Widersprüche im langen Sommer der Migration.

Ansätze einer materialistischen Grenzregimeanalye

Abstract

Today, the analysis of migration and migration policy from a perspective of critical political economy is necessary, because of the dramatic conflicts surrounding the so-called “refugee crisis” of 2015/2016, but also because explicitly materialist analyses of these issues have been marginalized for years, with problematic effects. Thus, the article sketches a theoretical and methodological outline of a materialist border regime analysis. It first criticizes problematic aspects of the influential “ethnographic border regime analysis” approach and then, by relying on regulation theory, develops a materialist understanding of migration and border regimes. Starting from a discussion of the social and political conflicts around German migration policy in 2015/2016, the article then goes on to identify three migration-related structural contradictions that are regulated within migration and border regimes: accumulation by dispossession and the autonomy of migration;labour conflicts; and the structural chauvinism of national welfare states.