Reading the Mediterranean Border through Racial Capitalism. With Prof Dr. Timothy Raeymaekers

In this talk Timothy Raeymaekers will present his monograph The Natural Border Bounding Migrant Farmwork in the Black Mediterranean Cornell 2024 Telling the recent history of Mediterranean agri food capitalism from the perspective of marginalized Black African farm workers the book argues that in the context of global supply chains and repressive border regimes agrarian production and reproduction are based on fundamental racial hierarchies Taking the example of the tomato a typical Made in Italy commodity the book furthermore interrogates how political boundaries are drawn around the land and the labour needed for its production what technologies of exclusion and inclusion enable capitalist operations to take place and which practices structure the allocation use and commodification of land and labour across global commodity chains thus offering a new conceptualization of territorial boundaries from a critical political ecology and environmental justice perspective Timothy Raeymaekers