Accumulation by immobilization: Migration, mobility and money in Libya

Abstract

Forms of accumulation in Europe's wider borderlands proceed through the creation of confined subjects. Migrants’ experiences in Libya's context of fragmented state authority reveal how vulnerable mobilities become a source of value through violent and forced immobilization. This dynamic is termed ‘accumulation by immobilization’, where accumulation involves different situations of confinement and detention imposed by criminal and state actors, the extraction of value through indentured labour as well as the drawing of rent through the payment of money to move on. Going beyond expulsion and the exploitation of free labour under capitalist production, accumulation by immobilization points to a carceral capitalism in the borderlands that profits from the enclosure and disposability of migrants’ lives.