Violent Separations: Refugee Workers, Racial Capitalism, and the Production of Debility

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on how Rohingya people, legally admitted as refugees to the United States, become available as workers by being violently separated from their places of origin, from family members, and even their own bodies. We argue that resettlement releases labor from its attachments to places and people, thus making it available for higher‐value, higher‐intensity exploitation elsewhere. This, however, exposes workers to an extraordinarily high risk of injury—risks native‐born workers will not take. We argue that the right to maim , lodged here in the US meatpacking industry, is an essential part of the extraction of surplus value from refugee workers. These features of capitalism are not just racialized, as we argue, but also significantly related to migration status—a feature that leads us to rethink the nature of racial capitalism writ large.