the US and England,

example of the tolerant and munificent liberal state, ever willing to open its doors to outsiders,
and to accept and protect cultural difference (see Taylor 1994; Kymlicka 1995). It is part of a broader narrative of
liberalism and the freedom of the individual, and through this narrative, it serves to ‘perform’ the
liberal state and create a sense of a unified, tolerant and coherent nation, despite the multiple
differences evident in the population of its citizenry. Secondly, multiculturalism operates as a
fundamental institutional and conceptual tool giving the state an enhanced ability to control
difference (Asad 1990). As a conceptual apparatus, it allows the state to set the terms of the ‘difference debate’. These
terms are highly individual: they are concerned with individual rights and preferences – the right to choose and display difference with respect to individual identity.

Cultural pluralism is encouraged, but only so long as the included groups follow certain rules, and
are willing to be contained within the strict parameters of liberalism, that is, to ‘accept’ liberalism
as a fundamental philosophical starting point (see, for example, Appiah’s 1994 critique of Taylor 1994). And while group difference is
acceptable for ‘cultural survival’ (e.g. in the case of the Québécois), it is only acceptable in certain carefully circumscribed times and spaces (e.g. within the province of Quebec).

Third, multiculturalism aids in the exportation of liberalism, and hence capitalism, abroad . For
example, the philosophy of American pluralism in the 1930s and 1940s was framed as an extension of equality

of opportunity to all members of the national body. This extension was crucial in justifying the
expansion of liberalism overseas during these years. Without the language of inclusion (e.g. for those who
were previously disenfranchised within the system, such as African-Americans), American criticism of fascist
dictatorships in Europe and Asia would appear hypocritical, and would impede the exportation of liberalism and the

market overseas. In his study of colour and democracy in the American century, for example, Singh (1998, 475) showed how the ‘moral status of American
nationhood and the status of Black nationality’ were inextricably intertwined during the decade of the 1940s. It was only with a more just society at home that the United

States could claim the rhetoric of a ‘civilizing’ mission abroad. The democratic impulses behind the
early formulations of multiculturalism were thus clearly linked with America’s ‘world-ordering
ambitions’ of that time (Singh 1998: 475–9; see also Mitchell 2001). In the field of education, multiculturalism draws directly from this Deweyan nationalist
legacy. Multicultural education in liberal, Western societies is concerned with the creation of a certain kind of

individual, one who is tolerant of difference, but a difference framed within certain national
parameters and controlled by the institutions of the state. The subject interpellated through multiculturalism in education believes
that cultural pluralism is good, or at least necessary, for national development, and is able to work with others to find sites of commonality, despite differences. All of

these understandings of how multiculturalism functions vis-à-vis the state, especially with regard
to the most effective constitution of a national citizen and national identity, have a certain logic
when implemented within a nation format. Both progressives and conservatives have found common ground in the utilization of
multiculturalism as a containing metaphor for ‘difference’ within the community, although with different opinions as to the relative advantages or disadvantages of retaining the

citizens are formed is a national one, and that

concept through time. But both groups begin with the assumption that the community in which

citizens will be regulated and disciplined by the state. What happens when the community is no longer necessarily a national one, and
the state’s interest in disciplining populations and regulating the actions and relations between actors is not based on a territorial population, but rather on a much larger, supra-

multiculturalism was able to operate effectively as a conceptual philosophy in the

national scale? I believe that

service of state formation during a certain kind of economic regime or period of capital
accumulation, that of high Fordism .15 During this time, in many Western nations such as the US,
Canada and England, the economy grew rapidly but was relatively protected from outside competition . The relations
between capital and labour were regulated through various mechanisms of state control, and an interventionist, developmental or welfare state took off to varying degrees in
numerous nations (cf. Aglietta 1979). At the same time, immigration from non-Western countries, especially from Asia into the United States and Canada, and from the Caribbean
into England, increased rapidly, disturbing the image of a dominant norm or narrative of cultural nationalism implicit in all three nations (Castles and Miller 1998).

Multiculturalism, in this context, could operate effectively as an instrument of state formation on

a number of levels, including serving as a national narrative of coherence in the face of immigrant
‘difference’, as a broad technology of state control (of difference), and as one of many capillaries of disciplinary power/knowledge
concerning the formation of the ‘well-schooled’ subject educated in liberal tolerance and willing to work for national unity within this philosophical framework. In all of this, but

multiculturalism was a strategic

especially in the constitution of national citizens able and willing to work through difference for the nation,

partner in the growth and expansion of a Fordist regime of accumulation around the world .

Neoliberal Multiculturalism co-opts immigrant ethnicities into capital and to

build transnational linkages that legitimize and foster globalization
Kymlicka 12 ( Will Kymlicka is a Canadian political philosopher best known for his work on
multiculturalism and animal ethics, “Neoliberal Multiculturalism?”, European University
Institute, 10/10/12, accessed 7/25/18,
https://www.eui.eu/Documents/RSCAS/Research/MWG/201314/29Jan-KymlickaWill.pdf) //JC
The overriding concern of neoliberals in the field of ethnic relations is with integrating minorities
into global markets and with the contribution they can make to economic competitiveness. If social
liberalism was fundamentally about citizenization – about the creation of relations of democratic citizenship – neoliberalism is fundamentally about creating effective market actors

and competitive economies. This need not lead to support for multiculturalism. Indeed,in the past, the attachment of minorities to their
languages and cultures was seen as a hindrance to effective market participation. But the defining feature of
neoliberal multiculturalism is the belief that ethnic identities and attachments can be assets
to market actors and hence that they can legitimately be supported by the neoliberal state .
And this is precisely what many neoliberals have come to believe. In some contexts, ethnicity is a market asset in the very tangible form

of cultural artifacts that can be marketed globally (music, art, fashion). But in most cases,
ethnicity is seen as a market asset because it is a source of “social capital” that successful market
actors require. Consider the following description of the World Bank’s commitment to “ethnodevelopment” for indigenous peoples in Ecuador: Social exclusion,
economic deprivation, and political marginalization are sometimes perceived as the predominant characteristic of Ecuador’s indigenous peoples. But as they often remind
outsiders, indigenous peoples are also characterized by strong positive attributes, particularly their high levels of social capital. Besides language and their own sense of ethnic
identity, the distinctive features of indigenous peoples include solidarity and social unity (reflected in strong social organizations), a well-defined geographical concentration and
attachment to ancestral lands, a rich cultural patrimony, and other customs and practices distinct from those of Ecuador’s national society . . . .The [World Bank] project aims to
mobilize this social capital, based on these characteristics, as a platform for ethnodevelopment (van Nieuwkoop and Uquillas 2000: 18). 11 All of these organizations eventually
backed away from neoliberalism, but they were all participants in the “hegemonic globalization” that characterized the neoliberal era. Or consider this quote from Shelton Davis,

one of the driving forces behind the World Bank’s indigenous policy: Until recently, a local culture has been seen as a hindrance
to development, whereas today we must rather look upon culture as an asset , as a driving
force for selfdevelopment . . . one might argue that more culture is more wealth, that having more know-how, more languages, and
more centres of interest enriches indigenous peoples as well as enriching in the process the rest of
a country’s citizens and some segment of humanity as well (Davis and Ebbe 1993: 8). In short, a neoliberal
multiculturalism is possible because ethnicity is a source of social capital, social capital
enables effective market participation, and governments can promote this market-
enhancing social capital through MCPs that treat minorities as legitimate partners .12 The way in
which ethnicity facilitates market participation varies from group to group. In the case of immigrants, social capital

does not flow from “a welldefined geographical concentration and attachment to ancestral lands” – immigrants are precisely uprooted
from their ancestral lands. But from a neoliberal perspective, this uprooting is itself a potential
asset because it enables transnational linkages that native-born citizens lack. Immigrant
transnationalism, then, is an asset in an increasingly global marketplace – it facilitates global
trade – exemplified by the commercial linkages in the Indian and Chinese diasporas. Insofar as multiculturalism legitimates the ethnic
identities that underpin these transnational links, it can be seen as good for the economies of both
sending and receiving countries. We see this version of multiculturalism emerging in Australia and Canada in the 1980s as neoliberal governments
adopted the discourse of “productive multiculturalism” and organized conferences with titles such as “Multiculturalism Means Business” and cities marketed themselves as the
multicultural home of transnational entrepreneurs.13 So the neoliberal vision of transnational multiculturalism for immigrant groups is different from their vision of
ethnodevelopment for indigenous peoples (which is different yet again from the neoliberal vision of the market role of substate national groups).14 But in each case, neoliberals
have found a way 12 “Social capital” in this context is a broader notion than found in Putnam’s influential work (2000), where it refers primarily to generalized interpersonal trust.
It is being used here as a label for any social or cultural feature that supports effective community development. 13 See Murphy, O’Brien, and Watson (2003) on the neoliberal
marketing of multicultural Sydney; Abu-Laban and Gabriel (1998) and Mitchell (2004: 100–1) on Vancouver and Toronto; and Glick-Schiller (2011) on Manchester, New
Hampshire. This valorizing of immigrant transnationalism as a source of economic competitiveness is related to, but distinct from, the more general claim that ethnic diversity in

This latter idea was another trope in the neoliberal

the workplace or in corporate boards increases productivity or profits (Herring 2009).

reframing of multiculturalism. 14 Granting autonomy to groups like the Catalans and Scots has
been supported by some neoliberals as a potential site for a more innovative and entrepreneurial
culture, sustained by higher levels of social cohesion (Keating 2001). to legitimize ethnicity, to
justify MCPs that shelter those ethnic projects, and to reinterpret these policies in line with
neoliberalism’s core ideas (enhancing economic competitiveness and innovation, shifting
responsibility from the state to civil society, promoting decentralization, deemphasizing national
solidarity in favor of local bonds or transnational ties, viewing cultural diversity as an economic
asset or commodity in a global market). In the process, the meaning of multiculturalism has clearly changed. As we saw, multiculturalism
originally was rooted in both social liberalism (committed to remedying disadvantages) and nationalism (building good citizens who can work across differences for the good of
the nation), both of which shaped the underlying idea of citizenization. The neoliberal vision of multiculturalism, by contrast, is largely indifferent to both the progressive equality-

The goal of neoliberal multiculturalism is not a tolerant

seeking component of multiculturalism and its national boundedness.

national citizen who is concerned for the disadvantaged in her own society but a cosmopolitan
market actor who can compete effectively across state boundaries. I will discuss below the extent to which these two images
of tolerant national citizen and effective global market actor can be combined, but the main impulse of the neoliberal reform of multiculturalism was to displace the former with the
latter. Mitchell captures this in her account of changes to multicultural education in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada under the influence of neoliberalism: There is
no longer much need for the multicultural subject interested in working towards harmony across the differences of race or class, one able to find points of convergence in the
general spirit of a nexus of production and consumption benevolently regulated by the state. The spirit of harmonious accumulation, for the capitalist, the worker and the nation, is

In this neoliberal vision of education, educating a child to

gone, and the multicultural self is no longer the ideal state citizen. . . .

be a good citizen is no longer synonymous with constituting a well-rounded, nationally oriented,

multicultural self, but rather about attainment of the “complex skills” necessary for individual
success in the global economy. (Mitchell 2003: 392, 399) 15 Focusing specifically on the Canadian case, Mitchell summarizes the shift from social liberal
to neoliberal multiculturalism this way: Multiculturalism [in its social liberal form] operated effectively as an instrument of state formation on a number of levels: as a national
narrative of coherence in the face of British-French and then immigrant “difference,” as a broad technology of state control of difference, and as one of many capillaries of
disciplinary power/knowledge concerning the formation of the state subject. In all of this, but especially in the constitution of national citizens able and willing to work through
difference for the nation, the socially liberal philosophy and practice of multiculturalism was a strategic partner in the growth and expansion of a Fordist capitalist regime of
accumulation. However, with the rise of transnational lives, deterritorialized states, and neoliberal pressures in the past two decades, this type of state subject has been increasingly

the resulting new spirit of multicultural education is “Good for

irrelevant. The 15 According to Resnik (2008),

Business but not for the State.” particular form of what I have termed “liberal multiculturalism” – one jointly bound up in the constitution of the nation,
the tolerant national self, and the formation of a regime of accumulation regulated by the state – is evolving into something qualitatively different. Liberal multiculturalism, a
spatially specific ethos of tolerance contingent on the history and geography of a city and a nation, is now rapidly morphing into neoliberal multiculturalism, the “progressive
process of planetary integration.” It reflects a logic of pluralism on a global scale, and a strategic, outward-looking cosmopolitanism (Mitchell 2004: 123–4). The shift toward a
neoliberal conception of multiculturalism has entailed a dramatic narrowing of the scope of political contestation. In the case of immigrants, old-style multiculturalism opened up
space to raise issues of structural inequalities in racialized societies, leading to programs such as employment equity. But the new multiculturalism replaces this with ideas of
“managing diversity” for competitive success: The diversity within the “managing diversity” model that has supplanted employment equity in important ways suggests that all
individual differences are important and that firms and sectors that fail to acknowledge this will not be able to compete effectively in a global market. This vision of diversity is

Neoliberal
also narrow insofar as it fails to problematize structural inequalities that exist between groups of people. (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 1998: 173)

multiculturalism for immigrants affirms – even valorizes – ethnic immigrant entrepreneurship,

strategic cosmopolitanism, and transnational commercial linkages and remittances but silences debates on economic redistribut ion, racial inequality, unemployment, economic

restructuring, and labor rights.In the case of indigenous peoples, neoliberal multiculturalism has sought to
divide Indians into “safe” and “radical” and seeks to accommodate the former – the indio permitodo (“permitted
Indian”), in Hale’s phrase – through a range of multicultural rights. These rights are deemed acceptable as

long as (a) they do not contradict the long-term economic development model of moving toward
free-market service- and manufacturing-based economies and (b) the resulting level of political
clout does not pass a certain line where existing authorities are seriously challenged. Neoliberal
multiculturalism thereby gives state and business elites the “ability to restructure the arena of
political contention, driving a wedge between cultural rights and the assertion of the control over
resources necessary for those rights to be realized” (Hale 2005: 13). The “cultural project of neoliberalism” accords rights to indigenous
peoples but only “to help them compete in the rigors of globalized capitalism or, if this is deemed impossible, to relegate them to the

sidelines, allowing the game to proceed unperturbed” (Hale and Millamen 2005: 301). And as McNeish notes, this cultural project is
not just about limiting indigenous demands but also about restructuring indigenous subjectivities: Indians are recognized as citizens by

governing elites as long as they do not question or threaten the integrity of the existing regime of
productive relations, especially in the sectors most closely connected to the global markets. As such . . .
the ultimate goal of neoliberalism is not just radical individualism, but rather the creation of subjects who govern themselves in accordance with the logic of globalized capitalism

The
(McNeish 2008: 34) 16 Viewed this way, the persistence of multiculturalism in the face of neoliberalism is a Pyrrhic victory, obscuring its fundamental transformation.

original aims of multiculturalism – to build fairer terms of democratic citizenship within nation-
states – have been replaced with the logic of diversity as a competitive asset for cosmopolitan
market actors, indifferent to issues of racial hierarchy and structural inequality. Indeed, the
ability of neoliberalism to appropriate the discourse of multiculturalism has been so great that
many people assume multiculturalism was a neoliberal invention. Zizek famously stated that multiculturalism
emerged as the “cultural logic of multinational capitalism” (Zizek 1997). The historic link between multiculturalism and national
projects of social liberalism has been eras
 L – Native Immigration
The affirmatives denial of natives with citizenship exposes useable by the
markets while simultaneously making them vulnerable and exploitable as
capital
Walia 10 (Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded
Coast Salish territories, BC, Canada.[1] She is known for her organizing work with No One Is
Illegal, the February 14th Women's Memorial March Committee, the Downtown Eastside
Women's Centre, and several Downtown Eastside housing justice coalitions.[2][3] She has been
active in migrant justice, Indigenous solidarity, feminist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist
movements for over a decade.[1] Walia is a frequent guest speaker at campuses and conferences
across North America and has delivered numerous presentations to the United Nations.[4] She is
the author of Undoing Border Imperialism (2013) and has contributed to over thirty academic
journals, anthologies, magazines and newspapers, “Transient servitude: migrant labour in Canada
and the apartheid of citizenship”, Institute of Race Relations, 2010, accessed 7/24/18,
http://davidmcnally.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Harsha-Walia-Transient-Servitude.pdf) //JC
The number of migrant workers in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) has doubled
over the past five years, spurred on by the province’s construction boom, the 2010 Olympics, trans-provincial transport of the Alberta Tar Sands, as well as
growth in extractive and mining industries. In Canada, migrant worker programmes involve being tied to the importing

employer; low wages, often below the official minimum, and long hours with no overtime pay;
dangerous working conditions; crowded and unhealthy accommodation; denial of access to public
healthcare and employment insurance, despite paying into the programmes; and being virtually held captive by employers
or contractors who seize identification documents.1 It is their temporary legal status that
makes migrant workers extremely vulnerable to abuse ; any assertion of their rights leads not
only to contract termination but also deportation. Migrant workers thus represent the ‘perfect
workforce’ in an era of evolving global capital-labour relations: commodified and
exploitable; flexible and expendable. The exceptional freedom of globalised capital stands in stark contrast to the restrictions on those migrant
workers whose precarious labour secures corporate profits. And the absence in Canada’s media of sensationalised stories of workplace raids, massive round-ups or overflowing

Canadian migration policy is the result of a

detention centres does not point to the country’s having a humane immigration policy; rather,

perfected system of social control, containment and expulsion. Canada formally institutionalised its foreign contract labour
programmes through the Non-Immigrant Employment Authorization Program (NIEAP) in 1973. Shortly after the NIEAP was introduced, most workers began to enter Canada as
‘unfree’ wage workers.2 In Canada today, more people are admitted annually under Temporary Employment Authorizations (238,093 in 2004) than as permanent residents
(235,708 in 2004). In 2006, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) reported admitting 112,658 new migrant workers, representing a 13 per cent increase from 2005.3 Migrant

such programmes depend on

worker programmes are the flip side of the transnational phenomenon of capitalist outsourcing. Adriana Paz argues that

huge surpluses of labour from the South that free-trade capitalism has itself displaced.4 That the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has displaced over one million Mexican farmers and forced over
fifteen million Mexicans into poverty has been extensively documented; many of these displaced people now work as undocumented workers in the
low-paying sectors of the US and Canadian economies. As William Robinson puts it, ‘the transnational circulation of capital and the disruption and deprivation it causes, in turn,

this must be seen as a

generates the transnational circulation of labor. In other words, global capitalism creates immigrant workers … In a sense,

coerced or forced migration, since global capitalism exerts a structural violence over whole
populations and makes it impossible for them to survive in their homeland .’5 Similarly, McKenzie Wark
writes that: ‘Migration is globalisation from below. If the “overdeveloped” world refuses to trade with the

underdeveloped world on fair terms, to forgive debt, to extend loans, to lift trade barriers against
food and basic manufactured goods, then there can only be an increase in the flow of people.’6 And
Canadian corporations are among the most aggressive foreign investors in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. From Guatemala to India, Canadian corporations, especially

Those
mining firms, have been responsible for environmental destruction, human and labour rights violations and forced displacement of surrounding communities.7

displaced by Canadian trade and foreign policy are made perpetually displace-able by
 Canadian immigration and labour policy . Border controls are deployed against those whose recourse to migration results from the free
licence afforded to capital to ravage entire economies and communities in the global South. While borders were essential to unify national

markets in nascent capitalism, today they are used to create differential zones of labour and
surplus capital, in which cheap, temporary workforces are used to attract investments. Harold Troper notes
that the denial of legal citizenship to migrant workers allows states to accumulate domestic capital

by ‘in-gathering of off-shore labour’ in order to compete in the global market.8 Despite its rhetoric, global capital
does not aim at the elimination of national borders; rather, the border regime legalises ‘foreign and temporary’ worker programmes for the benefit of capital interests. The role of

The relationship between

the nation state remains pivotal in a globalised economy, providing the principal means for disciplining the workforce.

exploitable and disposable labour in Canada has developed over the past century. Up until the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, indentured servants working off debt bondages from England accompanied White settlers. The enslavement of Indigenous

and Black people soon replaced indentured servitude as a preferred form of permanent
bonded labour . With the growing abolition sentiment, transient servitude as a profitable form of labour began to develop. Transient servitude, especially in the form
of (im)migrant labour, had many of the advantages of slave labour, as employers maintained control of both the labour as well as the labourer.9 One example of indentureship in
Canada was the estimated 17,000 Chinese railway workers, who, during the late 1800s, risked death and starvation on boats from China to come to BC to build the Trans-Canada
Railways; they were forced to work in dangerous and deplorable working conditions. Chinese coal miners earned $1 a day compared to the $2.50 earned by White workers and an
estimated 1,000–3,500 died during the railway’s construction.10 And these workers were not allowed to bring families, because the Canadian government and contractor expected

Today, the denial of legal citizenship through temporary migrant

the workers to return upon the end of the contract.

worker programmes ensures legal control over the disposability of labourers, which, in turn,
embeds exploitability of labour as an inherent feature of such programmes. Migrant worker
programmes allow for capital to access cheap labour that exists under precarious conditions, the
most severe of which is the condition of being deportable. This assures a pool of highly
exploitable labour, excluded from the minimal protections of the welfare state, and readily
disposed of without consequences.

