Institut de Geographie Alpine, Universite Joseph Fourier, GRENOBLE.

Capitalist Accumulation & Migration in Nepal: a Marxist Analysis

Master Thesis 2013 - 2014

Jérémy Ristord

This master thesis intends to provide a comprehensive Marxist framework to tackle the ever growing phenomenon of work migration in Nepal. It is based on the basic and classical assumption that migrants are both pushed-out of their country of origin for different reasons, but also pulled-in in their hosting countries for others ones: both related to different capitalist dynamics of accumulation, and the world-system structure on which they take place.

1

Avant Propos - ForewordFirst Sgt. Edward Welsh (EW): Hey Witt, who you making trouble for today?

Private Witt (W): What do you mean?EW: Well, isn't that what you like to do?

Turn left when they say go right. Why are you such a trouble maker Witt?

W: You care about me? Don't ya Sergeant? I always felt like you did. One day I come up and talk to ya.

Then the next day it's like we never even met. Lonely house now, you ever get lonely?

EW: Only around people.W: Only around people.

EW: You still believin’ in the beautiful light are ya? How do you do that? You're a magician to me.

W: I still see a spark in you.

- Terrence Malick, The Thin Red Line, 1998.

Ces quelques lignes d’avant-propos me seront utiles pour expliquer le pourquoi de ce travail, les motivations qui m’ont poussée à le réaliser, et le contexte dans lequel il a été effectué. Je profiterai de l’aspect peu formel de l’avant-propos pour m’exprimer dans ma langue natale, et ce pour plusieurs raisons, la principale étant la plus grande facilité éprouvée à y exprimer clairement, avec recul et complexité ma pensée.

Ce travail ne peut être compris sans commencer par un regard en arrière. J’ai intégré il y a cinq ans un cursus universitaire de géographie. Comme quelques dizaines d’autres personnes, je débarquais dans le monde universitaire un peu par hasard, comme par l’effet d’une erreur d’aiguillage. Avec du recul, je pense que, ce qui m’a fait perdurer dans cette voie, en plus des joies de la vie étudiante est que ce milieu m’a apporté des réponses, ou tout du moins donné les outils pour aborder d’importantes questions. Je m’explique : ma motivation a souvent découlée de l’observation du monde qui m’entoure, de ce sentiment d’injustices généralisées, et des outils intellectuels offerts par de nombreux enseignants qui m’ont permis d’appréhender ces questionnements en allant au-delà d’une révolte post-adolescente, de les aborder dans leur complexité, dans leurs interconnexions, dans leurs trajectoires. Comprendre le monde est le premier pas vers sa transformation, ne réaliser que l’un ou que l’autre me semble vain ou dangereux, et au diable les illusions de « neutralité ».

Quelle meilleure école que la géographie -discipline ouverte et ô combien dynamique- pour ce faire ?

Ce déclic ne s’est pas fait en un jour, mais résulte d’un long processus de découverte. De l’intérêt pour les multiples « post » en vogue jusqu’à la découverte et la compréhension du Marxisme lors de mes deux dernières années d’études, ce chemin a été long et chaotique. Mais la découverte des travaux historiques, comme moderne et souvent « non-orthodoxes » des penseurs affiliés à ce « mouvement » auront fini de me convaincre qu’il permet une analyse complexe, effective et scientifiquement viable de l’état présent du monde.

Ce mémoire de fin de master a été réalisé dans le cadre d’un stage professionnel à Katmandu, au « Nepal Institute of Development Studies ». Mes premières esquisses de projet tendaient vers un travail bien plus classique et parcellaire, tel que l’analyse des politiques migratoires ou les ressorts du discours autour des migrations des Népalais. C’était sans compter que, comme le Soldat Witt, personnage central de la magnifique réflexion philosophique de Terrence Malick sur la condition humaine, j’aime à me penser comme un « trouble-maker ».

2

Porté par cette « magnifique lumière », j’ai décidé de tourner à gauche plutôt qu’à droite, prendre des risques et troquer la relative facilité pour la motivation induite par le sentiment de s’atteler à une tâche utile. En effet, si les théoriciens radicaux ont souvent abordé la question des migrations dans leurs travaux plus globaux, l’inverse reste rare. Et pourtant, l’étude des migrations représente une formidable mine d’information sur les développements contemporains de nos sociétés. Leur entremêlement à d’autres domaines (économiques, sociaux, culturelles) en fait un objet complexe, mais ô combien instructif.

Cette « étincelle » étincelle évoqué par le sergent Edward Welsh, c’est pour moi l’espoir qu’un jour, notre monde pourra s’affranchir des tourments de l’argent Roi, c’est l’esquisse d’un monde ou quelques-uns ne s’engraisseraient pas sur la misère de ceux d’en bas. Pas la meilleure idée pour trouver un travail en dehors de l’establishment universitaire. En revanche, j’espère que ce modeste travail s’intègre dans un mouvement plus vaste, au côté de l’engagement effectif et quotidien de ces femmes et hommes, de la Selva Lacandona au Val du Susa, des jungles Colombiennes aux usines Chinoises, Coréennes et Européennes, de la base Maoïste Népalaise aux collines Péruviennes, des barricades argentines à l’Isthme de Tehuantepec. Comme l’affirmait le grand historien Américain Howard Zinn, on ne peut être neutre dans un train en marche, et j’ai choisi mon camp.

Gilles Deleuze, dans ses Pourparlers (éditions de Minuit, 2003) – un rassemblement de textes (entretiens, lettres et articles) publiés dans des journaux et revues, entre 1972 et 1990- théorise la pensée comme « machine de guerre » visant à faire un « pas en dehors de ce qui a déjà été pensé », « en dehors du reconnaissable et du rassurant » afin « d’inventer de nouveaux concepts pour des terres inconnues ». Il qualifie cet acte de périlleux car le penseur se devra d’affronter ceux restés sur « le rivage » qui le traitent « fou ». C’est ce pas de côté que j’ai essayé de réaliser dans le présent travail, m’attelant à la construction d’un nouveau cadre d’analyse des migrations.

J’ai bien conscience des nombreuses faiblesses de ce cadre d’interprétation construit de bric et de broc, qui n’est au final qu’une réorganisation de différentes théories. Cependant, une fois mis de côté ses imperfections formelles, je pense avoir réussi à m’éloigner quelque peu de la berge. Bien sûr, cette frêle embarcation est plus proche du bateau s’échouant en plage de Sète chanté par G. Brassens que du « Queen Anne’s Revenge », et il ne devrait guère attirer l’attention de ceux restés sur la côte, mais j’aime à le concevoir comme un point de départ, imparfait certes, mais qui a le mérite d’exister. Une esquisse, en quelque sorte, ou plutôt un esquif, pour rester dans le domaine maritime.

Le manque de moyen (financiers, temporels et logistiques) et de temps m’auront empêché de réaliser un travail de terrain, me privant ainsi d’une facette anthropologique du phénomène qu’il aurait été intéressant d’étudier. Pour le moment, je devrais me contenter de cette agrégation de connaissances et de leurs mises en relations, mais j’ose à espérer que ce travail de recherche et le cadre théorique émergeant de ce document ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives de terrain.

Bien que loin d’être parfait, ce travail –je l’espère- devrait fournir d’intéressantes pistes sur les théories des migrations aussi bien que sur les formes actuelles que revêt le capitalisme.

L’auteur,

3

AcknowledgmentI would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Ganesh Gurung and the team of the Nepal Institute of Development Studies (NIDS) for their wonderful welcome.

I would also like to thank my thesis supervisor, Anne Laure Amilhat-Szary, Kirsten Koop and Myriam Houssay-Holzschuch, teachers in charge of the IDS program at the Institute of Alpine Geography (Joseph Fourrier University) and the teaching staff who provided us amazing insights during the year, especially D. Blamont, M. Schmidt & JC. Gaillard.

Foremost, I am indebted to teachers who guided my during the 5 years of learning and exploration at the IGA: to Luc Gwiazdzinski who passed me the curiosity of learning and researching, but also to other teachers who shared their knowledge with me during these few wonderful years, especially M. Vanier & P. Bourdeau,

4

Table of ContentsTable of Figure.........................................................................................................................................9

Introduction............................................................................................................................................10

The Relevance of Marxism.................................................................................................................13

Objectives, “Problématique” & Hypothesis.......................................................................................16

Methodology and Limits....................................................................................................................16

Literature State-of-Art............................................................................................................................17

Neoclassical Economics & Push-Pull theory.....................................................................................17

Todaro and Harris School of Development Economics Model..........................................................19

“The Mobility Transition”: Migration & Development.....................................................................20

The New Economics of Labor Migration...........................................................................................21

Systems and Networks theories..........................................................................................................23

Historical-Structural models...............................................................................................................25

The Dual and Segmented Labor Markets theory............................................................................26

The Dependency theory..................................................................................................................26

The World System theory...............................................................................................................26

Regional Context....................................................................................................................................29

Useful maps........................................................................................................................................29

Physical and human geography..........................................................................................................31

People, Society and Demography.......................................................................................................33

Politics in Nepal..................................................................................................................................35

Nepali Economy and Development....................................................................................................36

Social Structure: Class and Cast in Nepal..........................................................................................39

Brief historical overview....................................................................................................................41

Migration in Nepal..................................................................................................................................43

An historical overview........................................................................................................................43

Amount of International Migrants......................................................................................................44

Destinations........................................................................................................................................46

Profile of migrants..............................................................................................................................47

Remittances in Nepal..........................................................................................................................48

Use of Remittance..........................................................................................................................49

Policies on Migration in Nepal...........................................................................................................50

To conclude........................................................................................................................................50

Chapter I: The Global Structures of Migration......................................................................................52

Geography of Contemporary Capitalism: Neo-liberalism & Globalization.......................................52

5

Nepal-Gulf Migration System: the example of the migratory couple Nepal-Qatar...........................54

A closer look: the case of Qatar......................................................................................................56

The Neoclassical Economy: an Unfinished Statement.......................................................................58

Structural Explanatory Factors...........................................................................................................58

Dual-labor Market: a definition......................................................................................................58

Theoretical background: Segmentation of Labor and Economic Migrations.................................60

Guestworkers Programs: Definition, Historical Overview and Taxonomy...................................62

Migrations, The Reserve Army of Labor and Strategies of Accumulation....................................64

Migration, Accumulation & Unequal Development..........................................................................69

“A world after its own image”........................................................................................................69

The tendency toward differentiation...............................................................................................70

The tendency toward equalization..................................................................................................70

Scales of Accumulation & The Dialectic of Differentiation and Equalization..............................71

Uneven Development: the “Seesaw Movement of Capital”...........................................................73

Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................74

Chapter II: Migrations and the Development of Capitalism within Nepal.............................................76

Underdevelopment and Primitive Capitalism in Nepal......................................................................76

Socio-spatial Structure of Agriculture............................................................................................77

The Development of Industry in Nepal..........................................................................................78

The Circulation of Capital within Nepal........................................................................................79

Underdevelopment in Nepal and the Transition of a Pre-Capitalist Society..................................79

The Concept of Primitive Accumulation of Capital...........................................................................80

A Definition....................................................................................................................................80

Examples of Primitive Accumulation (India & China)..................................................................83

Migration under the scope Primitive Accumulation...........................................................................87

The Primitive Accumulation in Nepal............................................................................................87

Ongoing Primitive Accumulation & The Labor Subsidies to Capitalism..........................................91

Intermittent Migration and Ongoing Primitive Accumulation.......................................................92

Labor Subsidies to Capitalism........................................................................................................92

Chapter III: Synthesis and Way Forward...............................................................................................97

The Continuous Character of Primitive Accumulation......................................................................98

Separation in Primitive and “Mature” Accumulation.....................................................................99

A crisis driven dynamic?..............................................................................................................102

Primitive Accumulation at the “Core”..........................................................................................102

Insights of Marxist debates...............................................................................................................103

Geographical Insights: The Expansion of Capitalist Relations........................................................105

6

Conclusion............................................................................................................................................108

Bibliography.........................................................................................................................................111

7

Table of FigureFigure 1 Map of South Asia (Bhattarai 2003)........................................................................................28Figure 2 Physiographic Regions and Administrative Districts of Nepal (CBS)....................................29Figure 3 Population pyramid of Nepal (CIA 2014)................................................................................32Figure 4 GDP composition (Ulandssekretariate 2013)...........................................................................35Figure 5 Sectoral employement and GDP share(without agriculture) (Ulandssekretariate 2013).........36Figure 6 Number of Nepalese migrant workers at various destinations around the world (excluding India) between the years 1993/94 and 2013/14 (NIDS 2013)................................................................44Figure 7 Migration of various Consumption Quintile groups by destination (NIDS 2010)...................46Figure 8 Oil dependency and migrants (Halvor & Gry 2013)................................................................54Figure 9 Distribution of Industrial Employement, 1980 – 2008 (Foster & al 2011:2)...........................63Figure 10 The Global Workforce and the Global Reserve Army (Foster & al 2011:12).......................67

8

Introduction

I'm out here a thousand miles from my home,Walking a road other men have gone down.I'm seeing your world of people and things,

Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings.

Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song,About a funny old world that’s a coming along,

Seems sick and it’s hungry, it's tired and it's tornIt looks like it's a dying and it's hardly been born.

- Bob Dylan, Song to Woody, 1961.

Migration is a phenomenon as old as the humankind, from the Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens spreading from Africa to the others continents, to the Greek colonization, the Roman expansion or the biblical exodus. But migration, as we now experience it, began with the rise of capitalism: first with the eighteen and nineteen centuries forced transportation of approximately 12 million of slaves, mainly from western Africa to the “New World”. Then, alongside with the rise of the United State industrial capitalism (from 1850s until the 1930s Great Depression), leading millions of workers escaping the European stagnant economies, repressive political regimes and sometimes famines (like Ireland) to Ellis Island, the New York harbor for immigration inspection. And, after the Second World War, “when labor was needed to sustain booming post-war economies in Europe, North American and Australia” (Koser, 2007:3), appeared a form of migration related to the colonial Empires. (ibid:1-3)

Migration have played a fundamental role in the human experience, migration is “intrinsic to human nature” (King 2012:4). Migration is driven by the need to search for food, pasture and resources, the desire to travel and explore, “but also to conquer and possess” (ibid).

What we can draw from these few and large scale example is that migrations are associated with significant global events: revolutions and wars, rise and fall of Empires, economic expansions or collapses, national building and political transformation… And thus, migration is inextricably linked with contemporary important global issues such as development, poverty and human right. Since a few decades, these issues have attracted considerable media coverage, have become a common topic of public interest and have risen towards the top of political agendas of many countries (Koser, 2007:12).

International migrations are an important feature of the so-called globalization process. Migrations are embedded in the changes of global socio-economic structures (Koser, 2007:28). Indeed, the growing developmental, demographic and democratic disparities are powerful incentives to move, in addition to the global job crisis affecting large parts of the “developing world”. The segmentation of labor market in richer countries have created a demand for migrant workers, facilitated by the revolution of communication (rising awareness of disparities and information on opportunities for would-be migrants) as well as by the transformation in the transportation (cheaper and more accessible). Due to these developments, migration networks have expanded rapidly (ibid).

The more obvious impact of these flows of migrant is the economic side of the phenomenon. Indeed, in many countries, the money sent home by migrant is often a more important source of

9

income than the official aid provided by the richer countries; entire sectors of the economy and public services could be highly dependent on migrant worker. But migration also impact social and cultural spheres of life due to the “unprecedented contact with each other’s”, impacting customs, religions, ways of life, beliefs… (ibid:10-11). It shapes and re-shapes societies, making them more complex (King, 2013:6). These few impacts are clearly highlighting the relevance of a scientific approach towards migrations, focusing on its impacts as well as on its causes.

In Nepal, the young Himalayan Republic –a never colonialized country, stuck between two giants neighbors- migration is not either something new. Indeed, “out-migration” started somewhere in the 17th century and rose with the employment of Nepalese in foreign armies, but since a little bit more than two decades, these armies became those of the Capital. And their importance is quite striking: 20% of the total population is considered absentee, which represents 5.5 million in 2012, on which 2.36 are considered as migrant (and these datas doesn’t take into account the work migration to India, estimated between 1.5 and 3 millions of people). According to the Department of Foreign Employment of the Nepali Ministry of Labor, for the year 2012, the average departure rate was more than 1,700 Nepalese labor migrant every day! And, according to the latest data made available by the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), 2.7 million Nepalese migrated to overseas destinations (except India) between the years 1993/94 and 2012/13. The other impressive figure about Nepalese migration is the importance of remittance in the national economy: 25% of the GDP of the country in 2012/2013, and approximately 56 % of the total households in Nepal receive remittance (WB 2013, CBS 2011).

Almost 60% of the 2013/2014 fiscal year (FY) Nepali migrants went to the Gulf Countries (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman), 32% to Malaysia and 8% to other countries. And it this other pole is a landscape of exploitation, abuses, despair and sometimes death. Hopefully, the situation of Nepali migrants have attracted a considerable media coverage especially in the Gulf Countries where they build the Babel towers of the capitalist feudal sheikh, not even burdened by the appearance of liberal-democracy.

For example, in Qatar, where migrants represent 88% of the total population (OHCHR 2013), the Guardian (not well-known for its radical position) denounced slave like working conditions experienced by migrants and many international organizations expressed their concerns about the state of migrant workers.

This work is based on the basic and classical assumption that migrants are both pushed-out of their country of origin for different reasons, but also pulled-in in their hosting countries for others ones. And, as I will show, this has to do with different capitalist dynamics of accumulation, and the world-system structure on which they take place. To sum up, it has to do with local conditions in both sending and hosting countries, but also in how these relations interplay together in a global context.

After describing the methodology used for this study, I will briefly review the state of the art of migration studies to set-up the context and then highlight some useful information about Nepal and its migration dynamic. In the first Chapter, I will review the environment in which migration take place in the Gulf countries, its forms and its reasons (i.e the interest in hiring migrant worker): it will appear that the state of migrant workers is not a contingent outcome, but the very reason of their presence in these countries. I will also briefly review the global structure in which take place this migration network: that is the uneven and combined dynamic of capitalist development.

10

In Chapter II, I will describe the local environment in Nepal, and try to show that it is necessary to understand the migration phenomenon as part of the transition or integration to capitalist social and production relations.

After having provided these local and global explanations for the migrations of Nepalese workers, I will go further by reviewing interesting contemporary development about the notions tackled in this work, and try to enlarge the framework for further studies.

This work attempt of be, to use Marx’s words a “ruthless critique of all that exists’’, but there is of course no univoqual reasons for the phenomenon tackled here. If it sounds like this, it is due to a need for clarity, to avoid endless and overcomplicated sentences, or sometimes, to be honest, by lack of time or laziness.

11

The Relevance of MarxismTo show the relevance of Marxism for the understanding of migrations, I will start with a

French intellectual (one of the only one worth reading nowadays) quite far from it: Edgar Morin. Sociologist and philosopher, he tried his whole intellectual life to promote a “pensée complexe” (complex thought or complex thinking), a way to escape errors, ignorance, blindness in our so called era of science and reason. My point here is that the complex thinking developed by Edgar Morin could find Marxism as an appropriate basis, or at least I want to highlight the similarities of Marxism with the complexity developed by Morin and other thinkers (such as Henri Laborit). Even if this development could appear “far-fetched”, Morin’s theory will remain highly interesting for migration study, and more globally, for every social science.

In his “Introduction à la pensée complexe” (Morin, 1990) he states that thinking is a process of clarification, the action to put things in order; “dissiper l’apparente complexité des phénomènes” and thus taking the risk to oversimplify, to disintegrate or mutilate ‘reality’. On the other side the complexity doesn’t bring any elucidation, only uncertainty, doubt and disorder. And yet, beyond this dichotomy is the complex thinking, analyzing phenomenon in their articulation and interaction rather in isolation and disjunction, a multidisciplinary and multidimensional process:

“toutes choses sont causes et causantes, aidés et aidantes, médiates et immédiates […] et toutes s’entretiennent par un lien naturel et insensible qui lie les plus éloignées et les plus différentes“ (ibid:10)

A geographer would certainly add multiscalar, local and global, but the point is that we need to produce a knowledge which is non-fragmented, non-divided, non-simplistic and which accepts to be unachieved and incomplete. For him, the errors of our thinking are not due to factual errors (wrong perception) or logical ones (incoherence) but to the mode of organization of our knowledge in systems of ideas (ibid:16). Indeed, “knowledge” consist in a selection of data, in their separation or unification, their hierarchization and centralization in some notion at the heart of a “paradigm” (or as he calls it, supra-logical principles), which today is for him a paradigm of simplification.

The “pensée simplifiante” quantify, reduce, and works in disjunction and abstraction. It is unable to conceive a conjunction between and object and its environment, between the one of the multiple, so whether it consists in a juxtaposition of the diversity without conceiving its unity, or in an abstract unification annihilating diversity (ibid:19). At the other side, the complex thinking is defined as a tissue of associated heterogeneous constituents, a way to tackle the one and the multiple. It is a “ tissu d’évènements, actions, rétroactions, déterminations, aléas” acknowledging disorder, ambiguity, uncertainty, and contradiction. It is what Morin defines as the “principe de l’Unitas Multiplex, qui échappe à l’Unité Abstraite du haut (holisme) et du bas (réductionnisme). “ (ibid :22)

For Morin, the only way to go beyond this alternative (i.e destroying difference, transforming it into simple unity or occulting the unity by looking only at the differences) is the system, an “association combinatoire d’éléments différents”, a theory born in the fifties in the field of biology. At the heart of the theory is the complex unity, a whole different from the sum of its parts, the assumed ambiguity of the notion (neither a real notion neither a formal one) and the multidisciplinary of the approach. (ibid:28-29)

Many latter developments occurred around the concept of system and especially interesting ones in thermodynamic with the discovering of the open system. It states that the existence of a structure (or system) depends on an external alimentation (energetic, material or informational). Indeed, a close

12

system is characterized by the non-existence of exchange, which is a state of equilibrium when an open system is based on exchange, on a nourishing disequilibrium: without exchange, it disappears. This disequilibrium is really interesting because it is what gives life to and nourish the system, which, for an external observer is apparently stable. This notion of open system go beyond the opposition of equilibrium/disequilibrium and tackles both of them, it states that for the structures to remains the same, their component have to change (Morin take here the human body has the illustration of this permanent disequilibrium (the renewing of cells) and the apparent stability of the structure containing them). Thus an open system (or a living organism) is constituted by its very disequilibrium, which is “catch-up”, compensated in a form of stable dynamism. (ibid:30-31)

Regarding these developments, a system is only understandable by looking within itself, but at the same time by looking at its relations with its environment, i.e in the distinction as well as in the linkage (the interactions between the system and its environments are qualified by Morin as “metasystem”). (ibid:32)

That’s where we come to Marxism. In dialectic philosophy (at least the Hegelian one), the contradictions and transformations are at the heart of the unity. Rather than only studying multiples aspects of a phenomenon (for migration it could be gender, class & cast, flows,…) these aspects are studied in their interactions, and related one to each other. Marxism, as developed by Marx (on an older methodological and philosophical stand) is a science of dynamic and transformations. In its many works, he depicted capitalism as necessary unstable state. Marx and many “Marxists” see crisis and disequilibrium as an integral part of the capitalist system. Quite interesting for migration study, as we will see later in the literature state of art that “disequilibrium” was sometimes at the heart of the discipline, as well as the notion of system.

Born more than 150 years ago, initiated mainly by Marx’s angers, this doctrine (a set of theories) remains a still vivid ideology, almost done with authoritarian scavengers and free from politician alienation. According to Lefebvre (1948), Marxism is at the same time a philosophy (the dialectical materialism), a moral, a sociology (the historical materialism), an economy and a politic. We could consider Marxism as the science of capitalism, the implacable dissection of this system into different disciplines always in relation one to each other. The Marxist analysis tend to show the dialectical structure of capitalism, which arise clearly when the researcher cease to isolate some economic facts and tackle the totality of capitalist process, by unifying a priori contradictories objects (Lefebvre, 1948:76). Quite close to Morin’s suggestions.

Marxism was, for almost a century (the 19th) the main language of expression for the political contestation, infusing in feminism as well as cultural studies, in sociology as well as (lately) in geography. Its theoretical sophistication is quite impressing, and, in my sense, lots of contemporary innovations in social sciences are related to Marxist schools of thought. It could maybe explained because Marxism is a radical theory, in the etymological sense of “pertaining to the root” or to the intrinsic nature of something (from the Latin radix), and thus trying to explain the root causes of a phenomenon, looking at its structure rather than just acknowledging its forms or its characteristics.

When speaking of Marxism, I’m not referring to the distorted dogma sometimes carried by a few proponents, but often by lazy opponents. I’m speaking here of a scientific corpus, a theoretical framework. Firstly, Marxism is far from unitary; it is made of debate and schisms, ruptures and continuity. It’s a set of theories, varying in time and space. Strong arguments are not unseen, and sometimes even contradictory elements cohabit within the same scientific corpus. Secondly, it is sometimes necessary to take some distance from the old grandpa (who himself asserted in French “Je

13

ne suis pas marxiste”) but, behind that, the heart of the corpus remains relevant because we did not go beyond the circumstances that created it.

Post-structuralism, and especially the “French theory” (Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, Lyotard…) has challenged it in the past decades, but Marxism seems to know a renewal, and seems now able to face its most recent an powerful critics, as Vivek Chibber (2013) did recently for the post-colonial theory, or as Harvey (1990) did in the field of “cultural studies”, postmodern or poststructuralist theories, a path opened long ago by Antonio Gramsci (2011).

This new Marxist wave renewed with an empiricism, when the Occidental Marxism of the second half of the twentieth century (Adorno, Althusser, Marcuse…) was quite abstractive, we go back to Marxism as a science rather than as just a philosophy, a Marxism closer to its foundation (Marx, Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky…)

As stated before, Marxism seems to encompass many aspect of social life, and that’s even more obvious in the “systemic” (some would say holistic) approach developed by contemporary Marxist thinker such as David Harvey who renewed with the analysis of capitalism as a totality. This is maybe the main reason to explain the relevance of Marxism for migration studies: rather than tackling the migrations as total object, or looking at its characteristics/effects/determinants, it embeds this phenomenon in the wider structures of capitalist development.

14

Objectives, “Problématique” & HypothesisFollowing the previous development, the objectives of this work is to take a look at the explanatory factors of migration in Nepal and its incidence, and relate them with their structural causes. I define the “external factors” as the conditions for migration in Gulf countries (or the environment of migration), and the “internal factors” as the transition to capitalism within Nepal, a process labeled as “primitive accumulation” in Marxist tradition.

We are thus here investigating to what extent the Nepalese migrations are related to multi-scalar capitalist dynamics and the development is organized around different hypothesis:

- The thematic hypothesis is that the working migratory phenomenon is related to the dynamics of capital.

- The first “field” hypothesis is that the environment (or the conditions of migrations) is related to structural factors and the necessity for capitalist accumulation in the hosts’ countries (here the Gulf ones).

- The second “field” hypothesis is that Nepal is in a “primitive” capitalist stage characterized by the penetration of capital and the phenomenon of “primitive accumulation”. Thus, we should analyze the phenomenon within this new framework.

- The methodological hypothesis is that the aggregation of works and data could enable the validation or the refutation of the previous hypothesis.

Methodology and LimitsThis work is primarily based on quantitative and qualitative data provided by official and non-official departments and organizations. These “facts” are themselves embedded in theories developed by Marxist school of though.

In migration studies, as well as in others social sciences, data are often unavailable, and they have always to be taken carefully, acknowledging the flawed counting mechanisms of weak institutional countries of the global South such as Nepal, as well as those produced by “interested” international organizations. Furthermore, a huge amount of people, money or information are transferred through informal channels, and thus not recorded. Data presented here are thus to be taken as rough pictures of the situation, a basis for the following development.

15

Literature State-of-ArtAccording to the United Nations (UN), an international migrant is a person who stays outside

its usual country of residence for at least one year. But defining a migrant is a little bit more complicated than the simplistic definition of the UN. Indeed, the term cover a wide range of people in different situation, especially since the globalization process has impacted migrations. Migrants can be categorized in 4 main ways, 4 dichotomies:

- Voluntary VS forced migrant, also called refugees, migrating due to conflict, persecution or environmental reasons.

- Political migrants (refugees) VS Economic or labor migrants, looking for a work or better job opportunities or working conditions. Labor migrants are often divided between low skilled and highly skilled migrant.

- Legal VS Illegal migrant, or “irregular” as Koser (2007:17) suggest; migrants entering a country without documents, with forged documents or who stay after their visa has expired.

- Temporary (involve a return migration, obviously) VS Permanent migration.

But, obviously, these categorizations simplify reality. These concepts are unclear. Indeed, there could be an overlap between different categories, very few migrations are purely voluntary or involuntary, and it’s hard to define what political and economic spheres are since they are highly related (ibi:18-19). Furthermore, the one-year limit leave aside seasonal migrant, which are vital for sectors such as agriculture, tourism or the construction sector (King, 2013:7). As King argue, (ibid:8), these ‘dyads’ “need to be blurred and deconstructed”.

Three “core group have dominated the study of migration in the past and still do so to some extent: temporary labor migrant, settler migrants and refugees (ibid:9). We will focus on the first group, looking at various theories and models explaining international as well as rural/urban migrations.

It’s noteworthy that migrations, due to the existing diverse and heterogeneous forms, can’t fit in a single theory.

Neoclassical Economics & Push-Pull theoryThe first significant scientific work done on migration came from Ravenstein (1885, 1889). As

a cartographer for the British administration, he based his work on the study of the British and other censuses of the time, and defined what we call now as Ravenstein’s laws of migrations.

Ravenstein’s model is a “gravity model of migration”, inspired from the Newtonian physics: the movement between to places is proportional to the product of their masses (population) and inversely proportional to the distance between them.

These 7 laws are as follow (summarized by King, 2013:12):

“1. Migrants move mainly over short distances; those going longer distances head for the great centers of industry and commerce.

