Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - COLOUR (THE COLOUR OF LABOUR: THE RACIALIZED LIVES OF MIGRANTS)

Teaser

\"In \"\"The Colour of Labour” we examine how differential positions of migrant groups in the production generate racialized identifications which are at once contingent, hierarchical and naturalized, i.e., attributed to inherent qualities rather than to the social processes...

Summary

\"In \"\"The Colour of Labour” we examine how differential positions of migrant groups in the production generate racialized identifications which are at once contingent, hierarchical and naturalized, i.e., attributed to inherent qualities rather than to the social processes. The dynamics of racialization combine a hierarchy-based production system and a racialist understanding of human diversity.
With a central reference to plantation economies and a focus on post-abolition societies, we combine anthropology, history, history of science and technology, sociology, migration and mobility studies in order to explore the political, ideological, scientific, technological, cultural and the experiential dimensions of the racialization processes in plantation-like economies based on imported, indentured, contracted, contingent and mobile migrant work across political boundaries.
Empirical cases include:
(I) Colonial British Guiana in the aftermath of abolition and transition to indentured labour;
(II) Hawaiian sugar plantations, during its monarchy and after 1898 annexation, and the multiple sources of incoming labour from Asia and Europe;
(III) New England cotton mills at the turn 19th/20th centuries and its hierarchized groups of migrants;
(IV) The trans-imperial nexuses of S. Tomé’s cocoa and coffee economies – focusing on the management of labour in connection to Angola, Brazil, and the Cameroons;
(V) The reconfigurations of plantation hierarchies in contemporary Mauritius;
(VI) The extreme contingency of labour and life in contemporary Italian agribusiness.
As a complement to the empirical research tracks, we include a line of research on labour mobilities (VII) and one on racializations in science (VIII).
Innovation is expected on three fronts:
• Developing theory by connecting conceptual work on race, racism, racialization, embodiment and memory with the lived experience of migrant labour across political boundaries and imperial classifications;
• Connecting issues of pressing social relevance like racism to wider, deeply rooted structures of domination via substantive, broad-scope, multi-sited anthropological/historical research on unconventional empirical settings and time frames of plantation and plantation-like economies,
• Shifting conventional comparatism of nation-based empires into the study of intersections between competing empires.
\"

Work performed

With literature review on digital and physical sources in Lisbon, London, Toronto, Washington D.C., Georgetown, Honolulu, Dartmouth, New Bedford, Port Louis, Rome, and a shared corpus of readings; with archival research in the UK (London, Kew, Greenwhich, Cambridge), Portugal (Lisbon, Porto, Funchal), S Tome, Italy (Rome, Foggia), Germany (Berlin), the US (Massachusetts, Maryland, Hawaii), Guyana (Georgetown) and Malaysia; with fieldwork in contemporary-oriented tracks (Mauritius, Italy) and in those where life interviews complement historical research (Hawaii/California; New England; Guyana/Toronto); with conferences, seminar series, symposia, panels, invited lectures and a summer course; and with the preparation of publications, we achieved:
(a) Documenting trajectories of migration/racialization across empires and political units. Findings indicate that:
Track I: Madeirans were recruited to British Guiana plantations in the 1830s-40s-50s unclear legal frames and in circumstances of extreme social inequalities, crop failures, famines and debt; once in Guiana plantations, Madeirans suffered dire conditions; consuls and priests described their situation as close to enslavement. Some survived and those who thrived in commerce carved a social niche, distinct from enslaved and indentured labourers, racialized as Portuguese/Blacks/Indians. Towards the late 19th century a second wave of business-oriented Madeirans expanded the local community, which remained a distinct group in the racialized dynamics of Guiana (White, Black, Indian, Portuguese, Chinese and Amerindian).
TRACK II: the sponsored, mostly legal migration of Madeirans and Azoreans to Hawaii, when kingdom (1878-1893) and when U.S. annexed territory (1898-1913), resulted from a combination of racialist immigration policies promoted by planters and governments in Hawaii and the availability of Portuguese islanders to migrate as families, endure plantation work and move on to other labour and social niches; they remained a distinct group as a result of the local dynamics of racialized differentiation (see Bastos, Portuguese in the Cane; Bastos, Lusotropicalism Debunked; Miller, Trading Sovereignty).
TRACK III: the racialization of the Portuguese in New England mills was discussed and will be showcased in the forthcoming edited volume.
TRACK IV: there is a close relation between the racialized labour management practices of Brazilian coffee plantations and those of São Tomé since the 1850s, as enslaved and indentured workers from Angola experienced similar working conditions on both sides of the Atlantic; those practices were adapted to the production of cocoa since the 1880s and exported to Belgium Congo and German Cameroons.
TRACKS V and VI: contemporary structures of labour recruitment suggest a plantation/post plantation nexus.

(b) Conceptual work.
“Racialization of labour” was tested in the different empirical settings of the project, debated within the team and with external audiences. The emphasis on the hierarchized dimension of racialized categories distances our approach from conventional studies of multi-ethnic labour force.
“Mobility” was tested across all research tracks and explored in dialogue with the leading research network Anthromob and the partnership will be further influential in the field through the leading journal Mobilities.
“Plantation/Post-plantation” nexuses were explored in dialogue with Stoler’s “imperial durabilities” and across most research tracks, particularly while addressing the reconfigurations of domestic service in contemporary Mauritius and of labour recruitment in Italy’s agribusiness.

(c) Methodological developments.
The team efforts towards connecting and cross-analysing single case studies as proven successful and more productive than conventional comparatism.

(d) Partnerships and knowledge transference.
Solid partnerships for knowledge exchange were established with research communities

Final results

Research is progressing beyond the state-of-the-art in subjects like: cross empire migrations; intersections of empires; labour recruitment in post-abolition plantations; portable technologies of labour; plantation/post-plantation nexuses and the angles of domestic service, sex work, and spatial containment of labourers; whaling crews as labour force; inscriptions of race in biomedical research and public health knowledge. Further progress will expand the conceptual work on racializations, mobile labour, plantation technologies of labour, embodiment and memory, and others.

Website & more info

More info: http://colour.ics.ulisboa.pt/.