The Right to Stay in Ireland is a Gift of the State

8/8/2019 The Right to Stay in Ireland is a Gift of the State

1/49

The right to be in Ireland is a gift of the state:

Migration regime, labor unions, and neoliberal

governmentality

By

___________________

A Senior Thesis submitted for partial completion of a Bachelors of Art,summa cum laude

degree in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

Honors Thesis

University of Minnesota

College of Liberal Arts

May 16th, 2009

Faculty Committee:

Advisor: David Karjanen, American Studies


2/49

Pashmina Murthy, Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies

Sabrina Ovan, French and Italian

The right to be in Ireland is a gift of the state1:

Migration regime, labor unions, and neoliberalgovernmentality

Abstract

1Mark Maguire. Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 15th January, 2009.

2


3/49

This paper will provide an overview of and engage with debates about the

labor migration to Ireland2 which both resulted in response to, as well

facilitated, unprecedented economic growth. The analysis will focus on ways

that labor unions have responded to the immigration and will argue that

unions, although they have made some positive developments in trying to

include immigrants, their overall efforts remained marginal and inefficient

because: a) business-state-unions power nexus called Social Partnership

contributed to union depoliticization and establishment of non-ideological

neoliberal space; b) lack of the grassroots organizing practices and

deployment of neoliberal governmentality in dealing with their membership;

c) neoliberal union rationalities that avert both the analysis and adoption of

innovative tactics that would be able to address the mobile migrant

workforce and the global economy. Therefore, despite the dominant views

about the (until recently) booming economy, social welfare state, and

tolerant, pro-immigration society, Ireland can be analyzed as an experiment

in which Social Partnership serves as central element to the emergence of

neoliberal governmentality.

INTRODUCTION

Why talk about Ireland? Because Ireland can serve as a space of

particularity to reveal something quite universal about social, political, and

economic developments that often are subsumed under the umbrella term

of neoliberalism.3 Ireland turned itself into a test site a laboratory of

neoliberal experimentation and the results astounded critics and

enthusiasts alike. Ireland is an interesting case-study because of the rapid

pace of demographic and economic change. For example, while in 1994

immigrant workers constituted 2% of the labor in 2006 it was 17%.4 For the

2 Throughout this paper Ireland will be used to refer to Republic of Ireland even if somepolitics, policies, and union sphere of influence extend to Northern Ireland.3 While being aware of how the term has been overused and is increasingly becoming anabstraction, I still find a utility in using this term and hopefully throughout this paper it willbecome evident what are some of the specificities of Irish neoliberalism.4 Thomas Turner, Daryl D'Art, and Christine Cross, Polish Workers in Ireland: A ContentedProletariat? Labor Studies Journal, Mar 2009; vol. 34: pp. 112 126

3


4/49

most part, the immigration was fueled by the economic growth of Irelands

economy, dubbed the Celtic Tiger. While there were a significant amount of

refugees and asylum seekers, the vast majority of migrants could be

characterized as labor migrants.5 Although low-skill labor immigration to

wealthy western countries is often talked about either as a social and

economic problem or as demographic solution to aging populations, Ireland

has often been invoked as a country which is quite exceptional for its

genuine efforts in integration and lack of outright racist sentiments, such as

those expressed in other parts of western Europe.6 However, as this paper

will argue, such a view is quite limited for a number of reasons.

In this paper,

7

I examine the situation of immigrant workers and laborunions participation in Social Partnership as the central lens to argue that

Ireland is far from being an exceptional or a desirable model to emulate, and

that analyzing it through traditional theoretical frameworks of political

economy, neoliberalism, or governmentality in isolation is inadequate.

Irelands case provides an opportunity to get a glimpse at contemporary

forms of social organization through the deployment of neoliberal

governmentality. This paper contributes to neoliberal governmentality

literature by arguing that labor unions, as a non-governmental body, not

only facilitate capital and the nation-states interests, but also actively shape

larger biopolitical management of local and migrant population.

