Expanded extractivism, confinement, and (im)mobilized labor in city-making: a longue durée perspective

Abstract

Compartmentalized historiography of cities and labor hinders us from seeing the common grounds and contour lines connecting disparate places, periods, processes, institutions, and groups of actors in the making and remaking of cities. Through exploring the historical geography of a street in Linz (Austria), I call for shifting our lens to expanded extractivism to bring economies of (im)mobile labor and confinement and the governance of the displaced inscribed to distinct periods and regimes within a common analytical lens. The longue durée perspective I adapt enables us to situate the commodification of the containment and care of refugee and asylum seekers within the broader dynamics of extractivism.