Le travail, marchandise fictive ? 100 ans de marchandisation de la main d’œuvre mexicaine aux États-Unis
For Karl Polanyi, market society is impossible, since it supposes that work, land and money be treated as merchandise, which can only destroy society. On the basis of the analysis of the utilisation of Mexican labor by US firms over 100 years, this paper tries to show that merchandisation is quite p...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Association d'Economie Politique
2008-12-01
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| Series: | Interventions Économiques pour une Alternative Sociale |
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| Online Access: | http://journals.openedition.org/interventionseconomiques/360 |
| Summary: | For Karl Polanyi, market society is impossible, since it supposes that work, land and money be treated as merchandise, which can only destroy society. On the basis of the analysis of the utilisation of Mexican labor by US firms over 100 years, this paper tries to show that merchandisation is quite possible as concerns work. It reduces the human being to his sole work force, while staying in the formal context of salaried work. In the case of Mexican workers, whether it be farm workers with temporary contracts in the US, or employees of maquiladoras on the Mexican soil, or illegal workers in the US, the territorial frontier between the two countries apears a particularly efficient way to accomplish this redcuction. The merchandisation of work is not necessarily the consequence of the establishment of autoregulating markets, contrarily to what is put forward by Polanyi. |
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| ISSN: | 0715-3570 1710-7377 |