LITERATURE REVIEW

5 For example, in 1992 there were 39 asylum seeking applications; in 2002 it peaked to11,634 and been declining ever since. Asylum is being granted only to a very small fractionof applicants. Crowley, Una, Mary Gilmartin and Rob Kitchin, 2008, Race and immigration in

contemporary Ireland, in New Geographies of Race and Racism, (Eds) Claire Dwyer andCaroline Bressey (Burlington, VT: Ashgate): 141-155.6 O'Malley, Eoin. 2008. Why There is No Radical Right Party in Ireland? West EuropeanPolitics 31, no. 5: 960-977.7This paper was written by researching and reviewing relevant literature. It also involvedvisiting Ireland (January 2009) and conducting interviews with nine people, including unionofficials, NGO representatives, and academics researching immigration to Ireland. I also hadinformal conversations with a dozen of Eastern European workers about their experiences inIreland. The stay in Ireland also involved reviewing immigrant newspapers in English,Russian, Polish, and Lithuanian.

4


5/49

Up until recently, Ireland has been showcased as an economic miracle,

the so-called Celtic Tiger8. Irelands success made it into a model for other

countries, one that could be followed and should be emulated by less-

developed countries (such as the Baltic Tigers). Even for wealthy Western

European countries, Ireland provided a new flexible and competitive

corporatist model.9 Significantly, Irelands success provided the ultimate

proof that neoliberal reforms actually work as suggested by appraisals in

various pro-neoliberal institutions from the EU, OECD, and top rankings in

The Heritage Foundations Index of Economic Freedom.10 The enthusiasm

surrounding Irelands success has been voiced by global institutions such as

the World Bank, which places Ireland as #5 (out of 181 countries) on their

index for starting a business and protecting investors. 11

However, the changes that dramatically transformed Irelands position

as an underdeveloped periphery to a country that matched the living

standards of Old Europe were also enabled by mass immigration. By the

mid 1990s, economic growth reversed the century and a half long trend of

emigration and for the first time in its history, Ireland became a country of

net immigration.12

Immigration especially intensified when Ireland, along8 The term, dubbed by Morgan Stanley Bank economist, suggests an enormous economicgrowth and refers to the economies of the Asian Tigers. For example, about a quarter of theUS investments in Europe were in Ireland (Kieran Allen, 2007: 231).9 Allen, Kieran, 2003, Neither Berlin nor Boston: Class polarization, and neo-liberalism inIrish Republic, in The end of Irish history?: Critical reflections on the Celtic Tiger, eds. ColinCoultier and Steve Coleman, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, pg. 62.10 For example, John Bruton, ex-prime minister of Ireland, serves as ambassador ofDelegation of the European Commission to the United States and appears to be activelypromoting Celtic Tiger and Irelands entrepreneurial spirit combined with flexibleinstitutional arrangements. John Bruton, The economic model that transformed Ireland cansucceed in Arizona http://eurunion.org/eu/index.php?

option=com_content&task=view&id=1232&Itemid=26; The Heritage Foundation/Wall StreetJournal, 2009 Index of Economic Freedom, http://www.heritage.org/index/Ranking.aspx11 World Bank Group. Ease of Doing Business. University of Minnesota Libraries,http://www.doingbusiness.org/ExploreEconomies/?economyid=93 (Accessed February 13th,2009)12 Grabowska, Izabel. 2005. Changes in the international mobility of labour: job migration ofPolish nationals to Ireland. Irish Journal of Sociology14, no. 1:27-44; Hughes, Gerard,McGinnity, Frances, O'Connell, Phillip, and Quinn, Emma. 2007. The impact of immigration.In Best of Times? The Social impact of the Celtic Tiger, edited by Tony Fahey, Helen Russeland Christopher Whelan T. Dublin, Ireland: Institute of Public Administration.; Barret, Alan,

5
http://eurunion.org/eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1232&Itemid=26http://eurunion.org/eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1232&Itemid=26http://www.doingbusiness.org/ExploreEconomies/?economyid=93http://eurunion.org/eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1232&Itemid=26http://eurunion.org/eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1232&Itemid=26http://www.doingbusiness.org/ExploreEconomies/?economyid=93


6/49

with UK and Sweden, opened its labor market to the 10 new EU member

states in 2004.13Thus, economic prosperity was mirrored by dramatic

demographic changes.