2. Most migration is from agricultural to industrial areas.

3. Large towns grow more by migration than by natural increase.

16

4. Migration increases along with the development of industry, commerce and transport.

5. Each migration stream produces a counterstream.

6. Females are more migratory than males, at least over shorter distances; males are in majority in international migration.

7. The major causes of migration are economic.”

Despite many critics, as for example Samers’ charge on this “economically deterministic” and “methodologically individualist” theory (2010:55-56), it represents a cornerstone of migration studies. Indeed, despite its great age, this model highlights many contemporary issues on migration: such as its relationship with industrialization (law 2), urbanization (law 3), development (law 4) and gender (law 6), but also the thematic of return migration (law 5).

These laws combine “individual rational-choice theory with the broader structures of rural-urban and developmental inequalities,” is embedded in the push-pull framework. “This simple, indeed simplistic, model conceives of migration as driven by a set of push factors operating from the region or country of origin (poverty, unemployment, landlessness, rapid population growth, political repression, low social status, poor marriage prospects, etc), and pull factors operating from the place or country of destination (better income and job prospects, better education and welfare systems, land to settle and farm, good environmental and living conditions, political freedom etc.)” (King, 2013:13).

This model put in relation the economic development and the labor supply: the rural to urban migration is seen as a response to the high demand of labor by the industrial sector, assuring workers for greater levels of productivity and superior profit for investor. It also highlights to central role of labor in the capital formation of the urban industrial sector. Within this framework, migration is related to the differences between the agricultural sector and the urban capitalist sector, and occurs for two reasons: if it insures a higher rate of wages, or because of a shortage of labor.

This model considers migration as an equilibrium mechanism between the traditional agricultural sector (characterized by subsistence economy and underemployement/surplus labor) and the modern industrial sector. Migration is supposed to bring wage equality in both sector, so migration is due to the wage inequalities and will continue as long as the surplus labor exist in rural areas.

Many scholars added new parameters to this model, but remaining on its framework. Lee (1966) added a set of obstacles (distance, cost of the journey, cultural gaps, political obstacles and personal factors in decision making.

Ravenstein’s model work at macro and micro level: focusing on the uneven spatial distribution of labor and factors of production (which will be eliminated by migration) and individual acting according to the rationality of economic interest. (King, 2013:14).

As King states, these push-pull models “dominated much migration thinking during the mid-twentieth century until the 1960s, if not later, and reflect the neoclassical economics paradigm, based on principles of utility maximization, rational choice, factor-price differentials between regions and countries and labor mobility” (ibid:13).

But this model was highly criticized for its determinism, functionalism and ahistoricism, and is a bit dated, especially since the post-oil crisis of the seventies (ibid:14). According to Arango (2004:19-20), it fails to explain why many people do not migrant, and the differences in migration rate between two

17

countries with the same structural framework: it fails to consider personal/family/sociocultural factors and to consider political conditions or colonialism legacies.

18

Todaro and Harris School of Development Economics Model.According to MP Todaro and J Harris (1970), rural/urban migration occurs because of wage

differentials: it depends on the difference between expected urban wage and the rural wage. Expected urban wage is highly important here, because it explain why migration can coexist with high level of urban employment. This model was confirmed by Yap and Williamson (1977 & 1988) surveys, highlighting that wage differentials and expected job wage are important determinant in would-be migrant decision.

In this model, the rate of rural-urban migration is a function of the difference between the expected urban wage and the expected rural wage, with the expected urban wage weighted by the probability of getting a job in the modern industrial sector.

This model was set in mathematical language; Todaro’s behavioral equation which works as follow:

When V(0) is positive, the rational worker will move.

The model is based on an individual unit of analysis, and supposes that migrants act according to economic rationality (self-interest), and thus, remains on the neoclassical economics framework.

G. Johnson (1971) and others researchers (such as Gugler & Flanagan (1978), Field (1975) or Kelly and William (1984)) made some basic amendment to this model, adding new variables such as wage sharing or differential access to information, educational level, cost of living…

19

“The Mobility Transition”: Migration & DevelopmentZelinsky (1971) linked migration patterns with the modernization theory, drawing on

Rostow’s stage of growth model (1960):

“there are definite patterned regularities in the growth of personal mobility through space-time during recent history, and these regularities comprise an essential component of the modernization process” (Zelinsky, 1971:221-222)

Based on the historical experience of Europe, this model work with 5 stage (King, 2013;15):

1. Pre-modern traditional society: very limited migration, only local movements related to marriage or marketing agricultural products.

2. Early transitional society: mass rural-urban migration, emigration to attractive foreign destinations for settlement and colonization.

3. Late transitional society: slackening of both rural-urban migration and emigration, growth in various kinds of circulation.

4. Advanced society: rural urban migration replaced by inter-urban ones, mass immigration of low-skilled workers from less developed countries; international circulation of high-skilled migrants and professionals; international circulation of high-skilled migrants and professionals; intense internal circulation, both economic and pleasure related.

5. Future super-advanced society: better communication and delivery systems may lead to a decline in some forms of human circulation; internal migration is inter or intra-urban; continued immigration of low-skilled labor from less developed countries; possibility of strict controls over immigration.

Again, migration is here seen as a self-correcting mechanism, leading to equilibrium where migration stops when wages rates are equalized.

This models foresaw the role of communication technology and its implication for some forms of mobility, and “in many respects it was visionary. It anticipated the current debate on migration and development” (ibid).

20

The New Economics of Labor MigrationIn the late eighties and early nineties, the migrations studies have known a major shift, with

emerging critical response to the individualistic neoclassical model, its religious belief in the fundamental individual rationality and its overemphasis of the factor of wage differential.

The New Economics of Labor Migration (NELM) –mainly carried by Oded Stark- aims at combining the neoclassical orthodoxy with a new scale of analysis: the family, or the household and their important role in decision making. Indeed, this theory ““recognize migration decisions […] are not individual decisions but joint decisions taken within the ambit of the household, and for different members of the household” or extended wider communal group (ibid:22). It recognizes that the individual behavior is embedded in a societal context, and considers that the family invests in the migrant through contractual arrangements between the family and the migrant, expecting a return of remittances: the whole household shares the cost and the rewards of migration.

Furthermore, the NELM points out that “rational-choice decision-making is not only about wage and income maximization but is also about income diversification and risk aversion”, aiming at compensate the market failure in case of hard blow such as crop failure due to environmental factors, sudden unemployment, … which are not compensated by savings, insurance or credit (because they are unavailable). Families or households are in an appropriate position to control/avoid/share/minimize these risks by diversifying their income earning (or livelihood) through different activities, “spreading their labor resources over space and time” (King 2013:23).

This NELM highlight the role of remittances as a part of the livelihood strategies, which can be used to cover basic costs of everyday life (food, education, clothing…) or be invested in new projects, or, as stated before, sustain the household in case of activity failure. Furthermore, unlike to the neoclassical framework, this theory considers the return migration as a success in the process. It is also a good tool to explain why migration can occur in the absence of expected wage differentials.

To summarize, according to the NELM, migration is a three-fold strategy: a risk aversion mechanism, an income maximization strategy and a strategy to overcome constraints imposed by market imperfections

This theory is obviously closely linked with the livelihood approach which emerged in the seventies among social scientists. The livelihood represents the assets, capabilities and activities required by an household to sustain itself. It goes from social institutions to intra-household relationships and mechanism of access to resources. Livelihoods are often divided in 5 frameworks: natural, social, human, physical and financial, and a livelihood strategy is a deliberate choice of a combination of activities within these 5 frameworks to maintain, secure and improve their livelihood.

It tries to shift the focus from structures (the push&pull neoclassical model) to human agency, studying the way that people react to these structure (like the pressures of penetration of capital, for example). Thus, it considers the people not only as passive victim of the structural forces but also as actors, shifting to an historical and structural approach to an empirical one. Indeed, De Haas (et al. 1997, McDowell and De Haas 1997) showed that migration is not only a strategy to counter poverty or misery (push factors) but also a mean to improve livelihoods.

It said that the NELM combined with the livelihood approach allow migration studies to tackle the importance of agency as well as the structural constraint, creating a balance between them (De Haas, 2008). But, by shifting the focus from the individual to the family, it does not change profoundly the

21

method of the neoclassical economics, remaining in the rational choice making framework hiding behind a familial fetishism structural major point such as social and economic relations, methods of production, state and class relations… This framework substitutes every possible sociological category with the family, reifying it as a unit against the individual as well as the world. But what about the organizations across families or across workers, here fragmented into families? It fails at embedding migrant with friends, community...

Furthermore, the NELM tend to consider the family/household as a black-box with clear and unanimous will/plan/strategies/aims, which is not acknowledging the tensions and conflict contained within it: such as intra-household differentiation (age, gender, class…)(Carling 2005, Rodenburg 1997)

According to Arango (2004:23), this theory is limited to the supply side of labor migration, and best applied to poor and rural settings.

Anyway, the advantage of the NELM theory was to show that migration is not an atomistic reaction to economic or environmental pressures, but a process embedded in societal rules and norms, traditions and conventions, depending on household decisions and migration networks.

This NELM framework is well used within the World Bank, ILO or United Nation discourses, looking at migration itself rather at its historical or economic dimension. We could say that it lead to an over-optimistic view of migration and development for sending area. Indeed, by emphasizing migration as a strategy to overcome market failures/structural constraints in sending areas, it contends that migration induces development by enabling households to overcome economic/financial/political constraints. It overlooks seriously the role played by the nature of capitalist development in creating inequalities through various structural constraints.

22

Systems and Networks theoriesThe system approach is said to be a “fruitful and comprehensive framework for studying

migration” (ibid:20), thanks to its multiple analytical focus on structures, linkages and processes. Its flexibility (in scale as well as in ideology) makes it able to tackle village or inter-urban migration systems to global ones.

According to Faist (1997:193):

“it enables the conceptualization of migration to move beyond a linear, unidirectional push-pull movement to emphasis on migration as circular, multi-causal and interdependent, with the effects of change in one part of the system being traceable through the rest of the system”

Thus, the system theory help to understand the structural changes that migration bring in the source and destination area, and so, the possible relationship between migration and development.

Mabogunje (1970) applied the approach to rural-urban migration in West Africa, highlighting 5 elements of the system:

1. The environmental settings (economic, government, social and community values, transport, communication…).

2. The migrant.

3. Control subsystem.

4. Adjustment mechanisms: reaction to the departure/arrival of the migrant.

5. Feedback loops during return visit (which can be positive or negative.

Portes and Böcöcz (1987) applied this theory to international migration. They found that migration flows are geographically structured in the form of clusters, shaped in terms of spaces.

The major contends of the system theory is the fact that causes and consequences can’t be explained separately since they are a part of the same system and processes.

According to Kirtz & Al (1992), this system framework is able to integrate various theoretical approaches and scales of analysis, but the whole approach fail to progress beyond descriptive identification of the contexts. Furthermore, we can see it as mechanistic and positivist, but it also neglects the personal angle. (King, 2013:20)

It is noteworthy that this systemic approach was used by Boyle & Al (1998) to tackle the “Gulf migration system”.

The network theory arised naturally in the migration studies. Indeed, “the importance of networks for migration can hardly be overstated… [they] rank amongst the most important explanatory factors for migration” (Arango, 2004:28).

Migrants’ networks represent a set of interpersonal ties connecting migrants, non-migrants and former migrants in webs (of kinship, friendship and shared origin) (King, 2013:21). Networks can be seen as a kind of “social capital stretched across migrant space”, facilitating international movement by providing information, lowering costs and risks of migrations (Massey et al. 1998:42-43). They constitute a “crucial meso-level between micro and macro formulation of migration, helping us to

23

move beyond the impersonal mechanics of gravity and push-pull theories of migration and to connect individual and socio-structural reasons for migrating” (Faist 1997a quoted by King, 2013:21).

The network approach makes researchers able to understand the dynamics of differential migration but also to predict future migration (ibid). Furthermore, it allow us to understand the continuance of migration in time, despite the changes of structure (like the disappearance of a wage differential between sending and receiving countries) or without any apparent pull&push factors: once migration is started, others factors are activated, migration become autonomous through a social structure sustaining its process. (Massey, 1989)

According to Boyd and Nowak (2012:79-83), it exist 3 types of networks: family and personal ones, labor ones and illegal networks. Recent works tend to focus on the gendered nature of these networks, which can also be exclusionary and have, of course their darker side such as trafficking networks (King, 2013:22).

Networks tends to have a multiplier effect and to perpetuate migration (Arango, 2004:28), but, in the dominant views, they are said to have positive functions such as providing information and contacts and helping migrants (to find a job, an accommodation, financial assistance…) (King, 2013:22).

Networks and systems theories are an excellent framework to analyze the continuance of network, but fail to explain the wider structural factors leading to migration and their collapse. Indeed, this theory seems to have a circular logic (i.e migration as a process going on forever) (Massey et al. 1998). Furthermore, Böcker (1994) and De Hass (2003) showed that settled migrant are not necessarily friendly towards prospective migrants, so they do not always act as bridgeheads but also as gatekeepers (Portes and Landolt 1996).

To sum-up, these theories are useful to analyze the continuance of migration, their autonomy, and the limited possible impact of policy intervention, but they are almost useless to provide a complete and coherent analysis of the entire process: beginning, causes, consequences, collapse…

24

Historical-Structural modelsThe 3 following models are largely inspired by the Marxist interpretation of capitalism,

especially the structural role of underdevelopment in the world economy. Here, migrations are caused by macro-structural forces and “stress the inherently exploitative and disequilibrating nature of the economic power shaping global capitalism” (Morawska, 2012:55). Indeed, individual migrant do not make decisions in vacuum; the socio-economic context influences its choice making.

The following theories are not monolithic; they are heterogeneous due to their different integration in different theories of movement of people and capital.

They suppose that modern phenomenon of economic migration began with the advent of capitalism. Migrations are made possible by the creation of a “dually free” labor force (i.e the proletariat in the Marxist jargon): free from the encumbrances of the ownership of means of production, but also free from feudal fetters, so free to sell its labor force and moving from one place to another. The creation of this proletariat is a precondition of the development of capitalism, and it happens through a process called “primitive accumulation”, which took variety of forms in different countries due to their different historical legacy.

Migrations are also due to the capitalist mode of production, shaping a world after its own image: capitalist development is differentiated spatially, temporally and on a sector basis. This uneven development of capitalist is multi-scalar (worldwide as well as within national boundaries). Neil Smith showed that this differentiation and polarization due to competition is also a tool of homogenization: we touch here the dual nature of capitalism (Smith, 2008). This fact explains migration processes, indeed, in a homogeneous capitalist world, economic migration would not happen, but migrations are also a tool of homogenization.

This unevenness is a tactic of accumulation: backwards areas become centers of reproduction of cheap labor. The unevenness of demand and supply conditions are the principal objective reasons beyond migration and labor flows from low demand area to high demand area.

These Marxist models contributed to the sixties paradigm shift, arguing that migration were the result of dislocations and disruption, inherent in the process of capitalist development, due to the capitalist penetration in “the less-developed countries”

25

The Dual and Segmented Labor Markets theoryThe theory of dual and segmented labor markets was first developed by Piore (1979) in its

major study “Birds of Passage”. He argues that international labor migrations are only driven by pull factors: “It is the structural power of demand for certain types of cheap and flexible labor that is the dominant force” (King, 2013:16). These pull factors are due to a dual labor market in advanced industrialized countries, divided between a primary labor market of secure and well-paid jobs for native workers and a secondary one, of low-skill, low-wage, insecure and generally unpleasant jobs in factories and services industries shunned by local workers. In this second labor market, employers can drive down wages and working conditions since foreign workers are more likely to accept because of their lack of bargaining power (especially undocumented workers), and their condition is still preferable to poverty and/or underemployment in their home country. This secondary labor market is also segmented in subsections, according to gender, race or nationality.

These segmented labor market are to be found in the advanced and newly industrialized countries (King, 2013:17). The creation of the jobs are preceding the migrant who fill them (Samers, 2010:65), and the recruitment of workers is often “network-based from within the immigrant community itself as entrepreneurs, including ‘ethnic’ businesses, recruit co-nationals to join the ethnic enclave economy (Fussell 2012:28)”.

This theory refers mainly to the Fordist era of mass industrial production and its aftermath (King, 2013;17), but was upgraded by Saskia Sassen (1988, 1991) work on global cities, showing that their growth is due to “the clustering there of corporate headquarters, financial centers and related producer services” based on a social and income structure constituted by “bulges of high income and very low-income inhabitants, the latter headed to serve the needs of the former” in restaurants, hotels, cleaning offices and houses, care to children or elderly… (King, 2013:17).

To summarize, immigration is seen as an intrinsic pattern of the continued growth and development of industrial and post-industrial societies, highlighting the demand driven nature of immigration.

The Dependency theoryThe second model is the dependency theory. This school originates in Singer and Prebisch

1949 study of terms of trade between underdeveloped countries and developed countries, and latter carried by A. Gunder Frank (1966, 1969). In this model, migration is seen as a self-perpetuating process, reproducing inequalities through the mechanism of cumulative causation (Murdal 1957, Petras 1981). Migration is a part of “the global geographic division of labor and of the historical process of subordinate incorporation of underdeveloped world into the major capitalist economies” (Morawska 2012:60).

Migrations are here explained by the difference of development between the core and the periphery, and are also a factor contributing to the underdevelopment of the peripheral areas by destructing their traditional societies and disrupting their economies.

The World System theoryThe third model emerged in the wake of the dependency theory. This world system theory is

based on an historical analysis of the development of the global capitalist system from the sixteenth century led by Emmanuel Wallerstein (1974, 1979). This model stresses the continuance of power relation between countries from colonialism to the neo-colonialism and corporate capitalist after the decolonization. Wallerstein classified countries according to their position on the global market economy, dividing them between 3 groups:

26

1. The dominant capitalist powers or “the core”: North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. They actively try to perpetuate a state of dependence by various means.

2. The semi-periphery

3. The poor countries or periphery, entirely dependent on the core through asymmetric ties of trade, capital penetration and migration. They provide resources, cheap labor and market for the core economies.

Migration are here partly explained by “the colonial imprint on the international population flows remains strong because of pre-existing colonial-era ties between past colonial powers and their former colonies, creating transport and communication infrastructures, administrative links and linguistic and cultural commonalities” (Morawska 2007 quoted by King, 2013:18).

But, moreover, it is the capitalist penetration into peripheral areas which is dislodging rural labor and traditional patterns of employment, thus creating a potentially mobile “reserve army” available for migration (ibid:18).

This world system theory is interdependent with the “New International Division of Labor”, studying the labor and migration side of the world system.

27

There are many critics about these historical-structural models. The first is that they regard migrants as “little more than passive pawns in the play of great powers and world processes presided over the logic of capital accumulation (Arango 2004:27). They are said to deny the agency of migrant, when some of them succeed and prosper. They are also said guilty of historical determinism, a “univocal, reductionist interpretations of history in which all countries pass through… as if following a grand script” (ibid). Indeed, according to King, migrations flows are not all driven by capital penetration, they can be much more spontaneous, “patterned by geographies of perceived opportunity” (2013:19). The last critic is the little attention paid to the role of state in migration flows.

The later critic was addressed by the political economy approach, which its major proponent: Castles and Miller (1993). While remaining in an historical-structural framework, it tries to combine the economic power of labor demand with state or supra-state political mechanisms. Indeed, it “sees the immigration policies of receiving states […] as directly shaping the volume, dynamics and geographical patterns of international migration flows” (ibid:19). In this approach, the economic system rests on the political and military power of a group of dominant nation (Morawska 2007:4): “in its current form, the neoliberal economic order enables hegemonic receiver-states to regulate global trade, finance and international migration” (King, 2013:19). In another hand, international migration also challenges the hegemony of the states…

The political economy approach considers migrations as an inevitable phenomenon in the transition to capitalism, and is strongly linked with the breakdown of traditional agrarian economy.

To sum-up, these theories allow us to go beyond the individual centered cost/benefit approach (i.e the neoclassical economy), which prevent from analyzing the real causes of migrations by leaving out the modes of production and the organizational patterns of the society (Amin, 1974). Indeed, the allocations of the factors of production are not automatically given as a natural point of departure, but are the result of basic development choices.

The penetration of capital and the displacement of people through differentiation and polarization are the broad framework of the historical-structural models. It is a way to recognize the importance of socio-economic context and its influence on human consciousness (which can itself transform this context). Agents are not only passive receiver, but subversive agency which can led social and political revolution or reforms. We need to escape the rigid mechanical division between structure and agency, understanding them in their intertwined motion.

Despite this fact, these theories are often criticized for being too deterministic and denying agency to migrant, regardless of the fact that none of their proponent speak in favor in a mechanical application or a reduction to a deterministic “economism”.

28

Regional Context

Useful maps

Figure 1 Map of South Asia (Bhattarai 2003)

29

Figure 2 Physiographic Regions and Administrative Districts of Nepal (CBS)

30

Physical and human geographyNepal is a small landlocked country of 147,181km², which, to give an idea, represent the 3

metropolitan biggest French region putted together.

Approximately 31 millions of people live in this territory (CIA 2014)(high population density: 212.67/km²), with only 17% living in the urban areas (World Bank 2013). Indeed, Nepal is predominantly a rural-agricultural society, and even areas designed as urban are to be taken with caution, since the rural-urban distinction is easily blurred by urban dwellers involved in rural activities (Bhattarai, 2003:13).

Only 16% of the total land could be considered as arable land (CIA 2014), so, over 70% of the land is unavailable for cultivation due to the nature of the terrain and the climate which is resulting in a high population pressure on land. (Bhattarai 2003:6)

Concerning its location, Nepal is “trapped” between two giants: China and India, and thus, totally dependent on India for external transit routes and sea access. This location as played an important role in the development and the trajectory of the country, indeed:

“It is precisely this geographical squeeze between China and India that has historically played a paramount role in defining Nepal’s human geography, cultural landscapes, economic life and diplomatic navigation.” (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:7)

Furthermore, as Achin Vanaik (2008:5) states, the strength of external pressures from these two giants “colonial or post-colonial powers have been determining factors in this formally independent state”.

Nepal is one of the most mountainous countries in the world; indeed, the country hosts six of the world’s ten tallest peaks. Despite these mountainous patterns, 20% of the country total land “lies in the subtropical lowland” (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:20) called Tarai, a physical unit bordering India. Nepal altitude ranges from a couple of hundred feet above the sea to the tallest peak on earth, and thus, encompass a wide array of climatic zones “almost all those found on the whole continent of North America”(ibid) in its 160km between India and China, creating tremendous climate variations, from subtropical summers and the monsoon season (in which relies the life of millions of people of the Bay of Bengal) and mild winters in the South to cool summers and Severe Winters in the mountains.

Nepal could be divided in 3 main regions, functioning as altitude layers, from the Indian border to the Chinese one. This stairway rises from the Tarai, the flat river plain of the Ganges in South, to the central hill region, and the Himalayas mountains up-North. These 3 broad physiographic regions based on elevation changes and ecological variations is one of the main ways to consider the country.

The Mountain region (parbat in Nepali) is situated 3,600m (12,000ft) above the sea level. It is a landscape of snowy mountains, with inclement climate and harsh topography, which is limiting human habitation and economic activities. This area is sparsely populated, with only less than 8% of Nepal population living there (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:9).

Economic activities in this region are mainly related to agricultural activities. Farming activities are to be found in valleys and rivers basins (only 5% of Nepal total cultivatable land), supplemented with pastoralism and trans-Himalayan trade (which decline since the late 50s annexation of Tibet).

This region is impacted by phenomenon of migration from the mountains to the hills and Tarai urban centers (mainly from the upper crusts of the society inhabitants). (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:10)

31

The Himalayan range represents a powerful hydraulic force: from the condensation of clouds coming from the Bay of Bengal resulting on monsoon precipitation, determining the economic fates of farmers of Nepal, Bangladesh and India (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:11), but also the source of most rivers that drain the subcontinent.

The Hill region (pahar in Nepali) lies between 600m (2000ft) to the Mountain region. It is constituted by a chain of middle mountains and fertile valleys such as Katmandu’s valley, the nerve center of the country, hosting 1.5 million people within its three districts (it is the single most urbanized area in the country, with a long history).

The pahar has “long functioned as the political and cultural heart of Nepal” (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:12), and has historically contained the largest population in Nepal (almost 53% in 1971 (ibid)) but since the beginning of heavy internal migration to the Tarai region started in the sixties, things are slowly changing.

In the region, the agriculture remains predominant despite the fact that the hills contain only 38% of the total cultivatable land of the nation (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:13) and is suffering from high economic vulnerability: “the pahar as a whole suffers from chronic food shortages, which generally intensify as one move westward” (ibid).

The Tarai Region “stand in complete topographic and climatic contrast to the mountains and hill regions to its north” (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:13). It is a lowland subtropical belt at the Nepal-India border, an extension of India Gangetic Plains. “Tarai” means damp, which describes appropriately its hot and humid climatic conditions.

Until the early 1950s, the region was a malarial subtropical jungle but today malaria has been contained and vast areas of dense forest have disappeared through legal and illegal logging, converting it into farm.

The region was only incorporated into the national configuration in the early fifties (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:14), transforming it from an internal colony to a frontier for resettlement of the hill and mountains resident through planned agricultural schemes and development plan.

The Tarai is the principle core of commercial forestry, and with 57% of the total cultivatable land, it the country’s granary with limited technological inputs and low land productivity. The region has also an industrial and commercial potential. These combined factors, related to the limits faced by the two other regions make it the richest Nepal economic region.

32

People, Society and DemographyThe estimated population growth rate is 1.82% for 2014 (CIA 2014). Nepal is a “young”

country, with a media age of 22.9 (ibid) and over 50 percent of the population is below the age of 30, and more than 30% below 14, which is a source of demographic concerns:

“the prospect for Nepal's population growth to slow down any time soon is slim. As this dependent population enters the child-bearing phase, the population is bound to swell, thus further accentuating its grim demographic problems.” (Bhattarai 2003:7)

Figure 3 Population pyramid of Nepal (CIA 2014)

The demographic history of Nepal is linked with migrant’s stories, from north and south. Ancient migration begins with the nomadic Mongoloid people from Tibet (Rais & Limbus), (Gurungs and Magars), (Sherpas and Lepchas) seeking forage for their animal. 1000 years ago, Nepal has known the migration of Indo-Arayans, high caste Hindus from Indian border (Brahmans and Rajputs).

In the late nineteenth century the hills ceased to be a migration destination to become a source of outmigration. People migrated in search of military and menial jobs in India or acquiring land in Tarai (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:19)

These internal migration issues are representing the problem of population growth in a country with a limited economic resource base; an agrarian country with limited advancements in agricultural technology. Indeed, migrants are mainly migrating internally to urban centers (with a rate of urbanization of 3.62 per year (CIA 2014), which (in relation with international migration) is a source of concern about the sustainability of these dynamics, since agricultural resources are limited and the urbanization is not followed by the development of industries:

33

“Historically, urbanization has served as a safety valve for rural population pressure in two distinct ways. First, since urban growth and urbanization were invariably associated with industrial growth-at least such was the case in Western Europe, North America, and Japan-cities acted as centers of off-farm employment for excess farm hands, thus bringing relief to rural areas in terms of reduced population and increased income. Second, growing urbanization led to reduced rates of population growth, partly because, unlike in rural-agricultural settings, children were no longer seen as an economic asset. But Nepal has not been able to benefit from this historical process. […] its industrial process in its infancy, it is one of the least urbanized and industrialized countries in the world.” (Bhattarai 2003:8)

Concerning the ethnicity patterns of Nepal, the country hosts varied ethnic groups which can be classified in 3 broads groups in terms of their origin (Bhattarai 2003:8):

India: o in the Hills: Brahmans and Kshatriyas (high-caste Hindus), Bahuns and Chhetriso in the Tarai: different sub ethnic groups from Northern India

Tibet: Gurung, Magar, Thakali, Tamang, Sherpa, Rai, Limbu… Indigenous people: Tharu, Dhimal & Newar

Religion occupies a center stage in Nepali society; a country where life cadenced by numerous festivals, and, until recently Nepal used to be constitutionally declared as a Hindu State.

Hindu is declared to represents 90% of the population, cohabiting with Buddhists (6%) and Muslims (3%). There’s an intermingling of Hindu and Buddhist beliefs, which could explain the peaceful cohabitation between religions in Nepal, quite surprising regarding the situation of its neighbors. (Bhattarai, 2003:13)

The ethnic and religious structure in Nepal could be seen a dualistic, divided between Indicized and Tibeticized zones of influence, which the following differences (Lewis & Riccardi 1995):

Indicized Polities Tibeticized PolitiesMore direct center-periphery relations Loose network in severe terrainCultural heart in the North Indian plains, one of the most densely settled areas in the world

Cultural heart in the central Tibetan plateau, one of the most sparsely settled areas in the world

Rice-cow subsistence system Cold crop & herding subsistenceSocial structure dominated by Chetri-Brahman alliances

Dominated by nobility-monatic alliances

High caste landlord elite Nobility and monastic landlord eliteCaste hierarchy as socio-religious ideas Endogamous social groupings and monastic

religious ideal

34

Politics in NepalSince 2008, a Federal Democratic Republic replaced the constitutional monarchy.

Traditionally, power structures are controlled by a nexus of high-caste and dominant class elites such as Hindus Bahuns and Chhetris ethnic groups (Bhattarai 2003:8) and the indigenous elite of the hill regions, the Newars. For example, after the 1999 election, these tree ethnic groups “occupied 75% of all cabinet posts and 61% of all parliamentary seats”, when, altogether they only represented 36% of the total population (Vanaik, 2008:7).

The political landscape of Nepal is characterized by an atomization of political parties: 120 parties participated in the November 2013 election for the constituent assembly. But a few parties are dominating the political scene; the Nepali Congress (social-democrat), the United Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Nepal (social democratic and reformist) and the Maoist Communist Party of Nepal, influenced by Mao’s theories and worldwide experiences such as Sendero Luminoso in Peru (Vanaik 2008:18).

