Living Labour II: Logistics, Migration, and Labour

Abstract

This chapter deepens the discussion on postcolonial labour through a specific examination of labour employed in the logistical and infrastructural expansion of economies. Such an expansion requires labour ready at hand but not always necessary; labour at work but not visible; labour living but whenever required can soon be made dead. In this ghostly transformative exercise, money (increasingly in credit and digital mode) seems to be the most important tool. This chapter reminds us of the lesson Marx drew on the question of money in circulation—the supply chain of money—that it becomes a commodity like other commodities, appearing as forms of circulation of the same capital. Hence, even though money’s function is one of capital, it appears as one of circulation—the spectral “other” of living labour in the postcolonial condition. Labour will follow the commodity chain, and will become a part of the commodity chain.