In this paper, by bringing different theoretical approaches together, I

will demonstrate that neoliberal governmentality is neither a universal nor

uncontestable process and that understanding how unions succeed or fail in

reaching out to migrant workers is crucial for envisioning politics and

practices that would go beyond the hegemony of neoliberalism. Articulating

migrants as only self-interested or stake-less in the larger society and in

need of mere services from the unions or the state closes possibilities of new

politics and reproduces neoliberal rationalities.

The extensive literature review below is meant to situate this paper

within existing debates about how Ireland dealt with immigration and point

out that there are significant gaps in scholarship, especially when it comes to

migrant labor and the role of Social Partnership in politics of migration

management. Typically, the literature on labor migration to Ireland often

focuses on migrant integration14 into the Irish labor market, and migrant

worker experiences and adaptability.15 Still, the labor market literature

appears to be much smaller in comparison to, for example, research on

refugees and asylum seekers. Up until recently, refugee and asylum

literature quantitatively dominated scholarship on immigration.16 While it is

and David Duffy. 2008. Are Ireland's Immigrants Integrating into Its Labor Market?International Migration Review 42, no. 3:597-619.; Krings, Torben. 2007. 'Equal rights for allworkers': Irish trade unions and the challenge of labour migration. Irish Journal of Sociology16, no. 1:43-61.13 Fanning, Bryan J. with Roland Erne. 2009. New Guests of the Irish Nation. Dublin, Ireland:Irish Academic Press, pg.137.14 Barret, Alan, and David Duffy. 2008. Are Ireland's Immigrants Integrating into Its LaborMarket? International Migration Review 42, no. 3:597-619.15 O'Connell, Phillip, and McGinnity, Frances. 2008. Immigrants at work: Ethnicity andnationality in the Irish labor market. Dublin, Ireland: The Equality Authority and Economicand Social Research Institute.16 The peak of literature was in the period of late 1990s to early 2000s, coinciding with thenumbers of asylum seekers and refugees granted residence in Ireland. Mac Einri, Piaras andAllen White. 2008. Immigration into the Republic of Ireland: a bibliography of recent

6


7/49

an important topic, it is illustrative of the shared state and scholarly

preoccupation with the most troubling of migrant categories and their

over-representation in discourses on immigration. In addition to this

literature, there is an increasing amount of literature on immigration to

Ireland which focuses on racism, nationalism, and citizenship. However, a

significant proportion of it is in the domain of public policy analysis, focusing

on providing suggestions for successful integration. Scholars appear to be

quite often17 producing policy advice on their own or in collaboration with

various NGOs with titles such as Racist attitudes in Ireland: baseline

research for the anti-racism awareness-raising programme.18

Another significant portion of migrant labor literature could bedescribed as taking a standard economic approach. It focuses on

macroeconomic and microeconomic impacts on the national economy and

immigrants, their earnings, and labor market integration. The labor

literature also tends to focus on integration and ethnicity, for example, how

Polish migrants adapt to market conditions;19 migrant workers in particular

sectors of the economy e.g. low-wage, high-tech, or health-care and

whether reliance on unlimited immigration is a sustainable economicstrategy.20

research. Irish Geography, 41, no.2: 159.17 One exception to the policy-oriented literature includes the work by Ronit Lentin and