Demands within the political project for civil rights of indigenous people
mask the ways inclusion translates into assimilation into and seizing of
private property of the neoliberal state
Volpp 15 (Leti Volpp joined the Berkeley Law faculty in 2005. She researches immigration and
citizenship law with a particular focus on how law is shaped by ideas about culture and identity,
“The Indigenous As Alien”, UC Irvine Law Review, 6/28/18, accessed 7/25/18,
http://www.law.uci.edu/lawreview/vol5/no2/Volpp.pdf) //JC
Such a critique of the exclusions concealed within liberalism and of the discrimination masked by
the promise of -merica is an important one. Yet at the same time, this critique, as long as it remains trapped
within the frame of membership in the nation state and the desire for full inclusion, erases other
stones. 10 In particular, as Kehaulani Kaunui tells us, for indigenous peoples in the United States, the political project of civil rights has been
"burdened, due to the history of U.S. settler colonialism, with distinctly different relationships to the nation state."" As she writes, the political
project of civil rights, which is fundamentally about equality cinder the law, and which is confined within the nation-
state, is insufficient for indigenous and other colonized peoples in addressing ongoing
questions of sovereignty.1 This is starldy visible in the Supreme Court's decision in Rice in Cayetano. The case concerned an electoral
limitation by which only Native Hawaiians were allowed to vote for trustees of the state's Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The Court read this limitation to be
the special privilege of a racial minority (Native lawaiians) and thus held the exclusion of white lawaiian resident Harold Rice to be an abridgement of his
right to vote under the Fifteenth Amendment. 13 Indigeneity
was thereby framed as a civil rights question rather
than as a matter of Native sovereignty14 There are at least two additional ways in which one could articulate
why a demand for civil rights and inclusion within a national project is inadequate for

indigenous people . First, the framework of civil rights and the desire for inclusion into full
membership cannot address how "democracy's intolerance of difference has operated through
inclusion as much as through exclusion." 5 While inclusion can be a valued good, it can also mean
assimilation, absorption, and loss . In the context of indigenous peoples in North America,
govemmental policies were adopted to putatively absorb indigenous subjects as indistinct from
others into the national body. In order to elevate individual indigenous persons from federal wards to citizens, both the United
States and Canada engaged in the regulation of marriage, kinship, and sexuality; in the forced removal of
children from families to government-funded boarding schools; and in land severalty.16 Land
severalty mandated the breaking up of tribes as both political entities and as the holders of land in common, turning indigenous
peoples into individual holders of private property , thus eviscerating the tribal land base, and
opening the way for nonindigenous persons to buy land rights within the historical boundaries of
tribal territoiy.i7 As Audra Simpson writes, "This process of equality cum absorption required a vanquishing of an alternative or existing political order,
.... which raises questions about how and why citizenship then might be a utilitarian good, when it requires or initiates a disappearance of prior
governance.' i 8 Second,
the critique of exclusion fails to note how the nation state in which an
immigrant seeks membership relies tacitly on the dispossession of already existing populations.
This then is the willing amnesia of settler colonialism. My focus in this Article is the nonrecognition of settler colonialism underpinning immigration law
scholarship. This scholarship's focus is the migrant, whose position already assumes the resolution of a fundamental conflict between indigeneity and
settler colonialism.19 As scholars have noted, the doctrine of plenary power developed and was expressed simultaneously in cases involving Indians,
aliens, and territories, all concerning individuals who were noncitizens and were "racially, culturally, and religiously distinct" from the majority.20 My
interest here is not to chart how these groups were treated similarly under U.S. constitutional doctrine, but to tease out how one of these groups-'Indians"-
was understood within the laws created to govern another "aliens."' 1 Thus, my project is not to examine parallel discourses but rather to discern how a
legal field developed to govern one group of individuals understood and understands-another. 22
 L – Open Borders
Open borders are a capitalist Trojan horse – you think you’re liberatory, but
actually its what the capitalists want
Goldin et al 12 (Ian Goldin is director of the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, and
professorial fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. He has served as vice president of the World Bank
and advisor to President Nelson Mandela, and chief executive of the Development Bank of
Southern Africa. His many books include Globalization for Development. Geoffrey Cameron is a
research associate at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford. He is currently principal
researcher with the Bahá'í Community of Canada. Meera Balarajan holds a PhD from the
University of Cambridge and works for a research organization in the United Kingdom. She has
also worked for the United Nations, a UK government department, and a grassroots NGO in
India. “Capitalism, globalisation and migration”
http://www.socialismtoday.org/160/migration.html//TU-SG)
The Freer Movement of labour is one aspect of globalisation. It is the
Consequences in the neo-colonial world...

freedom of capitalism to increase exploitation through a race to the bottom , maximising profits by
holding down wages. Other campaigners for freer labour are more honest – and crude – about this than the authors of Exceptional People. The Economist, for
example, evangelises for open borders , bluntly arguing that increased immigration means lower wages. In 2002, its survey on migration stated: "The
gap between labour’s rewards in the poor and the rich countries, even for something as menial as clearing tables, dwarfs the gap between the prices of traded goods from different

parts of the world.The potential gains [profits] from liberalising migration therefore dwarf those from
removing barriers to world trade". No capitalist government has implemented completely open
borders, which would be too politically destabilising for them to contemplate. However, while severe repression of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants from
Africa, Asia, and Latin America remains the norm in every advanced capitalist country, many have also consciously loosened border

controls, in most cases covertly. For migrant workers it is a very limited freedom to be able to travel the
globe if that is the only way to feed your family. What kind of freedom is it to hand your family’s savings to people smugglers and then, if
you are lucky, after an often dangerous journey, end up working without papers for less than the minimum wage? The authors of Exceptional People accept that migration

is not a painless process. They liken it to the economist Joseph Schumpeter’s description of capitalism’s ‘creative
destruction’. But any problems, they assert, are largely short-term or secondary, with the long-term consequences overwhelmingly positive for migrants, and for the
countries they move to and leave. However, the statistics in the book do more to prove the ‘destruction’ than the

‘creation’ . The argument that increased migration benefits migrants’ countries of origin is repeatedly undermined. The exodus leaves some of
the poorest countries completely denuded of skilled workers : "More than 70% of university graduates from Guyana and
Jamaica move to developed countries, and other countries have similarly high percentages of graduates leaving". Malawi, a particularly horrendous example, "lost more than half
its nursing staff to emigration over a recent period of just four years, leaving only 336 nurses to serve a population of 12 million. Meanwhile vacancy rates stand at 85% for

Nor can the authors argue that ‘remittances’ (money sent home to family and friends) develop the
surgeons and 92% for paediatricians".

economies of migrant workers’ countries of origin. Remittances have grown dramatically "from about $31.1 billion in 1990, they are
estimated to have reached $316 billion by 2009". While they can have a major effect on the lives of individuals and communities, Exceptional People concedes that "there are a
very small number of countries, however, for which remittance flows are substantial relative to GDP, and in only eleven countries are remittances larger than merchandise

Within The Economically advanced countries the period of

exports". ... and for advanced capitalist countries

globalisation has seen a dramatic increase in inequality . In Britain, for example, the proportion of gross domestic product (GDP)
that goes on wages has been shrinking for 30 years. If the share was the same today as it was in 1978, workers would be taking home £60 billion

more (in today’s money). The situation is the same in the US, where in July 2011 wages accounted for the smallest share of GDP since 1955 – 54.9%. Meanwhile,

corporate profits had the highest share since 1950 – 12.6%. One factor in this process was the tendency for
capitalism to move production to lower wage economies. Another factor, to varying degrees in different countries,
was the use of super-exploited migrant workers alongside younger workers, agency
workers and so on, to hold down wages in sectors , particularly services, which could not be moved abroad. That is not to suggest an
automatic link between increased migration and the lowering of wages. If the workers’ movement was strong enough – ideologically and organisationally – to launch an effective
struggle to fight for a living wage for all, then increased migration could not have had such a severe effect in holding down wages. Exceptional People asserts that the effect of
migration on wage levels is largely neutral. Once again, however, its evidence contradicts this, when it points out that "foreign born employees at all levels of education earn less

per week than native-born colleagues. Migrants earned about 23% less than native-born workers in the US in 2007". The only contemporary example
given of an ‘open borders’ policy is Britain’s decision not to impose restrictions on workers
coming from the A8 accession countries that joined the EU in 2004. Between 2004-08 one million workers arrived. The
only comparable scale of immigration to Britain took place from 1870 to 1920, mainly of Jewish workers fleeing pogroms in Russia and eastern Europe. Over that time, however,
there was a net outflow of 2.6 million as a significant section of the middle class, and some workers, left the UK for Canada, Australia and South Africa. Today, the same escape
routes do not exist, so increased immigration has been a major factor in the UK’s population increasing by an unprecedented three million over the last decade. New Labour’s

approach to the A8 countries was backed fully by big business which, as Exceptional People remarks, has
"long been a constituency pushing for fewer restrictions to cross-border movements". On its effects,
Exceptional People states that "the UK experience of opening borders to A8 countries provides evidence of the economic gains promised by theorists: it has reduced inflationary

Unemployment did fall during the boom but, even in April 2007 at the
pressures, lowered unemployment, and boosted the economy".

end of the boom, 1.69 million people in Britain were out of work. At the same time, real-term
average pay increases remained at the historically low level of 1%, with average pay rises of 4% while inflation was at 3%.
Overall, Britain led the world in terms of the dominance of the finance and services sector and growing inequality . The US was
the only advanced capitalist country with a bigger gap between rich and poor. Exceptional People tries to disguise the real reasons employers often preferred to take on migrant
workers: "Although foreigners make up about 10% to 15% of the workforce in the UK, about half of all new jobs are filled by migrants, either because they are in areas requiring
particular skills (like plumbing or banking) or because natives do not want them (such as fruit picking and elderly care)". It is a condemnation of British capitalism that, on top of
the demise of manufacturing, with 3,400 jobs being lost every week, young people are not even being trained to acquire essential skills like plumbing. And Exceptional People

natives’ do not want certain jobs because employers do not pay a living wage for back-
omits to add that ‘

breaking labour. Caring for the elderly, for example, is a demanding and important job, yet the average hourly rate for a care worker is £6 – less than a checkout
operator. Miliband’s speech belatedly recognised that the increased immigration that took place under New Labour has affected wages. He has no solution, however, opposing
Gordon Brown’s slogan of ‘British jobs for British workers’, not because it was nationalist but because it is utopian to promise workers in Britain jobs! In fact, Miliband is
repeating Brown’s attempt to win support on a nationalist basis. His threat to cut the extremely minimal benefits to which some migrants are entitled reveals this clearly.

Ineligibility for benefits is a major factor in forcing migrant workers to work for slave
labour wages .

Open Borders is literally the assurance of free movement of labor and capital
to further the neoliberal political project
Frank 14 (Denis Frank* Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of
Gothenburg, Göteborg, Sweden. “Changes in migration control during the neoliberal era:
surveillance and border control in Swedish labour immigration policy”, Journal of Political
Power, 2014, accessed 7/10/18,
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2158379X.2014.963381) //JC
Introduction Western European states introduced restrictions on labour immigration during the 1970s, which put a halt to two decades of large-scale
labour immigration. Some observers assumed that these states would continue to restrict labour immigration in the foreseeable future. However, in the
2000s, labour immigration from countries outside the EU had once again become an important political issue, and occurred in a radically different
historical context than from 1945 to 1975. Labour immigration to Western Europe from 1945 to 1975 was
spurred by exceptional economic growth. Migrants were often employed in large factories in the
expanding manufacturing sector and workers’ organisations were growing stronger, while in some states
left-wing parties were in government for long periods of time. The welfare state was expanding and a fundamental goal
of economic policy was full employment. The broader institutional context was the Keynesian
welfare state, which was based on a compromise between labour and capital (Jessop 2002, Harvey 2007). This
historical context has been transformed, as labour immigration has once again become an important political issue. Mass-unemployment has reappeared
in Europe, and there has been an increase in social inequalities. Workers’
organisations have been weakened, and the
capitalist class has abandoned the Keynesian class compromise . This transformation has been accompanied by
the diffusion and implementation of neoliberal ideas. A fundamental driving force behind the neoliberal project has
been to alter the power balance between classes or, in the words of David Harvey, ‘to restore the power of economic elites’
(Harvey 2007, p. 19). The prescriptions for neoliberal reform of migration control do not deviate from the

guiding principles of neoliberalism, for instance that markets should be freed from political
intervention . State involvement in migration should, according to neoliberalism, be kept to
minimum. People should be allowed to move as freely as possible across international
borders , particularly if there is demand for their labour in another country, and there should be as
few restrictions as possible on firms’ ability to recruit foreign labour. It follows that trade unions might
become a target of neoliberal policy if they impose restrictions on migration. The actual impact of
neoliberalism on migration control is ambiguous and uneven across countries. Some actors have demanded more liberal labour immigration policies, for
example, employer associations. However, what
governments in Europe have implemented so far lies quite far
from neoliberal demands. Immigration policy is sensitive to other interests than those of employers. The political right tends to be divided
on the immigration issue: those that represent employers advocate for expansive policies, while the cultural conservative fraction tends to be more
restrictive (Zolberg 1999). Another limitation on the introduction of more expansive policies is that populations in today’s Europe tend to be restrictive.
Right-wing populist parties are gaining increasing support, and parties that want to win elections cannot disregard such restrictive tendencies in the
population. Furthermore, experiences of labour immigration from 1945 to 1975 have made governments hesitant about introducing highly expansive
labour immigration policies. Labour immigration from 1945 to 1975 resulted in large-scale permanent settlement of migrants in Europe, which is a
pattern that some governments want to avoid repeating (Ellermann 2013).