The lack of political consensus can be illustrated by the endless try to finalize the new Constitution. The latest, an interim one, entered into force 15 January 2007. A constituent assembly was elected in 2008 to draft and promulgate a new constitution but was unsuccessful and was dissolved in 2012; a new constituent assembly was elected in late 2013 and the parties have committed to promulgating a new constitution within one year, which didn’t happened yet.

35

Nepali Economy and DevelopmentNepal is among the poorest and least developed country in the world, with a life

expectancy of 68 (World Bank 2014).

For 2012, Nepal’s Human Development Index (HDI) value was 0.463 ranking 157 out of 187 countries, thus in the low human development category. To compare it with its neighbor, China HDI was 0.699, India 0.554 and Bangladesh 0.515 (respective ranks: 101, 136 and 146). (UNDP 2013)

25% of the Nepali population lives below poverty line (ibid), which makes “a landscape filled with poverty”, but with only 17% of the Nepali population living in the cities; it could be considered as rural poverty (ibid). This notion of “poverty” needs to be pushed further, distinguishing between frugality, destitution and scarcity, and, in this framework, Nepal is somewhere between frugality and scarcity:

“Regardless of its geographical distribution, the face of poverty is no longer strictly determined by people’s economic inability to meet the basic minimum requirements of life, such as staple food and shelter. Poverty has also grown a second face, the one that is intimately associated with what can be called relative scarcity. As the culture of consumerism penetrates every facet of life and every corner of the country, the second face becomes openly visible. As poverty is increasingly defined and measured in terms of material possessions, the visible distance between the rich and poor is widened, often leading to the stigmatization of the poor” (Nana R. Shrestha, 2002:43)

Nepali Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is about 19 billion US$ for the year 2012, with a growth of 5% for the same year. Per capita, Nepalese GDP amount for about 700US$. (World Bank 2014)

Figure 4 GDP composition (Ulandssekretariate 2013)

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, providing a livelihood for more than 70% of the population and accounting for a little over one-third of GDP (CIA 2014). This could be explained by the patterns of this traditional form of agriculture, subsistence agriculture, so there are only few formal or waged employment opportunities in agriculture, and the sector is affected by time-related

36

underemployment… (Ulandssekretariatet 2013:1-2). Industrial activity in Nepal mainly involves the processing of agricultural products (including pulses, jute, sugarcane, tobacco, and grain)

Furthermore, Nepal is heavily dependent on remittances, which amount to as much as 22-25% of GDP (CIA factbook).

Figure 5 Sectoral employement and GDP share(without agriculture) (Ulandssekretariate 2013)

The Labour Force Survey of 2008 estimated an informal employment rate at 96% out of total employment. Outside agriculture 73% of the population is employed in the informal sector. 16.4% are estimated to be informally employed outside the informal sector. The latter mainly include non-agricultural subsistence workers and contributing family workers. Even for a developing country, “this is a high share for the informal sector” (Ulandssekretariate 2013).

The unemployment rate for the year 2012 was 2.7% of the total workforce, 3% for men and 2.4% for women, which is quite under the low income countries average (respectively: 5.2, 4.6 and 5.9%)(World Bank 2014), but the notion of unemployment doesn’t tackle the underemployment, rampant in Nepal.

Indeed, 54% of the population worked less than 40 hours per week (underemployment is defined as the fact that people work involuntary less than 40 hours per week), 32% less than 20 hours per week and 22% worked between 30 and 40 hours per week.

According to the Labor Force Survey (CBS 2008), 21% of those working less than 40 hours did so involuntary, explaining it by the fact that they “can’t find work” (41%), “off season inactivity” (56%) and other reasons (3%). Thus, the Nepali society is highly impacted by underemployment rather than unemployment.

37

The monthly average wage in 2010, US$70US for agricultural sector, and US$ 113 for the non-agricultural sector (2011 US dollar equivalent)(CBS 2011).

Regarding international trade patterns, Nepal is prey to dramatic disequilibrium. Indeed, estimated 2013 exports amount for US$1.06 billion and imported good amount for US$6.329 billion. Export commodities are mainly related to low technology goods (clothes, carpets…) and agricultural products, and import commodities are petroleum products and technological goods (electrical goods, machinery and equipment…)(CIA 2014).

Education in Nepal was historically a privilege to the elite but improvement in recent decades: 57.4% of the population is considerate literate, with huge gender differences (71.1% for men and 46.7% for women)(CIA 2014). Today, education system is still polarized by class division (powerful and wealthy families send their children to more “advanced” countries)(Bhattarai 2003:16)

To conclude, challenges to the Nepali economy include its landlocked geographic location, issues around power shortages, its underdeveloped transportation infrastructure, its susceptibility to natural disaster and moreover, the switch from a traditional agricultural economy to a modern one: the necessity to increase and secure the land productivity and to develop an industrial sector which could provide employment and produce local goods to replace imported ones.

38

Social Structure: Class and Cast in NepalA caste system is usually defined as a “multifaceted status hierarchy that groups all members

of society into specific caste categories” (Bhattarai 2003:80). The caste system of the Nepali society is modeled after the Hindu caste system of the Indian plains, and tends to be found mainly among Indo-Nepali people, but it was also adopted and adapted by Newars. (Bhattarai 2003:10- 11;80-81)

The caste structure in Nepal tends to be waned over time (especially in the cities) but remain influential (ibid).

The caste belonging influences everyday life activities, especially on marriage, social status, mobility and educational opportunities:

“caste is used to determine individual behavior, obligations, and expectations. All the social, economic, religious, legal, and political activities are prescribed by sanctions that determine access to land, position of political power, and command of human labor”(ibid)

The caste belonging is rooted in blood purity, but wealth can mitigate some of its effects.

The caste system in Nepal is divided into 4 casts (with subcastes in each groups):

o Bahun or Brahman: priests & scholars, at the top of the hierarchyo Chhetri: rulers and warriorso Vaisya (merchant and traders) o Sudra or untouchable (menial laborers).

Class and caste tend to converge, even if sometimes wealthy people could be quite low in social caste hierarchy and vice versa: “within this constrictive system, wealth, political power, high rank, and privilege tend to converge” (ibid).

It is noteworthy, that due to the ethnic and religious heterogeneity of the country, the caste framework is only consistent for regional and local context. (ibid)

Concerning the social class structure, the 10 richest percent of the population in Nepal hold between 26 and 27% of the global income share, and the 20% richest, almost 42% of it. (WorldBank Database)

The Gini coefficient -measuring the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals- for the year 2010 was 32.8 (knowingly that 0 represents perfect equality, and 100 perfect inequality)(World Bank Database). It is in the regional average: India 33.9, Bangladesh 32.1, China 42.1)

The concept of class is quite slippery, and there’s various definition of it. According to Erik Olin Wright (2009), there is 3 main approach and definitions:

o Individual attribute and property: interconnexion of individual attribute (sex, age, race, religion, instruction, geographic location…) and material condition of living. (sociologist and mainstream approach). Individual conditions are creating economic position. Individuals and their activities don’t reflect directly social relationship.

39

o The Weberian monopolization of opportunity approach: social enclosure, insiders/outsiders. Causal relationship between rank of wealth and position in the society, rich are rich because poor are poor. Economic condition produced by exclusion relationship, but class is not perceivable in activities relationship.

o The Marxist approach: exploitation and domination. Capacity of control of activities of other (domination) and acquisition of economic wealth created by the dominated (exploitation). Exploitation need domination, domination doesn’t necessarily mean exploitation. Relationship between classes, structural inequalities. Double relationship between structural effects of exploitation and domination on economic conditions and practices.

But there is no reason to considerate those as exclusive, moreover, there’s a need to combine them for a better understanding of these questions.

Looking at the differences in wealth and access to political power, Nepal can be divided into a small running elite class (government officials, big landholders and merchants) and peasants and workers (“perhaps over 75% of the population”) (Bhattarai 2003:13).

The landholding patterns are quite unequal, “the richest 5% of households own nearly 37% of land while some 47% of landowning households own around 15% of land” (Vanaik 2008:8).

In Nepal, class divisions are largely determined by socioeconomic roles and positions but are said to be relatively fluid categories (Bhattarai 2003:13).

40

Brief historical overviewRather than going into ancient and medieval eras, let’s make a rapid overview of modern

historical development in Nepal.

Nepal was a set of kingdoms unified in today’s form by Prithvi Narayan Shah in the mid-eighteen century, starting what could be qualified as the “medieval period of Nepal” (Bhattarai, 2003:xxxix). Before, it was divided between various pastoral dynasties.

The only hostile contact with a colonial power was the Anglo-Nepalese war (1815-16) due to border dispute. After that, friendship links where always maintain between the Kingdom of Nepal and the British Empire, assisting them against Indian rebellion (the Sepoy Rebellion, 1857) and both world wars.

Democracy in Nepal is born after a long struggle, including underground parties and armed insurgency (Arjun and Seddon 2003:3), started in late 1940s with the rise of pro-democracy movement and critical political party.

In the fifties, Nepal knew an era which one could call a false start in the “dawn of democracy” (Nanda 2002:35) with the reign of King Tribhuvan (ruled 1911-1955), assisted by the Indian power.

In February 1959 took place the first general election of a representative government, soon stopped by the action of King Mahendra (ruled 1955-1972) against the Koirala government by arresting the prime minister in December 1960, and insuring its absolute continued rule until his death in the early 1972s. (ibid;37)

The monarchy was stroke by a new pro-democracy movement in the late eighties, under the impulse of a coalition formed by the Nepali Congress Party and a “United Front” of diverse communist factions giving birth to the “Movement for the Restoration of Democracy” in February 1990, thirty years after the first aborted coming of democracy. The fast advance of the movement (through violent and non-violent forms of action) forced King Birendra (ruled 1972-2001) to accede the popular demand and to restore a constitutional monarchy in April 1990, under the prime ministership of the Nepal Congress Party leader Krishna Bhattarai, leading to a new constitution limiting the monarchy to a constitutional status, and general elections in May 1991 won by the Nepali Congress Party.

In 1994 national election, the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) won the majority of parliamentary seat and formed a government which fell in a year, replaced by the Nepali Congress Party.

Despite its potential, this second democracy era in Nepal had failed to “bring relief to the general population” (ibid: 39) and its failure could be perceived through the rise of the Maoist movement in the mid-nineties.

Rejecting the new 1990’s constitution promulgated by the King, the galaxy of left-wing parties continued their struggle for the formation of a People’s Republic through a new democratic constitution, winning the 1994 national election but failing at conserving the power more than 9 month, setting of the scene for the “People’s War” (Arjun & Seddon 2003:18), aiming at replace the royal parliamentary system with a “People’s Republic”.

41

The “People’s War” could be considered as the extension of the left-wing galaxy politics through armed struggle, and is rooted in historical and structural causes (politics, economic and social).

The massacre of the Royal Family by one of its member in June 2001 accelerated the political desegregation of the central power, leading to the initiation of a program of talk between the Maoists and the government alongside with a ceasefire. Maoists’ claims were unchanged: the formation of an interim government, a constituent assembly and a new constitution for the establishment of a Republic. These talks failed: in November, the Maoists broke off the talks and the ceasefire, launching a new series of attacks, and the government declared a State of Emergency, inscribing the CPN as a terrorist organization. (ibid: 30-38).

The conflict increased in intensity, becoming bigger than the low intensity conflict of the first six years, projecting it on the international scene (ibid:38-41). In 2002, the Maoists were officially considered to be in control of about 25% of the country, and to have a significant influence over the rest. (ibid:44)

On February 2005, King Gyanendra dismissed the government and took control of the executive powers to fight back the Maoists. He failed, and in September, the Maoists declared a 3 month ceasefire to negotiate. Pressured by the democracy movement, the King gave back its power to the House of Representatives, which abolish the monarchy and declared a federal republic between December and May 2008.

The civil war lasted from 1996 until 2006, causing the death of more than 15000 people (10,500 civilians by Government and 3000 Maoists by the government). It is estimated that 100,000 to 150,000 people were internally displaced as a result of the conflict, which also considerably disturbed the rural development in the country.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) won the 2008 Constituent Assembly election and formed a coalition government. In August, the Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal (also known as Prachanda, his war-name) was elected Prime Minister, succeeded by another Maoist, Dr Babu Ram Bhattarai in 2011.

Since then Nepal politics are still agitated by the writing of the new constitution.

42

Migration in NepalNepal is experiencing 3 broad types of migrations: internal migrations, emigration and

immigration, highly heterogeneous in terms of purpose, duration and “free-will”. Internal migrations could be seasonal, temporary or permanent, and are mainly related to work, studies and resettlement. Emigration is seasonal (mainly to India), temporary/contractual (to Malaysia & the Gulf countries) or permanent (to the USA, Canada, Australia…). We will focus on the later type, and especially on the Gulf-countries migrations.

International migrations in Nepal had become a common feature in the national landscape, and it strikes by its importance in terms of numbers of migrants as well as by its impact on a highly remittance dependent national economy.

An historical overviewNepal has a long migration history, indeed, migration has been a continuous process in Nepal

since centuries, but types and natures of migration have changed.

The first wave is an in-migration of people from North and South in the early 6 th century to the 13th

century, bringing different people together and building Nepal as we know it today. Until 1950, these in-migrations were coupled with trade migration due to the geostrategic position of Nepal; between India and Tibet. These trade migrations involved traditional mountain trading communities such as Thakalis, Manangba, Loba, Sherpas, Walongchung, Bhotiyas and Byansi (Gurung, 2014:33).

Out-migrations in Nepal started with the process of state formation between the 17 th and the 20th

century. People left the country to India, Sikkim and Bhutan, running away from the “high taxation and extreme exploitation of common peasant”. (ibid)

Labor migrations rose about 200 years ago with the enrollment of the famous Nepali soldier in foreign armies (mainly the British and Indian Armies). This process is still going on in a smaller scale, with a tendency to diversification to the French foreign legion, the US army, or police forces of places like Singapore.

These army-related migrations could have been the trigger for larger scale labor civilian migrations which started after 1930 and the end of government restriction on migration. These migrants were mainly targeting India. In the same time, mainly northern-Indian emigrated to the Taraï thanks to government encouragement. (Gurung, 2014:34)

Internal migrations dominated the period between 1960 and 1980 from the hills to the Taraï, due to the malaria eradication in the low-lands. These internal migrations are still going on, but in more multi-dimensional types and increasingly characterized by rural-urban migrations (ibid).

Then, the political changes of the nineties with the rise of democracy and the opening of the country to the world led to a diversification of migrations forms, giving birth the long-distance labor migrations, student migrations and a flow of refugees of state-less people coming from Tibet, Burma and Bhutan (ibid).

43

Amount of International MigrantsNepal has been experiencing a very high rate of migration since the last two decades.

According to the latest statistics, 20 percent of the total population of Nepal is absentee population of which 43 percent are residing outside Nepal. With the total population of 27.47 million in 2012, the number of absentee population and migrant population in Nepal during 2012 can be estimated to be 5.5 million and 2.36 million respectively. These figures, however, do not account for the number of Nepalese who move to India on a seasonal basis. According to an estimate made in the World Bank report, there are between 1.5 and 3 million total number of Nepalese workers in India including seasonal workers (World Bank 2011)

According to the Department of Foreign Employment of the Nepali Ministry of Labor, for the year 2012, the average departure rate was more than 1,700 Nepalese labor migrant every day! Quite impressing, especially when acknowledging the flawed counting mechanism of a country like Nepal, the number of illegal migrants and the migrant going to India (which are not taken into account due to a friendship agreement between the two countries, allowing people of both country to freely cross the border and work).

According to the latest data made available by the Department of Foreign Employment (DoFE), 2.7 million Nepalese migrated to overseas destinations (except India) between the years 1993/94 and 2012/13. A total of 311,512 Nepalese have already left Nepal for foreign employment in the first seven months of FY 2013/14 (NIDS 2014). This migration figure from 2013/14 puts the number of Nepalese leaving for foreign employment at approximately 1250 per day. The figure below shows the total number of Nepalese migrant workers between the years 1993/94 and 2013/14.

For the fiscal year 2012/2013, 453,543 Nepali left the country in search for a job, many of them in the Gulf Cooperation Country (Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman) and Malaysia.

44

1993

/94

1994

/95

1995

/96

1996

/97

1997

/98

1998

/99

1999

/00

2000

/01

2001

/02

2002

/03

2003

/04

2004

/05

2005

/06

2006

/07

2007

/08

2008

/09

2009

/10

2010

/11

2011

/12

2012

/13

2013

/140

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

400000

450000

500000

Fiscal Year

Num

ber

of M

igra

nts

Figure 6 Number of Nepalese migrant workers at various destinations around the world (excluding India) between the years 1993/94 and 2013/14 (NIDS 2013)

Note: Data for 2013/14 is for the first eight months of the fiscal year

There has been a steady rise in the number of Nepalese leaving for overseas employment except for the year 2008/09, where there was a slight decline. The decline in the number of Nepalese leaving for overseas employment during the year 2008/09 can be seen as a direct consequence of the global financial crisis. The number of Nepalese leaving for foreign employment started to rise again from 2009/10 and has shown a steady increase since then. If we are to take the first seven months of 2013/14 data on migration as a reference, the total migrants population in the year 2013/14 is expected to exceed 450,000 which is close to the number of Nepalese who had left for foreign employment in 2012/13 (453,543)(NIDS 2014).

45

DestinationsA total of 107 countries have been recognized as foreign employment destinations by the

government of Nepal.

Malaysia has become a popular destination for Nepalese for foreign employment. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait are the most common destinations for Nepalese migrant workers among the GCC countries. Although a lot of Nepalese travel to India for seasonal and permanent employment, there is no official data on the exact number of Nepalese working in India. Most of the Nepalese travelling to India are from the Mid-western and Far-western regions of the country, the poorest regions in the nation (NIDS 2014).

Destination Countries

Migrant numbersMale Female Total

Qatar 77,601 1,268 78,869Malaysia 113,689 3,518 117,207Saudi Arabia 50,921 602 51,523UAE 30,886 3,627 34,513Kuwait 7,611 7,440 15,051Bahrain 2,495 274 2,769Oman 1,373 750 2,123South Korea 1,496 58 1,554Lebanon 105 442 547Israel 125 382 507Afghanistan 280 3 283Japan 1,377 111 1,488Others 3,483 1,638 5,121TOTAL 291,442 (93.5%) 20,113 (6.5%) 311,555 (100%)

Table : Number of Nepalese Migrant Workers at various destinations around the world (except India) during the first eight months of FY 2013/14 Source: DoFE, 2014 (Table: NIDS Migration Yearbook 2013)

Almost 60% of the 2013/2014 fiscal year (FY) Nepali migrants went to the Gulf Countries (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman), 32% to Malaysia and 8% to other countries.

Despite a global trend toward a “feminization of migration”, Nepali patterns are also highly gendered since 93.5% of migrants are men.

46

Profile of migrantsThere is a very clear trend in migration among the quintile groups in Nepal. Those from the

very poor and poor class migrate to India for employment. Migration to India decreases as we move from poorer to richer quintile groups. Higher number of people from the lower-middle to richer sections of the community prefers to migrate to countries other than India. The following figure shows the distribution of various quintile groups by destination countries.

Very Poor Poor Lower-middle Upper-middle Rich0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

Foreign coun-triesIndiaWithin Nepal

Consumption Quintiles

Figure 7 Migration of various Consumption Quintile groups by destination (NIDS 2010)

Source: Nepal Migrants’ Survey, 2009 (NIDS, 2010)

Majority of Nepalese leaving abroad for foreign employment have either unskilled or semi-skilled. Of the total labour migrants, 75% are unskilled, 23% are semi-skilled and only 2% are skilled (NIDS 2010). Because majority of the Nepalese labour force migrating overseas are unskilled, they are mostly involved in lowly entry level jobs in the destination countries. Nepalese in overseas destinations are employed mostly in construction, industrial and hospitality sectors.

Migrant are mainly male from middle and lower class of the society (NIDS 2006), even if Nepal know a feminization of its migration.

Most of the migration (both internal and external) in the early 2000s used to be from the Hills of Nepal. The Hill migrants accounted for approximately 70 percent of the total migrant population until 2001 (Adhikari & Gurung 2009). However, there has been a gradual shift in the pattern of migration in Nepal. According to a survey conducted in 2009, approximately 48 percent of the total migrant population were from the Terai region (NIDS 2010).

47

Remittances in NepalThe other impressive figure about Nepalese migration is the importance of remittance in the

national economy.

Nepal has been experiencing an overwhelming scale of migration since the last two decades. Due to the dramatic scale of migration and the flow of remittance into the country as a result, remittance has become an integral part of the Nepalese economy. The dependence on remittance for the development of Nepalese economy is increasing every year. According to the Nepal Development Update published by the World Bank (2013), private transfers accounted for 25.5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2012/13. Most of these private transfers are worker’s remittances and pensions. Approximately 56 % of the total households in Nepal receive remittance, a significant increase from 2003/04 and 1995/96 (CBS, 2011).

According to the Nepal Development Report published by the World Bank in October 2013, there was an increase of 41.8% in workers’ remittance in 2011/12 and a further increase of 20.9% in 2012/13 compared to previous years. This puts the total workers’ remittance received in 2011/12 and 2012/13 at NRs. 368,000 million and NRs. 445,000 million respectively. The table below shows the mean and total remittance inflow in Nepal from different countries.

Table : Size of remittance received by source

Mean amount (NRs.)

Total amount (NRs.)

Internal SourceUrban 25,454 25,713,539,244Rural 12,127 25,172,505,866External SourceIndia 29,499 29,297,865,119Malaysia 93,474 21,776,508,833Saudi Arabia 108,561 25,770,996,309Qatar 115,794 41,327,887,124United Kingdom 164,842 7,719,576,662Other countries 224,609 82,362,803,100

Source: Nepal Living Standards Survey, 2010/11.

Internal sources still account for a significant portion of remittance in Nepal although the mean amount or remittance received internally and from India is very low compared to foreign destinations like Malaysia, Qatar and others. India also accounts for a substantial amount of total remittance received. However, not all the remittance received from India is officially documented as majority of the remittance from India is either hand carried or transferred through informal channels.

Total workers’ remittances for the fiscal year 2012/13 were NRs. 434,581.7 million. Workers’ remittances together with overseas pensions of NRs. 35,326.7 million take the total remittance inflow into Nepal during the FY 2012/13 to NRs. 469,908.4 million (Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) 2013) .

According to the Nepal Migrants’ Survey conducted in 2009, Jhapa, Morang, Solukhumbu, Chitwan and Nawalparasi received remittance in excess of NRs. 10 billion. There were 12 districts overall in

48

the country receiving less than NRs. 1 billion in remittance. The top five remittance receiving districts received approximately 30% of the total remittance. Overall, a trend was observed; most of the remittance that flows into Nepal goes to the eastern Terai and western Hills of the country (World Bank 2011).

Use of RemittanceRemittance receiving households make use of remittance for different purposes. For a majority

of Nepalese migrants, remittance is a strategy for survival. According to the Nepal Living Standards Survey of 2011, 79% of the total remittance received in Nepal is used for daily consumption and to fulfil the basic needs of the household. Another major use of remittance is the repayment of loans that the migrant family borrows before leaving for foreign employment. With the pre-migration loans by the government being non-existent, the loans that migrant families take from private sources are exorbitant in terms of interest rates. Hence, migrant families make repayment of loans second priority after the use for daily consumption. The following table demonstrates the primary uses of remittance by source.

Table : Primary use of Remittance by source

Source Daily Use

Education

Capital Formation

Business Household property

Savings Repay loans

Others

Internal SourceUrban 84.5 3.5 2.1 0.4 3.8 0.5 1.4 3.9Rural 86.6 3.6 1.2 0.3 5.6 0.4 0.5 1.9External SourceIndia 84.6 2.2 2.0 0.3 4.2 0.4 4.5 1.9Malaysia

52.1 4.3 4.3 1.2 5.0 0.9 30.0 2.2

Saudi 57.6 1.2 4.3 0.5 2.8 0.6 31.0 2.1Qatar 55.4 5.0 6.2 0.3 4.3 0.5 25.8 2.5UK 74.2 0.0 3.6 2.0 2.0 3.2 10.2 4.8Others 59.1 6.3 4.6 1.6 1.9 3.1 19.1 4.3NEPAL 78.9 3.5 2.4 0.5 4.5 0.6 7.1 2.5Source: NLSS-III, 2011.

Majority of the Nepalese migrants to India are from the mid-western and far-western regions of Nepal, the poorest regions of the country. Therefore, remittance sent by migrant workers in India is used mostly for daily consumption.

Since leaving for foreign employment to the GCC countries and Malaysia is an expensive affair. Migrants travelling to the GCC countries and overseas destinations (other than India) take loans at high interest rates, and thus make loan repayment their priority as seen in the table above. A study also revealed that a number of aspiring migrants (2%) are cheated in the process of migration, which has led to those people having to sell their lands to repay the loan they took for migration purposes. Remittance is also used to acquire household property (5%), education (4%), capital formation (2%), and the rest 3% for other purposes. Similarly, NRB (2013) report states that of the total remittance entering Nepal, 80% are used for general expenditure and only 20% for “productive purposes”.

49

However, there is enough debate about what constitutes “productive use”. Some argue that the use of remittance for household, real estate, consumption, health, and education purposes are also productive, while some say productive use of remittance should be those investments that allow for an increase in job opportunities and income for the people in order to promote longer term growth. The tendency of remittance receiving households and families is, however, to use remittance for the maintenance and improvement of livelihood rather than for capital formation/savings or other “productive purposes”.

Policies on Migration in NepalConcerning the political and legal framework, we can note a low control of the Nepali

government despite the Foreign Employement Act (1986): migration “take place fairly haphazardly, as much on the basis of private initiatives and private enterprise in Nepal and responses to emerging opportunities in other countries as it did under official direction and government legislation.” (Adhirakari 2013:xii)

This low control could be explained by several factors: the weakness of political power in Nepal, the importance of migration and remittances, motors of Nepalese economy (Adhirakari 2013:xiv) and the interest of many political actors in the migration business.

To concludeRemittance received from Nepalese migrant workers has become an integral part of the

Nepalese economy. However, there have also been some negative impacts of migration and remittances. Migration of Nepalese youth for foreign employment has created a shortage of labor in the Nepalese labor market. Shortage of labor together with inflation has resulted in significant increases in wages of laborers. Many Nepalese youth now prefer foreign employment over agricultural work within Nepal. A significant portion of the land that used to be cultivated has now started to get abandoned. With the shortage of local labor, there has been an increase in the inflow of international laborers in the country (especially from India). Reverse flow of remittance is ever increasing.

Majority of migrant households use remittances mostly for daily consumption purposes and for the purchase of consumer goods. This has given rise to a consumer culture in the country and widened the gap between the poor and the rich.

50

51

Chapter I: The Global Structures of Migration

“We shall build a tower that will reach to the stars!” Having conceived Babel, yet unable to build it themselves, they had thousands to build it for them. But those who toiled knew nothing

of the dreams of those who planned. And the minds that planned the Tower of Babel cared nothing for the workers who built it. The hymns of praise of the few became the curses of the

many – BABEL! BABEL! BABEL!”

- Metropolis, Fritz Lang, 1927.

In this section, I will try to highlight what we could call the global structures of migration; the environment on which they take place. I will start with an overview of the global economic system, and then take a look at the migratory couple Nepal-Qatar and try to explain the interest in migrant workers in the receiving country. Then, I will go to higher levels of “abstraction” to explain the structure, the root causes of the migratory phenomenon from a wider perspective: uneven development.

Geography of Contemporary Capitalism: Neo-liberalism & GlobalizationWe can’t understand the migration phenomenon without analyzing the later development of

our “world-system”. Many migration researchers relate their object of study with a trendy object of social sciences: the process of globalization. It is really important to do so, but it is not enough: we need to go beyond the superficial study of it, and to understand what globalization is really: an old dynamic of capital.

Since the early 1970’s, globalization, or at least the “alleged process of globalization” (Swyngedouw, 2004), became a common word which took a huge importance in social sciences, covering a broad range of themes like citizenship, democracy, cultural identities, international division of labor…(Brenner, 1999)

In its brilliant article “Globalization or ‘glocalization’?” Swyngedouw led a severe deconstruction about the “alleged process of globalization” (Swyngedouw, 2004). For him, scalar configurations are powerful discourses, which profoundly shape reality (political and social organizations, economic concerns…). Indeed, space and scales are places of power relations and struggles. What is resulting of this argument is that a change in, for example, the scale of governance is impacting the regulation/organization of social, political and economic relations. To sum, the scale is a social construction.

Indeed, for him, before the 8O’s, what we define now as globalization was defined as “the geographical project of spatial expansion and spatial integration” of the capitalist dynamics. Ironically, the English geographer goes back to the famous Marx and Engel manifesto to define that phenomenon… For him, the alleged new forms of organizations that transcended the nation-state to something called a world-system are in fact an ideological discourse used to “align […] social and economic policy to the exigencies and requirements of this new competitive world (dis)order.” He affirms that the social science object so-called globalization could be view as a hegemonic and western belief, which is now used as a political neoliberal strategy focusing on outcomes like the “labor cost”, “labor market rigidities”, “public debt”, “privatization”… At least, we can see this

52

globalization as the expression of the “dynamics of capital”, always reconfiguring space and spatial organization, “producing space” as D. Harvey said. It implies that the so-called globalization is not a new phenomenon in economy, but a parallel of capitalist dynamics. What is new is, according to him, the “acceleration of working class formation in many parts of the world, the hyper-urbanization process […] and mass movement of people”.