Steve Loyal. These scholars employ a critical analysis of the state as an agent of racism

through its institutional exclusion, and discourses and practices of biopolitics. However their

approach is in a minority, as it centers the state as a problem rather than a solution to

regulate local racisms. Lentin, Ronit. 2007. Ireland: Racial state and crisis racism. Ethnic andRacial Studies 30, no. 4:610-627; Loyal, S., 2003. Welcome to the Celtic tiger: racism,immigration and the state. In: C. Coulter and S. Coleman, eds. The end of Irish history?Critical reflections on the Celtic tiger. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 74-94.18 Garner, Steve and Allen White, 2001, Racist attitudes in Ireland: baseline research foranti-racism awareness-raising programme, Dublin: Department of Justice, Equality and LawReform.19 Grabowska, Izabel. 2005. Changes in the international mobility of labour: job migration ofPolish nationals to Ireland. Irish Journal of Sociology14, no. 1:27-44.20 Bruff, Ian, 2007. The role of I.T. migrants working in Ireland: the uneasy and unstablerelationship between skills shortages and career choices. Migrationonline.cz, Theme:Political Economy of Migration and Mobility in the EU, Prague: Multicultural Centre; Yeates,Nicola. 2004. A dialogue with 'global care chain' analysis: nurse migration in the Irish

7


8/49

In addition to the more critical analyses focusing on social exclusion of

migrants, there are numerous scholarly accounts that present the Irish case

as a rather positive or even exceptional one in terms of integration,

tolerance, and lack of extreme right politics that are thriving elsewhere in

Western Europe. 21 For example, Bacik, an academic who writes for popular

audience paints a picture of Ireland as evolved from its conservativism and

provincialism into a progressive and diverse society, a symbol of economic

success for all small states in Europe.22

A few scholars highlight that numerous NGOs as well as governmental

bodies were established to deal specifically with integration, and probably in

the most notable symbolic gesture by creating the post of the Minister for

Integration. However, often these policy bodies appear to be operating

through the rationalities and language of the racial state.23 Mac Einri and

White, the authors of most comprehensive overview of research bibliography

on immigration to Ireland, argue that there is a danger in perpetuating Irish

exceptionalism by academics and NGOs. The problem with this scholarship

appears to be a combination of theoretical and institutional limits.Institutionally there exists pressures to produce research quickly, justified by

the newness of the immigration (a myth that is being increasingly

challenged). Theoretically, scholars tend to analyze Ireland as localized

within its nation-state borders and not located within globalised systems

and movements of people, capital, and things.24

context. Feminist Review 77, 79-95;21 See for example O'Malley, Eoin. 2008. Why There is No Radical Right Party in Ireland?West European Politics 31, no. 5: 960-977.22 Ivana Bacik, 2004, Kicking and screaming: Dragging Ireland into the 21stcentury, Dublin:

The OBrian Press, pg.9.23Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh. 2006.After Optimism? Ireland, Racism, andGlobalization. Metro Eireann Publications. Pg. 69-70.24 Mac Einri, Piaras and Allen White. 2008. Immigration into the Republic of Ireland: abibliography of recent research. Irish Geography, 41, no.2: 151-179

8


9/49

Although there has been increased scholarly focus on migrants in

Ireland, there are still relatively few critical interrogations on migrant labor

organizing (see Arqueros (2006) for an exception), or the establishment and

management of Irelands migration regime.25 For example, Dundon et al

(2007) looked at migrant labor integration and asked how unions facilitated

the process, if at all, and what were the obstacles to migrants joining the

unions. However, while they identified some problems with union organizing

and legal obstacles on the part of the state, the paper appeared to be a

largely uncritical and mostly empirical account of union practices.26

With respect to migrant organizing, this lacuna is especially surprising

given the amount of policy-related publications that have addressed this

topic. For example, there have been number of publications dealing with the

mushroom industry, which was showcased as an extreme case of labor

exploitation, as well as a success case of union organizing, state

intervention, and the change of conditions.27 However, there appears to be

relative silence about working conditions in the agricultural sector now since,

generally, new reports focus on urban centers.28 In general, however, there

has been increased scholarly interest in migrant labor organizing, especiallyin the US. In Europe, the US experience is seen as cutting edge by