Open Borders is the end goal of neoliberal globalization

Ackerman 11 (Dr. Edwin Ackerman uses comparative-historical methods to understand how
political identities form and become operative. He has studied this process in two contexts:
political party formation in Latin America, and the historical trajectory of debates over ‘illegal’
immigration from the global South to the U.S. His works has been published in Ethnic and Racial
Studies, the Journal of Language and Politics, and Contexts, and has been featured in National
Public Radio (NPR), among other media outlets. He is currently working on a book manuscript
that focuses on how mass political parties form and consolidate, developing a comparison
between post-revolutionary Mexico and Bolivia. Edwin is a former MFP Fellow and Ford Fellow.
He received his PhD in Sociology from UC Berkeley, “NAFTA and Gatekeeper: A Theoretical
Assessment of Border Enforcement in the Era of the Neoliberal State”, Berkeley Journal of
Sociology, 2011, accessed 7/13/18, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23345247) //JC
Existing Theoretical Frameworks: Erosion versus Transformation Geographer Lawrence A. Herzog, who has studied the U.S.-Mexico border region (but not border enforcement),

has suggested that the internationalization of the world economy: has led to an inevitable reshaping of
boundary functions. The most obvious change has been the shift from boundaries that are
heavily protected and militarized to those that are more porous, permitting cross-border
social and economic interaction (1992:5-6). While such a statement is obviously perplexing considering the present situation, it is important to point
out that Herzog was interested in the increasing urbanization of international boundary zones. Where North Meets South (1990) focuses on

the economic and functional circulation patterns that have emerged between "twin cities" and
which ' eclipse the traditional screening functions of boundaries" (xi). Herzog develops the concept of "trans-frontier
metropolis": " the dejure functions of the boundary are fading, giving way to new territorial

political communities with some degree of autonomy and jurisdiction over their
transnational living space " (xi). A central idea in Herzog's work is that some overall tendency to move progressively away from fortified barriers has been
in effect beginning in the second half of the twentieth century. For the author, the traditional functions of boundaries (to functionally

and symbolically represent the outer lining of the sovereign nation state) have been changed. While
the concept of "trans-frontier metropolis" seems to exaggerate the changing role of nation states, one of the ideas is that borders are being changed independently of the will of

governments. Herzog writes: cross-national trade, migration, and global transportation have generated a scale
of human behavior that transcends the nation-state [...] the border zone between the United States
and Mexico is one such place. Here, not only is the boundary increasingly porous, it has become
the locus of large perma nent urban centers (1990:2-3). The idea that the nation state is being transcended is reinforced by Herzog's
embrace of a world-systems approach: "boundary zones derive their meaning from a role determined by the

workings of the world economy" (1990:13). Furthermore, Herzog argues: "Boundary cities have become so functionally intertwined that their futures are
inextricably bound, whether or not the national governments are able to devise formal proce dures for addressing border-related problems" (1990:61; emphasis added). So, while it
might be easy to dismiss Herzog's propositions as blatantly misguided considering the enforcement policies that began in 1994, there is still a level at which his ideas are worth

considering (world-systems approach aside — which would explain the shift in border policies as a function of a
change in the world economy); if we take his ideas seriously we could conclude that the current policies are a sign of the
contradiction that exists between the interests of at least a part of the state and the tendencies
unleashed by globalization. The state is trying to block a tendency that transcends it, yet the transcend ing is happening anyway (through increased economic
interaction and undocumented immigration, for example). Saskia Sassen (1995) has also pointed out a similar contradiction. While she has emphasized the
ways in which sovereignty is being decentered and redistributed onto other entities such as
supranational organizations, international agreements on human rights that limit state autonomy,
and the international legal regime for business transactions (65). Sassen writes: "Economic globalization
denationalizes national economies; in contrast, immigration is renationalizing politics [...] that
national state claims all its old splendor in asserting its sovereign right to control its borders" (63).
Denationalization is in progress only in a highly specialized institutional and functional way (65). The question becomes: "how can the state relinquish

sovereignty in some realms and cling to it in others?" (64). For Sassen, the answer has to do with the fact that immigration legislation
lies within the Congressional Judiciary Committee (not within the Foreign Affairs committee, for example). Since Congress is subject to different interests based on variegated

we stumble upon a "policy-making tug of war" (76) between congressional intent and the
constituencies,

foreign affairs priorities of the executive: "immigration policy continues to be characterized by its
formal isolation from other major processes, as if it were possible to handle migration as a
bounded, closed event" (91). Even so, Sassen believes that human rights regimes begin to impinge on the principle of nation-based citizenship and the
boundaries of the nation (95). This idea has been echoed by Soysal, although in a more qualified manner: boundaries are not more fluid, but rights within them are, and it is

The fluid boundaries of membership

perhaps precisely because of this that the state seeks to enforce territorial exclusion (1994:141). Soysal writes:

do not necessarily mean that the boundaries of the nation-state- are fluid. Neither does it imply
that the nation-state is less predominant than before. Indeed, the nation-states, still acting upon
the national model — since their existence is predicated on tins model — constantly try to keep out foreigners by issuing
new aliens laws and adopting restrictive immigration policies (1994:141; emphasis added). However, the limits of human-rights regimes have been evident in instances in which
border-enforcement policies in the U.S. have been contested on these grounds. In 1999, the San Diego chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the California Rural
Legal Assistance Foundation placed a demand before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights against the government of the United States. The petition alleged that the
State was responsible for the deaths of migrants who lost their lives after the implementation of Operation Gatekeeper (Inter-American Commission Report 2005). According to
the petitioners, the U.S. government was acting in violation of Article I of the American Declaration of Human Rights by designing strategies that consciously aimed at re-
channeling the flow of undocumented migration to harsh rural terrain. The government delayed in submitting a response to the Commission for close to two years. In its eventual
defense, the govern ment argued that migrant deaths could not be attributed to state actions but rather to people being ill prepared to cross harsh terrain; there was no basis under
the American Declaration to suggest that a government was obligated to resort to "all reasonable efforts" to minimize threats to the right to life when crafting policy measures
(Inter-American Commission Report 2005). The state contended that it could not be held responsible for the natural landscape or "for the illegal activity that its law-enforcement
personnel are acting to prevent." The U.S. government could not be asked to "indiscriminately forgo its sovereign right and duty to control the entry of foreign nationals within its
territory." The Commission sided with the State. While the models presented by Herzog and Sassen severely un derestimate the continuing power of the state's border-enforcement
capabilities and intentionality, it is unfair to characterize the debate as one between believers in the "erosion" of the state and those who see the power of the state even in an era in
which the ethos of liberalization was prevalent. After all (especially so for Sassen), there is an implicit idea that a part of the state is immersed in "fighting" against the erosion of

We might be in a better position to understand border-enforcement policies if

its traditional functions in the border.

we concentrate on the ways in which the state has been transformed under neoliberalism. For David
Harvey (2005:2), for example, although neoliberalism, at a basic level, is a theory that claims that human well-being

is best advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms, and hence state intervention in
markets must be severely restrained (the state cannot possess enough information to second-guess market signals, and it might become permeated by
interest groups who shape state interventions for their own benefit), in practice, there is, however, an important role for the state: [N]eoliberalism does not

make the state or particular institu tions of the state (such as the courts and police functions) irrelevant [...] There has,
however, been a radical reconfiguration of state institutions and practices (particularly with respect to the balance
between coercion and consent, between the powers of capital and of popular movements, and between executive and judicial power, on the one hand, and powers of repre sentative

democracy on the other) (Harvey 2005:78; emphasis added). This means that, while there is a push to increase the free
mobility of capital between sectors, regions, and countries — which implies that barriers
such as tariffs, punitive taxation, and environmental controls must be removed — the state
is expected to proactively promote a "good business-investment climate." This tension within
the theory of the neo liberal state results in practices that favor a good business climate
over collective rights of labor or environmental protection (Harvey 2005:70). For Harvey the neoliberal
state in practice tends to produce legisla tion and regulatory frameworks that advantage corporations (or
specific interests such as energy, pharmaceuticals, and agribusiness) (77). In fulfilling this task, the state may increase its coercive capacities: The neoliberal state

will resort to coercive legislation and policing tactics (anti-picketing rules, for instance) to disperse or repress collective
forms of opposition to corporate power. Forms of surveillance and policing multiply: in the US, incarceration became a key state strategy to deal
with prob lems arising among the discarded workers and marginalized populations. The coercive arm of the state is augmented to

protect corporate interests and, if necessary, to repress dissent (77). Loi'c Wacquant (2009) has
taken up and extended the analysis of the coercive aspect of the neoliberal state by positing that
the penal ap paratus has increasingly become part of the core organs of the state. The penal apparatus comes to
embody state sovereignty and is instrumental in imposing categories and upholding material and symbolic divisions. Wacquant writes: the ongoing capitalist "revolution from
above commonly called neoliberalism entails the enlargement and exaltation of the penal sector of the bureaucratic field, so that the state may check the social reverberations
caused by the diffusion of social insecurity in the lower rungs of the class and ethnic hierarchy as well as assuage popular discontent over the dereliction of its traditional economic
and social duties (305). Wacquant builds on Pierre Bourdieu's notions of the bureaucratic field as traversed by two internecine struggles. The first struggle pits the "higher state
nobility" of policy makers aiming to promote market-ori ented reforms against the "lower state nobility" of executants adhering to traditional government goals. The second
struggle — an opposition between the "Left hand" and the "Right hand" of the state — is between the "spendthrift" ministries in charge of "social functions," on the left, and the
ministries charged with enforcing the new economic discipline (budget cuts, fiscal incentives and economic deregulation) on the right. Wacquant wishes then to incorporate an
analysis of the penal apparatus of the state as a core constituent of the Right hand (289). He writes: Everywhere the law-and-order guignol has become a core civic theater onto
whose stage elected officials prance to dramatize moral norms and display their professed capacity for decisive action, thereby reaffirming the political relevance of Leviathan at
the very moment when they organize its powerlessness with respect to the market (298). Wacquant, however, is critical of Harvey, who Wacquant sees as failing to envision how
the penal apparatus is central to the normal functioning of neoliberalism (309). For Harvey, Wacquant claims, the state intervenes only when the neoliberal order breaks down.
Furthermore, the victims of state intervention have not been opponents of corporate rule, as Harvey would have it, but rather precarious frac tions of the proletariat. Wacquant also
points out that law enforcement carries an "expressive function [with the] ramifying material effects [of] generating] controlling images and public categories, to stoke collective

accentuate salient social boundaries, as well as to activate state bureaucracies so as to

emotions and

mould social ties and strategies" (309). Indeed, Douglas S. Massey et al. (2002) argue that border militarization strategies
were enacted mostly for symbolic political purposes and were generated by the particular interactions between economic insecurities and the
"cultivation of public hysteria about undocumented migration" (88). According to Massey et al., INS bureaucrats detected a means of increasing both their prestige and their
resources by promoting an image of a border in crisis. Recalling the impact of the Border Patrol's public relations film Border Under Siege, Massey et al. state: "Lost in the uproar
was the fact that the images were a direct consequence of the Border Patrol's own policies — neither the number nor the characteristics of migrants had changes in any significant
way" (2002:88). Yet, it is still unclear where one could place border enforcement within a model (Wacquant's and Harvey's alike) that does not provide a space for instances in

This oversight can paradoxically

which the repressive arm of the state is ag grandized in at least apparent detriment to strict neoliberal schemes.

result in a disregard for the connection between border enforcement and NAFTA, or in
exaggerated notions about the correspondence between the state and capital. Indeed, some have seen
NAFTA and Gatekeeper as serving complementary functions for national and transnational
capitalism (maintaining a vast amount of workers in Mexico to feed the maquiladoras while at the same time allowing just enough workers to cross the border — un
documented, and hence subordinated — to satisfy American industries dependent on migrant labor). Huspek (2001) goes as far as to imply that Gatekeeper has a social-

In times
evolutionist function as a filter that allows in only those who are more fit for work (those who are able to undergo the harsh conditions of clandestine crossing).

of high production, it is argued, capitalists demand cheaper labor for their domestic industries and
actively recruit the "industrial reserve army of labor" found in foreign labor markets. Conversely, in times of
economic uncertainty, a demand for a more closed immigration policy arises in order to avoid capital instability. Grace Chang (2000:174) for example, has argued that the "true
function of the INS [is] to regulate the movement, availability, and independence of migrant labor." Certainly we can think of the ways in which border-enforcement policies may

geographical mobility of capital permits it to dominate a

end up benefiting capitalist sectors. Harvey (2005:168-169) writes that the "

global labor force whose own geographi cal mobility is constrained." Undocumented labor's
"clandestine" status automatically results in the presence of a marginalized and subordinated pool
of labor, and, as Peter Brownell (2001:85) writes: "Mexican work ers are not inherently 'cheap labor.' Rather, U.S. immigration policy structures the conditions of their
participation in the labor market." But to provide a causal explanations of the workings of the state solely by reference to the benefits allocated (often indirectly) by its policies puts
us too close to a functionalist analysis at best, and, at worst, becomes pure speculatation. Neil Brenner (2004) provides us with a third model to be considered. Brenner has argued
against the ideas of the imminent demise of the nation state due to the uncontrollable forces of globalization, while at the same time critiquing the "purely territorialist, nationally
focused models [which] have become an inadequate basis for understanding the rapidly changing institutional and geographical landscapes of capitalism" (7). Brenner is interested

For
in understanding statehood under contemporary capitalism by developing the counterargument that national states are being qualitatively transformed, not dismantled.

him, state power, policy formation, and sociopolitical struggle are being decentralized in response
to both global and domestic pressures, making city-regions "key institutional sites in which a
major rescaling of national state power has been unfolding" (3). While Brenner is mostly interested in the transformation of state
structures in relation to capitalist development, it is important to con sider that the state functions at different jurisdictional levels. Indeed, a recent trend has been for cities to pass
anti-immigration laws indepen dent of the federal government (Massey et al. 2002:93). It is also impor tant to note, for example, that the anti-immigration campaign that led up to
California's Proposition 187, which would deny public services to undocumented immigrants in the state arguably began in January 1992 when Gustavo de la Vina, a Border Patrol
chief in San Diego, unilaterally decided to put up a new fence and deploy additional agents just in time for many undocumented migrants' return to the U.S. after visiting family in
December. When migrants and smugglers encountered these new obstacles, they began organizing "banzai runs" (of fifty or more immi grants) through the closest unbarricaded
sector (the official port of entry itself). By that time, de la Vina had assembled a video crew to document the funneled migratory flow and later edit a public relations video en titled
Border Under Siege. The video became an important resource during Governor Pete Wilson's push for Proposition 187 (in fact, it still remains archival footage of choice for many
mainstream media outlets even though "banzai runs" have disappeared altogether after Gatekeeper). Also, in the case of the border-enforcement buildup of the 1990s, it is
interesting to note that its immediate precursor was Operation Blockade, which was also unilaterally launched by the Border Patrol sector in El Paso, Texas, in 1993 (Nevins
2002:90). Furthermore, in Nevins's descrip tion of the more immediate political atmosphere prior to the implemen tation of Gatekeeper, the new operation is discussed as an
attempt by the Clinton administration to create a counterweight to the political capital gained by the Republican Party through Governor Pete Wilson and his push for Proposition
187. From a political standpoint, Gatekeeper was enacted as a way to prove that the Clinton administration was "serious" about stopping undocumented immigration and to
communicate to the voter that Wilson's Proposition 187 was, hence, uncalled for. It is hard to say that Gatekeeper is due to a rescaling of the state because certain decisions were
taken at a local level. Indeed, if these deci sions are in hindsight considered historically relevant it is because they inaugurated a set of policies that were projected as a national

strategy. The federal state simply adopted locally developed approaches when it saw it fit its interests.
 -- AT But The Poor People
Open borders don’t help the poor people – basic economics
Smith 14 (2/19/14, Yves Smith is a professional economist with a background in property
development, environmental economics research and economic regulation. “Open Borders: A
Morality Play by the 1%” https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/02/open-borders-morality-
play-1.html//TU-SG)

That open borders within countries does not automatically eliminate poverty reminds us be
skeptical of
claims that opening borders between them will reduce poverty
automatically . It helps to identify the potential winners and losers from opening borders in order to better
If open borders works, and large scale migration occurs, the net effect is
understand the motivations it its proponents.

that the poorest in the world’s richest countries would have their wages reduced due to
competition for unskilled jobs. By contrast, the richest individuals in rich countries, whose incomes are
derived mostly from owning capital, would increase due to the greater demand for their domestic
assets (such as land) following high levels of immigration. Even the wildest proponents of open borders
agree that …open borders could not on its own eliminate poverty and that international migration could only help the
relatively better off among the global poor The rich get richer ; that we know with some degree of confidence. The
poor get, well, we don’t know. Probably poorer in relative terms , maybe richer in absolute terms. We just don’t know.
But we can be fairly certain that the poorest in the world are unlikely to walk away from their

homes and straight into the most exclusive enclaves of New York and London. Indeed, one suspects that the most
highly educated from the poorest countries will be the first to leave (as they often are now). Open borders in a global sense is therefore

likely to be a game that benefits the richest from the poorest countries and still leaves the
poorest with few options to improve their economic fortunes .
 L – Refugees
The aff’s representation of the refugees as “in crisis” is ideological masking
that allows capitalism to run rampant
Mojab 16 (Shahrzad Mojab is an academic activist and professor, teaching at the Department
of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education and Women and Gender Studies Institute, at the
University of Toronto. “Refugees and Capitalism”
https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/atc/4693.html//TU-SG)

The
A Product of Capitalism This human catastrophe is called a “refugee crisis.” However, a closer look can reveal a much deeper crisis that is shaking humanity.

terminology of “crisis” is an ideological masking of the world capitalist crisis . It is “ideological”

because it is presented to us as both “unavoidable” and as an “isolated” incident. This perilous
condition, however, is the creation of the capitalist imperialist order in an effort to resolve many of its
deep contradictions. Among them, and the principal one, is the global-based mass socialization of production and the anarchy embedded in the privatization of the
wealth being produced by millions of laboring women and men. Millions of people are circulating around the world in search

of work. Women from the Philippines, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are leaving their families behind to look after the families of strangers in the Gulf States, North America
and Europe. Their men are recruited by construction industries to build monumental towers under

slave-like working conditions. Workers from Mexico and the Carib-bean are entering the United States and Canada as seasonal migrant workers to pick
fruits and vegetables to cheapen the cost of labor for corporate agribusiness. Most of us are affected by this “mass socialization of

production” through selling our power to labor. The capitalist owners are in competition in buying, selling and exchanging commodities,
ranging from labor power to finance capital or other forms of commodities such as food, garments or technology. Anarchy in the market requires the

intervention of the capitalist state to regulate, moderate and control this anarchy on behalf of the
capitalist class. This unjust system has made life intolerable for the majority of the world
population . The capitalist state often resorts to unrelenting wars, invasions, occupations or
genocide. The predacious class controlling this state has left open the wounds of colonialism and centuries of slavery that have damaged the social fabric of communities
and societies. Homes, neighborhoods, villages and cities are ruined beyond recognition and, in the process of this unfathomable destruction, other entrenched forces of annihilation

Western imperialism, now in conflict with its former Islamist allies such
such as religious extremisms have emerged.

as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, fights fire with fire: While resources are focused on war, there is
considerable effort to also promote “moderate” or “reformist” religious tendencies as an
alternative to ISIS, Boko Haram or Al-Shabaab. In more than two decades of military intervention in the MENA region, the imperialist
collusion and collision with religious patriarchy has strengthened the rule of religion and has shrunk the secular spaces and possibilities in most of these societies. Let us consider

Among the 10 million displaced Syrians, the majority are women

the impact of these relations in the lives of Syrian refugees.

and children. They flee war zones, but cannot escape patriarchal religious violence. Rape and sexual assault are a frequent
occurrence at checkpoints, on the borders, or in the camps. Displacement adds to economic insecurity and therefore forces young girls into early marriage or prostitution. Hibaaq
Osman (2016) reports that “the rate of child marriage among Syrians in Jordan” doubled between 2011 and 2012, making “them more vulnerable to abuse.” The patriarchal
relations under the condition of war and displacement have forced women to effectively live “under house arrest.” (Ibid.) It is well-established that rape and sexual violence are
weapons of war. But other forms of violence against women such as domestic violence, abduction, forced prostitution, early marriage and sexual exploitation are daily experienced
by women and young girls in the disruption of life by war. Osman writes that “an estimated 250,000 Syrians have been killed in the last five years, the slaughter has left thousands
of women as head of their household” and that the burden of care for the elderly and disabled is on their backs. Sex trafficking gangs are organized to transfer girls over 16 to the

What appear as “civil” wars in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen or throughout

