Fellow, SCAS.
University Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna.
Permanent Fellow, IWM Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna

ABSTRACT:
Extraction and confined labor are typically associated with colonialism, occluding their broader geographical, historical, and contemporary relevance. In my talk, I ask: how could we go beyond the compartmentalized historiography of cities, (im)mobile labor, and displacement to unearth possible commonalities and contour lines connecting disparate periods, processes, institutions, and groups of actors in the making and remaking of cities? To answer this question, I suggest that we adopt a lens of expanded extractivism that allows us to bring into conversation the economies of (im)mobile labor, confinement, and governance of the displaced as inscribed in distinct periods and regimes (such as forced, displaced labor, guest worker, temporary, circular, migrant worker, asylum seeker/Refugee). By tracing the historical geography of a street in Linz, Austria starting from the WWII, I show the continuities and mutations as detected in discourses and actors that regulate and finance the “care” of the displaced, as well as the spaces and practices of containment that is also visible today. Taking the perspective of longue durée thereby opens new ways of situating the current and ongoing commodification of the care and containment of migrants and refugees and the histories of confined labor within Europe.