providing new and innovative organizing models. Specifically, scholars argue

25 Exceptions would be Lentin, Ronit. 2007. Ireland: racial state and crisis racism. Ethnicand Racial Studies. 30, no 4: 620-627; Kieran, Allen. Neo-liberalism and immigration inImmigration and social change in the Republic of Ireland, ed. Bryan Fanning, Manchesterand New York, Manchester University Press, 84-9626 Dundon, Tony, Maria-Alejandra Gonzalez-Perez, and Terrence McDonough. 2007. Bitten bythe Celtic Tiger: Immigrant Workers and Industrial Relations in the New Glocalized Ireland.

Economic and Industrial Democracy28, no. 4:501-522.27 For example, Arqueros, Fransisco. 2006. Low Wages, Migrant Labour and Politics of IrishMushroom Industry. Irish Journal of Anthropology9, no. 3:45-55.28 Quite exceptionally Migrants Rights Center Ireland, Dublin based NGO produced series of

reports in industries that are widely considered as particularly exploitative. See for example

Exploitation in Irelands Restaurant Industry, (2008), Enabling Equality: Migrant Women in

Rural Ireland(2008), Private Homes: A Public Concern: The Experience of Twenty Migrant

Women Employed in the Private Home in Ireland (2004) MRCI, Dublin Ireland, December

2008.

9


10/49

that migrant organizing is the new frontier for union politics that promises to

revive the stagnating labor movement.29 The literature on migrant labor in

Ireland, as well as unions themselves, could benefit from comparative

studies even if there are enormous contextual differences between Ireland

and the US. For example, in a scholarly literature on Ireland there are no

references to migrant labor organizing in a state such as California, which,

similarly to Ireland, experienced dramatic demographic changes, major shifts

in the economy, and had unions and migrants themselves respond in new

and creative ways, including worker centers, student-labor, consumer-labor,

and religious-labor alliances. This points out to limited scholarly

preoccupation with Ireland as confined place mentioned earlier.

Overall, there appears to be several accounts of the Irish state which

utilize theories of neoliberalism, biopolitics, and governmentality, however,

there seems to be no consolidation of those distinct literatures to connect

migrant labor organizing, unions, migration regime, and Social Partnership.

An attempt is made by Breda Gray who utilizes concepts of governmentality

and neoliberalism in deconstructing policy reports that are concerned with

immigrant integration in Ireland and Irish emigrant integration abroad.30

Although various contradictions and neoliberal rationalities of the Partnership

and the nation-state are exposed, the article does not look at how unions

challenge or contribute to neoliberal integration policies. Kieran Allen, for

example, utilizes the concept of neoliberalism to argue that the political left

and labor union movement have been co-opted and workers have been

taking on a disproportionate burden in comparison to capital, which emerged

29 See for example, Ruth Milkman. 2006, L.A. story: Immigrant workers and the future of theU.S. labor movement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Ruth Milkman (Ed.). 2000.Organizing immigrants: The challenge for unions in contemporary California. Ithaca, NY: ILRPress; Immanuel Ness. 2005. Immigrants, unions, and the new U.S. labor market.Philadelphia: Temple University Press; Jayraman, Sarumathi and Immanuel Ness (Eds.).2005. The new urban immigrant workforce: Innovative models for labor organizing. Armonk,NY: M.E. Sharpe.30 Breda Gray, 2006, Migrant Integration Policy: A Nationalist Fantasy of Management andControl? Translocations, Vol. 1(1), pp. 118-138.