There are various definitions of globalization, some argues that it’s an economic process (growing role of transnational corporation, deregulation of finance capital, expansion of FDI, dissolution of Bretton Woods monetary regime since the early 70's…), others focusing more on its sociocultural interactions: emergent forms of identity, political consciousness, diasporas,... or as the growing interdepencies between places and localities (Brenner, 1999, p.4). But Brenner defines it as both the transcendence of the state-centric configuration of capitalism (that prevailed throughout much of the twentieth century) and the production of new territorial configuration on sub- and supranational scales. (ibid, p.3). Indeed, for him this process is a combination of both deterritorialization and reterritorialization, led by the capitalist dynamics, so he studies globalization

"as the most recent historical expression of a longue durée dynamic of continual deterritorialization and reterritorialization that has underpinned the production of capitalist spatiality since the first industrial revolution of the early nineteenth century. On the one hand, capitalism is under the impulsion to eliminate all geographical barriers to the accumulation process in search of cheaper raw materials, fresh sources of labor-power, new markets for its products, and new investment opportunities.” (Brenner, 1999, p.4)

This deterritorializing tendency is not new; we can go back to Marx’s word and its belief that the capital dynamics will "annihilate space by time". But:

“On the other hand [...] we must this "space time compression" it as [...] a contradictory sociospatial dialectic that continually molds, differentiates, deconstructs, and reworks capitalism geographical landscape. According to Harvey, it is only through the production of relatively fixed and immobile configurations of territorial organization [...] that's capital's circulation process can be continually accelerated temporally and expanded spatially. Each successive round of capitalist industrialization has therefore been premised upon socially produced geographical infrastructures that enable the accelerated circulation of capital through global space.” (Brenner, 1999, p.5)

It is a classic Marxist way to conceptualize the geography of capitalism, for example, Neil Smith used the same dialectical analysis for his theory of uneven development, using the words differentiation and equalization (Smith, 1984) to globalization understand as a dialectical relation between the movement (of commodities, capital, people, money…) continually accelerated, and the fixed and immobile socio-spatial infrastructures.

We can conclude by claiming that the contemporary round of globalization has radically reconfigured the scalar organization of territorialization processes under capitalism, by relativizing the significance of the national scale while simultaneously intensifying the role of both sub- and supra national forms of territorial organization. Indeed, the intensification of global socioeconomic interdependencies, production, reconfiguration and transformation of territorial organization on a sub-global geographical scales reconfigures social, economic and political which sign the end of state centrism and the growing influence of regulatory supranational regulatory systems (NAFTA, UE…) in today’s geography of capitalism.

53

Highly related to the so called process of globalization is the new economic and political project started in the early seventies, often labeled neoliberalism. Neoliberalism emphasizes free trade and market, entrepreneurial freedom and private property, all of them guaranteed by the state, by force if need be (Harvey, 2005:2). By valuing “market exchange as an ‘ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide to all human action, and substituting for all previously held ethical belief” (ibid:3) neoliberalism is leading a “creative-destruction” process, on social structures, ways of life, labor divisions, institutional and power structures… (ibid).

As for Marx’s industrial capitalism, the current neoliberalization wave, by reducing redistributive policies and actively leading privatization projects, had increase social inequalities, “a persistent feature of neoliberalization as to be regarded as structural to the whole project” (ibid:25). This neoliberal project could be characterized as the restoration of class power (ibid, quoting Duménil and Lévy):

“There has been a massive expansion of the proletariat worldwide as some two billion people have been dispossessed of their earlier economic base and brought into the proletariat either through the destruction of rural ways of life and peasant economies (as in Latin America and South Asia) or through direct government action (as in China and East Asia more generally). The predictable result of this influx has been that the working classes in the core traditional centers of capital accumulation have not improved their lot. Astonishing increases in wealth have flowed to the top 1 percent (and even more, proportionately, to the top 0.1 percent) of the population” (Harvey, 2010:284)

Nepal-Gulf Migration System: the example of the migratory couple Nepal-Qatar

The Gulf countries have emerged as a major destination (after India) for Nepali migrant since the year 2000 (Bruslé 2010:1); migration and working conditions are quite special in the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) it is worth to take a close look at it.

The GCC’s supplies of oil and gas are among the highest in the world; it is said that the GCC holds about 40% of global proven oil reserves and 20 percent of world gas. GCC produce close to 20 percent of the world’s total oil production.

Acknowledging the centrality of fossil fuels in our global society, this region thus have a vital importance to the patterns of accumulation in the global economy: huge levels of surplus capital accumulated in this area are the direct effects of this fuel production and these “petrodollars” have been a key feature in the development of the Gulf economies, but also of the global financial one. GCC have become central to the world economy, standing aside with the manufactures of goods in low-wage areas and the sale of commodities in other part of the global economy (Hanieh 2011).

As the following figure states, there is a close relationship between the oil and gas related wealth and the reliance on migrants:

54

Figure 8 Oil dependency and migrants (Halvor & Gry 2013)

In most of the GCC, foreign labor sources are the only alternative available, from the workforce needed to build national infrastructure projects to domestic activities. Many factors are behind this necessity from small native population to cultural factors like restriction on women on public sphere and large deposits of oil in the region. Thus, Gulf countries have the highest population of migrants in the world.

Until the year 2013 most of the GCC countries native population amounted to mere millions; Oman (2,773,000), Qatar (1,792, 000), Bahrain (1,234,000), Kuwait (3,328,000), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) (27,137,000), and United Arab Emirates (UAE (8,264,070). The economic investment and growth of these countries overtly depend on foreign migrant workers. The inflow of latter increased rapidly since the rise in the oil prices in the seventies, though, in the initial day the other Arab countries were primary worker sending areas. But latter, Asian migrant workers became the preferred choice for number of reasons. These includes, fear of permanent settlement by people from other Arab regions, and absence of commonness between Asian and native population. Because of the latter the GCC governments were able to have more control over workforce without risks of protests and other untoward outcomes. (NIDS 2014)

Today, the Gulf States are distinguished by their very high reliance upon this type of temporary migrant labor, with around 70% of these workers from South and East Asia and 30% from the Middle East. These labor flows differ from the permanent migration flows seen in other areas of the world because they are short-term in nature, lack associated citizenship rights, and are focused on maximizing remittance flows back to the country of origin. In all of the GCC states, temporary migrant workers represent more than half of the entire labor force, and in four of these states (Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the UAE) the proportion is greater than eighty percent. This heavy reliance on temporary labor flows closely ties the key labor exporting regions to accumulation patterns in the GCC. (Hanieh 2011)

Migrations in the Arab States of the Gulf are monitored under the kafala system, a restrictive immigration policy based on a sponsorship system. Under the kafala, worker’s visas and status are tied to their employer, who takes the responsibility for their recruitment fees, medical exams and the

55

possession of a national identity card. To leave the country or to change of employer, the worker must obtain its sponsor’s consent, giving to the employer a dramatic amount of power over the worker.

To quote Mike Davis on Dubai’s case, these countries have “achieved the state of the art in the disenfranchisement of labor” (Davis, 2006: 19): high levels of exploitation are enabled because a worker’s residency status is directly tied to holding a job. Once unemployed they become ‘illegal’ and are required to leave the country: because the right to be in the country is conditioned on employment, employers hold an enormous power differential over the worker. Moreover, the reproduction of the class is highly fragmented because workers generally return home when they finish their contracts, which is preventing for the formation of a conscious working class, inhibiting class memory and the creation of a proper solidarity net. Furthermore, workers-unions banned in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and severely restricted elsewhere (Hanieh 2011).

A closer look: the case of QatarThe case of the State of Qatar is particularly interesting because of the scale of the

phenomenon observed and the media coverage attracted in the last few years. We will use it as an example of the Gulf migration system.

Qatar is a sovereign Arab emirate located in the Persian Gulf, bordering Saudi Arabia. It has the highest GDP per capita in the world thanks to oil and natural gas revenues (CIA 2014) and is characterized by a booming economy and significant investments in infrastructure and construction; trends increased by the 2022 World Cup preparation.

Qatar, like other GCC is heavily dependent on migrant labor: migrants represent 88% of its total population (OHCHR 2013), which is the highest ratio of migrants to citizens in the world. The majority of them are unskilled or semi-skilled migrants are from South and South-East Asia: Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines and Sri-Lanka, and only 2 or 3% are women (ibid).

The main law governing migration in Qatar is Law n°4 of 2009 “Regarding Regulation of Expatriates’ Entry, Departure, Residence and Sponsorship”. It stipules that to be granted an entry visa to Qatar, the migrant shall have a sponsor. This sponsorship, the kafala, regulates the relationship between employers and migrants through a work permit linked to a single person, the sponsor who is often the employer (ONCHR 2013). This is preventing migrants from changing employers or leaving Qatar, and thus empowering dramatically the employer, enabling them to exploit employees (ibid). Furthermore, there is no legal minimum wage in Qatar.

First Nepalese migrants to Qatar were from the Muslims minorities of the Tarai, competent in Arabic who found employment at the Ministry of Religious Affairs in the eighties (Bruslé 2010:2). But the mass emigration only started in the mid-nineties, and increased tremendously since then. They were 400 in 1994, 30.000 in 1999, 100,000 in 2005 and at least 300,000 in 2009, representing 34% of all Nepali migrants in 2008 (ibid:3)(NIDS, 2008).

In the year 2013 many international newspapers looked at the miserable state of migrant workers in the country of Qatar. As the country is hosting the football World Cup in year 2022, the news regarding the state of migrant workers building the football stadiums and other needed infrastructure became one of the focused subjects in the international media.

56

It started especially after the British newspaper Guardian newspaper 2013 September article "Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'" reported almost slave like working conditions in the country for migrant workers. According to the article at least 44 workers died between 4 June and 8 August of 2013 and further the situation in the Qatar was equated with the modern slavery of 21st century. These includes forced labor on a huge World Cup infrastructure project, unpaid salaries of months and restriction of workers movement into work opportunities by withholding their passports, and confiscation of ID cards by employers to not to grant legal status to workers and forced to work on empty stomachs among others.

Since then the newspaper 'The Guardian' has been updating the state of migrant workers in Qatar and its recent report, it has revealed the death of 185 Nepalese migrant workers while building of the infrastructure for the World Cup, in the year 2013. It also reports about around 200 deaths in the year 2012 (The Guardian, 2014) .

Since 2000 around 7,500 Nepalese migrant workers have died in GCC countries and Malaysia. In Qatar, the Government has categorized most of them as natural deaths without giving any authority to Nepalese embassies to enquire about it. It tells a lot about the state of Nepalese migrant workers and others from developing world in the GCC and in other major work destinations countries. The state of women migrant workers in the Middle East in also under severe criticism and the Government of Nepal have already banned the migration of women under 30 years to the middle eastern countries. According to a recent newspaper report almost 150 women are being rescued by Nepal embassies in GCC every month.

Many human rights organization including the United Nation have raised their concerns on the state of migrant workers in the work destination countries especially in the GCC. In the November of 2013 UN send its Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Francois Creapeau to investigate the state of foreign migrant workers in the state of Qatar. After the visit 15 points preliminary recommendations were made to the government of Qatar to improve the labor rights and living conditions of the foreign workers staying in the country. Many of these recommendations like prohibition of confiscation of passports, detention of runaway migrant workers and rights to domestic workers and ratification of ILO conventions were useful to tackle the strict rules and regulation of Kafala system that are being used in practice to employ foreign migrant workers in the GCC (OHCHR 2013).

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and its Secretary General Ahmed Salem were urged by Human Rights Watch (HRW) to act regionally to lobby and protect the rights and welfare of its citizens in the GCC countries. In the letter written by HRW Asia director, Brad Adams stressed that SAARC government should push for similar rights and issues raided by UN with GCC countries like reform in Kafala system of GCC countries and ratification of ILO conventions on migrant and domestic workers rights (Saleem 2013). Though the unionization of migration workers in the GCC is far from possible in the near future but it will definitely influence the future migrant workers activities and discourses over them

57

The Neoclassical Economy: an Unfinished StatementThe neo-classical framework on migration states that people are moving in search of better

opportunities elsewhere (jobs, higher wage, security…). Raveinstein seventh law states that migration occurs mainly due to economic causes, embedded in interplay between push factors (from the country of origin) and pull factors (from the country of destination). Thus, the migrant become an actor with a rational choice making, driven by utility maximization.

This explanation is correct, but too simplistic. First, as other classical economy theories, the emphasis on the individual prevent from a broader analysis of the structural causes, reducing the drivers of migration to a rational choice making. Indeed, stating that migrants move to maximize their well-being is kind of obvious in the case of labor migration, but it is also fail to explain the structural reasons (social, economic, political) of these push and pull factors, their root causes. To do that, it is necessary to move beyond the individual level of analysis, to gain altitude and to take a broader view on the phenomenon, as well as a closer look at the places of origin and destination.

This is the aim of this section, which will start on obvious pull factors and dissect them to understand their causes, their reasons, and their role in a market led economy. I will thus assemble a set of coherent explanatory factors, from the dual form of the Gulf labor markets explained by the process of segmentation of labor, the form taken by migrant labor in these countries (guestworkers programs) to their role in the global patterns of capitalist accumulation.

Once done, we will have a better explanation of what drives migrants from one place to another, highlighting the differentials (in wages, in quality of life, in opportunities…) driving migration. One could be satisfied with an analysis like that, but it also fails to explain the root causes of migration, which are to be found in the differentials between the country or region A and the country or region B. Indeed, in the neoclassical framework, migration is supposedly a response to disequilibrium (in wages, mainly), a process which should tackle and resolve these gaps in development.

But what are the root causes of this disequilibrium, what creates them, and will they really disappear with the worldwide expansion of a market led economy. The neoclassical framework doesn’t give a proper answer to these questions, and I will try in the conclusion of this section, using Neil Smith work on unequal and combined development

To do that, we will need to go on higher level of abstraction, and by explaining the unequal development between two places, we will explain, in the last instance the causes which drives migration: the disequilibrium which is at the heart of capitalist development.

Structural Explanatory Factors

Dual-labor Market: a definitionMigration phenomenon in the Gulf Countries can’t be understood without a closer look to

recent theories of labor market, especially the theories about labor market segmentation (or stratification).

This concept arose under the name of “dual labor market” in the beginning of the seventies among American economists, in particular Peter Doeringer and Michael Piore. Starting with empirical researches on divisions among American workers (by race, sex, educational credentials, industry grouping), they showed that they were different group operating in different labor markets, with different working opportunities, wages and market institutions. (Reich et al. 1973:1)

58

The theory was designed to understand the socio-economic mobility and the manpower problems of the disadvantaged, “particularly black workers in urban core areas”. The basic hypothesis of the dual labor market is that the labor market is divided into two distinct segments; the primary and the secondary sectors, with sub-distinction within the primary sector between an upper and a lower level (Piore, 1972:1,5).

The primary sector is characterized by relatively high wages, good working conditions, chances of advancement, equity, employment stability and a relatively important administration of working rules. In the secondary sector, jobs are characterized by their low wages, poorer working conditions, little chances of advancement and a highly personalized relationship between workers and supervisors, leading “wide latitude for favoritism”, “conducive to harsh capricious work discipline; and with considerable instability in jobs and a high turnover among labor force.” (ibid:2) Noteworthy, jobs in the secondary market are often filled by minority workers, women and youth (Reich 1973:2)

Michael Reich, professor of Economics at Berkeley defined the labor market segmentation as “the historical process whereby political-economic forces encourage the division of the labor market into separate submarkets, or segments, distinguished by different labor market characteristics and behavioral rules”. Thus, a segmented labor market is the outcome of this segmentation process, which can, for the author, be divided on four sub-segmentation processes. (Reich 1973:1)

These segmentations are, as in Piore’s theory, between a primary and a secondary market (with the same sub-segmentation between upper and lower level), but also by race or by sex. (ibid)

For Michael Reich, this segmentation arose during the transition from competitive to monopoly capitalism, as a conscious strategy “to resolve the increased proletarianization of the work force and the growth and consolidation of concentrated corporate power” by breaking down “the increasingly unified worker interests that grew out of the proletarianization of work and the concentration of workers in urban areas”. He also notes that this effort leads to an intensification of a “hierarchical control.”(ibid:2-3)

He thus relates this segmentation process with systemic market forces and the rise of giant corporations. For him, the social functions of the labor market segmentation is “intimately related to the dynamics of monopoly capitalism”: it facilitates the operation of capitalist institutions, reproduces capitalist hegemony and divide workers. (ibid:6-7)

Relations between these segmented labor market and migrations are quite obvious. Indeed, as Harald Bauder –a geographer working on migrations- states, “industrialized countries have built powerful economies that depend on a disciplined labor force. They have become a magnet for international migrants willing to satisfy this demand for labor” (Bauder 2006:3). Going further, Manuel Castells, sociologist at Berkeley notes that “immigrant workers do not exist because there are ‘arduous and badly paid’ jobs to be done, but, rather, arduous and badly paid job exist because immigrant workers are presents or can be sent for to do them” (Castells 1975:54), which means that migration regulates labor markets, and not the other way around. This regulation is obvious when looking at who fill certain types of jobs:

“migrants and immigrants tend to cluster in certain industries and occupations. Many migrants are hired for low-end occupations that nonimmigrants don’t want or for position for which domestic workers are too expensive” such as “office cleaning, landscaping, food preparation services, and manual labor.” (Bauder 2006:4).

59

As it was highlighted by Michael Reich previously, this “divide and conquer” strategy “facilitate the reduction of overall wage levels, help to lower labor standards, and assist in introducing more flexible employment practices. International migration is a regulatory labor market tool.” (ibid)

But migrants are not only a regulatory tool of labor market, they represents also a more direct interest as noted Harald Bauder:

“Etienne Balibar (2000:42) has referred to undocumented migrant workers in France as “modern proletarians.” Pierre Bourdieu (2002a:40) juxtaposes the deliberate creation of a “global reserve army of labor” through international neoliberal policies with the desire among the business elite for “an emigration composed of disposable, temporary, single workers with no families and no social protection […] ideally suited to providing the overworked executives in the dominant economy with the cheap and largely feminine services they need”: migration is an “integrated aspect of a wider neoliberal economic regime” (Bauder 2006:5)

“Mass migration have become necessary for production” (Hardt & Negri, 2000:398), migrants represent a structural necessity for our economies (Cohen 1987:135, Basok 2002 quoted by Bauder 2006:15). Indeed, migrations draw exploitable labor force into the labor market of industrialized country. Properly used by states, they are “a way of managing the geography of capital accumulation”, they are a “strategic decision making of political actors” rather than an economic inevitability. (ibid:6)

Theoretical background: Segmentation of Labor and Economic MigrationsLet’s try now to understand in depth the links between the segmentation of labor and the

economic migrations of workers.

We can begin with Marx words: he called labor a “variable capital”, and means of production “constant capital”. Labor is a variable capital because it can be hired and fired in response to economic or seasonal cycles. The means of production are constant because they constitute a “fixed investment and stay idle in periods of economic slowdown.” (ibid:19) Here lies the nest of the segmentation of labor market:

“Segmentation theory begins with the premise that the idleness of machinery and other fixed investments can be prevented or reduced by dividing production into two distinct segments. The primary segment is capital-intensive: high levels of technology ensure the efficient use of the workforce. In times of economic contraction, this primary sector keeps operating to satisfy the basic demand that still exists for products. The secondary segment, on the other hand, is labor-intensive, with only minimal investments in machinery and technology. During a cyclical slowdown of the economy, workers in this secondary segment are laid off.” (ibid:19-20)

This strategy of capitalist producers gave birth to Marx’s expression of “reserve army of labor”, as descriptive of this second unstable employment sector.

Michael Piore (1979:35-43 quoted by Bauder 2006:20) links this segmentation with labor migration:

“he observes that migrants are recruits in the labor reserve army. The flow of migrants into cyclical, secondary segment of the labor market helps secure the jobs of nonmigrants in the primary sector. Thus, migration enables the nonmigrant population to escape being used as expendable labor in the secondary labor market.”

60

The use of migrants as secondary labor is related with the demand existing in cyclical and seasonal jobs: the demand declines in periods of economic slowdown (a look at the number of migrants for the year 2008/2009 (Fig. 6) denotes the impact of the global economic crisis on migration), and thus, the demand for migration too.

The call to migrant and immigrant workers is also related to their vulnerability, indeed, the degree of exploitation experienced by many migrant workers is very unlikely to be tolerated by most nonmigrant workers. First, they represents a kind of cost free labor for the State (which does not have to pay for their education, their social rights, etc), but they are also more vulnerable (language barriers, unfamiliarity with the local labor market conventions, unequal balance of power, lack of labor right…) and more flexible:

“Migrant and immigrant workers are often denied basic social and economic rights that nonmigrants enjoy. For example, temporary foreign workers are routinely ineligible for unemployment and welfare benefits, even if they contribute to these programs; undocumented workers are denied even more basic rights and services, such as education and medical care.” (Baulder 2006:21)

“Migrant workers who leave their families behind in their origin countries tend to be a particularly attractive labor force for employment in the secondary labor market segment. They are more flexible and less constrained by social responsibilities than the average nonmigrant worker. They may be more likely to work overtime on short notice because their absentee families do not demand their presence at the dinner table or on weekends.” (ibid)

Of course migration does not occur only in the interest of capital accumulation; rather, the motivations of migrants and other actors involved in the migration process are complex and they encompass other dimensions besides production:

“It would be erroneous to believe that state policies and practices respond blindly to national and international interests. Rather, states seek to protect their own geopolitical interests, associated with foreign affairs, electoral politics and other political concerns” (ibid:25)

Going further on the theoretical background, these migrants could be categorized as “unfree labor”, because they are bonded to particular jobs and employers. That’s quite a striking fact regarding the traditional processes of capitalism:

“Drawing on Rosa Luxemburg (1964), migration scholars have noted that the use of unfree migrant labor should not be interpreted as a retreat to a precapitalist mode of production but as an effective accumulation strategy within capitalist (Cohen 1987; Sharma 1997). Unfree labor provides a low-cost, disciplined and flexible foreign workforce in the secondary labor market. According to Robin Cohen (1987:26), the incorporation of unfree labor into capitalist production lies at “the heart of an economic theory of migration.” (Baulder 2006:22)

This condition of unfree labor is related to strategies applied by GCC around citizenship. Indeed, the citizenship is a tool to achieve a goal; it is a part of the domestic labor market policies at the national scale. Inclusion or exclusion policies depend on the actor interests, and, in this case, non-citizenship is a condition for the labor to be unfree since noncitizens failing to obtain or maintain necessary document are rendered illegal. (Baulder 2006:25-27)

“Citizenship is also a mechanism to shift a large share of the cost of social reproduction from the state to the immigrants. Undocumented migrants, in particular, are typically denied many

61

social and economic benefits, including health care, education, unemployment insurance and social security, which citizens take for granted”. (ibid:27)

As stated before, the advantage of this strategy for the GCC is to make the worker force “simultaneousy a ‘low burden’ on state revenues but also ‘highly skilled’ to encourage capital accumulation (Samers 2001:141).

This status of unfree labor is thus due to their non-citizenship. It is related to a special configuration of the dual labor market and migration patterns: guestworkers programs.

Guestworkers Programs: Definition, Historical Overview and TaxonomyGuestworkers programs are “state organized schemes for the import of foreign labourers,

admitted on a temporary basis for the purpose of work, and granted limited or no option for changing this status” (Surak 2013:1-2).

Nowadays, over fifty countries run temporary migrant-worker programs and it could be said that half of international migrant in the world are guestworkers, that represents 20 million of worker for the year 2010 (and more than the half of it, 13 millions are to be found in the Gulf Countries). (ibid)

The essence of these types of foreign labor program lies in a dichotomy:

“What typically make immigrants economically desirable to employers –their submissive malleability as rightless outsiders who perform the undignified tasks that natives shun- are precisely the qualities that make them undesirable as members of a society” (ibid:3)

Guestworker programs address this dichotomy, by addressing the first (malleable labor) without incurring the second (unwanted members). Nation-states, due to their status as “caretakers of capital and the demos”, have to call migrant as extraneous labor at some points in their economic “but seek to repel them as durable intruders.” (ibid:3)

Historically, according to Kristin Surak -a sociologist working on international migrations-, existed 3 types of guestworkers situations: settler societies with abundant land and important labor scarcity, countries with demographic deficiencies (leading to labor shortage or military weakness) and colonial Empires where migrants enter the metropolis with substantial rights such as in post WWII in Europe. (ibid:3-4)

Guestworkers programs are rooted in the spread of capitalist production in the nineteen century. For example, Marx highlighted the reliance on pools of workers (the “reserve armies of labor”) on the margins of metropolitan economies to ensure the flexibility of production costs, holding down wages in upswings of the business cycle and cutting payrolls in downturn. Example of this processes are the importance on Irish workers in the Victorian England or the so-called coolie trade after slavery abolition. (ibid:5)

In the mid-nineteenth century, due to economic downturns, states begin to impose gradual restrictions on guestworkers, setting in place a regulation rather than the previous “laissez-faire”. That is the birth of modern guestworkers programs: they are created by the states, which are “sanctioning their traversal of its border and ensuring the transience of their stay” (ibid).

The German case at the end of the 19th century is emblematic of the rise of guestworkers programs. Indeed, at this time, Germany managed labor imports from Polish areas through the use of brokers with network to recruit worker and employer association issuing legitimation cards for the migrants.

62

Areas where foreigners could work where strictly delimited. The whole process was monitored by employers and the state just kept an overview of the process but let economic forces channeling the flows. After the First World War, the state set up a government agency the regulate it and established official recruitment bureau in sending countries. (ibid:5-6)

For Kristin Surak (ibid:8-14), it exists five major forms of guestworkers program nowadays, categorized according to their location and the scale of the phenomenon:

- Core-industrial: the “earliest and longest-lasting of all guestworker program”, with the example of South Africa industrial sector at the end of the 19th century, which is still going on in a less important scale.

- Regional-supplemental: concentrated in a regional sub-section of the labor force and thus occupationally selective and with an economy less dependent. Best examples of this category are to be found in the seasonal workers programs between Mexico and the United States or in post-World War II’s United Kingdom.

- National-supplemental: due to post-WWII labor shortage and related to colonial ties: guestworkers entered the labor markets with substantial rights as national. To be found in France, UK or Netherland, but ended in the seventies.

- Marginal: due to the fast transition from agrarian to fully developed industrial societies, foreign labor is needed to low birth rates

The GCC guestworkers programs are the last configuration: primary. Indeed, since the 1973’s oil shock and the economic take off in the Middle East (related to oil revenues), guestworkers have become, for the first time in history, not complementary, but the primary labor force in local economies.

These guestworkers are drawn into a dual labor market, where nationals are mostly working in administrations and state agencies and “aliens assumed almost the entirety of private sector employment”:

- In Saudi Arabia, foreign workers represents half of the total labor force and 80% of it in the private sector- In Oman and Bahrain, 75% of the labor force and 80% in the private sector- In Kuwait, UAE and Qatar, 85 to 95% of the total labor force and nearly 100% of the private sector employment. (ibid:12)

First foreign workers in the GCC were neighbor from Arab countries, but the fear of the spread of pan-Arab solidarity and civil society movements led GCC government to call them from South and South-East Asia, and to establish state management of these flows before run by oil companies and labor brokers. (ibid:13). This state management took the form of the Kefala system.

The Kefala is a sponsorship system: migrants can’t enter the GCC without the sponsor of an employer, who is the only person for whom the migrant can legally work. This sponsor assumes the legal and financial responsibility for the worker. The Kefala renders migrant particularly vulnerable to abuse: they can be dismissed for anything by their employer, and sent home. A flourishing industry has grown around the system (often referred as the “migration industry” in migration studies), transforming “excess demand into excess supply and working conditions have worsened

63

correspondingly.” At the beginning, the transportation, passport and medical costs was covered by the sponsor, but it has now been devolved to agents, earning huge amounts of money. (ibid)

To conclude, guestworkers programs appeared in agriculture (due to seasonal rhythms of works) and mining (underground labor, invisible manpower) and then moved to manufacturing, and last to services and construction . This later stage is incarnated by the Gulf countries, where guestworkers are the basis of the national economy:

“The despotisms of the Gulf, sitting on vast oil wealth and fearful of regional migration as a threat to their political survival, have resorted overwhelmingly to out-of-area guestworkers as the safest way to build modern economies and preserve their power by distribution of rents to their citizen clienteles” (ibid:17)

We saw that migrants are a part of a reserve army of labor, used as a tool by capitalist corporations and States through the kefala system, let’s now try to understand in-depth this relation between the reserve army of labor and the concept accumulation in capitalist economy.

Migrations, The Reserve Army of Labor and Strategies of AccumulationIn its 1975 article “International Politics and International Economics: A Radical Approach”,

Stephen Hymer, a Canadian Marxian economist focused on the “latent surplus population”, which could be considered as the reserve army of labor in backwards areas of the developed economies but also in the “underdeveloped” countries. These internal and external reserves armies “which could be broken down to form a constantly flowing surplus population to work at the bottom of the ladder” are the material basis on which multinational capital was able to internationalize production, “creating a continual movement of surplus population into labor force, and weakening labor globally through a process of “divide and rule”. This fact resonate accordingly to Marx thought “accumulation of capital is therefore, increase of the proletariat”. (Foster & al 2011:1).

Foster JB, McChesney RW and Jonna RJ (ibid) focused on the distribution of industrial employment between 1980 and 2008. Industrial employment includes mining, manufacturing and construction work.

Figure 9 Distribution of Industrial Employement, 1980 – 2008 (Foster & al 2011:2)

64

Sources: ILO, “Key Indicators of the Labour Market (KILM), Sixth Edition,” Software Package (Geneva:International Labour Organization, 2009); UNCTAD, “Countries, Economic groupings,” UNCTAD StatisticalDatabases Online, http://unctadstat.unctad.org (Geneva: Switzerland, 2011), generated June 28, 2011.