Gulf States. Continuation of Colonial War

the MENA region are in fact continuations of colonialist wars, reinforcing and realigning
patriarchal, racialized and colonized forces. The horrific atrocities committed against women under these conditions leads us to conclude that
imperialist wars are symbolically and literally fought on and over women’s bodies. Women signify land, nation, culture, ethnicity, religion and community to be captured,
controlled, veiled or securitized. A forgotten group of “refugees” within the border of Syria are Palestinians who have endured displacement for 65 years: from their homeland
Palestine in 1948, and now since 2012 with the outbreak of war in Syria. About half a million Palestinian refugees are registered in twelve Palestinian refugee camps in Syria; all
are displaced again. According to reports, in a single day in April 2013, 6000 Palestinian camp residents in Ein al Tal Camp were displaced. The population of Yarmouk camp in
southern Damascus, which once numbered some 160,000 people, has dwindled to a mere 30,000 following mass displacement in December 2012. (Al-Hardan, 2012) A total of

the “crisis” of refugees is a

235,000 Palestinian refugees are now internally displaced within Syria. (White, 2013) My point, so far, has been that

manifestation of a multilayered crisis of capitalist imperialism wherein different wars, from Syria to Ukraine, Somalia,
Libya or Congo, are overlapping and interacting. In Europe and North America, this “crisis” is hastening the growth of virulent fascist

and neo-fascist currents. Indeed, the sectarian, ethnicized, religious-based wars in the MENA region are spreading into the streets of Europe. Refugee camp
workers and volunteers in European cities report the rise of sexual and sectarian violence within the refugee camps. As I have mentioned already, none of these tensions is limited
to the MENA region nor is this the first time that it is happening in recent history. The Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya is a case in point. Ben Rawlence’s City of Thrones: Nine
Lives in the World’s Largest Refugee Camp (2016) presents a horrifying account of refugee lives. Dadaab literally means “the rocky, hard place;” but it also means a place of
violence, brutality, starvation, rape, corruption, suffering and death. The camp was built in 1992 by the UNHCR to shelter 90,000 Somalian refugees fleeing war and persecution.
Today, it is a ravaged metropolis with half a million residents from neighboring countries. A recruiting ground for Islamist extremists like Al-Shabaab, it is a place where the
humanitarian aid agencies, government and non-government forces collaborate with patriarchal religious and secular groups in sexually harassing, financially corrupting, and
mentally persecuting the residents of the camp. This is a place of entrapment for generations of migrants who have not experienced anything but violence and dispossession.*

Bartered Lives The mass-based migration of people is militarized and securitized. In 2013-14, Italy operated its Mare
Nostrum humanitarian rescue mission in the Mediterranean. This operation saved the lives of 150,000 migrants in danger of drowning. The plan was canceled under the pressure of
the European Union (EU) because it was deemed to “encourage” people to leave North Africa for Europe via the sea. The rescue mission was replaced by a punitive and
controlling “Operation Triton” conducted by Frontex (the EU boarder police). Thousands perished in the sea and still dead bodies reach Europe’s shores. The capitalist imperialist
Europe put their forces together to solve the “refugee crisis” by “bartering refugees for refugees,” this time involving Turkey, the rising religious and autocratic regime in the
region. Iverna McGowan, head of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office, wrote: “EU and Turkish leaders have today sunk to a new low, effectively horse trading
away the rights and dignity of some of the world’s most vulnerable people. The idea of bartering refugees for refugees is not only dangerously dehumanizing, but also offers no
sustainable long term solution to the ongoing humanitarian crisis.” (Amnesty International, 2016) Here is how this “dehumanizing” deal was arranged: In November 2015, EU
leaders announced an agreement to offer Turkey three billion Euros over two years to manage more than two million refugees from Syria, in return for curbing the flow of
migration into Europe. In March 2016, another plan was finalized between the EU and Turkey: The EU proposed to the Turkish government a plan in which Turkey would take
back every refugee who entered Greece (and thereby the EU) illegally. In return, the EU would accept one person into the EU who is registered as a Syrian refugee in Turkey for
every Syrian sent back from Greece. Turkey countered the offer by demanding a further 3 billion Euros in order to help them in supplying the 2.7 million refugees in Turkey. In
addition, the Turkish government asked for their citizens to be allowed to travel freely into the Schengen area, i.e., the 22 nations of Europe that have abolished passport controls,
starting at the end of June 2016, as well as an increased speed in talks for a possible accession of Turkey to European Union. This plan was also “criticized on 8 March 2016 by the

United Nations, which warned that it could be illegal to send the migrants back to Turkey in exchange of financial and political rewards.” (Nebehay and Baczynask, 2016) In
mainstream reporting and analysis the refugee is reduced to a disembodied person,
fragmented into a nation, religion, or ethnic body, functioning and suffering outside of any
structure of power such as religious or capitalist patriarchy. This approach cites “pull
factors” to explain the mass desire of refugees to arrive in the EU . In these accounts, Europe
is considered to be the place of safety, security, and prosperity, of a much desired “West.” Slavoj ?i?ek
(2015) wrote: “The hard lessons for the refugees is that ‘there is no Norway;’ even in Norway. They [refugees] will have

to learn to censor their dreams: Instead of chasing them in reality, they should focus on changing
reality.” Then there are “push factors” such as ISIS, Boko Haram or El-Shabab. But
poverty, violence, corruption, authoritarianism, legacies of colonialism, and decades of
occupation and neoliberal austerity measures do not constitute “push factors.” More importantly, the
dependency of these two factors — “push” and “pull,” even if we attempt to consider them
seriously — on each other, and the totality of the unbearable conditions that they create for
people, is left out in this analysis. Imperial/Fundamentalist Symbiosis My point is that instead of relying on the positivist analysis of “correlating”
factors, we should expand and broaden our analysis to understand the conflicting but nonetheless complementary relations between imperialism and fundamentalism. In reality

there is a symbiotic relationship between them. Defending or supporting either imperialism or fundamentalism
will strengthen both . Every terrorist attack is responded to with a rally organized by fascist groups in Europe; more bombings fuel the
fire of war, more radicalization of the youth to join extremist groups; more displaced people
appear on the borders of the West, more rise in anti-immigrant sentiments, racism and
Islamophobia. Humanity is ensnared by the belligerent forces of imperialism and fundamentalism. The ideology of us/them, civilized/barbaric, tradition/modernity,
religious/secular or tribal/cosmopolitan is reinforcing this contradictory but complementary set of relations. The capitalist imperialist system

shows much contempt for the lives of millions, easily expelling them from their homes and lands,
bartering them and disposing them through the mechanism of “savage sorting.” (Sassen, 2014) This
should be a wake-up call — a call that the world needs a completely and radically different social
order. The current crisis is full of real and serious dangers, and the world condition is explosive. But it can bring real opportunities for radical social transformation. The 2011
Arab Uprising raised hopes for the building of a better world, but the millions who engaged in street politics lacked revolutionary leadership and were content with replacing
dictators by those who promised fair elections and the rule of law. Religious fundamentalists and imperialist powers, in collaboration with military, local and regional powers, were

To understand
ready to impose war and destruction to shatter people’s aspirations for democracy, freedom and equality. Understanding “The Crisis” Final thoughts:

the “crisis” of our time, we should not limit our analysis to the current events. If we do so, we
will never understand the depth of the human misery under the capitalist imperialist
condition nor be able to answer why and how patriarchal, racist, nationalist, religious
fundamentalist relations are (re)produced . Humanity does not deserve this life and condition. This level of
wretchedness is not limited to zones of war in the world. A characteristic of today’s imperialism
is the convergence of its domestic and international relations. For instance, the “War-on-Terror” is an
instance of the overlap of domestic and international forms of co-dependency in surveillance,
racialization, incarceration or policing. The sex trafficking of women, barbed wire fences along the U.S.-Mexico border or between European
nations, or the “separation walls” in Israel and the “normalizing” of the right of the state to securitize citizens in border crossing or in schools, are all forms of racialized and
gendered violence.

Refugees become commodities to serve the global economy

ŽIŽEk 15-, Slavoj ŽIŽEk, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, is a senior researcher at
the the Institute for Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London. He has also been a
visiting professor at more than 10 universities around the world. Žižek is the author of many
books 9-9-2015, "Slavoj Zizek: We Can’t Address the EU Refugee Crisis Without Confronting
Global Capitalism," In these Times, http://inthesetimes.com/article/18385/slavoj-zizek-european-
refugee-crisis-and-global-capitalism > ,accessed 7-13-18 /AH
In her classic study On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross proposed the famous scheme of the five stages of how we react upon
learning that we have a terminal illness: denial (one simply refuses to accept the fact: “This can’t be happening, not to me.”); anger
(which explodes when we can no longer deny the fact: “How can this happen to me?”); bargaining (the hope we can somehow
postpone or diminish the fact: “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”); depression (libidinal disinvestment: “I'm going to die,
so why bother with anything?”); acceptance (“I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it.”). Later, Kübler-Ross applied these stages to
any form of catastrophic personal loss (joblessness, death of a loved one, divorce, drug addiction), and also emphasized that they do
not necessarily come in the same order, nor are all five stages experienced by all patients. Is the reaction of the public opinion and
authorities in Western Europe to the flow of refugees from Africa and Middle East also not a similar combination of disparate
reactions? There was denial, now diminishing: “It’s not so serious, let’s just ignore it.” There is anger: “Refugees are a threat to our
way of life, hiding among them Muslim fundamentalists, they should be stopped at any price!” There is bargaining: “OK, let’s
establish quotas and support refugee camps in their own countries!” There is depression: “We are lost, Europe is turning into Europa-
stan!” What is lacking is acceptance, which, in this case, would have meant a consistent all-European plan of how to deal with the
refugees. So what to do with hundreds of thousands of desperate people who wait in the north of Africa, escaping from war and
hunger, trying to cross the sea and find refuge in Europe? There are two main answers. Left liberals express their outrage at how
Europe is allowing thousands to drown in Mediterranean. Their plea is that Europe should show solidarity by opening its doors
widely. Anti-immigrant populists claim we should protect our way of life and let the Africans solve their own problems. Which
solution is better? To paraphrase Stalin, they are both worse. Those who advocate open borders are the greater hypocrites: Secretly,
they know very well this will never happen, since it would trigger an instant populist revolt in Europe. They play the Beautiful Soul
which feels superior to the corrupted world while secretly participating in it. The anti-immigrant populist also know very well that, left
to themselves, Africans will not succeed in changing their societies. Why not? Because we, North Americans and Western Europeans,
are preventing them. It was the European intervention in Libya which threw the country in chaos. It was the U.S. attack on Iraq which
created the conditions for the rise of ISIS. The ongoing civil war in the Central African Republic is not just an explosion of ethnic
hatred; France and China are fighting for the control of oil resources through their proxies. But the clearest case of our guilt is today’s
Congo, which is again emerging as the African “heart of darkness.” Back in 2001, a UN investigation into the illegal exploitation of
natural resources in Congo found that its internal conflicts are mainly about access to, control of, and trade in five key mineral
resources: coltan, diamonds, copper, cobalt and gold. Beneath the façade of ethnic warfare, we thus discern the workings of global
capitalism. Congo no longer exists as a united state; it is a multiplicity of territories ruled by local warlords controlling their patch of
land with an army which, as a rule, includes drugged children. Each of these warlords has business links to a foreign company or
corporation exploiting the mining wealth in the region. The irony is that many of these minerals are used in high-tech products such as
laptops and cell phones. Remove the foreign high-tech companies from the equation and the whole
narrative of ethnic warfare fueled by old passions falls apart. This is where we should begin if we really
want to help the Africans and stop the flow of refugees. The first thing is to recall that most of refugees come
from the “failed states”—where public authority is more or less inoperative, at least in large
regions—Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Congo, etc. This disintegration of state power is not a local
phenomenon but a result of international economy and politics—in some cases, like Libya and Iraq, a direct outcome of Western
intervention. It is clear that the rise of these “failed states” is not just an unintended misfortune but also one of the ways the great
powers exert their economic colonialism. One should also note that the seeds of the Middle East’s “failed states” are to be sought in
the arbitrary borders drawn after World War I by UK and France and thereby creating a series of “artificial” states. By way of uniting
One cannot help
Sunnis in Syria and Iraq, ISIS is ultimately bringing together what was torn apart by the colonial masters.
noting the fact that some not-too-rich Middle Eastern countries (Turkey, Egypt, Iraq) are
much more open to the refugees than the really wealthy ones (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United
Arab Emirates, Qatar). Saudi Arabia and Emirates received no refugees, although they border
countries in crisis and are culturally much closer to the refugees (who are mostly Muslims) than
Europe. Saudi Arabia even returned some Muslim refugees from Somalia. Is this because Saudi Arabia is a fundamentalist
theocracy which can tolerate no foreign intruders? Yes, but one should also bear in mind that this same Saudi
Arabia is economically fully integrated into the West. From the economic standpoint, are Saudi
Arabia and Emirates, states that totally depend on their oil revenues, not pure outposts of Western
capital? The international community should put full pressure on countries like Saudi Arabia Kuwait and Qatar to do their duty in
accepting a large contingent of the refugees. Furthermore, by way of supporting the anti-Assad rebels, Saudi Arabia is largely
A new
responsible for the situation in Syria. And the same holds in different degrees for many other countries—we are all in it.
slavery Another feature shared by these rich countries is the rise of a new slavery. While capitalism legitimizes itself
as the economic system that implies and furthers personal freedom (as a condition of market
exchange), it generated slavery on its own, as a part of its own dynamics: although slavery
became almost extinct at the end of the Middle Ages, it exploded in colonies from early
modernity till the American Civil War. And one can risk the hypothesis that today, with the new
epoch of global capitalism, a new era of slavery is also arising. Although it is no longer a
direct legal status of enslaved persons, slavery acquires a multitude of new forms: millions of
immigrant workers in the Saudi peninsula (Emirates, Qatar, etc.) who are de facto deprived of
elementary civil rights and freedoms; the total control over millions of workers in Asian
sweatshops often directly organized as concentration camps; massive use of forced labor in the
exploitation of natural resources in many central African states (Congo, etc.). But we don’t have to look
so far. On December 1, 2013, at least seven people died when a Chinese-owned clothing factory in an industrial zone in the Italian
town of Prato, 19 kilometers from the center of Florence, burned down, killing workers trapped in an improvised cardboard dormitory
built onsite. The accident occurred in the Macrolotto industrial district of the town, known for its garment factories. Thousands more
Chinese immigrants were believed to be living in the city illegally, working up to 16 hours per day for a network of wholesalers and
workshops turning out cheap clothing. We thus do not have to look for the miserable life of new slaves far away in the suburbs of
Shanghai (or in Dubai and Qatar) and hypocritically criticize China—slavery can be right here, within our house, we just don't see it
(or, rather, pretend not to see it). This new de facto apartheid, this systematic explosion of the number of different forms of de facto
slavery, is not a deplorable accident but a structural necessity of today's global capitalism. But
are the refugees entering
Europe not also offering themselves to become cheap precarious workforce, in many cases at
the expense of local workers, who react to this threat by joining anti-immigrant political parties?
For most of the refugees, this will be the reality of their dream realized. The refugees are not just
escaping from their war-torn homelands; they are also possessed by a certain dream. We can
see again and again on our screens. Refugees in southern Italy make it clear that they don’t want
to stay there—they mostly want to live in Scandinavian countries. And what about thousands camping
around Calais who are not satisfied with France but are ready to risk their lives to enter the United Kingdom? And what about tens of
thousands of refugees in Balkan countries who want to reach Germany at least? They declare this dream as their unconditional right,
and demand from European authorities not only proper food and medical care but also the transportation to the place of their choice.
There is something enigmatically utopian in this impossible demand: as if it is the duty of Europe
to realize their dream, a dream which, incidentally, is out of reach to most of Europeans. How many
South and East Europeans would also not prefer to live in Norway? One can observe here the paradox of utopia: precisely when
people find themselves in poverty, distress and danger, and one would expect that they would be satisfied by a minimum of safety and
well-being, the absolute utopia explodes. The hard lesson for the refugees is that “there is no Norway,” even in Norway. They will
have to learn to censor their dreams: Instead of chasing them in reality, they should focus on changing reality. A Left taboo One of the
great Left taboos will have to be broken here: the notion that the protection of one’s specific way of life is in itself a proto-Fascist or
racist category. If we don’t abandon this notion, we open up the way for the anti-immigrant wave which thrives all around Europe.
(Even in Denmark, the anti-immigrant Democratic party for the first time overtook Social-Democrats and became the strongest party
in the country.) Addressing concerns of ordinary people about the threats to their specific way of life can be done also from the Left.
Bernie Sanders is a living proof of that! The true threat to our communal ways of life are not foreigners but the dynamic of global
capitalism: In the United States alone, the economic changes of the last several decades did more to destroy communal life in small
cities than all the immigrants together. The standard Left-liberal reaction to this is, of course, an explosion of arrogant moralism: The
moment we give any credence to the “protection of our way of life” motif, we already compromise our position, since we propose a
more modest version of what anti-immigrant populists openly advocate. Is this not the story of last decades? Centrist parties reject the
open racism of anti-immigrant populists, but they simultaneously profess to “understand the concerns” of ordinary people and enact a
more “rational” version of the same politics. But while this contains a kernel of truth, the moralistic complaints—“Europe lost
empathy, it is indifferent towards the suffering of others,” etc.—are merely the obverse of the anti-immigrant brutality. Both stances
share the presupposition, which is in no way self-evident, that a defense of one’s own way of life excludes ethical universalism. One
should thus avoid getting caught into the liberal game of “how much tolerance can we afford.” Should we tolerate if they prevent their
children going to state schools, if they arrange marriages of their children, if they brutalize gays among their ranks? At this level, of
course, we are never tolerant enough, or we are always already too tolerant, neglecting the rights of women, etc. The only way to
 One must thus
break out of this deadlock is to move beyond mere tolerance or respect of others to a common struggle.
broaden the perspective: Refugees are the price of global economy. In our global world,
commodities circulate freely, but not people: new forms of apartheid are emerging. The
topic of porous walls, of the threat of being inundated by foreigners, is strictly immanent to global
capitalism, it is an index of what is false about capitalist globalization. While large migrations
are a constant feature of human history, their main cause in modern history are colonial
expansions: Prior to colonization, the Global South mostly consisted of self-sufficient and
relatively isolated local communities. It was colonial occupation and slave trading that threw this
way of life off the rails and renewed large-scale migrations. Europe is not the only place experiencing a wave of
immigration. In South Africa, there are over a million refugees from Zimbabwe, who are exposed
to attacks from local poor for stealing their jobs. And there will be more, not just because of armed conflicts,
but because of new “rogue states,” economic crisis, natural disasters (exacerbated by climate change), man-made disasters, etc. It is
now known that, after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, Japanese authorities thought for a moment that the entire Tokyo area—20
millions of people—will have to be evacuated. Where, in this case, should they have gone? Under what conditions? Should they be
given a piece of land or just be dispersed around the world? What if northern Siberia becomes more inhabitable and arable, while vast
sub-Saharan regions become too dry to support the large populations that live there? How will the exchange of population be
organized? When similar things happened in the past, social changes occurred in a wild spontaneous way, with violence and
destruction (recall the great migrations at the end of the Roman empire)—such a prospect is catastrophic in today’s conditions, with
arms of mass destruction available to many nations. The main lesson to be learned is therefore that humankind should get ready to live
in a more “plastic” and nomadic way: Rapid local and global changes in environment may require unheard-of, large-scale social
transformations. One thing is clear: National sovereignty will have to be radically redefined and new levels of global cooperation
invented. And what about the immense changes in economy and conservation due to new weather patterns or water and energy
shortages? Through what processes of decision will such changes be decided and executed? A lot of taboos will have to be broken
here, and a set of complex measures undertaken. First, Europe will have to reassert its full commitment to provide means for the
dignified survival of the refugees. There should be no compromise here: Large migrations are our future, and the only alternative to
such commitment is a renewed barbarism (what some call “clash of civilizations”). Second, as a necessary consequence of this
commitment, Europe should organize itself and impose clear rules and regulations. State control of the stream of refugees should be
enforced through a vast administrative network encompassing all of the European Union (to prevent local barbarisms like those of the
authorities in Hungary or Slovakia). Refugees should be reassured of their safety, but it should also be made clear to them that they
have to accept the area of living allocated to them by European authorities, plus they have to respect the laws and social norms of
European states: No tolerance of religious, sexist or ethnic violence on any side, no right to impose onto others one’s own way of life
or religion, respect of every individual’s freedom to abandon his/her communal customs, etc. If a woman chooses to cover her face,
her choice should be respected, but if she chooses not to cover it, her freedom to do so has to be guaranteed. Yes, such a set of rules
privileges the Western European way of life, but it is a price for European hospitality. These rules should be clearly stated and
enforced, by repressive measures (against foreign fundamentalists as well as against our own anti-immigrant racists) if necessary.
Third, a new type of international interventions will have to be invented: military and economic interventions that avoid neocolonial
traps. What about UN forces guaranteeing peace in Libya, Syria or Congo? Since such interventions are closely associated with
neocolonialism, extreme safeguards will be needed. The cases of Iraq, Syria and Libya demonstrate how the wrong type of
intervention (in Iraq and Libya) as well as non-intervention (in Syria, where, beneath the appearance of non-intervention, external
powers from Russia to Saudi Arabia and the U.S.? are fully engaged) end up in the same deadlock. Fourth,
the most difficult
and important task is a radical economic change that should abolish social conditions that
create refugees. The ultimate cause of refugees is today’s global capitalism itself and its
geopolitical games, and if we do not transform it radically, immigrants from Greece and other
European countries will soon join African refugees. When I was young, such an organized attempt to regulate
commons was called Communism. Maybe we should reinvent it. Maybe, this is, in the long term,
our only solution. Is all this a utopia? Maybe, but if we don’t do it, then we are really lost, and we
deserve to be.