10


11/49

as a main beneficiary through Social Partnership. However, he does not

deepen his analysis in how labor unions are facilitating the biopolitical

dimension of neoliberal governmentality through their rationalities and

practices. His analytical lens to interrogate Irelands transformation does not

go outside the political economy approach to neoliberalism, which, despite

its utility, has certain shortcomings. On the other hand, Lentin, who employs

Foucauldian theories to analyze Irelands racial state, overlooks unions and

Social Partnership almost entirely. For example, in the book with McVeigh,

which appears to be one of the most critical accounts of Ireland, unions are

mentioned only in passing. For example, Lentin and MacVeigh state that

unions, along with state and capital, not only came to the consensus that

immigration is inevitable, but also beneficial to Ireland although migrant

workers themselves are valued only for their human capital.31

Although there are some appealing theoretical calls to reconsider

migration and the history of capitalism from the perspective of workers

mobility,32 this paper will argue that the migration regime is employed to

encourage certain mobilities and prevent others, largely for the needs of

(global) capital, by utilizing biopolitical state technologies.

* * * * *

The first section of this paper entitled Local/national/global Ireland

locates Ireland within larger global processes and debates about the

economic and political changes. It reviews the concept of neoliberalism and

its relation to capitalism and advices attention to local specificities. Then, it

describes Social Partnership and situates its role in Irelands economic

growth and success. It will argue that Social Partnership appeared to be

one of the central elements in facilitating the emergence of non-ideological

31 Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh. 2006:32 The concept is attributed to Antonio Negri in Papadopoulos, Dimitris, Stephenson, Niamh, and Vassilis Tsianos.

2008.Escape routes: Control and subversion in the 21stcentury. Ann Arbor: Pluto Press, pg.203.

11


12/49

space in which the direction of the globalized national development became

institutionalized. In the section State of economy and economy of the

state, the theories of neo-Foucauldian governmentality and state will be

discussed followed by the examples of how they apply to Ireland. On the

non-ideological space of Irish politics examines how unions contribute to

the creation and maintenance of neoliberal spaces from workplace to

national politics. The section entitled Productive immigrant bodies as

neoliberal subjects will analyze how immigrants are constructed as

neoliberal subjects. However, while the migration regime attempts to

facilitate neoliberal migrant docility and value as mere human capital, the

process is far from effective or uncontested. The last section, Migrant

workers, labor unions, and the limits of solidarity will elaborate on union

organizing practices, alternative models, and will point out limits and

possibilities for re-envisioning different labor politics.

LOCAL/NATIONAL/GLOBAL IRELAND

I suppose, we are open economy, operating in a global system. (David Joyce,

representative from Irish Congress of Trade Unions)33

Since the late 1970s, the Western world has been taking an

increasingly neoliberal direction. The fall of the Soviet Union in particular

allowed for pronouncements of the end of history, and neoliberalism

became the de facto most effective and non-ideological way to govern

societies. There have been various approaches to the study of

neoliberalism, which attempt to explain why and how it emerged. This

section links the growing dominance of neoliberal capitalism with the

emergence of Irelands Social Partnership, and points to the applicability and

limits of the political economy approach to neoliberalism. Neoliberalism

usually refers to a combination of economic, social, and political practices

and institutional rearrangements. It dates back to late 1970s and early

33 David Joyce.

12


13/49

1980s, emblematized by the governments of Thatcher in the UK and Reagan

in the US. A typical definition of neoliberalism often looks like this:

the attempt to restructure global capitalism by moving towards a greater

degree of market liberalization, deregulation, privatization, competitivity,productivity and profitability. It involves breaking down barriers to trade and

competition, remoulding the state and reorganizing its functions to serve

those purposes. It fosters individualism, economic man and inequality, at

the expense of collectivism, solidarity and egalitarianism. It aims at the

extension of the market and the entrepreneurial ethic to all corners of the

globe and the commodification of all aspects of contemporary life.34

While neoliberal reforms caused economic and social turmoil in other

countries, Ireland was able to successfully take advantage of the

restructuring of global capitalism largely through the establishment of Social

Partnership. Irelands subsequent economic growth can be attributed to the

combination of state-facilitated foreign direct investment, EU funds, and a

focus on social capital (e.g. education). However, Social Partnership,

established in 1987, was critical because it provided a permanent forum to

bring together and foster agreement between usually conflicting parties: the

government, businesses, and the labor unions.35 Social Partnership was first

proposed by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU), an umbrella

organization of Irish unions, during a severe economic downturn. The first

Social Partnership agreement entailed a restrain on wage increases for

workers and various government incentives to stimulate employment,

investment, and economic growth. The basic goal of the Partnership was the

creation of an active relationship based on recognition ofcommon interest

to secure the competitiveness, viability and prosperity of the enterprise.36

Thus, the Partnership was an essential tool in Irelands rapidneoliberalization.

