Extractivist governance of the displaced and their containment: rethinking state, capital, and labor

By tracing the afterlives of a site in Linz, this article examines the longue durée of the extractive governance of displaced populations, their containment, and labor in relation to the shifting dynamics of the global political economy. It brings together the changing and disconnected legal and administrative categories of the displaced – each tied to specific periods and regimes of labor and governance – within a common analytical framework of expanded extractivism to explore their shared connections to regimes of value and accumulation. Adopting a longue durée and conjunctural perspective, and focusing on the shifting power geometry between state and corporate capital in turning the displaced into a source of value, the article extends migration industry scholarship beyond its primary concern with commercialization and outsourcing and calls for transcending its methodological presentism. Furthermore, it situates the displaced populations within broader regimes of accumulation and shows how the governance, labor, and containment of the displaced function as extractive formations embedded in the changing relations between state, capital, and labor. It concludes by drawing attention to a conjunctural shift in the governance of the displaced, marked by the recentralization of state power.