Syrian refugees feed the neoliberal economy

Samaddar 18-, Ranabir Samaddar, Director of the Calcutta Research Group, His particular
researches have been on migration and refugee studies, 6-19-2018, "Why refugees and migrants
working for low wages are essential for brutal neoliberal capitalism," Africa Truth,
http://aftruth.com/article/why-refugees-and-migrants-working-for-low-wages-are-essential-for-
neoliberal-capitalism/ ,accessed 7-12-18, /AH

Most writings on refugee economy or the immigrant economy refer to changes in the immigrant
labour absorption policies of the Western governments. These writings reflect on the economic
activities of the refugees and other victims of forced migration. Refugees are seen as economic
actors in the market. But we do not get a full picture of why capitalism in late twentieth or early twenty first century needs
these refugee or immigrant economic actors These writings showcase refugees’ attempts to survive meaningfully in camps, cities, and
other settlements, in ethnically homogenous or mixed settings, and the ways they prove useful to market, big business, and organised
trade. Several studies along this line tell us of the success stories of migrants’ economic activities. The
message is: the
refugee or the migrant as an economic actor has arrived, do not neglect the refugee, do not
dismiss the refugee as an economic actor. Yet the organic link between the immigrant as an economic actor and the
global capitalist economy seems to escape the analysis in these writings. Between assistance and control of migrants Yet as Michel
Agier in his detailed study (Managing the Undesirables: Refugee Camps and Humanitarian Government, 2011) of several camps
shows, on the ground, however, the structure of care and protection put in place ensures that this remains a situation of permanent
catastrophe and endless emergency, where undesirables are kept apart and out of sight, while the care dispensed is designed to control,
Refugee camps are
filter and confine. How can we explain this duality of care and control coupled with exclusion?
transforming, likewise immigrant settlements are changing. Camps are like holding territories of
mobile labour, since they hold at one place an enormous amount of reserve labour. Camps are
becoming towns, and other types of big, informal-formal settlements. Without a study of the immigrant as
the labouring subject is it possible to make sense of such transformation? Even on occasions where the refugees or immigrants are
considered as economic actors it is a matter of labour market segmentation and differentiation. For instance, Stephen Castles and Mark
Miller’s The Age of Migration (2003) has an entire chapter on migrants in the labour force. They take note of the dominant presence
of the migrants in the informal economy, “growing fragmentation of immigrant employment and the range and significance of
immigrant labour market diversity” (p. 183), and labour market segmentation leading to long term marginalisation of certain
immigrant groups and immigrant women workers, and global cities and ethnic entrepreneurs. In all these analyses, market is the
conceptual anchor, be it labour market or trade, or marketing of skills. As
a consequence, the question frequently
asked is about the impact of the refugees on the host economy, and not, about why economies
cannot do without the so-called refugee economies that supply informal labour for the host
economy. The further result is that the economic interface of refugees and economies is little understood – also, because sufficient
data is not available and the question of refugee impacts does not lend itself to conventional impact evaluation methods. Some suggest
comparison of impacts of cash versus in-kind refugee aid. Refugees contribute to the host country’s economy
But there is nothing special in this. Studies of poverty alleviation programmes in developing countries show specific relevance of both
strategies – depending on specific time, locality, and situation. Most studies do suggest however that despite undergoing forced
migration and often living in destitute conditions, refugees have productive capacities and assets, and they actively interact with host-
Governments have realised that labour market integration calls for
country economies.
investment and viewing the arrival of refugees and other forced migrants as opportunities,
triggering further growth. Labour market integration helps fiscal sustainability for the host
country, given the specific skill base of the migrants say from Syria. Companies therefore
call for more efficient refugee policy, so that admitting refugees and other forced migrants
becomes a matter of both short-term and long-term investment rather than sunk cost. Capitalism
feeds on the informal economy and refugees Yet migrant economies create problems for any
policy of facilitating labour market integration, because these economies carry the signatures of
informal economy, and subsume refugee economies and other labour market actors like climate
migrants, illegal immigrants, economic migrants, etc. and are in turn subsumed in the dynamics
of informal economy. The dynamics of the informal economy relating to types of economic
activities (for instance in care and entertainment industry in countries of Europe) subsumes all
distinctions between refugees and other victims of forced migration, illegal immigrants,
environmental migrants, the internally displaced, the trafficked labour, and so on. We have to
keep in mind while talking of labour market segmentation the countervailing reality of the utmost
flexibility of capitalism to create informal arrangements in production and circulation
everywhere. Michael J. Piore’s classic study, Birds of Passage (1979) argued that the conventional push and pull theory is simply
wrong, and industrial development in one place always creates informal, low paid economy, and calls for the import of informal, low
wage labour for jobs that otherwise would not be performed. Indeed, informality and segmentation go hand in hand; between
stereotyped and regularised skills and jobs, there is a range of work arrangements creating transitory forms of labour, which navigate
The refugee economy is a footloose economy, whose relevance
several institutional spaces of the market.
to global capitalism today lies in the salience of the informal mode of production and
circulation. The global now houses the informal within the formal. Thus a formal sportswear brand
company in its production complex may engage informal makers of shoes, football, cricket bats, caps, etc., who are located across vast
distances, or a fashion company may contract tanneries in distant countries of the South for polished leather goods including leather
The refugee economy, a global economy This is possible because standards are global, and
bags.
the refugee economy in order to survive has to follow the global standards and protocols.
The refugee or the immigrant economy in this way becomes a part of the global supply
chain of a commodity. Classic is the case of carpet making by Tibetan refugees in Nepal or Syrian refugees making leather
and other garment products in Turkey or Bangladeshi immigrants in India engaged in garment making as in Kidderpore in Kolkata.
Syrian refugees also present an insightful corpus of
Opportunities and constraints thus have a pattern.
experiences of how and when refugees become labouring subjects. All these of course link the
management of informal economies on a global scale with the dynamics of global governance. One may argue that global experiences
of refugee and migrant economies suggest a broad uniformity of pattern in the formation of the labouring subjects from refugee and
immigrant populations, namely that they form a huge dispersed population of footloose labour whose products are linked to global
These population groups must be made to work as per the requirements of the
market chains.
global supply chains of commodities and labour; on the other hand they must remain invisible
from the public eye. Skilled refugees who adapt It is now being argued that to resolve the enigma of “refugee economy”,
analysts will have to ensure that, wherever possible, all relevant stakeholder groups four in particular – refugees, host population and
country, area and country of origin, and providers of assistance (which will include presumably business houses providing marketing
opportunities and capital advance to the displaced) – have to be incorporated into the analysis. Quantitative parameters will then have
to be evolved to measure impacts (for example, income, assets, employment and access to natural resources), together with mediating
factors such as age, gender and length of exile; also qualitative factors such as perceptions of security and protection will have to be
identified. With these two methods, the goal has to be to construct an overall socio-economic profile and analyse how the profile is
affected for each of the stakeholders by forced displacement. The host country’s public-sector fiscal costs and impacts in providing
social and welfare assistance for refugees have to be measured, such as, increased medical and education provision, increased demand
for utilities such as water, and longer-term capital costs and impacts such as infrastructure investment. And finally, while the
methodology’s focus will be on livelihoods and micro-economic impacts and costs, assessing the impacts at the macro-economic level
will remain an equally important dimension of the analysis. However, all these at the end of the day are labour market analyses. They
do not throw much light on the larger forces that lead to absorption or otherwise of refugee and immigrant labour in global economy.
The salience of Syrian and Iraqi refugees and asylum seekers in Europe is that they come from countries occupying the grey zone
between the North and the South. With over 80 percent literacy, wide skill base for entrepreneurship, high rate of women’s
participation in non-family forms of labour, these countries have produced refugees who have deployed knowledge in not only
reaching countries where they seek asylum, they also learn quickly new skills, adapt themselves relatively quickly – in a year or two –
to new requirements of language, labour protocols, self-run business rules, and learn to straddle the two different but interacting
worlds of formal economy and the informal economy. The eventual absorption of current immigrant flows of skilled, semi-skilled, and
unskilled labour in labour markets of Europe and countries of other regions (Brazil, South Africa, Hong Kong, the Gulf countries,
etc.), albeit in differential manner, will not be much different from what had happened in Europe, United States, Canada, and Australia
in the pre-Second World War years. In this dense labour market scenario pleas for labour market equality receive consideration from
well-meaning economists and refugee studies specialists, but formal (political, legal) equality makes sense only if they are relevant for
as labouring subject, the migrant’s lack of political equality is
entry in labour markets. Otherwise
the other side of her economic ability to enter the labour market. It is strange then that
migration analysts rarely consider the two aspects together, namely lack of entry in the formal
political arena accompanied by entry in the informal and sometimes formal labour market. Active,
autonomous and nomadic migrants Immigrant labour’s autonomy, more known as “autonomy of migration” allows the migrant to
cope with this dichotomous world. For long, it was a case of political opportunity, but economic closure; now it is the case of
economic opening (entry in the informal labour market), but political closure; yet the migrant as the footloose labouring subject copes
with this upside down world of politics/economics with his/her autonomy to move. In a way this return of economy to the centre stage
of discussions on refugees and migrants is strange, but perhaps should not be so, if we recall that at the heart of the “durable solutions”
debate in refugee studies circles, the issue of economic rehabilitation was always paramount. Policy responses concerning labour
market form the other side of what has been called the autonomy of migration – a term that means among others the willingness and
the capability of the migrants to move on from one condition to another, one job to another, one economic situation to another, and
one economy to another. Autonomy of migration means thus heterogeneity of labour forms. This is again brought out by empirical
studies, like the one conducted by Alexander Betts and his colleagues. That more than two-thirds of refugees are in protracted
displacement, at times in camps and without the right to work or move freely, does not mean that they stay put in one place. As Betts
and his colleagues in their research on African refugees demonstrated, despite the constraints placed on them, vibrant economic
systems often thrive below the radar, whether in the formal or informal economy. Refugees are not economically isolated; they are
part of complex systems that go beyond their communities and the boundaries of particular settlements. Their report tells us of corn
grown in settlements then exported across borders to neighbouring countries, and Congolese jewellery and textiles imported from as
Refugees, a new reserve
far as India and China. Somali shops import tuna from Thailand, via the Middle East and Kenya.
army of workers They are as a result mostly not burden on host states. Migrant labour is
relevant to global supply chains of commodities, it is the global nature of the supply chains
that produces footloose informal labour and ensures that various categories of the
displaced finally add up to the reserve army of labour to be deployed where and when
necessary to the extent that big refugee camps look like townships with specific economies
linked to various commodity chains. And it is this condition that accounts for the relative
autonomy of migration. Therein is the significance of migrant labour, whose marks are
irregularity, informality, subjection to unequal labour regimes, degradation of work,
footloose nature, subjection to violence, and the fundamental relevance of migrant labour
to the logistical aspect of neoliberal capitalism, such as construction labour, work in supply
chains, waste processing including e-waste recycling, and last but not least in care and
entertainment industry. In short, immigration policies produce precarious labour. What is
important to note in this context, and this has general significance for the task of theorising the
migrant as living labour, is that, migrants in the informal labour market are not always
particularly dependent on specific employers. Often their fate depends on immigration policies. They reproduce the
overall uncertain conditions of the life of labour under capitalism. This calls for a rigorous analysis of the link
between the refugee like condition and capitalism, and understand thereby the reasons why
refugees and migrants working for low wages are essential for capitalism.
The Aff’s assertions of ethics are a heartwarming mask to hide its neoliberal
leanings. They create a new form of capital in which refugees become the
supply to the Western demand of compassion.
Mavelli 17, Luca Mavelli, Lecturer in International Politics in the School of Politics at the
University of Surrey. His research focuses on questions of religion, secularity, and postsecularity
in international politics. He has contributed articles to the European Journal of International
Relations, Journal of Religion in Europe, and St Antony's International Review, and will be the
co-editor of the 2012 Review of International Studies Special Issue on 'The Postsecular in
International Politics', (“Citizenship and the Neoliberal Economy of Belonging”, International
Studies Quarterly, 2017, https://watermark.silverchair.com/sqy004.pdf
token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAcowggHGBgkq
hkiG9w0BBwagggG3MIIBswIBADCCAawGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQ
QMlhmVQ2FLCNR8sdrmAgEQgIIBfWe4e10eE0a3q5zRK_Lo4L5Xw_aDVj3g-
4KIJeEY5ZbVpPV2rWEFFu64_wqMECWSG_T8ajfSaucEO2OBoHUu4yofxBFUJz4YWA8Vt
G1aGnTlTcJUFsIaUWeg1ox8MT-5Fnp-PaDZ307v8AGv77oSIJ7tLVphvXWAIkhr-
Xb4odf9wxbml96-
Px6FUkX7ii1bBOAzAlIAbpNm2QnoWsm8sD3LN0uUNrKUKY_jUGrpcNeMYEiWBdZPTihC
8nyQ9wJUMaO75ym21RM0e8RaIxP2UZ-
sEo1xRYEC15irm9ly07WTMFgdG2aMOYa99QehuYFYZui3AoEySuFRnjuZos0Lr2hu0iFKGN
hSAbkIFMliR-l84ns5y5ZX_hpff4dtH9AyL0_neKzCsiDKtGPSOjORW6avWIQKQKc-
Ixnsp3ejZnJMlPI-CE-dNK2Thww2aTH2n_Nw2PzB746Ko3X-
OHoaThpQeAJ0EEyOSG1lDIFJaGNP5MpMsvRNkrsS3-bdCg AS)
New Zealand’s stance reflects a well-established distinction between refugees and economic
migrants. Whereas the former should be assessed and helped according to principle of need, the
latter should be evaluated solely in economic terms. New Zealand has also a tradition of
welcoming refugees with disabilities (Saker 2010, 25–26). For instance, in welcoming Asian
refugees from Uganda in 1973, Prime Minister Norman Kirk insisted that New Zealand should be
ready to accept “a significant proportion of ‘handicapped’ cases” (Beaglehole 2009, 107). This
argument would seemingly lend support to Ong’s (2016b, 22–24) view that contemporary
rationalities of inclusion and exclusion encompass two contending paths: neoliberalism and
ethical traditions of solidarity variously grounded in “religion . . ., feminism, humanitarianism
and other schemes of virtue.” These traditions may challenge the economic rationality of
neoliberalism by prompting states to welcome potentially. “defective” refugees in terms of human
capital, who would constitute a burden for the welfare state. However, as I argued in the first
section, this argument neglects how forms of inclusion based on human rights, shared humanity,
and common solidarity may be colonized and corrupted by neoliberalism. It neglects how these
values may have undergone a process of economization and how—given that economization
cannot be reduced to monetization—entrepreneurial states may try to maximize not just their
economic growth, but their non-monetary and non-economic value. Hence, they may evaluate
prospective citizens—a few hundred Syrian refugees, in this case—as capital that may enhance
their cultural, emotional, and reputational value, even if this implies an economic cost. This
argument appears particularly relevant in the aftermath of Alan Kurdi’s death. In New Zealand,
“Amnesty, the United Nations, Catholic bishops, former Prime Minister Helen Clark and local
mayors publicly urged the Government to do more” (Vance 2015). Yet, the rationale for “doing
more” was not solely framed as necessary in order to relieve the suffering of Syrian refugees. For
Labor leader Andrew Little, “Kiwis” should keep up with their “track record” of open borders for
those in need because “[t]here is something in our nature—we are people of conscience and
compassion—[committed] to offer help” (Vance 2015). Similarly, for then prime minister John
Key, New Zealand should do more because “people want us to respond with extra people, they
definitely want us to respond for Syrians” (New Zealand Herald 2015). These remarks invite us to
consider how responding to the demand of compassion stemming from the emotional wave
provoked by Alan’s death required supplying New Zealand with Syrian refugees in order to
reproduce an ethical and compassionate self-understanding of New Zealanders. Alan’s death, in
other words, contributed to turn Syrian refugees—specifically, a few hundred Syrian refugees
with mental and physical disabilities—into a source of emotional capital which would contribute
to strengthening the self-understanding of the moral value of the country.