This graph shows that the continuous search for low-cost position and higher profit margins led to the “offshoring” of a portion of the production, using pools of labor in the global South and creating a vast low-wage workforce, occurring thanks to the depeasantization of a large portion of the population the “periphery” and the integration of the workforce of the former “socialist” countries in the world economy. Thus, for the authors, as well as for Hymer, the key to understand these changes is to be found in the growth of the global reserve army of labor. (ibid:2)

For mainstream economists, from neoliberal ones (such as Thomas Friedman 2005) to left ones (such as Amin and Thrift 2005), this expansion and this North-South shift only reflect the march toward a “flat world” in which economic differences (i.e advantages and disadvantages) between nations are disappearing (Foster & al 2011:4), that “those parts of the world previously excluded from wealth and access are suddenly equal players” (Smith 2005).

In a Marxist point of view, it is only a part of the phenomenon of global labor arbitrage, a global development of Marx’s notion of absolute general law of capitalist accumulation:

“The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and therefore also the greater the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productivity of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army… But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour-army, the greater is the mass of consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to the amount of torture it has to undergo in the form of labor. The more extensive, finally, the pauperized sections of the working class and the industrial reserve army, the greater are official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation”. (Marx 1867:798)

We touch here at the polarization, the unequal development of the world system, with a domination of monopoly finance capital at the top, and at the bottom a massive global reserve army of labor. This reserve army is a tool to extract profits (accumulation, or sometimes called “imperialist rent”) from the South through the integration of its low-wage and highly exploited workers into the capitalist production. (Amin, 2011)

“In proportion as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse… The law which always holds the relative surplus population in equilibrium with the extent and energy of accumulation rivets the worker to capital more firmly than the wedges of Hephaestus held Prometheus to the rock. It makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation at one pole is, therefore, at the same time, accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.” (Marx 1867:799)

“Accumulation of misery”, torment of labor”, “slavery”, “brutalization and moral degradation”: these expressions are quite relevant when looking at the state of migrant workers in GCC. But, more important, Marx points here the equilibrium between capitalist accumulation and the “relative surplus

65

population” or reserve army of labor: under normal condition of growth (that is, normal conditions of accumulation), it results in the displacement of large numbers of workers and the constant generation of a reserve army of unemployed people, with a tendency to polarize wealth at the top and relative poverty at the bottom. Accumulation is thus an increase on the demand of labor. This demand of labor could be solved by increasing labor productivity (through new capital investments on technologies), in Marx terms, the “constantly revolutionizing of the instruments of production”; but also by the reproduction of the reserve army of labor, competing with the active labor army, and thus inhibiting the demand and supply law of labor, enabling the “capital’s drive to exploit and dominate the workers” (Marx 1967:772-792)

Summarized by Foster & al (2011:6), it means that “the tendency toward the domination of the economy by bigger and fewer capitals, was as much a part of his overall argument on the general law as was the growth of the reserve army itself.”

The reserve army includes those who are wholly unemployed and those who are partially employed, it takes different kind of forms, but which kind be categorized in 3 main segments: the floating, the latent and the stagnant reserve army of labor (ibid:7):

- The floating reserve army is constituted by unemployed workers due to normal ups and downs of the economy, or as a result of the technological unemployment (that is, the progress in productivity)

- The latent reserve army is to be found in agriculture where demand for labor falls as soon as the capitalist production is introduced (due to higher level of productivity in the capitalist agricultural sector)

- The stagnant reserve army is part of the active reserve army with irregular employment, part time and casual labor and are more likely to be found in the “modern domestic industry”, primarily among women and children.

Following Marx notes on the importance of Irish foreign workers for the English industry in period of peak production, we can say that foreign workers are part of the relative surplus population of a Nation-State labor market. We touch here at the importance of foreign workers for the global economy:

“Marx was unable to complete his critique of political economy and consequently never wrote his projected volume on world trade. Nevertheless, it is clear that he saw the general law of accumulation as extending eventually to the world level. Capital located in the rich countries, he believed, would take advantage of cheaper labor abroad –and of the higher levels of exploitation in the underdeveloped parts of the world made possible by the existence of vast surplus labor pools (and non-capitalist modes of production).” (Foster & al 2011:7)

“The reality of unequal exchange whereby, in Marx’s words, “the richer country exploits the poorer, even where the latter gains by exchange,” was a basic, scientific postulate of classical economy, to be found in both Ricardo and J.S. Mill. These higher profits were tied to the cheapness of labor in poor countries –attributable in turn to underdevelopment, and a seemingly unlimited labor supply (albeit much of it forced labor). “The profit rate,” Marx observed, “is generally higher there [in the colonies] on account of the lowest degree of development, and so too is the exploitation of labor, through the use of slaves, coolies, etc.” In all trade relations, the richer country was in a position to extract what were in effect “monopoly profits” (or imperial rents) since “the privileged country receives more

66

labour in exchange for less,” while inversely, “the poorer country gives more objectified labour in kind than it receives.” (ibid:7-8)

This unequal exchange is nowadays carried by the increasing multinational corporate dominance over the world economy that gave birth to the concept of globalization among economists in the seventies (ibid:8). These firms reorganized the world production and thus, the labor conditions: “these global oligopolies have been off shoring whole sectors of production from the rich/high wage to the poor/low wage countries, transforming global labor conditions in their search for global low cost position, and in a divide and rule approach to world labor.” (ibid) “The result has been the proletarianization, often under precarious conditions, of much of the population of the underdeveloped countries, working in massive export zones under conditions dictated by foreign multinationals.”(ibid)

At a world level, the existence of a massive global reserve army (on which lies the surexploitation and the basis of the rapid economic growth of emerging economies of the global South) has been a source of “enormous imperial rents for multinational corporations and capital at the center of the system” (ibid:9).

It seems clear that this global reserve army could be used in the underdeveloped areas of the world-system (through the off-shorisation of the production), but also in core areas through the exploitation of migrants: dynamics are the same, it is the search for a higher profit through the use of cheap and exploitable labor.

A closer look at 2011’s data produced by the International Labor Organization allows Foster & al (ibid:12) to provide an empirical look at the notion of reserve army of labor: 1,4 billion workers are wage workers (precariously employed and part time) and 218 million are unemployed. Own account worker (subsistence and entrepreneurial activities, mainly in the informal sector) and contributing family worker (unpaid) are classified as vulnerably employed: they represents 1,7 billion of workers, the “fastest-growing, and most unprecedented, social class on earth” (Davis 2006:178)

The vulnerably employed could be viewed as Marx stagnant and latent portions of reserve army:

“The “vulnerably employed thus includes the greater part of the vast pools of underemployed outside official employment rolls, in poor countries in particular. It reflects the fact that, as Michael Yates writes, “In most of the world, open unemployment is not an option; there is no safety net of unemployment compensation and other social welfare programs. Unemployment means death, so people must find work, no matter how onerous the condition” (Foster & al 2011:12)

Thus, the authors define the global reserve army of labor as the unemployed, the vulnerably employed and the economically inactive population: it represents more than 70% of the active labor army and is to be found mostly in “underdeveloped” countries.

67

Figure 10 The Global Workforce and the Global Reserve Army (Foster & al 2011:12)

Sources: International Labour Office (ILO), “Economically Active Population Estimates and Projections (5th edition, revision 2009),” LABORSTA Internet (Geneva: International Labour Organisation, 2009); ILO “Global Employment Trends,” 2009, 2010 and 2011 (Geneva: International Labour Office).

Concerning the patterns in Nepal, it is clear that the vulnerably employed are potential wage workers, as well as workers engaged in peasant production that can be drawn into capitalist mode of production and become “proletarians”. Migrants are to be found mostly in these categories (vulnerably employed, economically inactive or unemployed), they are thus part of a global reserve army on which lies the possibility of accumulation for the GCC and more globally, in the capitalist system.

The centrality of this global reserve army in nowadays capitalist economy thus explains the importance of migration, and its consequences at a global scale:

“Another effect was felt in the developing countries that were the recipients of investment capital. Their populations were dragged into capitalist system of production. People who were previously engaged in subsistence agriculture and other forms of no capitalist production saw their livelihoods disappear and were pulled into waged labor market. The ongoing expansion of capitalism created a new international proletariat and a “large pool of potential immigrant workers” (Sharma 1997:16). Capital flows from industrialized to developing countries triggered migration flows in the opposite direction. While the economic logic of international migration presents a powerful narrative, social, cultural, and political processes are also part of the equation. Foreign investment, for example, exerted an ideological effect (Sassen 1988:20) of valorizing “Western” lifestyle and consumption patterns”. […] Similar social cultural and political factors influence where and how migrants travel and settle, how they integrate their destination, and what economic effects they exert at these places.”

68

Migration, Accumulation & Unequal DevelopmentWe saw that: migrants are living due to a search for a better position, and that at individual

level, migrations could be explained by the unequal level of development between countries. We also saw that the structural explanatory factors of the migration’s structure between Nepal and the GCC, and that they are highly related to the process of capitalist accumulation. The conclusion of this section aim at explaining how capitalist accumulation is related to the concept of unequal development.

The theory of uneven development is not something new, for example, Ernest Mandel in its inquiry about modern capitalism (“late capitalism” in his words), noted:

“International movements of capital constantly reproduce and extend the international productivity differential which is characteristic of the history of modern capitalism, and are themselves in turn further determined by this differential” (Mandel, 1972:340)

But, Neil Smith pushed this theory further, creating a complex thinking about it.

“A world after its own image”The concept of uneven development has been widely used, mainly in the Marxist tradition, but

also in political economy wide use of the term, it can thus have an economic, political and philosophical sense. The term refers to “uneven rates of growth between different sectors of the capitalist economy”, it describes the spatial dimension of capitalist development and give us a fundamental insight about the geography of capitalism. “Uneven development, it is asserted, is a “universal law of human history” states Neil Smith, adding that it is a function of “the contemporary universality of capitalism”. (Smith, 1984:133-135)

“uneven development is the hallmark of the geography of capitalist. It is not just that capitalist fails to develop evenly, that due to accidental and random factors the geographical development of capitalism represents some stochastic deviation from a generally even process. The uneven development of capitalism is structural rather than statistical.” (4)

Marx and Engel, two centuries ago already stated that capitalism creates “a world after its own image”, and this basis is at the center of the theory: “In its constant drive to accumulate larger and larger quantities of social wealth under its control, capital transforms the shape of the entire world”. (ibid:7) Uneven development is thus the “systematic geographical expression of the contradictions inherent in the very constitution and structure of capital” (ibid:4) which will be developed later in this section:

Neil Smith notes that there are no suggestions that precapitalist development was equal but “the geography of capitalism is more systematically and completely an integral part of the mode of production than was the case with any earlier mode of production.” (ibid:134)

The theory of uneven (and combined) development comes from the study of the contradictions at the heart of capital. Uneven development derives from the opposed tendencies inherent in capital: the differentiation and equalization process of the levels and conditions of production. Indeed, Capital invests in order to produce surplus value and expand its capital, and in the same time, capital is withdrawn from some places to move elsewhere and take advantage of higher profit rates. (ibid:6)

That is Neil Smith’s starting point: “the contradictory tendencies toward differentiation and equalization determined the capitalist production of space. In action, this contradiction emanating from

69

the core of the capitalist mode of production inscribes itself in the landscape as the extant patterns of uneven development”. (ibid:133)

The concrete determinants of uneven development are thus the “tendency toward the equalization of the conditions of production and of the level of development of the productive forces” in constant opposition to “the tendency toward differentiation” (ibid:154), both developed further.

The tendency toward differentiationThe tendency toward differentiation in the capitalist economy had been, again, already tackled

by Marx statements in his “General law of capitalist accumulation”, highlighting the trend toward concentration and centralization of capital. (ibid:160)

For Neil Smith, the differentiation dynamic is the historical basis of development. Indeed, the division of labor in society –which the result of social dynamic related to surplus labor and surplus value-, is the basis of spatial differentiation of conditions of development and their territorial expression. (ibid:135-136)

This division has a geographical impact since the differentiation of geographical space (or territorial division of labor) is related to “the more general societal division of labor”. For Smith, the systematic division of labor could be seen as the hallmark of capitalism, an exclusive product of capitalism. This division of labor works at 3 scales: the general division of labor (between activities i.e. agriculture/industry), the particular (subdivision between different sector) and the detail division (of work processes). (ibid: 143-144)

The tendency toward differentiation (of the geographical space) is due to the capitalist dynamics towards the concentration and centralization, which works as a “leveler”:

“The concentration and centralization of capital in the built environment proceeds according to the social logic inherent in the process of capital accumulation, and this, we saw previously, leads towards a leveling of natural differences, at least insofar as they determine the location of economic activity” (ibid: 141)

The differentiation of geographical space “occurs in a cyclical manner, according to the equalization of profit rate within a given sector, and the resulting movement of capital between sectors, from those with a low rate of profit toward those with a higher rate of profit” (ibid: 152)

The tendency toward equalizationWe touch here at the “universalizing tendency of capital” (ibid:153). Since the whole

economic model is based on growth, there is an inner necessity for capital accumulation, which leads to geographical expansion of capitalist society through continuous investment of capital. (ibid:159)

Particularly interesting for Nepal, Neil Smith notes that this expansion of capital is also directed toward non- or pre-capitalist areas:

“The accumulation of capital progresses not simply through the development of the division of labor but by the leveling of pre-capitalist modes of production to the plain capital”

“The universalization of the wage labor relation portends for the laborer a freedom given with one hand –the freedom to buy and sell his or her labor power- but taken away with the other.”

70

This expansion of capital open new markets and new spaces of production, but by doing this, “by capitalizing them” or developing them, capital is therefore creating new competitor. That is the result of the tendency toward equalization. (ibid:178)

“Capital has no choice whether to expand into pre-capitalist societies but it does have a ‘choice’ about how it does this. On the one hand, the developed highly centralized capitals must constantly search not just for the physical elements of production […] but for cheaper and cheaper sources of these materials, especially new materials and labor power. In the expanding search for relative surplus value, capital is driven to convert these external, relatively undeveloped spaces into places of production and accumulation.” (ibid:187)

As noted earlier for the differentiation dynamic, “the investment of capital in the built environment is synchronized with the more general cyclical rhythm of capital accumulation” (ibid:166)

Scales of Accumulation & The Dialectic of Differentiation and EqualizationThe combined dynamics of differentiation and equalization are contradictory, but tackled

dialectally, they are the key to understand the theory of uneven (i.e differentiated) and combined (the “universalizing tendency of capital”) development. Drawing in D. Harvey works, Neil Smith put it like this:

“while there is certainly a tendency toward spatial equilibrium (in the sense of equalization), it is continually frustrated by equally powerful forces at the heart of capital (e.g., technological dynamism) which tend toward a continual geographical disequilibrium.” (177)

It is important to note that the dialectic differentiation/equalization does not result in a static disparity but in the dynamic patterns of uneven development, active on different scales. (ibid:75). Before tackling more in-depth the implication of this dialectical relation, let’s take a closer look at a geographical object: the scale, and precisely the scales of accumulation. This little digression will be useful to understand the relationship between migration and uneven development, as well as further development on “primitive accumulation”.

The 3 primary scales of accumulation defined by N. Smith are pre-existent to capitalism, “Capital inherits a geographical world that is already differentiated into complex spatial patterns”, but under the capitalist production, “these patterns are grouped into increasingly systematic hierarchy of spatial scales.” These scales are, in different degree, historically given before the transition to capitalism, but they are also transformed by capital. These primary scales are the urban space, the nation state and the global space. (ibid:181)

- The Urban Scale is the most accomplished geographical expression of the centralization of capital; it is the absolute space of production. Indeed, the expansion of industrial capital made the centralization of productive activity come to supersede the market function as the determinant of urban development (ibid:181 - 182).The example of Nepalese migrant working in mass in the construction sector and in the services in “world cities” such as Dubaï speak for itself.

- The Nation state represents a “hierarchy of nationally based laws of value more or less integrated within a larger international law of value. To the extent that this leads to “unequal exchange,” the latter results from the uneven developments of capitalism and not vice versa.” (ibid:189)

- Global scale: “capitalism inherits the global scale in the form of the world market”, but the accumulation of space (private property, land parcels) provides “the essential condition for

71

transforming the geography of feudalism into the geography of capitalism. The world market based on exchange is transformed into a world economy based on production and the universality of wage labor”. The spatial integration in the world market is done through the law of value (price mechanisms of the commercial market). This generalization of the law of value means that “capital bludgeons, connives, and insinuates the wage-labor relation into virtually every crevice of the pre-capitalist systems it encounters”. At is at this scale that the dialectic of combined and differentiated development take form: “Just as the necessity of accumulation implies the centralization of capital responsible for the formation of a distinct urban scale, the same necessity leads toward the equalization of a global scale of production. Through the universalization of the wage-labor relation, this scale is defined at the level of the relations of production.” (ibid 185 – 186)

We already saw that “the equalization of global space results from the universal tendency of the wage-labor relation”, but it means that “the main axis of geographical differentiation at this scale is the differential determination of the value of labor power, and the geographical pattern of wages thus effected”. Neil Smith notes that the historical roots of this process lie in primitive accumulation; it is what I argue in a further section. (ibid:187)

Marx, in works on accumulation and primitive accumulation highlighted the market function of the “backward nations”, noting that the constant threat of over-accumulation creates a need for capital: transform these places into markets and places of consumption, but:

“it cannot do both, because it can convert these undeveloped societies into places of consumption only by developing them and by raising wages to facilitate consumption. There is a contradiction between the means of accumulation and the conditions necessary for accumulation to proceed, and it has a trenchant geographical shape.” (ibid:188)

To sum, “As a result, the geographical differentiation of the globe according to the value of labor power is replicated in a series of more fixed spatial characteristics, such as a pronounced international division of labor and a systematic differentiation between the organic composition of capital in developed and underdeveloped areas” (ibid:188). Thus:

“For in the end the contradiction between the means of accumulation and the conditions necessary for accumulation remains. Insofar as it originated with primitive accumulation and the opposition of capital against pre-capitalist societies, it retains the dichotomous form. But today it is less an issue of the ‘articulation of different modes of production,’ more an issue of development at one pole and development of underdevelopment at the other […] Pre-capitalist modes of production have been integrated into the world capitalist system as ‘internalized externals.’ As such they have not made the complete transition from formal to real integration […] The more labor power is commodified in the world economy, the more the value of labor power becomes a lever for disrupting the tendency toward spatial integration. The more apparent, therefore, does it become that the original political foundation of world capital is the major barrier to further social development.” (ibid:188-189)

This is the foundation of the theory of uneven development: “the drive toward universality under capitalism brings only a limited equalization of levels and conditions of development. Capital produces distinct spatial scales –absolutes spaces- within which the drive toward equalization is concentrated. But it can do this only by an acute differentiation and continued redifferentiation of relative space, both between and within scales.” (ibid:196)

72

Uneven Development: the “Seesaw Movement of Capital”Again, drawing on Marx statement that “capital grows in one place to huge mass in a single

hand because it has in another place been lost by many”, Neil Smith notes that capital creates a world after its own image, where development and underdevelopment are “geographical mirrors of the capital-labor relation” (ibid:199). That is the seesaw of capital, an endless movement from developed to underdeveloped areas.

“Capital moves to where the rate of profit is highest (or at least high), and these moves are synchronized with the rhythm of accumulation and crisis. The mobility of capital brings about the development of areas with a high rate of profit and the underdevelopment of those areas where a low rate of profit pertains”. (ibid:197)

In the same time, the process of development leads to a diminution of this higher rate of profit (the tendancy toward equalization): “the development of productive forces in a given place leads to lower unemployment, an increase in wage rate, the development of labor unions, and so forth”, which is lowering the rate of profit of capitalist, “and thus take away the very reason for development”. (ibid:197-198)

“At the opposite pole, that of underdevelopment, the lack of capital or its persistent overflow leads to high unemployment rates, low wages and reduced levels of workers’ organization.”: the underdevelopment is the condition “that make an area highly profitable and hence susceptible to rapid development.” (198)

This see-saw movement of capital makes Neil Smith stating, using Nigel Harris, sentence that “capital is like a plague of locusts. It settles on one place, devours it, then moves on to plague another place”. Uneven development is the geographical expression of the contradictions of capital. (ibid:202) Both are the product, and the “geographical premise of capitalist development” (ibid:206), and an inner necessity for capitalism to address its contradiction and crisis:

“As uneven development becomes an increasing necessity in order to stave off crises, geographical differentiation becomes less and less a by-product, more an inner necessity for capital. (203)

“Uneven development is social inequality blazoned into the geographical landscape, and it is simultaneously the exploitation of that geographical unevenness for certain socially determined ends” (ibid:206)

73

Conclusion

74

75

Chapter II: Migrations and the Development of Capitalism within Nepal

We died in your hills; we died in your deserts,We died in your valleys and died on your plains.

We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes,Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

- Deportee, Plane Wreck at Los Gatos,Woody Guthrie, 1948.

In the previous section, I exposed the structural reasons of migration in the host countries (characterized as “pull factors” in the migration studies) and the global framework enabling it: the uneven capitalist development. In this section, I would like to highlight the “push-factors” what drives Nepali migrants out of their sending country.

My point here is to provide a new framework for the migration dynamics in Nepal, to analyze them as the result of the transition to capitalism, the dissolution of previous social and production relations, what was labeled as “the so-called primitive accumulation” by Marx.

To do so, I will provide a closer look at the state of development in Nepal, then define what Marxists tackled as “primitive accumulation of capital” and try to show the relevance of the concept to analyze the migration phenomenon.

Underdevelopment and Primitive Capitalism in NepalWe saw in the context section that Nepal was never colonized; its autocratic and conservative

monarchy lasted until late (Vanaik 2008:5), it thus had no causes to undertake necessary reforms to create the “pre-conditions for a sovereign nation state” and “infrastructural development aimed at creating a national market” (ibid).

The modernization of the country starts somewhere in the second half of the twentieth century, the literacy level raised from 2% in 1951 to 40% in 1990, a professional middle class emerged in the urban centers and the opening of the country to the world “created a growing awareness of [its] comparative underdevelopment” (ibid:11).

The aim of this section is to integrate the migration dynamics in Nepal within this framework of late integration in the global economy, to understand it as a product of this transition from a pre-capitalist society to a capitalist one.

The work of Dr Baburam Bhtattarai, a revolutionary intellectual and political leader in Nepal, member of the Politbureau of Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and former Prime Minister appeared to be necessary to understand the situation within Nepal. Born in a middle peasant family, he obtained Doctor of Philosophy Jawaharlal Nerhu University of Delhi in 1986 with his thesis “The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional Structure of Nepal”.

He provided a complete Marxist interpretation of Nepal’s history and economy through an historico-materialist perspective based on a lot of statistical data, explaining the underdevelopment of Nepal by

76

the interplay of different factors, endogenous (such as the retrograde semi-feudal relations of production, physical constraints, powerful centralized state) and as well as exogenous (such as semi-colonial relation with India) ones.

This work, quite old, could seem out of date, but the author notes in its 2003’s preface, and regarding nowadays’ data, it remains valid:

“Questions may be raised whether the research work done almost two decades earlier would stand the scrutiny of time in its theoretical approach, hypothetical propositions and basic conclusions and would bear relevance to the current global and national reality. It’s the author’s strong conviction that, though he would have preferred to update both the literature survey and statistical data, the basic propositions and conclusions would not only remain the same but they have been entirely validated by the subsequent course of events in the nineties of the last century and the beginning of this century.” (Bhattarai 2003:viii)

Indeed, despite the political changes of the nineties (the multiparty governance), “the fundamental politico-economic characteristics of society or basic class relations cannot be assumed to have undergone any qualitative change”(ibid:ix). Nepal is still facing a very low level of development of its productive forces, a low sectoral differentiation of the economy and the predominance of primary production sector (i.e agriculture), the only discernable shift seems to be that “both labour force and GDP [switched] away from the primary production sector to the economic integration sector […] is a sign of growing comprador and bureaucratic capital and increasing integration with the metropolitan economy as envisaged earlier in this work” (ibid:ix).

Bhattarai defines underdevelopment as “the opposite conditions of non-realization of full potential of development and/or blockage to transformations to higher formation under the cumulative impacts of prevailing endogenous and exogenous development”. The exogenous factors highlighted are not specific to Nepal but widely pointed out in many “underdeveloped countries”, it is “imperialism” taking place within Bretton Woods system (WB, IMF, WTO…), the “globalization”… (ibid:xi)

Concerning the endogenous factors, the analysis developed by Bhattarai tackle the agricultural, the industrial and the capitalist development in Nepal.

Socio-spatial Structure of Agriculture (ibid:158 – 169)

The agricultural sector in Nepal is marked by the ‘feudalisation’ and the incomplete ‘detribalisation’ of the society, with geographical differences: a greater persistence of communal formation in the east, a greater degree of feudalization in the west, and more direct state intervention in the central region.

For Bhattarai, the very low development of productive forces in the agriculture sector reflected by the domination of traditional factors of production (land, human and animal labor…). This “backward and retarded state of agriculture” manifests itself in the low cropping intensity, the predominance of subsistence crops, the low growth rate of crop output, the declining food surplus… Indeed, the land productivity not only low, but declining over time.

Especially important for my point is the preponderance of ‘owner-cultivator’ subsistence peasantry and low/declining average size of land-holding as reflecting the “backward and retrograde relations of production in agriculture”

77

Dr. Bhattarai also notes that, despite other auxiliary forms of appropriation (such as state taxation, mercantile exploitation and usury practices), the pre-capitalist ground rent realized through the system of share-cropping constitutes the principal form of appropriation of social surplus in agricultural sector.

He thus concludes:

“The aggregate agrarian process in Nepal is thus found characterized by low technical level of production, pre-capitalist (or semi-feudal) relations of production, disarticulation with other sectors of the economy, particularly industry, and a general state of stagnation and retardation. In the territorial dimension it is manifested in the marginally differentiated vast hinterland of Hill and Mountain surrounded by areas of ‘extraverted development’ along Terai, Inner Terai and Kathmandu Valley.”

The Development of Industry in Nepal (ibid:274 – 277)

There is a general historical trend toward the decline of industrial production since the 1920s, despite a persistence of indigenous proto-industry. The “generalized pattern of chronically anemic and inverted industrial structure” is reflected by the higher share of elementary processing such as agro-based and forest-based industries and a negligible share of production goods industry. These industries are specifically localized in the Tarai and Katmandu’s valley. This industrial sector is characterized by its low capital intensity and low level of technology in use, with an increasing external dependence for technological and raw material.

The primitive nature of the organization of production is obvious when looking at the ‘unpaid family labour’ which is giving the evidence of the “undissolved ties if the industrial labour with agricultural production”, a proof of “the backward relations of production in the industrial sector”

Baburam Bhattarai highlights the signs of premature monopolization of the industry: a few dominants social groups are monopolizing ownership, particularly people from Indian origin or Indian nationals.

Concerning the patterns of accumulation, Bhattarai notes that the “industrial production is primarily organized for ‘private’ appropriation of social surplus. The few state-owned units of ‘production goods’ industries seem to be merely preparing grounds for the spread of the private sector.”

The industrial strategy in Nepal is also oscillating between two poles: import-substitution (replacing imported goods by national ones in the ‘home market) and export-promotion (external market). The primarily home market is facing 2 problems: “firstly the constriction of the internal market due to gross social inequality and low purchasing power of the masses; and secondly preemption of the existing internal market […] by exogenous capital.”

Concerning capital investment in the industries, “there is virtually no private ‘foreign’ investment (i.e other than from India) in the industrial sector” because of it lack of credibility for external finance. Despite this, industries in Nepal are over-dependent on private Indian capital.

Regarding the territorial dimension of the development of industries, Bhattarai states that Nepal is facing an extraverted and disarticulated industrial spatial structure with isolated points of industrial localization, articulated with the outside economies.

78

To conclude, there is strong link between the agrarian and the industrial process, and both are “underdeveloped”.

The Circulation of Capital within Nepal (ibid:386 – 389)

In Nepal, the general level of marketization of the indigenous economy (measured in terms of total indigenous produce circulated through markets and the number of trading, establishments per unit households and per capita sale) is low. The economy is thus marked by “self-sufficiency or autarchy”, even if there is spatial variation in the levels of marketization, which is declining from South to North and from East to West, and prevailing in Katmandu’s valley.

The social relations of exchange are “marked by primitiveness as reflected in predominance of retailing and small-scale operations, circulation of use-values than exchange-value, etc.”, but, as noted earlier for the industries, there is a strong tendency of commercial monopolization in terms of ownership by dominant mercantile group.

Bhattarai also notes an increasing economic dependence on foreign trade with a declining volume of export when imports are growing. Furthermore, these international exchange are marked by unequal exchange: primary product exports and imports of finished products, which, for him, one of the reason of underdevelopment in Nepal.

To conclude, financial capital is still at a primitive stage of development, social relations of financing are “found backward and retrograde”, and a large proportion of organized financing is going to mercantile activities and consumptions purposes, short term loans rather than medium or long-term ones.

Underdevelopment in Nepal and the Transition of a Pre-Capitalist SocietyFor Bhattarai, development is a process triggered by contradictions between forces and

relations of production in a given social formation “full realization of productive potentials of the society or transformation to higher social formation”. Thus:

“The current social and spatial structure of development/underdevelopment of Nepal should be viewed in the light of its peculiar historical and natural specificities including: late and induced, and hence uneven ‘feudalisation’ under the aegis of a strong centralized state power; no direct colonial but only semi-colonial integration with the metropolitan power which is still continuing in a new guise; extreme physiographic diversities and natural barriers to socialization of means of production in large parts of the country constituting of Hill and Mountain; etc.”

We saw that the prevailing economic structure is characterized by a very low development of the productive forces, a negligible sectorial differentiation and a predominance of the primary production sector. The backward a retarded state of agriculture is found in the low cropping intensity, the predominance of subsistence crops, the sluggish growth rate of crop output, and the declining food surplus. Indeed, land productivity: not only low, but declining over the time. As a repercussion of this are the low and declining average size of land-holding per farm household, the pre-ponderence of “owner-cultivator” subsistence peasantry and considerable disparity in the social distribution of vital means of production-land.

