Situating the migration industry: governance, capital accumulation and global dehumanization: an introduction

To introduce this Special Issue, we begin by asking whether we are currently traversing a new phase of the migration industry. These transformations are characterized by the complete enmeshing of profit-making activities with the not-for-profit sector and by the state becoming an active market actor. The paper introduces our approach to a political economy of the migration industry today, situating it as a new form of governmentality and a transnational economy. In these new governing formations, states not only fund physical and digital infrastructures and services but also provide mechanisms of capital accumulation through the management of the bodies of migrants. We look at how this political economy’s temporal and spatial dimensions can signal the continuities as well as changes in the dynamics of the migration industry. Throughout this introductory article we illustrate how contributions to this Special Issue cast light on capital accumulation within a politics of dehumanization.