It’s not just about monetary value. The aff turns refugees into emotional
capital which supports economization and the neoliberal machine.
Mavelli 17, Luca Mavelli, Lecturer in International Politics in the School of Politics at the
University of Surrey. His research focuses on questions of religion, secularity, and postsecularity
in international politics. He has contributed articles to the European Journal of International
Relations, Journal of Religion in Europe, and St Antony's International Review, and will be the
co-editor of the 2012 Review of International Studies Special Issue on 'The Postsecular in
International Politics', (“Citizenship and the Neoliberal Economy of Belonging”, International
Studies Quarterly, 2017, https://watermark.silverchair.com/sqy004.pdf
token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAAcowggHGBgkq
hkiG9w0BBwagggG3MIIBswIBADCCAawGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQ
QMlhmVQ2FLCNR8sdrmAgEQgIIBfWe4e10eE0a3q5zRK_Lo4L5Xw_aDVj3g-
4KIJeEY5ZbVpPV2rWEFFu64_wqMECWSG_T8ajfSaucEO2OBoHUu4yofxBFUJz4YWA8Vt
G1aGnTlTcJUFsIaUWeg1ox8MT-5Fnp-PaDZ307v8AGv77oSIJ7tLVphvXWAIkhr-
Xb4odf9wxbml96-
Px6FUkX7ii1bBOAzAlIAbpNm2QnoWsm8sD3LN0uUNrKUKY_jUGrpcNeMYEiWBdZPTihC
8nyQ9wJUMaO75ym21RM0e8RaIxP2UZ-
sEo1xRYEC15irm9ly07WTMFgdG2aMOYa99QehuYFYZui3AoEySuFRnjuZos0Lr2hu0iFKGN
hSAbkIFMliR-l84ns5y5ZX_hpff4dtH9AyL0_neKzCsiDKtGPSOjORW6avWIQKQKc-
Ixnsp3ejZnJMlPI-CE-dNK2Thww2aTH2n_Nw2PzB746Ko3X-
OHoaThpQeAJ0EEyOSG1lDIFJaGNP5MpMsvRNkrsS3-bdCg AS)
This argument is well illustrated by the United Kingdom’s decision, shortly after the death of
Alan Kurdi, to commit to take twenty thousand Syrian refugees over a period of five years
directly from camps in Syria’s neighboring countries. Then prime minister David Cameron (cited
in BBC News 2015) explained that the refugees would be selected on the basis of need: “We will
take the most vulnerable: . . . disabled children, . . . women who have been raped, . . . men who
have suffered torture.” Even more than in the case of New Zealand, the British government—
which had withdrawn its support for search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean in 2014
and refused to accept any refugees under the European Union emergency resettlement program in
2015—came under heavy pressure to open its borders to those in greater need. Revealingly, the
flurry of calls urging the government to act questioned how, by failing the test of compassion, the
United Kingdom was betraying its identity, undermining its status as a moral nation capable of
abiding by its obligations, and losing its moral value (Mavelli 2017b, 826–27). The United
Kingdom, in other words, was irredeemably damaging what could be described as its humanity
capital. To avert and reverse this process, in the framework of a logic of economization of
emotions, the country decided to invest in a small number of refugees who could undeniably be
recognized as “victims.” To this end, the pledge was to not just take “womenandchildren”
refugees—the embodiment of defenseless, apolitical, and innocent victimhood as per Cynthia
Enloe’s famous definition (see Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2017, 207). The United Kingdom raised its
moral investment by committing to take the suffering (and emasculated) bodies of disabled
children, raped women, and men who had been tortured in order to produce the emotionally
valuable, deeply racialized, and gendered figure of the “ideal refugee” (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2017,
209). The fact that this choice may be potentially costly for the health system lends support to the
argument advanced in this article. The market value of prospective citizens may not be reduced to
their human, economic, or financial capital and to their capacity to contribute to the economic
growth of the country. The process of neoliberal economization turns emotions into a valuable
source of capital, with the effect that inclusion may become a function of prospective citizens’
capacity to strengthen the emotional identity and moral self-understanding of the country.
 L – Trafficking Victims
The victim focused framework of the aff steals agency from the migrants
while simultaneously legitimizing racialized violence and concealing
capitalism
 This is definitely a better link to the victimization k. when explaining this as a cap link
the victimization argument should become satellite k’s
 You should explain the link in terms of mystifying capitalisms influence on global
trafficking and the global north-south disparity

Sharma 5 (Nandita Sharma is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Sciences,

Atkinson at York University in Toronto, Canada. “Anti-Trafficking Rhetoric and the Making of a
Global Apartheid”
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/4317159.pdf?casa_token=akpf4CJ__VQAAAAA:dn4PlIWwXV
3aBQ_h0dpsKFpjwQ7gOvqcUpFD3yj6kbPx1-
YS4HwqFxd9gMORkplwOgEyL8WzYZL4cdGmouFHvSidLRc9A-
c048yF5D1Wqhv8gbjHvZU//TU-SG)

women and children-but significantly never the men-among these particular migrants were labeled as " victims of
The

trafficking " at various times by some feminists advocating for them as well as by then Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Elinor Caplan. The fact that
they arrived on rusty, unsafe boats after a long, harrowing trip made this seem like common sense. After all, who would voluntarily embark on such a dangerous journey without

Failing to regard the fact that male migrants also traveled under these same conditions, those
being forced?

feminists employing the conceptual frame of trafficking tried to shift the representation of the women

migrants as a danger and a threat to one where they would be seen as victims. Presenting some
women as victims of trafficking, it was hoped, would transform them into extraordinary, innocent
beings and not the supposedly unvictimized, even victimizing, illegal migrants. This, they believed, would help to
elicit greater public sympathy and help the women receive legal status in Canada. The immigration minister, on the other hand, used the label of "traf- ficked women" to rationalize
keeping them in jail. She said that "[t]he snakeheads and their emissaries are always waiting in the shadows to retrieve their clients upon their release from immigration custody"

anti-
(Foster 1999, 1; McGinnis 2001). Jailing these women was thus presented as a form of protection. Although never stated in this way, those feminists using the

trafficking framework shared the belief that the traffick- ers were the greatest threat facing these
women. The women migrants were imagined as vulnerable to the traffickers once released from jail or if returned to China. For some feminists, this vulnerability became the
rationale for demanding the women migrants be allowed to stay in Canada. The idea was to let them stay lest they be retrafficked. The government did not accept this argument.

The fact that anti-trafficking discourses were mobilized to simultane- ously help illegal migrants
as well as maintain and legitimize the state's repressive actions toward them is telling. This convergence of
feminist and state practices points not to the hijacking of the anti-trafficking agenda by the state but to the fundamental, anti-migrant

assumptions embedded within it. The state can adopt the anti-trafficking discourse precisely
because it identifies smuggler/trafficker-aided migration as the problem. Thus, while the women
migrants were not necessarily being portrayed as dangerous, their illegal migration to Canada
was . For all the women I interviewed, their decision to move was mostly an attempt to better provide for themselves and their families because they were unable to eke out a
living in Fujian province, or in China generally. They believed that moving to Canada (or the United States, which is where they intended to go) offered them the best chance for a

none of these women could meet the criteria estab- lished for immigration as
new liveli- hood.' Significantly,

permanent residents to Canada, either through the points system, family reunification program, refugee determination system or the business and entrepreneur
recruitment programs. For them, entry into "the immigration queue" was therefore impossible . Contrary to widely
circulated beliefs that these women were exploited by loan sharks forcing them to pay steep interest rates, most of the women (20 of 24) borrowed money for their migration from
relatives or friends (Foster 1999).2 Also in contrast with prevailing views of "trafficked women," the women I interviewed were not trapped in debt-bondage to those who moved
them. None of the women were allowed to pay their cost of being moved over time. All had to pay the smugglers upon arrival at their destination point.3 To pay these fees, the
women borrowed money from family or friends-those whom they could pay back over a longer period. Moreover, despite the rhetoric of "Chinese triads and tongs" being the

women I interviewed
ringleaders of trafficking rings circulated by the mainstream media, Canadian immigration officials, and even some feminist advocates, the

revealed that the smugglers organizing their move- ment were not closely linked with criminal
gangs (Wong 2004). They were not part of a powerful mafia; rather the smugglers were generally small business owners.4 Like the
migrants themselves, the smugglers were motivated by poverty . As a recent New York Times article put it, "[t]he smugglers [ran] a business
 recent studies show that in the majority of cases
built for the poor by the poor" (Thompson and Ochoa 2004, Al). Indeed,

smuggling is a service handled without violence. A report by the solicitor general of Canada acknowledged that migrant smuggling did not
have a significant violence generation impact (Crepeau 2003). The smuggler's role character- istically ends with the delivery

of the individual safely to the particular stage of the journey the smugglers are handling. Another report by
the International Labour Office discusses how many smuggling operations are "sometimes difficult to distinguish from legitimate work of travel agen- cies or labour recruitment
agencies and may include assisting migrants with obtaining a passport, visa, [and] funds for traveling (travel loans)" (2002). For these reasons and others, the Canadian Council for

p]eople smuggling, despite its evils, has also been life-

Refugees, an umbrella organization for refugee-serving agencies, states that: [

giving. It has made it possible for significant numbers of people to flee persecution and
reach a place of asylum when no government was willing or able to offer an escape route. It
has allowed them to exercise their human right to seek and to enjoy in other countries
asylum from persecution (Article 14, Universal Declaration of Human Rights). For others, smugglers have offered a way out of a situa- tion of misery and
an opportunity for a new life of dignity. Even some of the people who are trafficked, knowing the wrongs of their situation of bondage, may still prefer it to what they left behind,
either for themselves or for what it enables them to do for family members. This of course does not in any way justify the abuses perpetrated by the traffickers. But it is relevant to
any dis- cussion about solutions to the problem of trafficking. (Canadian Council for Refugees 2000) All 24 women I interviewed were ultimately deported from Canada. The last
time I spoke to any of them, all were distraught at being sent to the places where they hold citizenship (Centre for Feminist Legal Research 2004, 28). Significantly, most of the
respondents (18 of 24) declared their intent to try again even though their last attempt did involve varying degrees of coercion, deceit, and even abuse. Angry at having been cap-
tured before reaching their desired destination of New York City and now owing large sums of money, they stated that only by hiring another group of smugglers could they
achieve their goals of being rid of debt and supporting themselves and their families. Thus, contrary to the idea that women who experience some form of coercion, abuse, or
deception while partaking in dangerous and illegal migration routes are passive victims of trafficking, many of these women expressed their desire to live and work in the United
States (or Canada) and saw the smugglers as the only people who could help them to achieve this. From the standpoint of these women migrants, then, the smugglers (or
traffickers) were not the source of the exploitation they faced or their greatest danger. Thus, while they readily acknowledged the difficult and dangerous nature of their journeys,

not one of the women I interviewed saw herself as a "victim of trafficking." Instead, their self-identity was
informed largely through their courage in seeking new homes and new livelihoods across
borders . None articulated the demand to "end trafficking" but wanted cheaper, safer, and more reliable migration routes. Without exception, the demands they most often
articulated were to stay in Canada (or, even better, the United States) without fear of deportation, to work, make and save money, and to be reunited with the significant people in
their life. From their perspective, the biggest problem they faced was the Cana- dian state, most especially its immigration officials, who wanted to return them to their point of
departure and, thus, force them to start anew their search for new livelihoods, this time even greater in debt. Being rescued from the smugglers/traffickers by the Canadian state-the
very thing anti-trafficking campaigns advocate for-was the last thing these women wanted. They wanted to avoid the Canadian state-not be seen by it, for this meant the loss of
everything for which they had worked. Thus, the greater coercion faced by these women in their migration journey was not being removed from China but being forcibly returned

conceptualizing the process of clandestine

there. Critical reflection on the experiences of the women I worked with makes it clear that

migration as the cause of people's exploitation not only denies the agency of women
migrants but creates and legitimates punitive state measures aimed at punishing traffickers
(and smugglers) rather than assisting migrants in their survival strategies (Crepeau 2003). In fact, by
discursively ratio- nalizing their efforts through the "relations of rescue," anti-traffick- ing
campaigns provide what is often missing for such state repressive measures-the veneer of
humanitarianism (Pascoe 1993). By portraying migration as the cause of exploitation, the notion
that women are always better off at "home" is accepted without question . Acts of deportation are imbued
with the moral authority of helping a victim. By characterizing such calls as something that caring people would naturally demand, they become depoliticized within the feminist
lexicon. In this regard, Kara Gillies argues that, it is of "great concern that ... [recent] changes to immigration and refugee law make specific references to the trafficking of women

a very deliberate ruse to garner

and children for sexual purposes as part of the platform for why we need to tighten our borders. It seems to me

support from otherwise liberal thinking people for an extremely [racialized] and regressive
immigration policy" (in Brock et al. 2000, 87). In this way, attempts by feminists who use the discursive frame of anti-
trafficking as an attempt to garner sympathy for women migrants also gain approval for anti-
immigrant practices. Predictably, most resources spent on ending trafficking have been put into border control measures aimed at uncovering clandestine
movements of people and prosecuting smugglers/traffickers. The main result of such practices is to make illegalized migrations much more dangerous. As people
smugglers/traffickers face greater penalties if discovered, migrants are increasingly being funneled through more precarious routes leading to an unprecedented number of deaths

The increased danger of smuggling people also has led to an increase in the
(Fekete 2003, 2; Nevins 2002, 124).i

cost of hiring smugglers, thereby placing migrants in greater debt and creating increased financial
hardships on the families and communi- ties supporting their migration. Moreover, increased punitive measures against
smuggling/trafficking have made the emergence of modern-day Harriet Tubmans even more unlikely. As I have noted elsewhere, Canada has included Article 6 of the Crimi-
nalization of Smuggling Activities of the Palermo Protocol in its 2002 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (Sharma 2003). It allows for imprisonment for a maximum of two
years on a summary conviction or fourteen years on indictment for smuggling less than ten persons and life imprisonment for smuggling a group of ten persons or more or for
disem- barking illegal migrants at sea (Crepeau 2003). Significantly, the state does not have to prove that harm to persons or damage to property took place in order to secure a life

the organizing framework for such

sentence. While this may be far from the intent of many organizations involved in anti-trafficking campaigns,

campaigns conveniently shifts our attention away from the fact that the source of most
migrant's oppression and exploitation lies in the processes that displace people . The sources are the
restrictions migrants face in moving across national borders legally and the subordinated, illegal status they receive if they do make it to their destination points-not in the spectacu-
lar imagery of kidnappings, forced confinement, and sexual slavery that is the dominant imagery and imaginary of anti-trafficking campaigns. The White Slave Trade: The

there was a significant disjuncture

Antecedents of Anti-Trafficking Campaigns My interviews with women migrants from China show that

between their lived experiences, their self- identification as migrants, and how they were
represented in the main- stream media, in government statements, and by feminist advocates
using the anti-trafficking framework. What does this disjuncture tell us? To begin to answer this question, we need to recognize that migrants
deemed illegal, as well as the contemporary discourse of trafficking, do not enter a "neutral ideological context" regarding to relations of gender, racism, or nationalism (Miles
1982, 165). To develop a critical feminist knowledge of current anti-trafficking practices we need to examine the history of past efforts of women reform- ers to regulate the lives
of women they saw as victims and how their efforts worked to maintain these women's subordination. One of the key aspects of the anti-trafficking discourses of a hundred years
ago was the invention of the White Slave Trade by moral reformers and its link to anti-immigrant politics (Doezema 2000; Kempadoo 2005). Brock et al. note that "l[n late
nineteenth and early twentieth century anti-trafficking discourse[s] in Canada, traffickers were generally portrayed as individual immigrant/'foreign' men" (2000, 87). Their

men identified
immoral and illicit activi- ties were said to have deceived untold numbers of unsuspecting White maidens coerced into acting as sex slaves. In Canada,

as Chinese were particularly targeted as the purveyors and benefactors of this unlawful trade
(Backhouse 1999). Not coincidentally, this was the period of virulent anti-Chinese beliefs and practices. The

simultaneous portrayal of Chinese men as both effemi- nate-not man enough to be builders
of the nation-and as the sexual predators of White women contributed enormously to their
popular iden- tification as an overdetermined threat to the character of the White Cana- dian
nation . Anti-trafficking campaigns of this period were therefore very much a part of the racist
effort of keeping Canada White (Ward 1972). As Etienne Balibar informs us, "race" and "nation" have "never been very far apart" in the making of
nationalized societies (1991, 90). A hun- dred or so years ago, the racism of anti-traffickers was an attempt to both regulate

migration into Canada and ensure highly racialized criteria for membership and belonging within
nationalized space. In classic oriental- ist fashion, anti-traffickers were not only concerned with eradicating the supposed threat of the Chinese migrant or rescuing
the victims of those trading in White slaves, they were also concerned with constructing themselves as White and, in contrast to the Chinese, as civilized.6 As Canadian
nationalists struggled to realize their fantasy of a White nation, one that would center Whites as the natural governing group, a great deal of attention was paid to how to best
position people from China in Canada.7 Such nationalist practices were not just aimed at excluding Chinese people from Canada, as is most often reported, but at differen- tially
including them as non-national objects, that is, at subordinating them within the nation (Deleuze and Guattari 1987). Consequently, only those able to legitimately assert their
White-ness would be recognized by the law and by each other as national subjects. Campaigns against the White Slave Trade also advanced a highly patriarchal model of gendered
relationships. Mariana Valverde notes that during this period White women were defined as "mothers of the race" whose responsibility was to produce the White nation (1992).
For this to be possible, the racialized "purity" of their sexual activities had to be protected (Ferber 1999). This involved racializing relationships between women and men. In

fears of miscegenation between White women and Asian men were rampant during
Canada,