79

“On the basis on the findings of this study it can be concluded that the problems of development/underdevelopment of Nepal both in the social and spatial dimensions are essentially the problems of transition of a pre-capitalist society hybridized primarly under the retrograde internal social structure but increasingly mediated by the exogenous capitalist/imperialist interests. Even through the space economy is seen characterized more by the absolute low level of development of the productive forces than by a distortedly developed structure, the recent trends are found to be increasing superimposition of the latter tendency onto the former, as the two are not necessarily exclusive and contradictory. Also the dominant spatial differentiation may be seen in terms of the changing nature of basic contradictions in different territorial zones, which should also provide a ‘planning’ perspective to ‘change’ the status quo. Hence, without the basic restructuration of the society which would check the above tendencies as well as the forces abating them, the social and spatial problems of development/underdevelopment are not likely to be solved.” (ibid:503, my emphasis)

The Concept of Primitive Accumulation of CapitalWe saw, using Dr. Bhattarai’s work that Nepal is embedded in a transition to capitalism. My

point here is to integrate the study of Nepalese migrations within this framework. If Nepal is passing through the “pre-history of capitalism”, we may find pre-capitalist dynamics. In this last chapter of Capital vol. 1, Marx’s tackled this pre-history of capitalism, what he labeled has the “so-called primitive accumulation.” I will try to relate this process of primitive accumulation in Nepal with the migrations dynamics, showing that they are the result and the tool of primitive accumulation.

Capitalist production supposes the existence of surplus value which is being effective once masses of capitals and workforce are already accumulated in the hand of capitalists. The primitive accumulation (or original), already highlighted by Adam Smith is thus what is occurring before capitalist accumulation proper (or mature), its starting point or as Marx put it, the “original sin”.

The “capitalist social relations rest on the divorce of the mass of the population from the means of production”, this divorce is the result of primitive accumulation, and the “presupposition on which capitalists exploitation of labor rests”. For Werner Bonefield, primitive accumulation is a necessary element of capitalism (Bonefeld 2001: 2).

A DefinitionWithin Marxist tradition, primitive accumulation is usually seen as the pre-history of

capitalism, “a period of historical transition from pre-capitalist to capitalist social relations”, a “time specific systematic character” referring to “the separation of labour from the means of production and the natural conditions of labour”, “A history of blood and fire where sheep replaced humans during the clearing of estates”. (Bonefeld 2001:2)

Marx, in his part 8 of Capital described “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation”, which, according to David Harvey “enlightens us mightily as to the class content of what, for example, the past thirty years of market-based neoliberal globalization have always been about” (Harvey, 2010:290). He starts with the dual freedom of laborers: free to sell their own labor power, and at the same time, free from any control over the means of production. What he is describing on this part is how the second kind of freedom was secured through thievery, predation, violence and use of power. He described how laborers were transformed into commodities and how earlier mode of production is impacted by capitalism, in sum, the historical origins of the wage labor relation or the transition from feudalism to capitalism:

80

“In the Gundrisse, Marx is rather more explicit. He there writes of how money dissolves the traditional community, and in dissolving the traditional community, money becomes the community” (Harvey, 2010:294).

In Chapter 27, Marx deals with the expropriation of the agricultural population, and shows that the appropriation of land was the primary means for the dispossession of the peasantry. At the other site of the chest is the formation of a bourgeoisie, “made of landed capitalists, merchants capitalists, finance capitalists and manufacturing capitalists in broad alliance”, with the state as the instrument of their collective will. He also highlights the systematic theft of communal property through a movement of enclosure of the commons, based on the example of the Scottish Highlands. In Chapter 28, he describes what happen to all the people kicked off the land, who becomes vagabonds, beggars, thieves and robbers due to the lack of employment. He also describes the switch from primitive to mature accumulation:

“The violence of the socialization of workers into the disciplinary apparatus of capital is at first transparent. But with the passing of time, “the silent compulsion of economic relations sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker.” Once the proletariat is formed, Marx here seems to be saying, the silent compulsion of economic relations does its job and the overt violence can fade into the background, because people have been socialized into their situation as wage laborers, as bearers of the commodity labor-power.” (Harvey, 2010:296, my emphasis)

In Chapter 29, he examines the genesis of capitalist farming, or how sharecroppers became tenant farmers and have to pay ground rent to landlords. It is a process of monetization and commodification of the soil through a process of “agricultural revolution”. In Chapter 31, he considers the genesis of industrial capitalism “who takes over the leading role from merchant’s capital, usurer’s capital, the bankocracy (finance capital) and landed capital”, closely related with colonialism and slave trade. (ibid:297)

At the core of the process of primitive accumulation is the creation of the class antagonism between the capitalist and the wage-laborer, a relationship of dependence between a master and a servant. Indeed, the wage-laborer renounce to every property rights on the product of his work, because he only possess his own work force but not the external condition needed to give body to it, which are the raw materials and the instruments of its work. These external conditions are possessed by the capital owner. So, central for primitive accumulation, but also for the whole Marx’s critic of capitalist system is the radical separation of the producer and the means of production.

In sum, Capital is a social relationship between labor and the conditions of labor which are ‘rendered independent in relation’ to labor (ibid 422). ‘The loss of the conditions of labour by the workers is expressed in the fact that these conditions of labour become independent as capital or as things at the disposal of the capitalist’ (ibid:271). For Werner Bonefeld, primitive accumulation, then, “is not just a period from which capitalist social relations emerged. Rather, it is the historical ‘act’ that constitutes the capitalist social relations as a whole” (Bonefeld 2001:6-7)

This separation of labor from its conditions, concentration of these conditions “in the hands of non-workers” give birth to “a perverted form of human social practice where the ‘process of production has mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him (Marx, 1983, p. 88)” (Bonefeld 2001:7).

Primitive accumulation is thus, “the means whereby labor was converted into a commodity, to be bought and used by capitalist entrepreneurs”. This process had sometimes involved the plunder of land

81

and raw material and the dispossession/enslavement of people through colonization (during the pre-imperialist stages of capitalist countries)(Wilson 2011:2). For Marx, “all the rules of market exchange earlier laid out (in chapter 2) are abandoned. There is no reciprocity, no equality. Yes the accumulation of money is there, markets of a sort are there, but the real process is something else. It is about the violent dispossession of a whole class of people from control over the means of production” (Harvey 2010:293).

Interestingly, for Bonefeld as well as for many Marxist theorists, primitive accumulation persists within the capital relation, “as its constitutive pre-positing action” of the separation of labor from its means is “at the heart of capital’s reproduction”, not an historical result but the presupposition of capital (Bonefeld 2001:7):

“The systematic character of primitive accumulation subsists, then, in suspended form through the constituted relations of capital. The separation is not the result of capital but its genesis and it is now posited as the presupposition of capital. It no longer ‘figures’ as the condition of its historical emergence but, rather, as the constitutive presupposition of its fanatic bent on reproducing human relations as relation between commodity owners […] In short, the separation ‘begins with primitive accumulation, appears as a permanent process in the accumulation and concentration of capital, and expresses itself finally as centralization of existing capitals in a few hands and a deprivation of many of their capital’ (Marx, 1966, p. 246)” (Bonefeld 2001:7)

“Capital’s existence rests not just on the exploitation of labour but, rather, on the continuous accumulation of capital through the progressive exploitation of labour (see Marx, 1983, 555).” (9) “Thus, the contention that capitalist accumulation is not just based on the results of primitive accumulation but, instead that primitive accumulation is the constitutive presupposition of the class antagonism between capital and labour”. “accumulation merely presents as a continuous process what in primitive accumulation appears as a distinct historical process, as the process of the emergence of capital” (Marx , 1972, 272) (Bonefeld 2001)

Without the mastery and the control of its work, the worker become someone else’s property, or philosophically said, an “alien object”:

“Man is confronted by things, labour is confronted by its own materialized conditions as alien, independent, self-contained subjects, personifications, in short, as someone else’s property and, in this form, as “employers” and “commanders” of labour itself, which they appropriate instead of being appropriated by it. The fact that value –whether it exists as money or as commodities – and in further development the conditions of labour confront the worker as the property of other people, as independent properties, means simply that they confront him as the property of the non-worker or, at any rate, that, as a capitalist, he confronts them [the conditions of labour] not as a worker but as the owner of value, etc., as the subject in which these things possess their own will, belong to themselves and are personified as independent forces” (Marx, 1972, 475-76) (Bonefeld 2001:8)

Bonefeld, again, argues that Capital, “fanatically bent on making value expand itself” (ibid, 555) can do no other than to intensify the division of labour so as to increase its productive power.” (Bonefeld 2001:10). He’s here pointing at the fact that primitive accumulation is a constantly reproduced accumulation, “be it in terms of the renewed separation of new populations from the means of production and subsistence, or in terms of the reproduction of the wage relation in the

82

‘established relations of capital. The former seeks to bring new workers under the command of capital […] and the latter to contain them there as social categories ‘freed’ from their conditions.” (Bonefeld 2001:11)

The place of primitive accumulation is, “as opposed to capitalist accumulation, was for Marx (1979:713) the value gleaned from outside of the capitalist sphere of production, and the original precondition for investment in the capitalist sphere of production”, i.e the mature accumulation when capitalist accumulation is based on extracting surplus labor (and thus profit) from the labor force employed by capitalist-enterprise. (Wilson 2011:1)

The first form of primitive accumulation is that generated by divorcing peasants and other laborer from their means of production so that they have to become wage laborer for the capitalist system:

“The process… that clears the way for the capitalist system can be none other than the process which takes away from the labourer the possession of his means of production, a process that transforms, on the one hand, the social means of subsistence and of production into capital, on the other, the immediate producers into wage-labourers. The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process divorcing the producer from the means of production. It appears as primitive because it forms the pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding to it. (Marx 1979:714-715) (Wilson 2011:2)

For Tamar Diana Wilson, primitive accumulation is a two-fold process: “the progressive disintegration of pre-capitalist modes of production” and “the tapping of a workforce bred and raised to working age in a non-capitalist social formation”, “the looting of the labor force from previous modes of production”. (Wilson 2011:2)

Whether occurring at the outside through colonization, or within national boundaries of a State, what is central to primitive accumulation is the acquisition of a labor force, free from its previous modes of production:

“In both form of primitive accumulation-expropriation and exploitation of laborers at home or abroad – the acquisition of a labor force was (and is) central. The first form can be seen as a form of “internal colonialism” whereby a country’s internal labor force most usually tied to the land employed in the informal sector, is tapped for labor in capitalist enterprise.” (Wilson 2011: 2)

For Abbas Abdelkarim, who worked on primitive accumulation in Sudan, primitive accumulation is essentially a process of class formation: the formation of “double-free” wage laborer and of the capitalist class and its domination over the socio-economic formation (Abbas, 1992).

Examples of Primitive Accumulation (India & China)A brief look at concrete processes of primitive accumulation could provide useful insight to

understand the process going on in Nepal. Having already briefly tackled the traditional analysis of England, on which Marx built his theory, we will look at two contemporary example, taking place in the Global South: the two giant neighbors of Nepal, India and China.

Webber M. provided an analysis of the process of primitive accumulation of capital in China, by visiting villages and working on empirical materials. His definition of it highlights the double

83

movement of the creation of capitalists (with the property rights on the means of production) and a proletariat (with rights on their own capacity of work) mediated by a market exchange:

“Primitive accumulation is the process (or set of processes) through which capitalist production emerges from pre-existing conditions of work. That is, it is the process through which emerge capitalists, who advance capital to purchase means of production in the hope of making a profit, and workers who, separated from the means of production, have only their commodity power to sell.” (Webber 2006:3)

Furthermore Webber highlighted the continuity of the process, which is not simply historical “once and for all: rather, it occurs whenever capitalist forms of production take over production that had been organized under other social relations”. Thus, the planned destruction of the welfare State in the global North is very similar to the integration of pre-capitalist societies when understanding it as a part of a phenomenon of primitive accumulation. (ibid)

He notes further that “a worker, for example, is a person who has no means of subsistence other than his or her labour power, that is sold on market. Reality is not so tidy” (ibid:4). In China, they are divided between peasants with land, sometimes sufficient to support their households but who rely in capitalist production for their living, other worker in former state-owned or collective enterprises that have been corporatized, landholding peasants (independent producer) but contracted to urban enterprises… Thus, “they are all people who are partially proletarianised; they are not “pure workers” but neither are they any longer independent commodity producers or state employees (ibid:4). This notion of partial proletarianization is highly interesting for the further development on primitive accumulation in Nepal.

It is important to note that in China, an industrial development emerged before the process of primitive accumulation, in a collective form where people had power over their means of production, at least theoretically. Thus, the process of primitive accumulation will be specific. Webber notes a few form taken by it (ibid:5):

- The decollectivisation accompanied with a dramatic rise of absolute poverty and a rapid agricultural growth

- The transformation of communal enterprises into capital enterprises- Rural-urban migrations, due to overpopulation and relative poverty in the countryside.

Migrants mainly filled niches such as street trading, restaurants and personal services- Webber also notes that since the beginning of the 21th century, a process of rural

dispossession through the privatization of communal and household assets, for industrial agriculture as well as for infrastructural developments such as damns. This process increased the landless and very small holding population.

For him, “the principal mode of primitive capital formation in China since the late 1970s has been the privatization, corporatization, and development as shareholding corporations of SOEs, together with their capitalist offshoots.” This is the arena of the first capital formation. (ibid:9)

Acknowledging that 15 millions of rural citizens have moved to cities, he points at poverty, family strategies and conflict and “the desire for the modern play their part too” as motives to move:

“In terms of sheer numbers, more important than dispossession has been the market mechanisms – through migration. For such rural residents, their land is simply not worth enough in comparison with the new opportunities offered in, or by, cities. The allegiance of

84

these people to wage labour is purchased through the market rather than compelled by dispossession” (ibid, my emphasis)

To conclude, he draws some interesting statement about the process of primitive accumulation. The first is that there is a difference between primitive accumulation and dispossession, and that the market could be partly involved in the phenomenon:

“The first observation is that primitive accumulation is not the same as either dispossession or accumulation by force. In the early history of capitalist in the UK, force appears to have been necessary (Perelman 1983). As Perelman points out, the compulsory formation of a working class took the form of enclosing the commons: removing traditional rights to communal resources, such as woods, quarries, hedgerows and the like; and removing alternatives to wage labour, such as vagrancy and welfare.”

“dispossession, outside the market is involved. But the market has been implicated too. Peasants have made decisions about migration; others have chosen whether or not to begin producing agricultural products and handicrafts under contract; yet others have chosen to consolidate their land holdings so as to work in factories.” (ibid:11)

His second observation is that primitive accumulation and the formation of markets are different processes, and that primitive accumulation and the expansion of capitalism concerns the production relations:

“It was not the development of markets that marked the emergence of generalized capitalist production in urban China, but the changing social relations within production –opposing on the one side workers who had lost rights to jobs and social security and on the other side capitalists, who had gained the freedom to decide for themselves who to hire and what to make, and who took real risks to make real profits.” (ibid)

“Obviously the creation of markets and the creation of capital and labour power are related processes; but markets were easier and the earlier to create” (ibid:17)

Last but not least is that primitive accumulation in China not only followed an economic logic, but was embedded within the institutional structures of rural and urban China, states policies, and mainly other local conditions, leaving only a little role to “global capital” (ibid:12-13). For example, the State actions have helped the process, but not (only) for economic logics. One good illustration of this is to be found in the war on poverty, which consisted in promoting economic development and enterprises growth. Webber points at WB projects in Tibet, which are converting traditional nomadic pastures into intensive agricultural production. The motives are to be found in the search for social welfare and environmental protection, in the political struggles against ethnic minorities, but at the end, this kind of project play a role in the process of primitive accumulation.

To sum, primitive accumulation dynamics occurred in China between the eighties and 2000, through three principal means: the transformation of state or collective enterprises into capital, the loss of land and assets through various modes of dispossession for peasants and thirdly the voluntary migration of peasants to urban areas, all of them embedded in a complex mix of dispossession and market mechanisms (ibid:16)

Samaddar Ranabir (2008) described the “Primitive Accumulation and Some Aspects of Work and Life in India in the Early Part of the Twenty First Century”.

85

At the end of the 20th century, a little more than 90% of workers were to be found in the unorganized sector (mainly in agriculture). For him, this unorganized labor is dispossessed and thus free of any attachment: it is in this sense, s/he stands as a member of a vast reserve army waiting to be drafted into the lines of industrial production” and he highlights the role of globalization in the process of expropriation of peasant proprietors transformed to unorganized labor. (ibid:24)

For him, primitive accumulation is embedded in neo-liberal capitalist expansion and facilitated through “the dismantling of customary relations to land, forest and water” (ibid:25). In India, it took the following form:

- The dissociation of the laborers from the means of labor through displacements and migration- An extra-economic, violent and coercive role played by administration, which he characterizes

as an internal colonialism.- The process was rendered possible by the unorganized character of production and the low

regulatory laws.- At the end, of this is the emergence of the laborer as a free agent, free from the means of labor

and free to enter into contracts with capitalists.

In India, the process of primitive accumulation is tied to the creation of special economic zones:

“We can note the process of primitive accumulation in India in the first decade of the twenty first century – a process aided and facilitated by the existence of surplus labour and the administrative strategy of creating the special economic zones as spaces of exception to the “normal” process of capitalist accumulation and development.” (ibid:24)

These special economic zones are for him the most developed form of primitive accumulation in today’s India: places with their own administration of their exchange mechanisms, productions processes and production relations, “special zones of enclosures” (ibid:28).

Agriculture in India is also viewed as a source of accumulation: capital goes for investment in intensive agriculture: machine, agro-based industries… In some regions, it occurs through land grabbing and the eviction of rural population (ibid:26)

As many others theorists, he highlights the continuity of primitive accumulation:

“The continuing history of primitive accumulation carrying through to this day on the basis of a process of destruction of peasant and small commodity production, and keeping a large chunk of production informal and unorganized is possible because this division between the formal and informal sectors, the organized and unorganized, and the primitive and modern is finally a social division with huge implications for the life of capital and the bourgeois society” (ibid:27 – 28)

Furthermore, despite that fact that “modern forms of primitive accumulation occur in quite different contexts, different from the earlier ones” he highlights the universality (going alongside with the world-wide spread of neo-liberal orthodoxy) of the process. For him, cuts in social spending in the UK, destruction of land and property in Iraq, massive privatization in Russia, enclosures in India… are all new sites of primitive accumulation.

86

Nature and dynamics widely debated, research on contribution drawn from the example of various spatial and temporal examples such as Europe in the 17th, colonial and postcolonial India, Africa, and China… But what is common?

“the history of this expropriation assumes different aspects in different countries, and runs through its various phases in different orders of succession, and at a different historical epochs. Only in England which therefore take as our example, has it the classic form (Marx:876), UK as a special and pioneering example (Harvey 2010:294)

Transformation of peasantry into commodity producer, from agricultural proletariat to industrial one.

Origins: local class structures, colonial plunder and population dynamics. More recent: accumulation by dispossession.

Phenomenon: conversion of the common collective and state property into exclusive property rights, slave trade, public debt, colonial (or semi, neo) and imperialist practices, dismantling of welfare states. (Webber, 2006:2)

Migration under the scope Primitive Accumulation

The Primitive Accumulation in Nepal “We live in a world where neoliberal economic system penetrates at an increasing pace the

most remote regions of the globe and almost every aspect of our lives” stated Harald Baulder (2006:11), and Nepal is no exception.

In this section, I will try to analysis the effects of migration in Nepal in relation with the concept of primitive accumulation. But tackling the migration process alone won’t be enough to show the relevance of the concept, I will also have to enlarge the scope to the whole agricultural sector, and review others dynamics such as the marketization, of labor or the land dynamics to strengthen my point: that primitive accumulation is going on in Nepal, and that migrations are a part of this process.

Since the last five or ten years, Nepal’s have been involve in important agrarian change and an agrarian reform is at work, as a result of the People’s War. This agrarian reform is sometimes state led, sometimes market led through the neo-liberal policies giving up to market forces and property rights and the WB model. (Pyakuryal 2011:114-115)

We saw previously with Bhattarai’s analysis of underdevelopment that Nepal is characterized by its low land productivity and its very limited progress in the last fifty years: from 1950 to 2000, the percent increase of crops productivity was: 96% for wheat, 44% for paddy, 11% for barley, 9% for millet and only 2% for maize. It’s important to note that maize, barley and millet are the poor people’s food, and that those progresses are mainly due to improved varieties of seeds. (Pyakuryal 2011:4)

Equally important is the decrease of the GDP share of agriculture in the past years, the underdevelopment of agro-based industries and the low commercialization of agriculture. Furthermore, in the absence of industrial development agriculture remains central, and land in Nepal is a symbol of wealth, prosperity and power. Indeed, land owners are often depicted as feudal landlords,

87

and the poor and powerless are working for other on various tenure arrangements (and indebtness). The dalits, the poor and the minorities have no voice in land governance. (ibid:4-5)

The land is unequally distributed, and this distribution “violates the principles of equality, equity and need, and therefore generates conflict.” There is a very limited access to land for small and landless farmer. According to a census led by the Central Bureau of Statistics in 2006, the average land holding was 0.8ha. Small land holders (from 0.1 to 0.5ha) represents one half (47,3%) of total land owners, but they own only 14.7% of total land cultivated. Nearly three fourths of the total land holders are within the range of 0.1ha to 1ha, they own only 38.9% of the national lands. These highly unequal patterns explain the difficulties faced by little farmers. (Pyakuryal 2011:4-5)

“45% of the total population is small-land holding peasant (CBS 2006)” and the “large size farm [are] often cultivated export-oriented crops while small farms had to maintain subsistence agriculture to supplement nutrient requirements of the family” (Pyakuryal 2011:77, 101)

The tensions occurring within this framework could be one of the push factors in Nepal as Pyarkuryal notes it:

“With modernization and globalization people tend to be more individualistic and thus those depending on agriculture opt out of it and look for non-farm opportunities due to tension in the agrarian structure.” (Pyakuryal 2011:60)

At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of a society come into conflict with the existing relation of production. That means that the material productive forces at the heart of social change. That is maybe what is happening in Nepal. The landlessness is a huge issue in the Himalayan Republic, landless peasant are a kind of proletariat, people dispossessed from productive resource, land. In 2004, 25% of the farmers didn’t own a piece of land. (Pyakuryal 2011:114)

Nepal is still embedded in a feudal system where a non-farmer elites accumulate land holdings, giving birth to a bonded labor system (approximately 80,000 to 100,000 Nepalese households are trapped in systems of bonded labor despite its interdiction in 2002) based on the exploitation of the lower class lower cast and exploitation (Pyakuryal 2011:114, 145).

For Pyakuryal, the systematic failure of land reform is due conflicts of interests with decision maker, constituted by a nexus between politicians and the wealthy and powerful (Pyakuryal 2011:146). Indeed, since the restoration of democracy in 1990, Nepal adopted policies of privatization and liberalization, under the pressure of the WB and others international financial institutions (before, they already adopted structural adjustment programs and became member of WTO). The policies are here working for the promotion of open market economy and commoditization dynamics. As a result, the agricultural land treated as a commodity, with huge speculation on land and the landlord represents the economic and political power, an elite based on land and agriculture system.

It is here obvious that marketization of land, labor and product are part of a primitive accumulation process (that is the separation between the producer and the product of its labour), an expansion of the capitalist sphere toward a new frontier. These contemporary developments are also worsening the situation for the poorest farmers, and migration could be a way for them to escape this situation, and an alternative to bounded feudal labor.

88

I highlighted here some capitalist dynamics impacting the agrarian sector in Nepal, I defined them as part of the primitive accumulation process, but also as push factor for migration. Let’s new tackle the effects of migration on land.

Migration and Land DynamicsThe Nepal Institute of Development Studies published in 2013 a study of the effects of

Migration in agricultural direct in Nepal. This study was undertaken by Adhikari J. and Hobley M., and took place in the Khotang district.

Khotang is a mid-eastern district, characterized by its higher level of labor migration than the national average. Most of these migrants are going to the GCC and Malaysia, and only a few to India. On the village studies between 51 and 71% of the households had at least member abroad. The authors also note a decrease of the population in the last 10 years which they attribute to international and intra-national migration. Indeed, there is only very few employment opportunities. Migration trends take form in a migration cycle; men go, come back after 3-4-5 years and leave again.

Remittances flowing in the district are estimated between 33 and 51 million US$, that is superior to every other flow of development investment, and these returns from migration are mainly used to buy consumer goods and a new way of life, not linked with the risky agriculture. The relative economic progress of migrants are pushing other to do migrate, creating a “snowball effect”. As a result, people are moving out of agriculture, which in turns contributes less to local GDP than it did before (Adhirakari 2013:xvi): in the 70s, agriculture represented between 60 and 70% of total GDP, but only 30% of it in 2000.

People leaving are often young men, which is creating changes in demography (Adhirakari 2013:xvi). Women and elder are the only one left to work, which in in turn take form in in labor shortage. (Adhirakari 2013: xiv). The authors also note an empowerment of women: since father, sons and husband abroad, they have to take responsibilities.

Also very interesting is the fact that Dalits benefits from migration when poorer Brahmin and Chhetri households not. (xvii) The poorest are stuck at the bottom due to the cost of migration, and are bonded in relationship of patronage… Furthermore, many households have to borrow money to cover the cost of migration. (Adhirakari 2013:xvii)

Especially interesting in the study of primitive accumulation are the changes in patterns of landownership: high cast households move away from the villages to town or Tarai (due better opportunities for education, access to health facilities, employment…). They sell their land to others, including Dalits. Generally, agriculture is becoming less intensive and land left fallow, livestock numbers are decreasing and the overall contribution of agriculture to economy is decreasing. (Adhirakari 2013:xvii-xviii)

Of course, each district, each locality has its own history and specificities, and this work is not “statistical evidence” which can be applied generally, but the study of the district remains useful, since some characteristics can be found in other locality. This work reflects broadly the wider situation of districts of eastern hills of Nepal.

Concerning the main effects of migrations highlighted by the authors we can notice the changes in economic well-being (44% of migrant households were able to increase their well-being over the last 10years). There is also changing land ownership patterns, the remittances are driving social transformation: in one hand is the exit of the wealthier (high caste) to other areas in Nepal, and

89

the other people with fewer assets which are using their remittances to leave to the district headquarters, to areas closer to markets or to buy land. A large part of the land for sale is purchased by the Dalits. These two changes are also transforming the social structure: the changes in access to decision-making for Dalits thanks to their new economic independence, the awareness of their rights… and their social inclusion thanks to land owning position rather their previous wage laborer situation.

The changes in agricultural land use and landlord tenant relations is embedded in a long term trend in decline of agricultural productivity, but due to migration there is a further increase in fallow land, an increase of trees in private land, a decrease of livestock number and shortages of labor (which is further increasing the cost of wage labor) and thus, a low interest in renting low productivity land. The power shifting from the landlord to the tenant, who determines the nature of relationship and the share of benefits: that is a huge change in the nature of the society, but it’s maybe too early to draw lessons from it…

For the author, the labor intensive low input agriculture is more and more unsustainable due to the combination of high levels of male labor shortage, expensive wage labor, poor and non-existent markets for surpluses, and constrained female labor. For him, “the agriculture sector as currently configured cannot absorb the aspirations of young men and will continue to propel them overseas.”

Another effect of migration is the indebtness of households. Indeed, migration is rendered possible thanks to loan to cover pre-departure costs. These loans are usually borrowed in several smaller portions from (mainly) private source with a high rate of interest, which is increasing the vulnerability of households in the first years of migration. The very poor can’t borrow, so they can’t migrate.

Remittances are usually initially to repay the loans, with no surplus to re-invest, and then used in household’s expenditures such as education/health cost (for the poorest households), and a little bit of money saved for medium households (around 25%) which is used for education, house improvement and to buy land. As I already highlighted, the very poor households less able to access migration opportunities: they tend to get lower paying jobs, with higher risks, including the risk of being cheated (less education and network)… They thus profit less from remittances flows.

Migration poses challenges to the model of group-based development: there are evidences of increased individualization and less engagement in public goods. They are also changes in the social network, labor exchange relationship (parma in Nepali) are gaining in importance for women… The authors also note a feminization of collective action: due to male labor shortages, women take on more “male activities”, especially the major social ones (religious rites, festivals…) but there are threats on social functions and threads that link households since work stress and the fact that fewer people to share the duties. Migration is also increasing family tensions. This is due to stress, high workload, indebtness… and the implications of living without the male presence in the house.

Concerning the empowerment effects of migrations, they are quite unclear: some women are able to increase their voice outside the home and take employment opportunities, whereas other are forced back into domestic sphere… Furthermore, major decisions still made by men through mobile phone… So the increase in authority and decision making appear only as temporary and seems to disappear when male migrant come back.

90

Marketization of Products and LaborAgriculture is “central to accelerated growth. Sustainable agricultural development would lead the country to prosperity whereas negligence of agriculture would aggravate poverty and unemployment and lead to poor health and education.”. The way toward a “sustainable agriculture” was defined as its marketing, and the investment of technology, inputs and labor (Pyakuryal 2011:12). There is thus strong pressure toward the marketization of production, as part of the land reform (which involves a restructuration of the sector, infrastructural development and the work toward a scientific industrial agriculture). These push are carried out by the government and international organization as well as by local NGOs.

Ongoing Primitive Accumulation & The Labor Subsidies to CapitalismTo fully understand the relevance of the concept of Primitive Accumulation for the migration

phenomenon in Nepal, we have to go back to theoretical development started long ago.

Following Rosa Luxemburg’s work on the accumulation of Capital (2004), Wilson states that “capitalist system is not only surrounded by but dependent upon precapitalist sectors for its continued growth”. (Wilson:3):

“William I. Robinson (2008:7, 169, et passim), who sees capitalist accumulation as dependent on pre-capitalist social relations, argues that under the relatively new epochal shift to globalization, the peasantry is dying a slow but “agonizing death” and being forced to migrate internally or transnationally to “nodes of capitalist accumulation”. He points out that it is not only peasants and artisans who have become part of the global labor reserve, but also the old middle class” (Wilson 2011:3)

Wilson thus defends Robinson and Luxemburg’s position, that primitive accumulation is constant and ongoing and a necessary part of capitalist accumulation. (Wilson 2011:3).