34 Daniels, Gary and John McIIroy. 2009. Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World. New York:Routledge. Pg.435DArt, Daryl and Thomas Turner. 2005. Union recognition and partnership at work: a newlegitimacy for Irish trade unions? Industrial Relations Journal, 36:2, pg.12136Partnership 2000 for Inclusion, Employment and Competitiveness, quoted in DArtandTurner, 2005: 122. (italics mine).

13


14/49

Since its establishment, the Partnership has been assessed and

renegotiated every 3 years till 2005, when a longer term plan Towards

2016 was agreed upon.37 Although not all parties in the Partnership gained

from it equally, the Partnership agreement was intended to foster a social

welfare regime as well as to close the social gap between the rich and the

poor. According, to Allen, corporate welfare was instituted instead. Also,

despite its economic boom, Ireland remained above the EU average in

poverty indicators.38

One significant characteristic of Irelands economic success was the

active participation of the nation-state in Social Partnership. This clearlyexemplifies how neoliberalization transformed the nation-state instead of

eroding its powers as is usually assumed. One of the central paradoxes of

neoliberal ideology is that state regulation is seen as an obstacle to market

self-regulation and efficiency, while simultaneously the state is always

actively involved in creating and protecting conditions for capital

accumulation. Addressing this paradox specifically in Ireland, Allen states

Labour is treated as a mere commodity that has to adjust to the laws ofsupply and demand, but, prior to its entry on the market, state mechanisms

have been designed to ensure an outcome favorable to the corporations.39

Over the past few decades there has been an enormous amount of literature

that argued that one of the main features of globalization was the

diminishing role and importance of the state.40 The crucial function that the

nation-state continues to occupy in Social Partnership reveals its centrality in

37

ICTU, Social Partnership in Ireland, 2009, available at http://www.ictu.ie/partnership38Allen, Kieran. 2007. The corporate takeover of Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.

Pg.61; Callan, Tim, Mary J. Keeney, Brian Nolan, and Bertrand Maitre, 2004, "Why is RelativeIncome Poverty so High in Ireland?," Research Series, Economic and Social ResearchInstitute (ESRI)39Allen, Kieran. 2007. Neo-liberalism and immigration. In Immigration and Social Change inthe Republic of Ireland. Ed. Bryan Fanning (ed). Manchester: Manchester University Press.40 For a review of debates and criticism of nation state decline thesis see Mann, Michael.1997. Has globalization ended the rise and rise of the nation-state? Review ofinternational political economy. 4:3, 472-496.

14


15/49

facilitating Irelands economic growth. Lentin and McVeigh summarize the

perspective of numerous scholars who argue that:

while the Republic of Irelands spectacular economic growth [] may seem

a text book case of free market globalisation, various commentators []argue that Irelands new found economic success is anything but free market,being driven in large measures by precisely the kind of institutions that theright despises: an interventionist government, public servants, the socialdemocrats of the European Union and the trade union movement.41

While scholars have highlighted the role that the nation-state plays in Social

Partnership, it is important to situate Irelands emergence as a booming

economy within globalizing capitalism.42 In fact, Ireland is occasionally

ranked as number one most globalized country in the world.43 Through Social

Partnership, Ireland was able to situate itself within global circuits of capital

and for a time, profit immensely from it. However, Irelands economic

success was also enabled by increased labor migration from countries

around the world. This necessitated increased regulation and solidified the

nation-states importance through its role in the management of migration.