this time (Backhouse 1999). These underpinned anti-White Slave Trade campaigns aimed at demonizing Chinese men and separating White women from them.
Importantly, campaigns against the White Slave Trade wielded tre- mendous influence as cross-border regulations of people began in the late nineteenth century (Torpey 2002).
Two international instruments (1904 and 1910), both entitled The International Agreement for the Suppression of the White Slave Traffic, were enacted. Shortly thereafter, the
recently founded League of Nations weighed in with two Conventions regarding trafficking in women and children. These were The International Con- vention to Combat the
Traffic in Women and Children (1921) and The International Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women of Full Age (I 933). Following World War II, the newly
formed United Nations arrived at the 1949 Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Per- sons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others that superseded all previous
international agreements (Kempadoo 2005). Importantly, the work of anti-trafficking campaigners articulated closely with the interests of powerful nation-states at this time. The
two Conventions against trafficking adopted by the League of Nations took place in the context of growing cross-border networks facilitating people's mobility following World
War I. Similarly, the United Nations 1949 Con- vention was adopted in a period of heightened displacement and growing international migration following the end of World War
II. Condemning and criminalizing the illicit movement of peoples, it was thought, would ensure that the full weight of nation-states would be used against anyone who dared move
without official permission. At the same time that women's moral reform organizations promoted the use of international mechanisms to regulate the international migra- tion of
some, they advocated for laws in Canada that would differentially regulate the "foreigners" within. Again, this was applied in a highly racist manner. The first Canadian anti-
Chinese bill was passed in 1885. It imposed a $50 head tax on most migrants from China. This was raised to $100 in 1900 and to $500 in 1903 (Bolaria and Li 1988, 107).
Alongside these discriminatory acts were regulatory mechanisms actively discour- aging the migration of women from China. In the context of racist ide- ologies and anti-
miscegenation laws these were designed to prevent the formation of nonWhite families in Canada. Finally, in 1923 the Chinese Exclusion Act was enacted effectively cutting off
all legal migration of people from China to Canada until 1947. These measures were aimed at limiting not only legal migration from China to Canada but also at elimi- nating the
possibility of Chinese migrants gaining permanent residency status in the country. In the years between World War II and the 1980s, anti-trafficking efforts were relatively
dormant (Doezema 2000, 36). Not insignifi- cantly, such campaigns reemerged during a period of growth in anti- immigrant discourses and practices in Canada. In particular, the
suppos- edly nondiscriminatory "points system" of Canadian immigrant selection came under increased attack for being too liberal. Replacing the pre-1967 discriminatory
legislation that allowed the Canadian state to select immigrants based on a value scale of "preferred races and nationalities," the seemingly more meritorious "points system"
offered certain (mostly middle-class, English- or French-speaking) nonWhites from the global South entry to Canada as permanent residents.8 Immediately after 1967, complaints
of this having resulted in the entry of "too many" nonWhites were commonly heard (Sharma 2000). These complaints have only inten- sified since the 1980s. Anti-trafficking
campaigns within Canada (and the United States) emerged, therefore, as the permanence of nonWhites in these societies was being attacked and as governments in the relatively

affluent global North began to implement more restrictive immigration policies. Anti-trafficking campaigns also resurfaced at a
time when neoliberal policies of globalization-privatization, deregulation, and trade
liberal- ization-proliferated . These policies resulted in massive increases in the numbers
displaced in the global South and the consequent growth in the number of people migrating
across national borders. Together these two policies-growing displacement and increasing restrictions on legal, per- manent migration-shaped the contemporary
context for the legitimacy of anti-trafficking campaigns. The Contemporary Crusades While there are many similarities, there are some interesting divergences between campaigns

traffickers are
against the White Slave Trade and contemporary anti- trafficking ones. Instead of invoking the explicitly negatively racialized immigrants of the past,

now portrayed as part of "foreign criminal syndicates" (Brock et al. 2000, 87). The victims of trafficking also
have been reconfigured. Instead of innocent White maidens, they are now portrayed as "poor and uneducated"
women from the global South coerced or forced into the sex industry (Chesler and Hughes 2004, B7). Traffickers, then,
are represented as ruthless outlaws affirming their mas- culinity through abuse and exploitation of "their own" women. Kathleen Barry, one of the founders of the Coalition
Against Trafficking in Women (CATW), argues that while any woman could potentially become a "sex slave," the most vulnerable are those who occupy what she believes is a
lower stage of economic and feminist development. Leaving no doubt as to whom she is referring, Barry states that such a lower stage "prevails in pre- industrial and feudal
societies that are primarily agricultural and where women are excluded from the public sphere" and where "Third World women" are the "exclusive property of men" (Kempadoo

both traffickers and trafficked victims are seen as part of negatively

1998, 11).9 Unlike previous portrayals, then,

racialized groups within nationalized spaces imagined as White . Thus, while in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries it was the return of the slave trader to his home country that was portrayed as the necessary response, today the most dominant anti- trafficking campaigns posit that the
victims of trafficking are generally better off if returned home. In current anti-trafficking campaigns, at least in its most influential organizations, like CATW, the imaginary of
home as a static, fixed space of belonging are a part of what Balibar calls the "new racisms" (1991). Like recent anti-trafficking campaigns, these forms of racism also date to the
early 1980s and rely on calls for cultural modernity, the defense of discrete and separate cultural identities, and the demand for national security (Taguieff 1999). Of course, within

The
the new racisms there are many traces of the old, especially in the idea that groups of people are inherently different, incapable of communication, and best kept apart.

discourse of anti-trafficking, especially as mobilized by CATW, contributes significantly to the conceptualization

of the world as one where a "war" against western civilization is being waged through "the
exponential growth of the global sex trade" (Chesler and Hughes 2004, B7). This is starkly evident in a recent article in the Washington Post by
Phyllis Chesler and Donna Hughes, two prominent CATW spokespeople. In it they call for feminists and others to "actively oppose the traffickers" by framing the fight against
trafficking as a fight for civility (B7). Actively mobilizing dominant post-9/11 tropes, Chesler and Hughes argue that principles of the "secular, Judeo-Christian, modern West"
need to be set against "totalitarian" regimes, particularly those relying on ideologies of Islamic fundamentalism (B7). In contrast to unspecified (but presumably non-Muslim)

"conservative or faith-based groups" seen as potentially "better allies on some issues [such as
anti-trafficking] than the liberal left has been," they argue that "Islamism" is a "fascist politi- cal
movement that aims for world domination" (B7). The links between trafficking and Islamic fundamentalism are not clearly specified (perhaps
post-9/11 it is simply enough to link them in the reader's mind).'0 But what is clear is that supporting anti-trafficking campaigns is

tantamount to becoming : [a] force for literate, civil democracies. They ["twenty-first-century feminists"] must oppose
dictatorships and totalitarian movements that crush the liberty and rights of people, especially women and girls. They would be wise to abandon multicultural relativism and
instead uphold a universal standard of human rights. They should demand that all girls have the opportunity to reach their full potential instead of living and dying in the gulags of

By demonizing those long set up as the West's Other through Their

the sex trade. (Chesler and Hughes 2004, B7)

treat- ment of Their girls and women, not only do Chesler and Hughes reinforce the West's image of a barbaric,
hyper-patriarchal Islam, they also reinforce the dominant trope of female migrant sex workers as
powerless victims devoid of agency. In so doing, they also recreate a positive identity of lib-
erator for "American feminists," at least those opposed to trafficking, and produce highly
imperialist narratives of a racialized femininity and mas- culinity. As in the past, their self-assessment of superiority is
achieved through a moral panic against sex work. The strong association between trafficking and sex work is therefore a crucial one to analyze when trying to understand why
some feminists use the framework of anti-trafficking to help women migrants and why such campaigns articulate so easily with official anti-migrant agendas aimed at rendering

While it is widely recognized that most women migrants in the

illegal the vast majority of people crossing national borders.

world, including "illegal" ones, do not work in the sex trade (the largest sectors employing illegal migrant women are the
restaurant and garment indus- tries), when tropes of trafficking are deployed, the image of women and

children being violently and coercively recruited into the sex industry dominate (Chin 1999, 116;
Doezema 1998). Thus, Brock et al. point out that the shift toward portraying the victims of trafficking from working

class, White women to wholly impoverished women from the global South (and increasingly from the former Soviet Union) needs to be historicized within
the development of sex worker-run organizations in the global North. In the 1980s, when anti-trafficking campaigns reemerged, women engaged in sex work in the North had
already mounted serious and sustained challenges to radical feminist theorizations of prostitution as always a universal form of male violence against women (United Nations
1979). As such, it became increasingly difficult for feminists sharing a victimization perspective of sex work to impose their view on women from within the global North (Brock

A new victim was produced: the third-world woman migrant. The radical feminist bias against sex work has
et al. 2000, 88).

therefore led to the view that any migration of women to work in the sex industry is a moment of trafficking." Such a moral panic is built into the latest UN
definition of trafficking since exploitation is understood to "include, at a minimum, the
exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation" and where the
consent of the trafficked victim is rendered "irrelevant" (United Nations 2000b). Thus, as sex work is seen by defini- tion as always a
coercive form of sexual exploitation, the lived realities of sex workers are easily ignored, even have to be ignored, by anti-trafficking discourses of rescue. This anti-sex

work bias was evident in the work done by some feminist organizations advocating for women migrants from China arriving in 1999. A minority of women in
this group (5 out of 24) either had been sex workers in China and/or planned to be in the United States believing that this would allow them to earn the highest possible income. In

many feminists advocating

my inter- views with them, they emphasized that working in the sex industry was a key part of their migration strategy. However,

for these migrants were wholly unable to accept that sex work could be a legitimate aspect of a
woman's migratory project. Instead, as in many anti- trafficking frames, it was imagined that the only reason women migrants would work in the sex industry
was out of fear of the traffickers.12 The "solution" that emerges out of such imaginations is to further
criminalize prostitution . In this there is again much historical continuity with past anti-White Slave Trade efforts. As Brock et al. note, the ways in which a
'traffic in women' discourse was first deployed by social reformers during the late nineteenth century in Canada, the United States and Britain was through the mobilization for an
expansion of criminal code legislation, particularly the procuring and bawdy house provisions, allegedly for the protection of women and girls. (2000, 88) Legislative protections
for victims of trafficking were won. Yet feminist scholarship has shown that these protections were a victory for those interested in policing the sexual practices of women and

girls rather than for the sex workers themselves (Valverde 1992).Contemporary anti-trafficking campaigns unproblematically
rely on the same state-centered strategy, perhaps without reflection on what these accomplished in the
past or perhaps fully cognizant of the fact that such strategies did indeed police women's engagement in sex work and in international migration. This can be seen in
government programs in Italy and Belgium, often touted as the most progressive in helping victims of trafficking. For these governments, helping victims means "rehabilitat- ing"
sex workers (Andrijasevic 2003). Thus, Italy allows for social protec- tion and legalization of trafficking victims only on the condition that the rescued agree to leave prostitution
and participate in a social protection program. If caught in sex work again, they can be deported (2003, 5). Tellingly, anti-trafficking groups do not see such regulations as a form
of coercion against women and thus deny the reality that for some women sex work is a part of their migratory project (Kempadoo 1998). Such "pro- gressive" anti-trafficking

measures, then, are about regulating women's mobilities and sexuality. In the United States a somewhat similar program was passed in
2002. It offers temporary " T-visas " for a maximum of three years to those who testify in court against their traffickers. The visa is only available for a
limited period during the criminal proceedings and only to those who can show that they would suffer extreme harm or hardship upon return to their 'home' countries. They must,
of course, also cooperate fully with the law (Kempadoo 2005, 43). As of mid-2003, there were 200 applications in the United States for T-visas: only 24 were accepted (44). The

The greater problem, as Rutvica Andrijasevic

problem with such programs is not only that they assist only a handful of women migrants throughout the world.

notes, is that such laws establish "a normative narrative of victimhood" (2003, 4). They demand that

women applying for legal status both denounce and leave sex work. Women who do not
perform the role of trafficked victim or whose performance is not believed by state
authorities cannot legalize their status and are often deported . Even more important, they are seen to have been
legitimately deported. Within this anti-trafficking frame, the good girl/bad girl dichotomy that works against sex workers goes on to organize the good migrant/bad migrant trope
(Doezema 1998). In this regard, it is noteworthy that my interviews with women migrants from China took place after all of them had received their deportation orders. Prior to
this, in my informal discussions with some of them, some had indeed claimed to be victims of trafficking. Significantly, they learned this term from the feminist advocates in
Canada who employed it to frame the migrant women's experiences. Just as the women migrants had applied for refugee status without necessarily being refugees (as narrowly
defined by the UN or the Canadian state), using the label of trafficking was seen as a way to remain in the country legally. Their representation of themselves was also an act of
agency and one, like all the others, made in conditions not of their own choosing. Recalling that these women actively sought out people to smuggle them into Canada and that
some of them saw sex work as a part of their sur- vival strategies, their claim to being trafficked was structured not by their lived experiences but by Canadian immigration laws
and legal categories as well as feminists who offered this frame to them. Significantly, then, once the "victim of trafficking" label failed them, they stopped using it. What these
women articulated through their attempts at gaining status was not a demand to end trafficking but a desire to not be illegal, to not be detained by the Canadian authorities, and to
be able to earn a living. However, these demands could not be heard within the existing apparatus of state laws. There is no state category of migration in which to place women
who simply demanded free movement and a new livelihood. Conclusion: The Making of a Global Apartheid Today, more people migrate as a result of the dislocations wrought by
spatial disparities in prosperity and peace than at any other point in human history. The United Nations officially estimates that about 175 million people now cross national

Importantly, in contrast to the great "age of

borders every year (2003). This number is expected to double again by the end of this decade.

mass migration" of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when migration was mainly
out of Europe, most cross-border migrants today are from the global South (Hatton and Williamson 1998; Sutcliffe
2001). Not having restricted the movement of people, what the reformula- tion of immigration and

refugee policy has accomplished is the denial of permanent status to the vast majority of the
world's migrants within the places they come to live and work. Neoliberal immigration policies
have increasingly relied on the entry of migrants into the global North but have reclassified
these migrants as "illegals " (or as "temporary migrant work- ers") to prevent the vast majority from making any claims against the state or employers.
The operation of different legal regimes, one to govern "citizens" and "permanent residents" and
another to govern "illegals," is part of the regime of global apartheid, a regime whereby
discrimination against "foreigners" is not only accepted but accepted as necessary. The
discursive and policy framework of anti-trafficking is one of the more nefarious ways that
such differentiations are organized . The assumption of the violent nature of trafficking or smuggling enables anti- trafficking campaigns to put
forward an agenda calling for measures to combat it through heightened state interventions at the border and more punitive measures for traffickers and/or smugglers.

Regardless of the rhetoric of protecting migrants, the emphasis is on controlling migration. Tighter
control over the borders, stricter immigration laws, and more punitive criminal laws are called upon as indispensable measures to rescue migrants. In this way, anti-trafficking
campaigns act as the moral regulatory arm of White nationalist movements by denying migration to those who are deemed incapable of deciding for themselves if and when they

This, again, works to reposition nonWhites in particu- lar, in subordinate positions within
should move.

the nation-states in the global North and within global capitalism. By mystifying the role of
nation-states in the processes of migration , especially illegal migration, anti-trafficking
campaigns
and practices work to conceal precisely those situations where we
should insist on knowing why there is a lack of safe migration routes
available to those needing to move away from a number of (politically, economically, and/or
violent and/or untenable situations. The narratives of victimization and criminality within the
socially)

ideological framework of trafficking organize a contemporary moral panic that discloses the
dissymmetry of power rela- tions within a system of global apartheid where membership in the
North remains elusive for all but a few and is especially restrictive for the major- ity of people
from the South. It is for these reasons that anti-trafficking campaigns articulate so well with official anti-migrant agendas. Instead of objectifying women migrants as
trafficked victims, we need to recenter the lived experiences of women migrants who, through the state practice of illegalizing them, have been forced to endure dangerous
migration routes. We need to be aware of how the intersection of crimi- nal law and immigration law creates the conditions for the exploitation of people who need to earn a living
and form new homes across borders. Doing so leads to the recognition that only by mobilizing to end practices of displacement while ensuring that people are able to move

Feminists intent on
according to their own self-determined, willful needs and desires will feminists be able to contest global practices of exploitation and abuse.

securing social justice, therefore, need to make central to their praxis the elimination of all
immigration controls and the eradication of those sets of social relations organized
through global capitalism .
 L – U Visas
U-Visa’s require a subject transformation that encourages neoliberal self
dependence strengthening the repressive system
Gehi and Munshi 15(Pooja Gehi, Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild
graduated from American University's Washington College (WCL) of Law in 2004 with a
JD/MA in international affairs. For the past eight years, Pooja has worked as a staff attorney and
then the Director of Immigrant Justice at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) where she
provided direct legal services for hundreds of low-income transgender and gender nonconforming
clients, Soniya Munshi Assistant Professor of Sociology Social Sciences, Human Services &
Criminal Justice at BMCC, January 2015, " Connecting State Violence and Anti-Violence: An
Examination of the Impact of VAWA and Hate Crimes Legislation on Asian American
Communities "
https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&amp;
httpsredir=1&amp;article=1179&amp;context=aalj//TU-SG)
these acts serve to produce different criteria that create internally differentiated immigrant
Each of

populations—where some are offered freedom while others are subjected to repression and
punishment .43 For example, the combination of AEDPA and IIRIRA effectively amended the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and further
criminalized immigrants through a series of disciplinary and regulatory technologies.44 Such
technologies included “re-characterizing,” which increased the types of crimes that constituted aggravated felonies for immigration purposes.45
This simultaneously removed legal barriers that protected immigrants from deportation and erected barriers to post-deportation admission, thereby intensifying border control.46
Although these acts primarily affected immigrants who were interacting with the criminal legal system and/or were in the United States without authorization, their reach extended
even to potentially legal immigrants.47 Meanwhile, VAWA employed the logic of exception to protect some immigrant survivors of violence from the vortex of criminalization.

For example, as part of VAWA, some immigrant survivors of domestic violence became eligible for specific
immigration remedies, such as self-petition or U-visa mechanisms . These remedies furthered
neoliberal ideals 48 of a good, cost-effective, self-reliant citizenry in which uncooperative
immigrants would be disciplined and excluded but cooperative immigrants whose
victimization is recognizable by the state are subject to exception . The passage of VAWA, PROWRA, and
AEDPA/IIRIRA exposed the contradictions of simultaneous gains and losses in freedoms, creating

populations of immigrant survivors differentiated by their eligibility for state protection.

Advocacy efforts on behalf of domestic violence survivors resulted in remedial gestures to
ameliorate the harshness of these contradictions. For example, PROWRA included a Family Violence Option (“FVO”) through which
eligible domestic survivors would be able to gain exemptions from work requirements and the sixty-month lifetime limit.49 IIRIRA preserved the immigration remedies available

50 The exemption mechanism served to discursively

to domestic violence survivors under VAWA and included other exemptions.

construct the domestic violence survivor as worthy of exception from otherwise repressive
technologies. VAWA legal regulations vary, but what they have in common is an investment in
survivors who are convincingly worthy, powerless, in need of state protection, and willing to
remake themselves into self-sufficient and autonomous citizens. Previous state-sponsored
remedies for women relied upon moral discourses to determine worthiness; within the context of
neoliberal governance, morality, and deservedness, is the potential to be both financially
independent and willing to be under the regulation of the government .
Alt
 1NC Darder Alt
The alternative is to reject reformism and engage in collective grassroots
struggles to counter the contradictions of modern neoliberalism
Darder 15 (Dr. Antonia Darder is an internationally recognized scholar, artist, poet, activist,
and public intellectual. She holds the Leavey Presidential Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral
Leadership in the School of Education at Loyola Marymount University and is also Professor
Emerita of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. “Pointing the Way toward a More Socially Just World”
https://www.sensepublishers.com/media/2261-neoliberalizing-educational-reform.pdf//GHS-SG)
Toward A Coherent Political Vision Of Struggle Since no form of oppression is ever complete and history remains, as Freire (1998) often
reminded us, an unfinished affair, there aremany who today work diligently to raise concerns and to struggle against the
national and global impact of neoliberal policies on society and the environment. As is well documented in this
volume, there have been demands for educational change made by both union and community activists.