“Samir Amin (1974a:382-83) also argued that primitive accumulation was constant and ongoing process, with benefits going to dominating foreign capital while restricting accumulation by local, peripheral capital. Yet he held that this primitive accumulation was occurring primarily though unequal exchange whereby manufactured products from the center commanded higher prices than raw materials and exotic foodstuffs produced by the periphery. Thus value is systematically transferred from periphery to center. While Amin saw this transfer as due to market dynamic, it could be argued that differences in prices were due to the differential wages paid in center and periphery.” (Wilson 2011:3)

A little bit different is Amin’s view, who didn’t see the primitive accumulation (resting on unequal exchange) as necessary for the reproduction of the capitalist system: “Development of the capitalist countries is perfectly possible even when there are no precapitalist societies to be disintegrated” (Amin 1974a:531). He is here arguing against Luxemburg’s theoretical approach, which sees capitalist expansion and constant primitive accumulation as central for the development of core capitalism:

“Luxemburg (2004) pointed out that the capitalist system required linkages with pre-capitalist socio-economic organizations for its expansion, and assumed that its survival depended on such expansion; she thus viewed linkages with the pre-capitalist economies as integral for the

91

functioning of the capitalist system. Luxemburg identified three such linkages: members of pre-capitalist social organizations were consumers of capitalist products, providers of raw materials for capitalist industry and reservoir of labor.” (Wilson 2011:4, my emphasis)

For Wilson, “her argument could be extended to say that, in terms of labor, the capitalist system requires an on-going process of primitive accumulation (in Marx’s sense) for its expansion and survival, and that this primitive accumulation partially rests on the mobilization of the reserve army of labor wherever it is found in the world.” (Wilson 2011:4)

Intermittent Migration and Ongoing Primitive AccumulationTamar Diana Wilson, from the Department of Anthropology of the University of Missouri (St

Louis), is interested in informal economy, immigration and gender issues. It’s striking how er study of Mexican migrants fits to Nepal’s situation, be in term of labor subsidies provided by migrant (the next section) and the angoing primitive accumulation embedded in their intermittent migrations.

While studying the case of Mexican recurrent migrants, the author argues that they intermittently return to the subsistence economy in their country of origin, this is here starting point to analysis the ongoing primitive accumulation at works. (Wilson 2011:2)

She argues that “primitive accumulation is an ongoing process in tandem with the continual differentiation of the peasantry (due to crop failure, etc.) into small capitalist farmers and proletarians and with the refunctionalization –or constant recreation- of the peasantry through the agency of semi-proletarianization as well as under state policies” (Wilson 2011:2)

“The differentiation of the peasantry leads to a full proletarianization of a large part of rural populations: they are divorced from the mode of production and appear as “free” workers in the labor market. But primitive accumulation can swing back and forth, as those with a foot on the land and a foot in the wage labor market (the semi-proletarians) supply their labor power at lower cost to the capitalist system than the full proletarians receiving a social benefit package” (Wilson 2011:2)

The term semi-proletarians defined accurately the situation of Nepalese migrants: they go abroad to work for 5 or 10 years and come back in Nepal, lives with the money earned and often go back to migrations flows for 5 or 10 more years. During their time in Nepal, they are supported by their earnings, their families and the traditional/informal economy. This intermittent embedness in capitalist relations of production is crucial to understand the labor subsidies they provide to Capitalism.

Labor Subsidies to CapitalismWe saw that primitive accumulation could be (and is often) based on the expropriation of

labor from pre-capitalist formations (or from peripheral capitalist formations), which can be seen as a labor subsidy to core capitalist concerns (“nodes of capitalist accumulation”). Labor subsidies are effective when the process of production is separated from the processes of reproduction and maintenance of the workforce, when they take place in different social formations: the laborer is employed in an economy differing from the one in which he was raised and to which he will returns (in times of illness, unemployment or retirement). (Wilson 2011:4)

Tamar Diana Wilson defines these subsidies as “an economic provisioning that comes from outside the dominant capitalist system but becomes integral and necessary to the functioning and expansion of that system” (ibid:4):

92

“Laborers who partially supported and support themselves in both the informal economy and in sub-subsistence and, and even the petty capitalist farming economy embody this economic provisioning to capitalist agro-, manufacturing, construction, and services industries.” (ibid:4, my emphasis)

“Because they are partially supported in the non-capitalist economy (whether agricultural or informal sectors) within which no social wage is received, the surplus labor power they provide to capital is greater than among those who are fully proletarianized.” (ibid:5)

De Janvry, when exploring the dynamics of social disarticulation common in Latin America and the Third World in general, noted that:

“Of the two motives for proletarianization of labor that exist in articulated economies, the first (reducing labor costs), but no the second (creating a home market out of rising wages), applies to disarticulated economies. As a result, labor costs can be further reduced by perpetuating the subsistence economy that partially assumes the cost of maintaining and reproducing labor force. Functional dualism between modern and traditional sectors thus makes it possible to sustain a level of wage below the cost of maintenance and reproduction of that labor force – a cost that would determine the minimum wage for a fully proletarianized labor force.” (de Janvry 1981:36-37)

With primitive accumulation, and within capitalist relations of production, “commodity identity” is attached to workers (Velez-Ibanez 1996:7): “In a capitalistic economic system, things such as labor, materials, and processes can be bought and sold for a price, and conditions are created in which some populations may be regarded primarily as a type of price-associated group to be used and discarded not unlike disposable materials or any used manufactured goods.”

This commodity identity and the disarticulation between production/reproduction makes Wilson states that “labor power partially supported in subsistence economies is commoditized both internally and internationally. Primitive accumulation does not occur once and for all, but is an ongoing process in this case”. (Wilson 2011:5)

According to Wilson, Meillassoux (1975) was one of the first to argue that a divorce occurred between processes of production and processes of reproduction/maintenance, by studying intermittent migration from agricultural communities to centers of capitalist enterprise in Africa. He argued that there are three elements making up the value of labor power: the sustenance of the workers during periods of employment (reconstitution of immediate labor power), the maintenance during periods of unemployment and the replacement by “breeding of offspring” (1975:100). (Wilson 2011:5)

Indeed, for seasonal and temporary migrant workers, the only cost assumed by employers is during period of employment, the reproduction and maintenance occurs outside of the sphere of capitalist production. Capital doesn’t pay indirect wage for workers returning to the precapitalist or peripheral capitalist economy during times of unemployment (such as social security, unemployment compensation, due to fully proletarianized native workforce), the migrant only earns direct wage. But wages earned under capitalist relations of production do not represent all the resources at their disposal: they got a social network at home; with a portion of this resources are marked by generalized and reciprocal exchange (to be found in the work of wives and children in the country of origin). For migrants, “unemployment usually means return to the endeavors that have often been maintained by family members, whether working in agriculture or the informal sector” (Wilson 2011:6-8), thus, the worker’s maintenance becomes the responsibility of himself, its family or its social network:

93

“if the capitalist system does not provide adequately for old-age pensions, sick-leave and unemployment compensations, they have to rely on another comprehensive socio-economic organization to fulfill these vital needs. Consequently, preservation of the relations with the village and familial community is an absolute requirement for wage-earners, and so is the maintenance of the traditional mode of production as the only one capable of ensuring survival” (ibid:6)

This “survival mode of production” is often understood as subsistence agriculture, but it can be extended to the informal sector. Thus, the informal sector and the peasant economy “are important sources of subsidies for the modern capitalist sector” (ibid:7), the capitalist employers benefit from migrant labor (which cost of maintenance are assumed by the subsistence economy in region with lower standards of living). That is the labor subsidies provided by precapitalist countries and their migrant to core countries:

“The labor force associated with an ongoing primitive accumulation can be envisioned as providing a subsidy to capitalist enterprise, whether this enterprise is located within the boundaries of the nation of their birth, or in core capitalist countries to which their migrates. This labor subsidy exists whether workers drawn from pre-capitalist or peripheral capitalist social organization are seasonal, temporary, or permanent.” (ibid:7)

Castles and Kosack (1973:409) while studying migration from poor European countries under guest-worker programs argued that the country of origin is transferring a valuable economic resource in the form of human labor to countries of destination. Wilson is going further to explain the value of these workers:

“Most workers migrate around the age of twenty, just when they reach the peak of their working capacity. The costs we are concerned with are those of feeding, clothing, and housing a person and providing health and educational and other services, until he reaches working age. Some of the costs are borne by the parents, others (depending on what social services exist) by the community. Whatever the proportions borne by parents and community, the cost of raising a child is a charge on the country’s national income.”

Thus, as Castles and Kosack stated it, “migrants contribute to production and capital accumulation in their countries of destination while at the same time constituting a flexible labor force that can be recruited and discarded at will, with no cost to receiving country” (Castles and Kosack 1985:410)

Concerning the amount of these subsidies, Gomez Quinones (1981:17) estimated that, the labor subsidy provided by Mexico to the US, before 1980, “each worker cost the Mexican economy $40,000 to produce, a savings for the U.S. economy”. (Wilson 2011:8)

Furthermore, as we saw previously for the segmented markets, overall wages are often lower for those “who venture into the broader capitalist system from the subsistence economy or from peripheral social formations” because of the instability of their job, often seasonally (in agriculture) or temporarily (construction or flexible manufacturing). (ibid:8)

One of the last points is the gendered nature of the subsidy provided. Indeed, male are drown into capitalist formations as a form of subsidy, but women’s and children’s are central to this because they provide resources that aid the reproduction of family and labor or help in hard times (disability, unemployment, old age) . That is the gendered nature of the subsidy provided by the subsistence economy, through agricultural production. This was documented by Deere (1976) and Hecht (1985) in

94

South America. They states that women and children provided a subsidy to household economy, “which in turn provides a subsidy to capitalist enterprise” by allowing the maintenance in time of unemployment and the reproduction of the family, and also by playing the role of “nursery for future workers”. (ibid:8-9)

For Wilson, it exists different types of labor subsidies, differing according to economic sector they are embedded in: (ibid:10)

1- Direct subsidy for capitalist production: immigrant employment in factories and foundries (producer goods/intermediate goods/consumer goods), because lower wages are usually paid to immigrant, and he’s helping to keep wages low so profits are higher (competition with native) (for temporary or permanent immigrants)

2- A second subsidy in the form of supply of raw materials to manufacturing and other industries at low cost.

3- A third, when the immigrant labor is utilized to build infrastructure for the use of capitalist industry, “whether in the form of capital goods or as a distribution network”. Constituted by temporary and floating “permanent” workers. This type might last years.

4- Subsidies of consumption goods “whose prices are lower because wages paid or income earned for their production are lower than the going wage of workers in the formal sectors of the economy.”

Concerning the Nepal-Gulf corridor, subsidies seems mainly to take form as the third type.

To summarize, with the penetration of core capitalism into the periphery, “members of the pre-capitalist social formations become differentiated into proletarians, semi-proletarians, and petty capitalist farmers”; the capital penetration disintegrates the subsistence economy and recomposes it. “There is a constant and ongoing primitive accumulation on which the expansion and reproduction of the capitalist mode of production depends” which is based on the continual expropriation of labor from non-capitalist social formation, and periodic transfer of labor from the informal to the formal, and back again. These workers are a source of subsidy, because they are born and raised to working age outside of the core capitalist system (reproduction), furthermore, the semi-proletarianized and the intermittently proletarianized workers maintains links with the outside of the capitalist economy, and are maintained by it in time of unemployment. (Wilson 2011:10)

95

96

Chapter III: Synthesis and Way Forward

No more auction block for me,No more, No more

No more auction block for meMany thousands gone

- Traditional US Slave Song

We saw in the previous chapters the “environment” in which takes place the migratory phenomenon in Nepal. At one pole (the one of the Gulf countries, that is the “pull-factors”) migration is a tool of accumulation and a response to local constraints, the explanatory factor of the phenomenon is to be found in the interest in hiring migrant (or guest) workers. At the other pole (in Nepal, the “push-factors”), the phenomenon could be explain by the structure of the Nepali economy, which is experiencing a change in its social structure, or as Marx labeled it, a process of “primitive accumulation”. It is the interplay of these two poles under the dialectic of “uneven development” that drives the migration phenomenon in the last instance. To express it in a more classical Marxist way, we could say that migration between countries occurs if and when it resolves social contradictions inside both of them; the contradictions that pushes people out of a country, and the set of contradiction that pull them into another country.

In Nepal, as in many “less developed” economies, social (or class) structure is experiencing an extreme pressure: small independent producers are not able to generate enough value from their activities to secure their “reproduction”, national (or domestic) capitalist enterprises are not able to compete with multinational corporations (invading their markets) and are often under the influence of Indian capitalists, important changes in land dynamics are impacting the traditional farming economy… Thus, there are not enough new jobs to absorb the mass of rendered unemployed by the process of primitive accumulation. The reaction to this contradiction is often observable in internal migration (farmers migrating to urban and industrial areas) where they are drawn into the informal sector, a mix of legal and illegal small scale activities, often low price and low profit good and services. The other effect (or “solution”) is to enter in international migration.

Under this framework, it’s really important to note that “poverty” is not the root cause of migration, since poverty (in the sense of frugality) has been the norm in many parts of the world since ancestral times without resulting in migration. Rather, the causes are to be found in the interplay of internal and external conditions dissolving social structures, patterns of life and structures of production (the small scale capitalist production and independent producers).

Concerning the external factors, they are to be found related to globalization, the class contradiction and crisis occurring in the so-called “developed world”. The long-standing capitalists dynamics directed toward the lowering of prices of production and generating more profit take form in the search for cheaper conditions of production or the inverse, the call for cheap overseas workers via immigration. These low-wage workers are to be found in industries, agriculture, construction, and services (tourism, restaurants, hotels, hospitals…)

97

This geographical dialectic show -to use Michael Peter Smith words- that “the dichotomy of “global economy” versus “local agency” is simplistic and misleading. Rather, contemporary social practices operate in a transnational space that encompasses global, national, and local scales. From a geographical viewpoint, it is indeed increasingly difficult to categorize nation-states and migration patterns. World system theory once classified countries into core, periphery, and semi periphery (Wallerstein 1974, 1979) but it recently became clear, that periphery, semi periphery, and core do not have simple spatial delimitations. Core and periphery exist within a single country and even within a single metropolitan area. The proletariat “shifted geographically… [in]to each society and across the entire world” (Hardt and Negri 2000:256), the division of labor occurs at various nested geographical scales. (Baulder 2006:7)

The concept of primitive accumulation can be tracked back to the 19 th but it had recently attracted considerable attention from scholars and intellectual, and could be a powerful tool of analysis of many contemporary developments. In this chapter, I would like to push a little forward the reflection about primitive accumulation, and explore the insights provided by the work done here.

The Continuous Character of Primitive AccumulationIn his 2001 article “Marx and Primitive Accumulation: The Continuous Character of Capital’s

‘Enclosures’”, Massimo de Angelis suggests a reinterpretation of Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation, looking at the social character of it. He argues that the concept can be seen both as an historical and a continuity process. He describes the idea of primitive accumulation as a forced separation between people and social means of production, a separation that can take many forms, and he thus argues that primitive or original accumulation is necessarily present in “mature” capitalist system, so continuous. (de Angelis 2001:1-2)

We saw previously that the concept of primitive accumulation indicates the historical process that gave birth to the preconditions of a capitalist mode of production: mainly the creation of a section of the population “with no other means of livelihood but their labour power to be sold in a nascent labour market” and, at the other side, “the accumulation of capital that may be used for nascent industries”. There is thus “a clear cut temporal dimension (the past), which becomes the condition for a capitalist future”, but the concept has been interpreted also as a continuous phenomenon within the capitalist mode of production (especially in Marxist analyses of the world economy and North/South relations). (ibid:1)

Historically, there is two main interpretative framework of it. The first one is from Lenin’s study, “The development of capitalism in Russia” (1899). Lenin saw primitive accumulation as the historical premise to the capitalist mode of production, and focuses on the process of separation between people and means of production, on the moment of transition between modes of production. Lenin argued that the disappearance of the peasant (their expropriation) were the conditions for the creation of the capitalist market in Russia, he saw this process as inevitable and positive. This is what de Angelis call the “historical primitive accumulation”: “an age, historically and temporally defined, describing the pattern of separation between people and means of production” (ibid:3)

The second one, closer to what we developed here was carried out by Rosa Luxemburg, in “The Accumulation of Capital” (1913) accepted the understanding of original accumulation as a one-time, one-place phenomenon leading to capitalism, but also pointed out that capitalist production is relying on “third parties” (peasants, small independent producers,…) “to be commodity buyers”. Thus the enforcement of exchange relations between capitalist and non-capitalist production becomes necessary to realize surplus value, but it creates a “clash with the social relations of non-capitalist production.”

98

According to De Angelis, Luxemburg discovered something very fundamental because she highlighted that “the extra-economic prerequisite to capitalist production –what we shall call primitive accumulation – is an inherent and continuous element of modern societies and its range of action extends to the entire world.” (ibid:3) Luxemburg’s approach “could be […] labeled as ‘inherent-continuous primitive accumulation’, to indicate the fact that the characteristic extra-economic process of separation between people and means of production is a continuous and inherent process of capitalist production (ibid:4).

Massimo de Angelis also notes further that modern interpretation of primitive accumulation seem to share the basic characteristics of these two approaches. For example, Maurice Dobb in his studies on the development of capitalism conceived primitive accumulation as a well-defined age of accumulation of property rights (sometimes known as “the mercantile age”):

“If any sense is to be made, therefore, of the notion of a ‘primitive accumulation’ (in Marx’s sense of the term) prior in time to the full flowering of capitalist production, this must be interpreted in the first place as an accumulation of capital claims – of titles to existing assets which are accumulated primarily for speculative reasons; and secondly as accumulation in the hands of a class that, by virtue of its special position in society, is capable ultimately of transforming these hoarded titles to wealth into actual means of production. In other words, when one speaks of accumulation in an historical sense, one must be referring to the ownership of assets, and to a transfer of ownership, and not the quantity of tangible instruments of production in existence” (Dobb 1963:178, quoted by de Angelis, 2001:4))

On the other hand there’s the approach developed by Samir Amin, closer to the understanding of primitive accumulation as an inherent and continuous process (rather than just an historically prior period). He argues that it is through this framework that a value of transfer occurs within today’s world economy:

“Relations between the formations of the “developed” or advanced world (the centre), and those of the underdeveloped world (the periphery) are affected by transfers of value, and these constitute the essence of the problem of accumulation on a world scale. Whenever the capitalist mode of production enters into relations with pre-capitalist modes of production, and subjects these to itself, transfers of value take place from the pre-capitalist to the capitalist formations, as a result of mechanisms of primitive accumulation. These mechanisms do not belong only to the prehistory of capitalism; they are contemporary as well. It is these forms of primitive accumulation, modified by persistent, to the advantage of the centre, that form the domain of the theory of accumulation on a world scale.” (Amin 1974:3, quoted by de Angelis 2001:4)

De Angelis notes that vision of primitive accumulation is close to Wallerstein’s notion of world system (Wallerstein:1979), where primitive accumulation is seen as the objective mechanisms of accumulation and circulation of capital. (ibid:5).

Separation in Primitive and “Mature” AccumulationAt the core of Marx’s approach to primitive accumulation (and widely, capitalism) is the separation between producers and means of production. This separation is a “fundamental condition for Marx’s theory of reification of the transformation of subject into object” (ibid:7)

99

Primitive accumulation was first tackled by Adam Smith as a an accumulation of stock (or capital) and a precondition for the division of labor when Marx described this notion of capital as a class relation (a change in property relation and the consolidation of capital) rather as a stock (ibid:6):

“In the context of accumulation separation of producers and means of production means essentially that the “objective conditions of living labour appear as separated, independent values opposite living labour capacity as subjective being, which therefore appears to them only as value of another kind” (Marx 1858:461). The separation of producers and means of production at the social level means the positing of living labour and conditions of production as independent values standing in opposition with each other.” (ibid:7)

“In other words, because of this separation “the objective conditions of labour attain a subjective existence vis-à-vis living labour capacity” (Marx 1858:462). This meant that the means of production are subjected to the drive towards self-valorisation and self-expansion, and this, from the perspective of capital, is all that count. On the other hand living labour, the “subjective being” par excellence, is turned into a thing among things, “it is merely a value of a particular use value alongside the conditions of its own realisation as values of another use value” (Marx 1858:462).”

To sum, the result of the separation is that the living labour capacity (own life’s expression according to Marx (1858:462) is surrendered to capital in exchange for objectified labor, creating what Marx’s called an alienated labor, alienated from the object of production (i.e the means, the product and other producers). (ibid:8)

“The common property regimes, peasant production, and artisanal labor that capitalism replaces ‘excludes the concentration of these means of production’ and so also exclude ‘co-operation, division of labour within each separate process of production, the control over, and the productive application of the forces of Nature by society, and the free development of the social productive power’” (Glassman 2006:3)

According to de Angelis, there is 3 central points to understand Marx’s approach of original accumulation. First, as we saw previously, is the fact separation is a central category of Marx’s critique of political economy. This separation between the producers and the means of production is a common character of both mature and primitive accumulation and thus the only difference between them is in the conditions and forms in which this separation is implemented. As Marx putted it in his Capital Volume 3, accumulation is nothing else than primitive accumulation (i.e separation) “raised to higher power” (Marx 1894:354): accumulation reproduces the separation and the independent existence of material wealth as against labor on an increasing scale, accumulation is thus a continuous process of what in primitive accumulation appears as a distinct historical process. (De Angelis 2006:6)

Marx describes the “so-called primitive accumulation” at the end of Capital volume 1, after the analysis of labor process, commodities, surplus value and reproduction; he goes back to the origins of the surplus “that made the first process of capitalist accumulation possible”, which is a transformation of social relation. For him, primitive accumulation is the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production, transforming social means of subsistence and of production into capital and immediate producers into wage laborer. This is done through the setting free of the agricultural population as proletarians for industry, the destruction of domestic industry and the process of separation between manufacturing and agriculture (Glassman 2006:3)

100

If primitive accumulation is the historical basis (rather than the result) of capitalist production, it is shares the same principle with mature accumulation (separation), but with different conditions of existence:

“It is in fact this divorce between the conditions of labour on the one hand and producers on the other that forms the concept of capital, as this arises with primitive accumulation… subsequently appearing as a constant process in the accumulation and concentration of capital, before it is finally expressed here as the centralization of capitals already existing few hands, and the decapitalization of many” (Marx 1894:354-5)

As de Angelis states, the difference, or the distinction between the conditions of capital’s arising (becoming) and the condition of capital’s existence (being) is thus, “not so much in timing of occurrence” but in “the conditions and circumstances in which this separation is enforced”. As Marx noted the former (becoming) “disappear as real capital arises” while the latter (being) doesn’t appear as “conditions of its arising, but as results of its presence” (Marx 1858:460-1). Once developed, capital creates the conditions of its existence and “therefore it drives to reproduces (at increasing scale) the separation between means of production and producers”, creating and reinforcing their opposition. (De Angelis 2001:8-9)

Marx indicated that accumulation relies primarily on “the silent compulsion of economic relations [which] set the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker”, when for primitive the separation is imposed primarily through “direct extra-economic force” (Marx 1867:899-900) such as the state or particular sections of social classes (ibid:879;900), so:

“Primitive accumulation for Marx is a social process instigated by some social actor (the state, particular social classes, etc.) aimed at the people who have some form of direct access to the means of production. This social process often takes the form of a strategy that aims to separate them from the means of production” (ibid:9)

De Angelis thus reformulated Marx’s theory of primitive accumulation, noting that the separation does not only indicate the rupture between modes of production in an historical period of transition, that primitive accumulation can’t be “confined to a distant past”. He also acknowledges the centrality of the separation in the definition of original accumulation, and the difference between the “mature” and the primitive one is based on the conditions of implementation of this separation.

De Angelis thus claims that Marx conceived primitive accumulation partly as a historical phase of capitalist development, but also “as a process that formed a basic ontological condition for capitalist production rather than just a historical precondition” (ibid:8). This ontological connection between primitive accumulation and expanded reproduction is to be found in the separation, both common character of primitive and mature accumulation. Accumulation properly is nothing else than primitive accumulation raised to higher power, when primitive accumulation (the prerequisite of capitalist production) remains an inherent and continuous element of modern societies.

To sum, De Angelis (and other Marxists thinkers) provided a new interpretative framework, highlighting the continuity of primitive accumulation and its “persistence in mature economy” when it was often viewed as an historical necessary stage towards “socialism” (orthodox Marxism is full of necessary stages), maybe for strategic reasons. Thus primitive accumulation is both “the dawn of capitalist era” and a process occurring in modern forms, different from the English enclosure and the slave trade. As it will be developed later, De Angelis also highlight the “new enclosure” (i.e a renewed separation from the means of existence) of the current neoliberal project trying to weakening socio-

101

economics rights and entitlements (such as the welfare state), often result of battles and “institutionalization in particular forms of social common. This is highlighting the “common ground between different phenomenal forms of neoliberal policies” faced from people all over the world, in the “global North” as well as in “the global South”. (ibid:19-20)

A crisis driven dynamic?Many recent Marxists insights have emphasized the crisis driven nature of capitalism, and it maybe another interesting factor for our study. It is related to what Harvey called the creative destruction of capitalism: “capital necessarily creates a physical landscape in its own image at one point in time only to have to destroy it at some later point in time as it pursues geographical expansions and temporal displacements as solutions to the crises of overaccumulation to which it is regularly prone” (Harvey 2004:4).

Indeed, as we saw, capitalism is functioning under the characteristics of uneven geographical development, surpluses available in one territory are matching with the lack of supply elsewhere, and the “new dynamic spaces of capital accumulation ultimately generate surpluses and have to absorb them through geographical expansions”, devaluation and destruction or the their exportation to spatio-temporal fixes. (ibid:5)

For David Harvey, “overaccumulation within a given territorial system means a condition of a surpluses of laborer (rising unemployment) and surpluses of capital”. These surpluses could be absorbed by temporal displacement through investment in long-term project or social expenditures (education, research) (this differing the re-entry of the excess of capital), by a spatial displacements through opening of new markets, new production capacities and new resource, social and labour possibilities elsewhere, and the combination of the both.

These “fixes” have both a physical forms for a long period of time, but they also represent the solution to capitalist crises in the form of temporal deferment and geographical expansion. That is the “production of space”: new territorial divisions of labor, access to new and cheaper resources, new spaces of accumulation and invasion of pre-existing social formation by capitalist social relations to absorb capital surpluses (ibid:3-4).

Primitive Accumulation at the “Core”Geographer provided three important insights about the process of primitive accumulation going on in the core areas of global capitalism. This interest started with the research done in “The Conquest of Bread (Walker:2004), where primitive accumulation was used to explain the continuously weak position of agricultural labor in context of agricultural growth and organizing effort (Glassman 2006:11).

It was followed by McCarthy (2004) work on environmental politics of neoliberal trade agreements, where he adapted the concept of primitive accumulation to highlight the process involving accumulation of proletarian labor but also the consolidation of the ‘pigmy property of the many’. This was not done through a direct privatization of the common property resources but a specific legislation on the right to profit from use of externalities their use generate. (ibid:12-13)

The last and the most interesting is Harvey’s analysis (2004), which took as a basis that capitalism survives through the production of space (Lefebvre theory) and Luxemburg’s (and somehow Lenin) insights about imperialism as a certain form of space production. Doing so, the English geographer introduces the notion of “spatio-temporal fixes”, a way to absorb capitalist surpluses (due to over-

102

accumulation) and fix the falling rate of profit through the geographical expansion of capitalism and the spatial reorganization carried by him.

“Global capitalism has experienced a chronic and enduring problem of over-accumulation since the 1970s” (ibid:2) stated Harvey following Brenner’s contribution. For him, this inability of the system to accumulate through expanded reproduction “on a sustained basis has been paralleled by a rise in attempts to accumulate by dispossession”, the “hallmark of what some like to call ‘the new imperialism’” (ibid).

For Harvey, Marx’s description of primitive accumulation “reveals a wide range of processes”: commodification and privatization of land, forceful expulsion of peasant populations, conversions of various forms of property rights (common, state…) into exclusive private property right, “commodification of labor power and the suppression of alternative, indigenous forms of production and consumption”, and colonial/imperialist processes of accumulation (natural resources, monetization of exchanges, taxation, slave trade..) and debt & credit system… (ibid12) But Harvey is particularly interested in the “major levers of predation, fraud and thievery” that are the credit system and the finance capital, central features of the contemporary capitalism. (ibid:13)

For him, new mechanisms of primitive accumulation have emerged, especially around the issues of intellectual property rights, such as the patenting and licensing of genetic material, the commodification of nature or cultural forms, histories… This new wave of enclosure is going on around creativity, but also around public assets (like universities, water, …) and thus, “accumulation by dispossession can occur in a variety of ways and there is much that is both contingent and haphazard about its modus operandi (ibid:13-14). Harvey thus sees privatization in the global core as an “accumulation by dispossession”, a liquidation of diverse protections and right obtained from struggles. Interestingly, this is quite similar to Karl’s Polanyi concept of a “double-movement”, which are the movement and will of the society opposed to the movement and will of the markets. Thus, for de Angelis:

“The task today is to develop links between progressive struggles over accumulation by dispossession and struggles over expanded reproduction” both are organically linked to the “historical geography of capitalism” (ibid:14)

“neoliberal agenda promoted by organization like the IMF makes the connections between accumulation by dispossession and expanded reproduction increasingly clear” (ibid)

Furthermore, the inability of the system to accumulate through expanded reproduction “on a sustained basis has been paralleled by a rise in attempts to accumulate by dispossession. In this view, Harvey emphasizes the global expansion of capitalism into the periphery point at the crucial role of the global neoliberal project (IMF, WB, and their politics organized around privatization …).

