Center-periphery trade, migration, security and employment agreements. A world-ecology analysis

Abstract

In this article I provide a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the approach developed by Jason W. Moore in the field of International Relations, known as "World-Ecology". Through this perspective I analyze the agreements that are negotiated between core and semi-periphery states, and the periphery states in the African continent in the field of trade, migration, security and employment.
Recent studies analysed the agreements negotiated between the core, semi-periphery and periphery states from very different perspectives. For example, from an economic point of view, previous research has highlighted the link between migration and development or analysed the increasing dependence on the migrant workforce in some specific sectors in the global center. Other studies opted for a more “social” standpoint and analysed the process of integration of migrant-origin workforce from periphery states in the socio-economic fabric of core states. A third group of studies focused on the repercussions that security agreements have on regular and irregular migrants coming from periphery states. Other scholars have investigated the environmental impact of the appropriation of raw materials and energy following (dis)agreements between core, semi-periphery, and periphery states.
All these contributions help to shed light on the core-periphery relations from different angles. Yet, Moore’s World-Ecology perspective can help us go beyond the intrinsic limitations of these "compartmentalised” approaches and activate a holistic re-reading of these core-periphery relations in the field of migration, trade, security and employment. In this article, I focus on these agreements to demonstrate how this perspective can be used to theorise those strategic and dialectical bundles of human and extra-human relations that are at the foundation of the global capitalist civilisation.
As I will show, core-periphery state agreements provide the structure through which patterns and relationships of power and production within nature can be co-produced, exerting continuous pressure on human and extra-human nature to keep it cheap. Moore refers in this regard to the “Four Cheaps”: labour, food, energy, and raw materials, and the tendency of capitalism to appropriate them with as little capital as possible, or even better free of charge in order to generate surplus value and an ecological surplus. Core-periphery state agreements serve to extend the zone of appropriation and set up new streams of the Four Cheaps. Core-periphery state agreements are the Janus face of capitalism: if on the one hand they exert pressure to keep nature cheap, on the other hand, the same dynamics of negotiation inherent in these agreements progressively leads to the exhaustion of capitalism’s Cheap Nature strategy.
Core-periphery state agreements include, for example, the temporal migration programs signed between the European Union and the periphery states in Africa with the explicit aim of providing cheap labour to specific sectors (e.g. social care) in the global centre that would otherwise need higher remuneration and much better working conditions to motivate core states' autochthonous labour power. These programs also result in promoting a specific type of migrant-origin labour force: temporal, circular, vulnerable, and therefore cheap. In turn, the promotion of this type of migration solidifies hierarchical and dualistic constructions within the labour market. Moore’s World-Ecology perspective can also be used to place emphasis on the link between migration, cheap labour, and the production of cheap food. The function of labour reserves, which in the past was covered by slaves and colonized labour, is today entrusted to migrants from the global periphery.
This article also analyses the trade agreements between core, semi-periphery and periphery states for their role in securing cheap energy and raw materials. Core-periphery trade (dis)agreements are primarily power relations that mobilize and recombine human and extra-human natures, and that have as their purpose the endless accumulation and production of global spaces of appropriation. The packages of trade agreements signed between the core, semi-periphery and periphery states are also closely linked to security measures. Security is not a by-product of these agreements, but rather a constitutive element of the negotiations, through which interlocking agencies of capital, science, and political power together release new sources of free or low-cost human and extra-human natures for capital accumulation. Going beyond the consideration that the proliferation of fences of razor wire and walls around the globe is a valid indicator of the flourishing state experienced by the security industry in the current phase of capitalism, once we embrace the World-Ecology perspective we can see how the security agreements between core, semi-periphery and periphery state alter extra-human and human nature. In fact, securitarian measures are inserted in pre-existing geographical patterns and social structures (re)producing clusters of nature hierarchized according to historical-geographical specificities, and patterns of race, gender, and class. Here I think for example about the categories of Arabised North Africa (e.g. the Maghreb) vs the rest of “Black” Africa or the category of "illegal" migrant vs "legal" migrant, which are solidified through the security "deals" struck between core, semi-periphery states and periphery states.
In addition to its introduction and conclusions, this article has three sections. The first section establishes the main features of Moore’s World-Ecology perspective that will be developed throughout the article. In the second section, the article isolates four broad reasons that help us understand how and why agreements between core, semi-periphery and periphery countries can accelerate the decline of the ecological surplus and presents the main argument around which the article revolves: while in the past, appropriation practices combined with the global market and technological innovations ensured rapid global expansions, based on the identification, codification, and rationalization of the Cheap Natures, notably through the practices of colonisation and slavery,today this "advantage" is no longer available. Moreover, the identification, appropriation and mobilization of uncapitalised nature must undergo long, tedious, and above all expensive core-periphery negotiations, which ultimately take the form of agreement packages that include measures in the field of trade, migration, security, and employment. The third section further develops this argument by applying it to the concrete case of the African periphery countries. In the concluding remarks, the article highlights the dual characters of the core, semi-periphery and periphery state agreements and reflects on the nature of the ongoing crisis.
The core-periphery agreements analysed in this article are certainly a display of capitalism’s adaptive power, yet at the same time core-(semi)periphery negotiations accelerate the crisis of modernity-in-nature by exhausting the Cheap Nature, making everything less cheap, and at fast speed, as evidenced by the last commodity supercycle and the one on the horizon. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the fragilities of the global capitalist economy and woken up post-capitalist imaginaries. However, as of today it is an open question as to whether we are facing a developmental crisis of capitalism, which can be solved within the boundaries of the neoliberal order through new rounds of accumulation and commodification, or we are witnessing instead the beginning of an epochal crisis marked by an irreversible decline of capitalism’s capacity to restructure itself as the mode of organisation of human and extra-human nature.