Migrations and new expulsions: accumulation by dispossession or crisis of capitalist societal reproduction?

Abstract

The present paper discusses the relation between population dynamics and accumulation of capital, with special emphasis on a critical dialogue with the theory of accumulation by dispossession as presented by Marxist geographer David Harvey. We depart from a discussion on the so-called primitive accumulation as conceptualized by Karl Marx, in order to identify the fundamental meaning of the said historical process: the formation of capitalism, rooted in the separation between owners of means of production, on the one hand, and owners of the workforce commodity, on the other. From there on, we present a critical appraisal of the land grabbing scholarship, in which we spotlight similarities between land grabbing's expulsive and expropriating effects and the so-called accumulation by dispossession and its supposed capacity to resolve capital's crises. However, we problematize such an interpretation in light of the fundamental crisis of capital, that is, capital's tendency to absorb less and less workers into productive processes, due to capitalist competition and technological development, that in turn undermines capital accumulation itself. Lastly, we explore how contemporary expulsion processes, in a multiscalar register, go hand in hand with distinct confinement strategies as forms of surplus population management, typical of the barbarism provoked by the collapse of capitalism.