This nexus of political powers, accumulation by dispossession and “spatio-temporal fixes” is at the core of the “New Imperialism”: capitalist social formations are “engaged in quasi-imperialist practices in search of spatio-temporal fixes to their overaccumulation problems” (ibid:14-20):

“The only thing that is certain is that we are in the midst of a major transition in how the global system works and that there is a variety of forces in motion which could easily tip the balance in one or another direction. The balance between accumulation by dispossession and expanded reproduction has already shifted towards the former and it is hard to see this trend

103

doing anything other than deepening, making this the hallmark of what the new imperialism is all about” (Harvey 2004:20)

Insights of Marxist debatesThe varied violent means of divorce apprehend through the theory of primitive accumulation (the usurpation of common property from the individuals or the states) have been seen by orthodox Marxists as a necessary step for further human development since it allows the creation of a proletariat, seen as the only revolutionary subject thanks to the clustering of workers in one location (the result of primitive accumulation) which is enabling communication and organization (Glassman 2006:3).

This question is quite important; there has been a strong debate throughout the 20th century within Marxist and leftist social movement and this process is still highly contemporary (ibid:5):

“both the older and the renewed discussions of primitive accumulation directly address issues of extraordinary salience for understanding transformations in the contemporary world. For example, removal of agricultural producers from the countryside and consolidation of more privatized control over resources –both central to primitive accumulation – remain hugely important processes today, effecting literally billions of people” (Glassman 2006:3)

The question is to know if whether or not the transition to capitalism is necessary for a full development of a socialist revolution. To do that, it is important to understand how capitalism function in the periphery and of a social change could be achieved here. (ibid:5)

After decades of low revolutionary activities in the global core, Neo-Marxian theorists acknowledged the Zapatista and Maoists innovations, in which peasants in pre-capitalist areas became agents of change or reform. Thus appeared the view that “rather than being the dying representatives of the premodern, they might well form segments of a progressive coalition […] peasants could be expected to favor progressives causes” (ibid:5), and it impacted the contemporary conception of the immediate producer as a possible agent of change:

“In many respects, contemporary ‘new social movement’ approaches are heir to this tradition of regarding subsistence producers and the owners of small property as potentially progressive social actors rather than, as Marx sometimes characterized them, representatives of the dead weight of the past” (Glassman 2006:6)

The 70’s debates within Marxists affiliated school of though was focused on the “conservation-dissolution” dialectic, the conquest made by the manufactured witnessed in the periphery were related to the rural districts, since they were relying on them as their ultimate basis, or as Luxemburg putted it, the “crisis tendencies of capitalism made the constant conquest of non-capitalist territories necessary for extraction of raw material and reinvestment of surplus (stability)” (quoted by Glassman 2006:6).

This incomplete process of proletarianization is –for neo-Marxists-, the proof that the revolutionary subject does not have to wait a full development of capitalism. It means that, in the global South, the revolutionary subject is most likely to come from a formation impacted by uneven and incomplete development of capitalism.

These findings could explain the interest showed for the popular-national movements in the periphery such as in Cuba, Russia or China. That’s even more relevant acknowledging the persistence of primitive accumulation of the capitalist development in the global South.

104

For De Angelis (2001:8-10), workers can fight for employment as wage laborer, to gain access to the forms of social expenditure accompanying a full proletarianization, but he also notes a long history of workers resisting their full proletarianization. He thus conceives the proletarianization more as a contingent outcome of class struggles than as a predetermined trajectory of capitalist development since “there is little reason to suppose that capitalists would wish to dispose to all formally non-capitalist processes of production and social reproduction”:

“In some contexts, capitalists can benefit not only from garnering cheap resources but from turning precapitalist workers into wage laborers in the process. In such context, however, workers themselves may struggle against this process of proletarianization with greater or lesser effect. In other contexts capitalists can benefit from maintaining a large non-proletarianized labor force that contributes indirectly to capitalists” (cf previous Chapter and “The Labor Subsidies”) (ibid:9)

Maybe the important contributions of the late 20th leftist analyses concerning migration and the development of capitalism comes from feminist analyses of the ways in which the household labor (productive and reproductive) and the subsistence production contribute indirectly (they are thus indirectly exploited) to the accumulation of capital in the “modern economy”, as we stated before in the section concerning the labor subsidies provided by migrants workers. Thus, Jim Glassman refers to these diverse forms of accumulation as a “panoply”:

“entire panoply of forms of accumulation by means other than expanded reproduction – the primitive accumulation discussed by Marx, new or ongoing forms of accumulation by dispossession, and the gendered and racialized forms of accumulation within social reproduction noted here – as ‘accumulation by extra-economic means’.” (ibid:10)

Geographical Insights: The Expansion of Capitalist RelationsLuxemburg’s work on the Accumulation of Capital will be the starting point of this part. She highlighted the dual aspects of capitalist accumulation:

“One concerns the commodity market and the place where surplus value is produced –the factory, the mine, the agricultural estate. Regarded in this light accumulation is a purely economic process, with its most important phase a transaction between the capitalist and the wage labourer… Here, in form at any rate, peace, property and equality prevail, and the keen dialectics of scientific analysis were required to reveal how the right of ownership changes in the course of accumulation into appropriation of other people’s property, how commodity exchange turns into exploitation and equality becomes class rule. The other aspect of accumulation of capital concerns the relations between capitalism and the non-capitalist modes of production which start making their appearance on the international stage. Its predominant methods are colonial policy and international loan system – a policy of spheres of interest – and war. Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed with any attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern laws of economic process.”

The first aspect is the one I provided as a local framework to explain the dynamics of migration from Nepal, the second one could be seen as the global framework, the interplay between our two fields of study: the Gulf countries and Nepal. As Harvey putted it (2004:11), we can only analyze capitalism by taking together these two aspects organically linked.

105

Marx illustrated the notion of primitive accumulation with the example of land enclosure in England, but also referred to other forms. The work realized here give also some insight about it. Indeed, and as highlighted by Marx or Luxemburg before, the process of primitive accumulation in “distant land” is linked and subordinated to the process of accumulation in another place (England and slave trade for Marx, Gulf countries and migration in the case developed here).

Orthodox Marxists had always more highlighted the role played by land dynamics during the transition from feudal to capitalist mode of production. But the example of slave trade (and migration tackled through the scope of primitive accumulation) shows that it can also occur through North/South interaction, international division of labor, destruction of traditional communities and enslavement (ibid:10-11):

“Marx was of course very well aware of all these forms. Therefore, in this case, the “historical process of separating the producers from the means of production” revealed characteristics and dimensions quite different from the stereotypical representation of land enclosure portraying the passage from “feudalism” to “capitalism” in Europe. Here primitive accumulation is consistent with an understanding of the capitalist economy as a world economy, in a Braudelian sense (Braudel 1982), in which accumulation in one place may correspond to primitive accumulation in another place […]” (ibid:11)

Indeed, Marx spoke about the enslavement and the conquest and looting of colonies: different forms of violent expropriation in which capitalism was born, “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt”. (Marx 1967;760)

Marx’s also noted that there are other forms of primitive accumulation, obtained through the manipulation of money by the state, the public debt, the international credit system and taxes… This side of primitive accumulation is nowadays widely debated. So, for Marx, as for other related thinkers and as developed in this thesis, the primitive accumulation isn’t only related to direct land enclosure, but can take other forms, using other means (ibid:11).

Saskia Sassen, sociologist at Columbia University (New York) “explore the possibility that capitalism is today undergoing the systemic equivalent to Marx’s notion of primitive accumulation”, and this, “as a deepening of advanced capitalism predicated on the destruction of more traditional forms of capitalism”. For her “The geographic expansion and systemic deepening of capitalist relations of production over the last 20 years have led to one of the most brutal sortings of winners and losers” through the incorporation of pre-capitalist modes of production into capitalist relation. (Sassen 2010:3).

Sassen renewed the notion notion of primitive accumulation, tackling it as the “destruction of traditional capitalisms in order to extract what can be extracted for the further deepening of advanced capitalism.” Drawing on Arrighi’s finding, she shows that the dominance of the financial logic is a proof of the decline of the post-Keynesian period. For her, we are assisting at a systemic shift, based on the expulsion of peoples rather than their incorporation:

“at the center of this logic is not the ‘valuing’ of people as workers and consumers, but the expulsion of people and the destruction of traditional capitalisms to feed the needs of high finance and the needs for natural resources” such as “the buying of vast stretches of land in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America to use for offshore agriculture, extraction of underground water” (ibid:4)

106

For here, some aspects of the contemporary version of primitive accumulation are responsible for the “expanded expulsion of people and the destabilizing of a large number of South countries” for example through structural adjustments projects carried out by the IMF, the WB, the WTO… These policies started in the eighties and escalated in the nineties taking form of extraction from global South countries through “instrument of discipline” such as debt servicing, but also in the global north (i.e sub-prime mortgage crisis in the early 2000, exploding in 2007).

For Saskia Sassen, the Marxist notion of primitive accumulation “points not only to a logic of extraction that can expropriate and impoverish, but also, and more importantly to a mode of incorporating non-capitalist economies into capitalist relations of production”. Thus primitive accumulation could be seen as the historic expansion of capitalist relations.

This definition is quite close from Marx’s insights, which saw primitive accumulation as a process “hinded on earlier modes of production becoming factors in the making of capitalist relations of production.” We already saw that primitive accumulation could be seen as the historical process that separates people from the means that allow them to live and produce”. We also saw that Amin (2000) rejected the assumptions that primitive accumulation is something confined to early stage of capitalism, as well as Harvey (2003), stating that Marx’s use of original accumulation is misleading since the history of capitalism repeated itself, so he changed the term in accumulation by dispossession, tackled as a safety valve against over-accumulation crises and the integration of non-capitalist economies in world capitalist relations of production. (Sassen 2010:4-5)

For Sassen, the “territory is systematically repositioned in growing parts of the global South as representing not nation states but ‘needed resources’” (ibid:5), and that this is not only a contigent effect but a systemic shift:

“I think it is critical to go beyond logics of extraction to recover the systemic transformation –how more traditional capitalist economies are being destroyed to expand the operational space of advanced capitalism” (ibid:5)

The effects felt in these place of capitalist expansion throw people into “strategies of survival”, a “different trajectory from that of the old industrial countries.” Indeed, instead of going the way of unions and political fights to move from the predatory state to the regulatory state, in the global South it is the axis of criminality and extreme sacrifice on the part of poor and impoverished households.” These alternative survival circuits include as immigration and remittances (ibid:10 - 11):

“In short, the growing immiseration of governments and economies in the global South launches a new phase of global migration and people trafficking, strategies which function both as survival mechanisms and profit making activities.” (ibid:11)

“Growing numbers of traffickers and smugglers are making money off the back of men, women and children, and many governments are increasingly dependent on their remittances.” (ibid:12)

“These survival circuits are often complex, involving multiple locations and types of actors, and constituting increasingly global chains of traders, traffickers, victims, and workers” (ibid:12)

“global cities are also sites for the incorporation of large numbers of low-paid immigrants into strategic economic sectors” through the demand for low-paid workers (ibid:13)

107

“This mix of circuits for labor supply and demand is deeply imbricated with other dynamics of globalization: the formation of global markets, the intensifying of transnational and trans-local networks in a growing range of spheres, and the geographic redeployment of a growing range of economic and financial operations.” (ibid:14)

108

ConclusionNepal has a long migration history, but since the two last decades, the Himalayan Republic

has been experiencing a very high rate of migration: 20% of the total population of Nepal is considered as absentee population, which represents 5.5 million of people (out of 27.47) in 2012. The daily average departure rate is estimated at more than 1,700 people.

2.7 million Nepalese migrated to work in overseas destinations (except India) between the years 1993/94 and 2012/13. A total of 311,512 Nepalese have already left Nepal for foreign employment in the first seven months of fiscal year 2013/14.

107 countries have been recognized has foreign employment destinations by the government of Nepal. The most popular are Malaysia, India and the Gulf Cooperation Countries.

The goal of this work was to show the relationship between these striking Nepalese work migrations and multi-scalar capitalist dynamics, using Marxism as a theoretical framework.

In the first chapter, I described the environment of migration, the structural factors in which it take place. I tried to show that these patterns of migration are related to globalization understood as the geographical expansion of capitalism at the age of neo-liberalism.

Concerning the local factors in the receiving countries (as showed for Qatar, but I take the risk to generalize to other Gulf Countries), migration “resolves” many contradictions: the shortage of labor opposed to the formidable amount of wealth provided by oil and gas production which could end in a crisis of over accumulation. Starting with the dual labor market characteristic of the Gulf Countries economy, I also showed that the global reserve army of labor that represents migrants workers is used by capitalists as a tool of accumulation: they represents a variable capital necessary for production, an exploitable and malleable labor force chained through guest workers programs. More globally and theoretically, I also showed that the phenomenon is highly related to the dynamics of capital, and that it takes place under the conditions of uneven development.

In the second chapter, I tried to explore the reasons pushing Nepali into migration networks, which is, the effects of the penetration of capital in Nepal, the changing social and production relations tackled under the notion of primitive accumulation.

I showed that the prevailing economic structure is characterized by a very low development of the productive forces, a negligible sectorial differentiation and a predominance of the primary production sector, and that:

“the problems of development/underdevelopment of Nepal both in the social and spatial dimensions are essentially the problems of transition of a pre-capitalist society hybridized primarly under the retrograde internal social structure but increasingly mediated by the exogenous capitalist/imperialist interests.” (Bhattarai 2003:503).

Thus, it could seem relevant to analyze the migration phenomenon within this transition framework. It is what I did, using the Marxist concept of Primitive Accumulation of Capital, which describes the historical moment as a well as the ongoing process of separation between the producer and its means of production. By looking at the migration process, the dynamics in the agricultural sector, the marketization of labor and land, I showed that a process of primitive accumulation is going on in Nepal.

109

By reviewing many works on primitive accumulation, I also showed that it consists in the interaction with pre-capitalist sectors of the economy, but that it is also a process going on in the “core” capitalist’s economy. I showed that, as well as for the conditions in the Gulf Countries, this process is related to the necessity of capitalist accumulation, and that it provides subsidies to capitalism in many forms.

In short, I tried to provide a new multi-scalar framework, exploring the global dynamics and the national patterns of accumulation in both sending and receiving countries. Many insights can be draw from this, especially that capitalist world system is an important geographical object; an interplay of various dynamics at different scales, but all related to the same root causes.

It could be interesting to think about the future development of the migration phenomenon in Nepal. Indeed, the uneven development theory states that capital develop a place by moving in, and developing its production, which in turns become “development”. The differential between two countries is used as a tool of accumulation of profit. But capital doesn’t have to move to Nepal, workers are moving. Regarding the use of remittances in Nepal and the situation stressed by Bhattarai it seems that there’s little chance that the migratory phenomenon resolves itself “naturally”. I would that that we are assisting to the creation of a proletariat (the primitive accumulation) without the development of the capitalist stage at a national level.

So, is there any chance that Nepalese workers slip from the slave like conditions of life they are experiencing in the feudal capitalism of the Gulf Countries? Even if they proved their capacity during the “People’s War”, it will be difficult for them to do something. Indeed, the conditions of work in the receiving countries and the temporary nature of migration prevent the formation of a working class. Furthermore, Nepalese workers alone won’t be able to build a power struggle since the “global reserve army of labor” presents in many other “underdeveloped” countries will be happy to replace them and to serve their masters. The view of pre-capitalist areas as places of resistance to capitalism, even if successful in Chiapas, and somehow in China doesn’t seem realistic in the Nepalese case: during my researches and my five months in Nepal, I did not even have a glimpse of a possibility like that.

Hopefully, many contemporary theoretical developments highlighted the similarities between the challenges faced by both North and South workers. The building of an international coalition against oppression and exploitation seems every-day more necessary. Nothing new, that was the meaning of Marx’s “Workers of the world, Unite!”.

That is in my sense the main insights provided by my work here. Concerning what could be done to make it better; I think that it is now necessary to address the cultural side of the phenomenon.

My whole work here addressed the structures of migration (a material state, an economic domination), but it is obvious that they matches with superstructures (cultural and ideological domination) as defined by the Marxist Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci. It is in fact the need for an acknowledgment of the multi-scale nature of migration, the need to find an appropriate way to tackle it, what Faist (1997) called “the crucial meso-level”; a scale between the “micro-level individual motives to migrates and the macro-scale structural opportunities and constraints mainly related to development in different migrant sending and receiving contexts” (King, 2013:10).

Indeed, I am convinced that “what is missing from the literature on labor migration is a comprehensive treatment of how economic, social, cultural and institutional processes interlock in the context of social production and reproduction. Such treatment can provide an illustration of how the neoliberal project operates, penetrating virtually all aspects of human life.” (Baulder:8). This is what is lacking in

110

the work done here: the demonstration of the relationships among economic, social, cultural and institutional processes.

Indeed, primitive accumulation is supposed to take form of “extra-economic means”, but in the case of Nepal, it seems more that it is carried by a change in mentality, the rise of a society of low consumption. So the cultural side seems highly important to go beyond the simple description of the environment of migration realized here:

“Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Adorno 1977; Horkheimer and Adorno 1947) conceptualized culture as a structural element of capitalism. They saw it as a seductive process that lure modern society into delusionary consumption, similar to the singing of the Sirens that drove ancient sailors to ruin. The idea that culture is an integral part of capitalism is useful for labor market research in the context of migration.” (Baulder 2006:10)

We can’t separate work and non-work activities into distinct analytical categories, social reproduction as a part of capitalist economic production (Katz 2001; K. Mitchell et al. 2003; Sassen 2000). Social practices are fundamental to the continuation and renewal of capitalism. (Baulder 2006:17). Even Marx highlighted it when he stated in his Manifesto that the bourgeois society “has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe”.

I hope that this work could serve as the basis for these further developments.

111

Bibliography

Abbas Addelkarim (1992), Primitive Capital Accumulation in the Sudan, Taylor & Francis e-library (2005)

Adhikari J. & Hobley M. (2013) Everyone is Leaving – Who Will Sow our Fields? The Effects of Migration from Khotang District to the Gulf and Malaysia, Nepal Institute of Development Studies (NIDS)

Adhikari, Jagannath & Gurung, Ganesh (2009) Migration between Nepal and India: security and livelihood concerns. Kathmandu, Nepal: Nepal Institute of Development Studies

Amin A. and Thrift N. (2005) “What’s left? Just the future”. Antipode 37:220–238

Amin S. (2011), “The Law of Worldwide Value” (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011)

Amin, S., ed., 1974. Modern Migrations in Western Africa, International African Institute,OxfordUniversity Press

Arango, J. (2004). Theories of International Migration. In D. Joly (ed.), International Migration and the New Millennium. Aldershot: Ashgate,15-36.

Arjun K. and Seddon D., eds (2003) The People's War in Nepal: Left Perspectives. Delhi: Adroit Publishers.

Bauder H. (2006), “Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets”, Oxford University Press.

Bhattarai Baburam (2003), The Nature of Underdevelopment and Regional Structure of Nepal. Adroit Publishers, Delhi.

Bhattarai Keshav (2003), Historical Dictionary of Nepal, Scarecrow Press

Boyd, M. and Nowak, J. (2012). Social Networks and International Migration, in Martiniello, M. and Rath, J. (eds.). An Introduction to International Migration Studies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 77-103

Brenner, N. (1999) “Beyond State-Centrism? Space, Territoriality, and Geographical Scale in Globalization Studies, Theory and Society”, 28, p. 40.

Brenner, N. (2004), “Urban Governance and the Production of New State Spaces in Western Europe, 1960-2000”, Review of International Political Economy, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Aug., 2004), pp. 447-488.

Bruslé Tristan (2010) Who’s in a labour camp? A socio-economic analysis of Nepalese migrants in Qatar. Published in European Bulletin of Himalayan Research, 2009-2010, n°35-36, p.154-170

Carling, J., 2005. Gender Dimensions of International Migration, Global Commission on International Migration, Geneva

112

Castells M. (1975), “Immigrant workers and class struggles in advanced capitalism: The Western European experience”. Politics and Society 5(1): 32–66.

Castles, S. and Miller, M.J. (2009). The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (4th edition).

Castles, S., and G. Kosak. 1985 [1973]. Immigrant workers and class structure in Western Europe. New York:Oxford University Press.

CBS, Central Bureau of Statistics (2008) Nepal Labor Force Survey (2008)

CBS, Central Bureau of Statistics (2011) Nepal Living Standards Survey (2010/2011)

Chibber V. (2013) Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital, London, New York, Verso Books.

CIA (2014), The World Factbook https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/np.html (consulted 13/05/2014)

Davis Mike (2006), “Planet of Slums”, Verso Books, London.

Davis Mike (2006), Metropolitan disorder: Fear and Money in Dubaï, New Left Review 41, Sept/oct 2006.

de Haas, Hein (2008) The internal dynamics of migration processes. Paper presented at IMSCOE Conference on Theories of Migration and Social Change. St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, 1-3 July 2008.

de Janvry, A. 1981. The agrarian question and reformism in Latin America. Baltimore, MD: Johns HopkinsUniversity Press.

Deere, C. D. 1976. Rural women’s subsistence production in the capitalist periphery. Review of Radical Political Economics 8 (1): 9-17.

Faist, T. (2010). Towards Transnational Studies: World Theories, Transnationalisation and Changing Institutions, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(10): 1665-1687.

Foster JB, McChesney RW and Jonna RJ (2011), “The Global Reserve Army of Labor and the New Imperialism”, Monthly Review.

Frank, A.G. (1966). The Development of Underdevelopment. Monthly Review September 1966

Friedman T.L. (2005) “The World is Flat. A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century”. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Fussell, E. (2012). Space, Time, and Volition: Dimensions of Migration Theory, in M.R. Rosenblum and D.J. Tichenor (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of the Politics of International Migration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 25-52.

Glassman J. (2006), Primitive accumulation, accumulation by dispossession, accumulation by ‘extra-economic’ means, Progress in Human Geography 30, 5 (2006) pp. 608-625

Gómez-Quiñones, J. 1981. Mexican immigration to the United States and the internationalization of labor, 1848-1980. In Mexican immigrant workers in the U.S., ed. A. Rios-Bustamante, 13-34. Los Angeles:UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

113

Gramsci A. (2011), « Guerre de mouvement et guerre de position », La Fabrique éditions.

Gurung Ganesh ed (2014), Migration from Nepal: Policy and Reality, Proceeding of First Migration Conference in Nepal.

Halvor Mehlum & Gry Ostenstad (2013): Memorandum No 18/2013, The Political Economy of Migration Policies in Oil-rich Gulf Countries

Hanieh Adam (2011), Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Harris, John R. & Todaro, Michael P. (1970), "Migration, Unemployment and Development: A Two-Sector Analysis", American Economic Review 60 (1): 126–142.

Harvey D. (1990), The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Wiley-Blackwell.

Harvey David (2004), The ‘New’ Imperialism: Accumulation by Dispossession, Socialist Register 2004.

Harvey David (2010), A Companion to Marx’s Capital, Verso Book.

Harvey, D. (2005), “A Brief history of neoliberalism”, Oxford University Press.

Hecht, S. 1985. Women and the Latin American livestock sector. In Women as food producers in developing countries, ed. J. Monson and M. Kalb, 51-70. Los Angeles: Regents of the University of California.

Khalid Koser (2007), “International Migration, a Very Short Introduction”, Oxford University Press.

Kritz, M., Lim, L.L. and Zlotnik, H. (eds.) (1992). International Migration Systems: A Global Approach. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Lee, E.S. (1966). A Theory of Migration, Demography, 3(1): 47-57.

Lefèvre, H. (1948), « Le Marxisme », Presse Universitaire de France, 24th edition (2012)

Lewis Todd T. & Riccardi Theodore Jr (1995) The Himalayas: A Syllabus of the Region's History, Anthropology, and Religion (Association for Asian Studies Occasional Papers Series).

Mabogunje, A. L. (1970), Systems Approach to a Theory of Rural-Urban Migration. Geographical Analysis, 2: 1–18

Mandel Ernest (1972), Late Capitalism, Lowe & Brydone Printers Limited

Marx K. (1867), “Capital: Volume 1: A Critique of Political Economy”, Penguin Classics; Reprint edition (May 5, 1992).

Massimo de Angelis (2001), Marx and Primitive Accumulation: The Continuous Character of Capital’s “Enclosures”, The Commoner, September 2001.

McDowell, C., de Haan, A., 1997. Migration and Sustainable Livelihoods: A Critical Review of the Literature. Sussex:Institute of Development Studies

114

Meillassoux, C. 1975. Maidens, meal and money: Capitalism and the domestic community. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Morawska, E. (2007). International Migration: Its Various Mechanisms and Different Theories that Try to Explain it. Malmö: Malmö University, Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in International Migration and Ethnic Relations 1/07.

Morawska, E. (2012). Historical-Structural Models of International Migration, in Martiniello, M. and Rath, J. (eds.) An Introduction to International Migration Studies. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 55-75.

Nanda R. Shrestha (2002), Nepal and Bangladesh, A global Studies Handbook, ABC-CLIO, Inc.

Nepal Institute of Development Studies (2011), Migration Yearbook 2010. Kathmandu, Nepal: Nepal Institute of Development Studies.

Nepal Institute of Development Studies (2012), Migration Yearbook 2011. Kathmandu, Nepal: Nepal Institute of Development Studies.

Nepal Institute of Development Studies (2013), Migration Yearbook 2012. Kathmandu, Nepal: Nepal Institute of Development Studies.

Nepal Institute of Development Studies (2014), Migration Yearbook 2013. Kathmandu, Nepal: Nepal Institute of Development Studies.

Nepal Rastra Bank (2013), NRB Quarterly Economic Bulletin, Mid-July 2013.

OHCHR (2013) Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants François Crépeau. http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/SRMigrants/A-HRC-26-35-Add1_en.pdf

Olin Wright Erik (2009) "Understanding Class: toward an integrated analytical approach", New Left Review, 60, November-December 2009.

Petras, E. (1981). The Global Labour Market in the Modern World Economy, in Kritz, M.M., Keely, C.B. and Tomasi, S.M. (eds.) Global Trends in Migration: Theory and Research on International Population Movements. New York: Center of Migration Studies, 44-63.

Piore MJ (1972), “Notes for a Theory of Labor Market Stratification”, Working paper, Department of Economic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Piore, M.J. (1979). Birds of Passage: Migrant Labour and Industrial Societies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Portes, A. (2010). Migration and Social Change: Some Conceptual Reflections, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(10): 1537- 1563.

Pyakuryal KN, Upreti BR (editors)(2011) Land, Agriculture and Agrarian Transformation. Kathmandu: Consortium for Land Research and Policy Dialogue.

Ravenstein, E.G. (1885). The Laws of Migration – I, Journal of the Statistical Society, 48(2): 167-227.

Ravenstein, E.G. (1889). The Laws of Migration – II, Journal of the Statistical Society, 52(2): 214-301.

115

Reich M., Gordon DM. & Edwards RC (1973), “Dual labor markets: a theory of labor market segmentation”, Economics Department Faculty Publication, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Rostow, W.W. (1960). The Stages of Economic Growth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Russel King (2012), Theories and Typologies of Migration: an overview and a primer in Willy Brandt Series of Working Papers in International Migration and Ethnic Relations

Saleem Ahmed, Human Rights Watch (2013), Letter to SAARC on Improving Protections for Migrant Workers. http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/12/17/letter-saarc-improving-protections-migrant-workers

Samaddar Ranabir (2008), Primitive Accumulation and Some Aspects of Work and Life in India In the Early Part of the Twenty First Century, Published by Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group.

Samers M. (2001), “Here to work: Undocumented immigration in the United States and Europe”. SAIS Review 21(1): 131–145.

Samers, M. (2010). Migration. London: Routledge.

Sassen Saskia (2010), A Savage Sorting of Winners and Losers: Contemporary Versions of Primitive Accumulation, Globalizations March-June 2010, Vol. 7, pp. 23-50

Sassen, S. (1988). The Mobility of Labor and Capital. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Sassen, S. (1991). The Global City. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Smith N. (1984) “Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space”, Basil Blackwell.

Smith N. (2005) “Neo-Critical Geography, Or, The Flat Pluralist World of Business Class”, Antipode.

Surak K. (2013), “Guestworker: A Taxonomy”, New Left Review 84, December 2013.

Swyngedouw, E. (2004), "Globalisation or 'glocalisation'? Networks, territories and rescaling", Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 17, pp. 25-48.

Tamar Diana Wilson (2011), Primitive Accumulation and the Labor Subsidies to Capitalism, Review of Radical Political Economies, published online 4 October 2011.

The Guardian. 2014. Qatar World Cup: 185 Nepalese died in 2013- official records, (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/24/qatar-2022-world-cup-185-nepalese-workers-died-2013), consulted 20/05/2014.

Ulandssekretariat (2013) Nepal–Labour Market Profile 2013, LO/FTF Council, http://www.ulandssekretariatet.dk/sites/default/files/uploads/public/PDF/LMP/nepal_2013_final_web.pdf

UNDP (2013), Human Development Report 2013 “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World”, http://hdr.undp.org/en/2013-report

Vanaik Achin (2008) The New Himalayan Republic, New Left Review 49, January-February 2008

Vélez-Ibañez, C. G. 1996. Border visions: Mexican cultures of the Southwest United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

116

Wallerstein, I. (1974). The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. New York: Academic Press.

Wallerstein, I. (1979). The Capitalist World Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Webber M. (2008), Primitive accumulation in modern China, Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008.

Werner Bonefeld (2001), The Permanence of Primitive Accumulation: Commodity Fetishism and Social Constitution, The Commoner n°2, September 2001

World Bank (2012) Bilateral Remittance Matrix.

World Bank (2013) Nepal Development Update.

World Bank (2014), World Bank data base, http://data.worldbank.org/country/nepal, consulted 11/05/2014

Zelinsky, W. (1971). The Hypothesis of the Mobility Transition, Geographical Review, 61(2): 219-249.

117