Immigrant rights groups have brought their concerns to the arena of educational debate. Student
union organizations at various universities have launched important challenges to the neoliberal
transformation of higher education. Unfortunately, at times, even these efforts have become inadvertently neoliberalized, in that they have
remained often isolated from one another, focused on single issues, and more attentive to
individual concerns. As a consequence, it has been tough to forge a larger political project for change, where collective solidarity and structural reinvention remain
ever at the center, even when tending to particularistic concerns. In the absence of such a political vision, seldom can local efforts alone lead to

systemic change of hegemonic structures that both reproduce and perpetuate gross inequalities. What this points to is the need for a
coherent vision of social struggle in this country and internationally, where systemic changes are, indeed, the
catalytic imperative that drives our various political efforts to reclaim collective control of
our schools, our labor, our communities, and our lives . Toward this end, Paulo Freire (1997) insisted that the oppressive system
of capitalist production could not be altered without simultaneous collective efforts to democratize

schools and the larger society—which, incidentally, is exactly what neoliberal reform strategies stifle through the logic of the marketplace and the quest
for economic supremacy that inform the politics of neoliberal reformism. Not surprisingly, Freire argued, instead, that we fight against reformism and

use “the contradictions of reformist practice to defeat it” (p. 74). To help counter these contradictions, Freire urged us to
construct within schools and communities what FOREWORD xv he called “ advanced forms of social organizations …
capable of surpassing this articulated chaos of corporate interests ” (p. 36). This again points to the
need to challenge coherently neoliberal policies that promote corporate deregulation, unjust practices of the free market, bootstrap
accountability, and rampant individualism. Furthermore, the underlying focus of our work at every level must entail a

critical challenge to the social and material structures of capitalism and the neoliberal adherence
to the false notion that a free-market equals democracy. The struggle for systemic social change is, indeed, made more difficult in the
current climate, where neoliberalism has made a farce of the democratic ideal of “civic engagement,” subterfuging the public good and the strength of our differences. To counter

this travesty, we must move in theory and practice beyond reformism , as Freire (1997) suggested, and embrace
through our daily praxis a larger political project for educational and societal transformation . This
demands from us a more profound sense of political affiliation and a reinvestment in the collective

power of social movement . Toward this end, we can strive to become more politically conscious and vigilant in
our responses to the world, so that we do not fall prey to the common contradictions of neoliberalism that easily betray our liberatory dreams. This
requires that we understanding, as did Freire, that no one exists outside the system (Darder, 2015); and as such, a purity of
politics or sectarianism are not the answer. Rather, we must enter into critical engagement with the complexities and

nuanced ways in which hegemony impacts our lives as educators and world citizens, as well as the many
social differences that exist among us, as a consequence of our cultural histories and material conditions of survival. Similarly, to prevent the structural

reproduction of oppression, so common to our world, also necessitates an ideological and epistemological
shift in how we make meaning , define problems , seek solutions , and enact institutional and
communal change . And none of this can transpire outside of an ethical and moral commitment to
democratic participation, the dignity of human rights, and the struggle for economic justice. Toward this end, our work in schools and
communities requires the solid integration of critical democratic principles, in cultural, political,
and economic terms. At the heart of such a concept is recognition that the process of liberation , whether in the classroom or the larger
society, can only be enacted through a coherent political vision of struggle , where neither unity nor difference is

sacrificed. Further, our collective strategies of struggle must also fully reflect and correspond to the

contemporary historical moment. Human emancipatory strategies are both longstanding and dynamic ,
defined by the historicity of their emergence. There can simply be no return to the good ole days even of the 60s, which were—if truth be told—often mired in a contradictory and
Eurocentric epistemology of assimilation, white privilege, patriarchy, individualism, and authoritarianism, even within progressive organizational contexts (Darder, 2015). Yet,

despite historical contradictions, we must nevertheless continue to forge collectively an

emancipatory vision of education and society—one that can point the way toward a more socially just world.
 2NC AT Feasibility
Utopianism is needed-The rise of Trump demands this new form of consensus
building
Walker-Emig 16 12/09/16, Paul Walker-Emig, Journalist, "Why The Left Needs Utopia",
novaramedia.com/2016/12/09/why-the-left-needs-utopia/
We are entering a new utopian age. That may seem counterintuitive to suggest as the most right wing
government since Thatcher leads the UK into a bleak post Brexit future, Trump prepares to enter the White House
flanked by a team of white supremacists in the US, and the far right finds itself in ascendency
across Europe, but it is happening. Signs that a new utopian era is emerging can be read in the way we encounter these events as
impossible: Brexit; Trump winning the Republican candidacy, and going on to defeat Clinton in the
US presidential elections; even Jeremy Corbyn’s victory in the Labour leadership contest. These all
represent realities we collectively refused to conceive of as possible, until we awoke the next
morning to find ourselves living them . Impossibility, of course, is the territory of utopia.
Something new is emerging, and it doesn’t fit the framework within which we’ve been
thinking. The hostility to Corbyn’s election from within the Parliamentary Labour Party, and the now transparently
terrible decision of the Democratic Party to go with Clinton as its presidential candidate —
followed by an apparent inability to comprehend its defeat — suggests that the centre left in
particular is dragging its heels when it comes to adjusting to this change . It believes too
faithfully in the End of History, steadfastly committed to the idea that political success depends
upon accepting a number of ‘realities’ that we can broadly file under the heading of
neoliberalism . It is a profoundly anti-utopian position that precludes the need or even possibility
of imagining alternatives. One based paradoxically on the utopian assumption that we have
already found the best, or least worst, system in liberal democratic capitalism. We now know that this
represents electoral suicide. Anyone seen to be defending the status quo will be punished by an
electorate that, in the wake of the 2008 financial crises, is acutely aware that the system
represented by the ‘realists’ at the political centre will not deliver for them. Liberal democratic
capitalism has been stripped of what utopian efficacy it had (save for those privileged enough to enjoy the
utopian islands of tax havens and gated communities) and that means it is finished. History is not over, the
future is open, and that makes utopianism a necessity . Unfortunately, it’s the right that has most
readily embraced the coming of the utopian age. Hijacking the language of the left as they talk
about taking on global elites and smashing the establishment, they’re the ones most loudly
proclaiming that there is an alternative, that things don’t always have to be the way they
are, that we can have a better life. They promise to return us to an imagined utopian golden
age, to make their respective nations great again. Of course, ‘us’ does not include everyone: who is in and who is
out being a perennial concern of utopia; immigrants those most obviously banished from the new utopias being drawn
up in the US and Europe. You might question to what extent even those deemed to be ‘in’ will be served by their curiously elite anti-
If the left is to
elite leaders, but you cannot deny that the stories those leaders have been telling have proven to be compelling.
effectively respond to this challenge it must reembrace its own utopian tradition. As it stands
we have a left that is sorely lacking in imagination – epitomised by the Labour coupsters who tried to take on
Corbyn without any ideas to challenge him, and a Democratic party that thought an avatar of the establishment
was the perfect response to Trump’s populism. But imagination is what utopianism requires. For
years the left has suffered for its willingness to debate the right on their own terms. Utopianism
will not be stuck in that mire; it moves beyond it. The electorate demands anti-establishment
politics that offer an alternative. Utopianism necessarily delivers it. In other words, utopianism is a
mode of thinking that offers precisely what the left is lacking and what is necessary in the
new political climate . To accept the coming of the new utopian age will require the left to
harbour a deep suspicion of anyone who begs for ‘realism’ or makes appeals to ‘electability’.
Instead, its strategy should start with a reclamation of the populist, anti-business, anti-
establishment rhetoric that the third wayers abandoned as part of their project to be ‘taken
seriously’. The right has proven that this language is effective. This rhetoric should be combined with a series of ostensibly
impossible utopian demands and proposals: a universal basic income; the abolition of tuition fees; a radical cap on working hours
accompanied by higher wages; the end of tax havens; the abolition of inheritance; why not even, to borrow a couple of ideas from the
great theorist of utopia Fredric Jameson, the nationalisation of finance and severe taxation, or outright appropriation, of powerful
corporations? Not all of these ideas will resonate with the electorate, but it is clear that now
is the time to give what was
previously unthinkable voice and test the viability of new approaches and ideas. The proper
response to the racist, populist dystopias of the right can only be a leftist utopianism that can
promise a better life for all without the caveat of exclusion for any part of the working class
(though we shouldn’t be afraid of a little hostility towards the rich). Without a utopianism that looks to the future,
the left will find itself positioned as the defender of a politics that is dying. To build a
utopian vision for the left will mean to have utopianism hurled at us as an insult by those
members of the political class and mainstream media who cannot comprehend that the
politics they know is over. Let them insist that we are dreamers, because to dream is
precisely what we need to do to win.
 2NC AT Collapse
Even if we don’t win the alt, you can vote neg to let the economy collapse
Alexander, 17
Lecturer at the Office for Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne (Samuel, with Jacob
Garrett, “The Moral and Ethical Weight of Voluntary Simplicity,” Simplicity Institute Report
17a, 2017

What is more, to the extent that overconsumption of the world’s resources is putting in jeopardy the viability of
the planet for future generations , then this also provides utilitarian support for voluntary simplicity. After all, if
we take the happiness of future generations into account and recognise the vast suffering that would
flow from ecosystemic collapse, then it would seem the moral scales fall heavily in favour of voluntary
simplicity. By consuming modestly and thereby helping avoid ecosystemic collapse, this will help
maintain a healthy biosphere for millions of years within which human beings can flourish.
Continuing to consume recklessly, on the other hand, is likely to lead to unfathomable suffering , with
runaway climate change being one of the greatest humanitarian threats (Gardiner, 2011). In closing it is worth noting that the moral scope of

utilitarianism arguably extends beyond humanity and should include, as Mill (2012 [1863: 13) argued, ‘the whole of sentient
creation’. That is, the entire animal kingdom, not just humans, should be included in the hedonic calculus, for as Bentham (2007 [1789: 311) asked,

rhetorically: ‘The question is not, Can they [animals] reason? nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?’ And the answer to that final question is obviously yes – animals

can suffer – and therefore morality arguably demands their consideration (Singer, 2009).
 2NC AT No Blueprint
Prioritize questions of desirability over feasibility. The belief in the possibility
of “real utopia” generates effective reform.
Wright 9 (Erik Olin Wright is Vilas Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of
Wisconsin, “Envisioning Real Utopias,” July 2009)
These are all examples of what I will call “real utopias”. This may seem like a contradiction in terms. Utopias are fantasies, morally inspired designs for a humane world of peace

What we need are

and harmony unconstrained by realistic considerations of human psychology and social feasibility. Realists eschew such fantasies.

hardnosed proposals for pragmatically improving our institutions. Instead of indulging in utopian dreams we must
accommodate to practical realities. The idea of Real Utopias embraces this tension between dreams and practice.

It is grounded in the belief that what is pragmatically possible is not fixed independently of our
imaginations, but is itself shaped by our visions. Self-fulfilling prophecies are powerful forces in
history, and while it may be naively optimistic to say “where there is a will there is a way”, it is certainly true that without “will” many

“ways” become impossible. Nurturing clear-sighted understandings of what it would take to create social institutions free of oppression is part of creating a
political will for radical social changes to reduce oppression. A vital belief in a utopian ideal may be necessary to motivate

people to leave on the journey from the status quo in the first place, even though the likely actual
destination may fall short of the utopian ideal. Yet, vague utopian fantasies may lead us astray, encouraging us to embark on trips that have
no real destinations at all, or worse still, which lead us toward some unforeseen abyss. Along with “where there is a will there is a way”, the human struggle for emancipation
confronts “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. What we need, then, is “real utopias”: utopian ideals that are grounded in the real potentials of humanity, utopian
destinations that have accessible waystations, utopian designs of institutions that can inform our practical tasks of navigating a world of imperfect conditions for social change. The
idea that social institutions can be rationally transformed in ways that enhance human wellbeing and happiness has a long and controversial history. On the one hand, radicals of

diverse stripes have argued that social arrangements inherited from the past are not immutable facts of nature, but transformable human creations. Social institutions
can be designed in ways that eliminate forms of oppression that thwart human aspirations for
fulfilling and meaningful lives. The central task of emancipatory politics is to create such
institutions. On the other hand, conservatives have generally argued that grand designs for social reconstruction
are nearly always disasters. While contemporary social institutions may be far from perfect, they
are generally serviceable. At least, it is argued, they provide the minimal conditions for social order and
stable interactions. These institutions have evolved through a process of slow, incremental
modification as people adapt social rules and practices to changing circumstances. The process is driven by
trial and error much more than by conscious design, and by and large those institutions which have endured have done so because they have enduring virtues. This does

not preclude institutional change, even deliberate institutional change, but it means that such
change should be very cautious and incremental and should not envision wholesale
transformations of existing arrangements. At the heart of these alternative perspectives is a disagreement about the relationship between the
intended and unintended consequences of deliberate efforts at social change. The conservative critique of radical projects is not mainly that

the emancipatory goals of radicals are morally indefensible – although some conservatives criticize the underlying values of such projects as well – but that the

uncontrollable, and usually negative, unintended consequences of these efforts at massive social
change inevitably swamp the intended consequences. Radicals and revolutionaries suffer from what Frederick Hayek termed the “fatal
conceit” – the mistaken belief that through rational calculation and political will, society can be designed in ways that will significantly improve the human condition.5 Incremental

Of course, one can point out that many reforms favored by

tinkering may not be inspiring, but it is the best we can do.

conservatives also have massive, destructive unintended consequences. The havoc created in many poor countries by
World Bank structural adjustment programs would be an example. And furthermore, under certain circumstances conservatives themselves argue for radical, society-wide projects
of institutional design, as in the catastrophic “shock therapy” strategy for transforming the command economy of the Soviet Union into free-market capitalism in the 1990s.
Nevertheless, there is a certain apparent plausibility to the general claim by conservatives that the bigger the scale and scope of conscious projects of social change, the less likely
it is that we will be able to predict ahead of time all of the ramifications of those changes. Radicals on the left have generally rejected this vision of human possibility.

Particularly in the Marxist tradition, radical intellectuals have insisted that wholesale redesign of
social institutions is within the grasp of human beings. This does not mean, as Marx emphasized, that
detailed institutional “blueprints” can be devised in advance of the opportunity to create an
alternative. What can be worked out are the core organizing principles of alternatives to existing
institutions, the principles that would guide the pragmatic trial-and-error task of institution-
building. Of course, there will be unintended consequences of various sorts, but these can be dealt with as they arrive
“after the revolution.” The crucial point is that unintended consequences need not pose a fatal
threat to the emancipatory projects themselves. Regardless of which of these stances seems most
plausible, the belief in the possibility of radical alternatives to existing institutions has played an
important role in contemporary political life. It is likely that the political space for social
democratic reforms was, at least in part, expanded because more radical ruptures with capitalism were
seen as possible, and that possibility in turn depended crucially on many people believing that radical ruptures
were workable. The belief in the viability of revolutionary socialism, especially when backed by the grand historical
experiments in the USSR and elsewhere, enhanced the achievability of reformist social democracy as a form of class

compromise. The political conditions for progressive tinkering with social arrangements, therefore,
may depend in significant ways on the presence of more radical visions of possible
transformations. This does not mean, of course, that false beliefs about what is possible are to be supported simply because they are thought to have desirable
consequences, but it does suggest plausible visions of radical alternatives, with firm theoretical

foundations, are an important condition for emancipatory social change. We now live in a world in
which these radical visions are often mocked rather than taken seriously. Along with the post-modernist rejection of “grand
narratives”, there is an ideological rejection of grand designs, even by many people still on the left of the political spectrum. This need not mean an

abandonment of deeply egalitarian emancipatory values, but it does reflect a cynicism about the human
capacity to realize those values on a substantial scale. This cynicism, in turn, weakens progressive
political forces in general.

Blueprint bad – societal change doesn’t come from convincing people to buy
into a detailed depiction of an idyllic world, but in analyzing the routine
practices of the present
Eagleton 11 [Terry, Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University, Why
Marx Was Right, 2011, Yale University: New Haven, CT, p. 67-69]

There is another reason why Marx was wary of images of the future . This is because there were
a lot of them about in his time—and they were almost all the work of hopelessly idealist radicals. The idea that
history is moving onwards and upwards to a state of perfection is not a leftist one. It was a
commonplace of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, which was hardly renowned for its revolutionary
socialism. It reflected the confidence of the European middle class in its early, exuberant phase. Reason was in the process
of vanquishing despotism, science was routing superstition , and peace was putting warfare to
flight. As a result, the whole of human history (by which most of these thinkers really meant Europe) would culminate in a state of
liberty, harmony and commercial prosperity. It is hardly likely that history’s most celebrated scourge of the
middle classes would have signed on for this self-satisfied illusion. Marx, as we have seen, did indeed believe
in progress and civilisation; but he considered that, so far at least, they had proved inseparable from barbarism and benightedness.
This is not to say that Marx learnt nothing from utopian thinkers like Fourier, Saint-Simon and Robert Owen. If he could be rude
about them, he could also commend their ideas, which were sometimes admirably progressive. (Not all of them, however. Fourier,
who coined the term ‘‘feminism,’’ and whose ideal social unit was designed to contain exactly 1,620 people, believed that in the
future society the sea would turn into lemonade. Marx himself would probably have preferred a fine Riesling.) What
Marx
objected to among other things was the utopianists’ belief that they could win over their opponents
purely through the power of argument . Society for them was a battle of ideas, not a clash of
material interests. Marx, by contrast, took a sceptical view of this faith in intellectual dialogue . He was
aware that the ideas which really grip men and women arise through their routine practice , not
through the discourse of philosophers or debating societies . If you want to see what men and women really believe, look
at what they do, not at what they say. Utopian blueprints for Marx were a distraction from the political
tasks of the present . The energy invested in them could be used more fruitfully in the service
of political struggle . As a materialist, Marx was chary of ideas which were divorced from historical reality, and thought that
there were usually good historical reasons for this separation. Anyone with time on their hands can hatch elaborate schemes for a
better future, just as anyone can sketch endless plans for a magnificent novel they never get around to writing because they are
endlessly sketching plans for it. The
point for Marx is not to dream of an ideal future , but to resolve the
contradictions in the present which prevent a better future from coming about. When this has been
achieved, there will be no more need for people like himself.