Imperialism and Super-Exploitation: Situating Migration and Racism within the German Political Economy

The argument elaborated in this paper is that the concept of super-exploitation that has been applied to the relation of workers of the Global South to the international capital accumulation process, and with it their unequal position in relation to workers of the Global North, can and should also be applied to an analysis of migrant labour within the Global North.In making use of Marx's Labour Theory of Value, I embed my analysis of super-exploitation within a framework of the German domestic job market.I suggest that an understanding of the specific conditions of exploitation faced by migrant workers and their descendants needs to look at how this exploitation can legally and illegally supersede the modes of typical exploitation faced by non-migrant workers and draw insights into the fragmentation of the working class in Germany along the lines of nationality and racialisation.