Immigration and Labour
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
6:00 pm
- Venue
- Online on Zoom
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
The Series in Advanced Political Economy (SAPE) was launched in 2022, jointly organised by Departments of Economics at SOAS University of London and New School for Social Research (NSSR) in New York.
Picking up from our last conversation on the global value chains and what they mean for international workers’ solidarity, we next discuss immigration and labour.
The case of Honduras: Social violence, forced migration, and the fight for the right to stay [David Bacon]
Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) used a low standard of living as a means to attract investment in factories producing, not for an internal market, but for export to the US.
Violent crackdown on protests and trade unionists, CIA-backed coups and election interferences, economic sanctions are a campaign against the Honduran working class, which produced migration.
The ability to stay home is as important as the ability and right to migrate. The choice to leave must be truly voluntary – where they have a future with dignity if they choose to stay.
The capitalist imperialist state organises and regulates labour within and beyond its borders. In doing so, it reproduces social hierarchies and structures of exploitation. [Hannah Cross]
An overview of the role of the migration regime in capitalist development
A comparative perspective of migration and imperialism in Europe and the US
How the capitalist class benefits from a weakened and divided majority - what does this mean for labour organising?
Speakers
David Bacon
Hannah Cross
Surbhi Kesar [Chair]
Header image credit: Shubham Verma via Unsplash.
About the speakers
David Bacon
David Bacon is a California writer and documentary photographer. A former union organiser for thirty years, David Bacon has photographed documentary projects about labor, the global economy, war and migration, and the struggle for human rights in countries around the world including Iraq, the Philippines, Honduras, Mexico, and the United States. He is author of Illegal People—How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants (2008) and The Right to Stay Home (2013), More Than a Wall / Mas que un muro (2022)
Hannah Cross
Hannah Cross is Senior Lecturer at the University of Westminster. She is a member (former chair) of the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy. She is also a founding member of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy's Africa working group. Her publications include Migration Beyond Capitalism (Polity 2021), and Migrants, Borders and Global Capitalism: West African labour mobility and EU borders (Routledge 2013). She has also published articles and chapters on the global remittances agenda, migration and labour mobility in West and Southern Africa, and the CFA franc under neoliberal monetary policy.
Surbhi Kesar
Surbhi Kesar is Lecturer at the Department of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London). Her research areas include informal economy, processes of structural transformation and capitalist transition in labour surplus less developed economies, issues of economic and social exclusion, identity, labour and work, and decolonised approaches to economics. She is a coordinator for the Economic Development Working Group of the Young Scholars Initiative of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a Steering Group member for the Diversifying and Decolonising Economics initiative. She is also an editorial board member of the Review of Political Economy journal.
About Series in Advanced Political Economy (SAPE)
The Series in Advanced Political Economy (SAPE) was launched in 2022, jointly organised by Departments of Economics at SOAS University of London and New School for Social Research (NSSR) in New York. We have been promoting political economy beyond university walls and created a platform where academics, activists, trade unionists, and many others, could come together to discuss pressing issues and explore ways to address the multi-faceted crises of our time. As of October 2025, these lectures have collectively gained nearly 68,000 views on YouTube, in addition to the live in-person and Zoom webinar attendees.
We are back this year with new collaborators - Forum for Real Economic Emancipation (FREE) have now joined us to organise the Series, and the Series will be hosted by the UK's General Federation of Trade Unions Educational Trust (GFTU ET). Building on the academic and theoretical discussions we have had in the first 2 years, we now aim to connect them more directly with workers’ struggles. The objective is to reach a wider audience, particularly union members, leaders, and shop stewards through the GFTU’s broad network of trade unions in the UK and internationally. We would also like community and grassroots organisers to join our exciting debates on workers’ fights for a better future.