Not only did the nation-state play an important role in Irelands

neoliberalization, the more surprising partners who participated are the laborunions. Labor unions typically, serve as an example of institutional collective

power. In most literature on neoliberalism they are portrayed as in decline

and under neoliberal assault. There is a good rationale for that it is not a

coincidence that one of the major features in the rise of neoliberal policies

41 Ronit Lentin and Robbie McVeigh. 2006.After Optimism? Ireland, Racism, andGlobalization. Metro Eireann PublicationsPg. 3042

Castree et al perspective is instructive here for using the term global capitalism. Globalcapitalism is really a multitude of local capitalisms that are connected by flows of people,goods and information.[]By the term global capitalism we mean to register the factcapitalism is today the normal economic system worldwide without implying it is globalizedin the sense of embroiling all places and countries equallyand uniformly. Castree, Noel,Neil M. McCoe, Kevin Ward, and Michael Samers. 2004. Spaces of work: global capitalismand geographies of labour. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Pg.1743A.T. Kearney/Foreign Policy Magazine Globalization Indexranked Ireland as Top 1 in 2001,2002, 2003 and other years within the Top 10. Accessed March 20th,http://www.atkearney.com/main.taf?p=5,4,1,127

15


16/49

was systemic onslaught on labor unions especially in the US and UK.44 Labor

unions clearly were seen as a threat, or at least an obstacle, to the neoliberal

project. This paper, however, argues that, at least in Ireland, unions are by

no means outside or in serious opposition to capital and the state, but rather

work in a productive relationship under Social Partnership agreement. While

initially unions entered the Partnership with pragmatic but ambiguous

aspirations, eventually the unions shifted from believing there was a conflict

of interest between capital and labour to viewing business as its actual

partner45

Scholars of political economy, many utilizing Marxist perspectives,

such as Kieran Allen, have revealed that unions have abandoned their

traditional interests, in addition to exposing the contradictions of free market

ideologies by revealing the role of the nation-state in managing the free

market. However, I argue that rather than seeing actors such as trade

unions and social democrats as pre- or anti-neoliberal it is important to

analyze how they became complicit with the neoliberal project. For example,

the EU and its social democrats are not simply preserving the European

social model but often are actively involved in efforts to privatize,deregulate, and, in short, to neoliberalize member nation-states.

Furthermore, it is not enough to expose how un-free the free market is, it is

also essential to show how various actors which in the past or present might

have held the appearance of opposition, different values and loyalties, might

be central in constituting regime of neoliberal governmentality. That is not to

suggest that there are no political differences or contradictions, or that

neoliberalism is an uncontestable totality. Labor unions appearto be

included as equal partners but in fact are subsumed under, or rather act as

44 The distinction should be made between savage neoliberalism of the 1980s from softneoliberalism of the 1990s where New Labour in the UK and New Democrats in the USemployed different strategies to deal with, or more accurately co-opt, the trade unionmovements through partnerships that are quite similar to Irelands. Daniels, Gary and JohnMcIIroy. 2009. Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World. New York: Routledge. Pg.4-5.45 Ibid, pg.218.

16


17/49

transmitters of, neoliberal governmentalities. Labor unions compromises,

acceptance of certain rationalities and even occasional conflict within this

power nexus is inherently incapable of resolving the contradictions that it

sought to overcome through establishing of Social Partnership. Exposing the

underlying rationalities of Social Partnership can provide a new range of

strategies for re-politicization of unionism, opening new political spaces, and

forming theoretical interventions that can be utilized to challenge prevailing

discourses that adhere to the inevitability of liberal capitalism and its

inevitable exclusions.

However, following Lemke,46 this paper is not meant to suggest that

new forms of economic and political organization are merely destroying older

and better forms; it does not suggests that traditional industrial unionism

or the paternalistic social democratic state offer desirable models to aspire

to. However, the labor union, as a space of collectivity, could be an

important site for political intervention against the neoliberalization of

society. In this paper I utilize a neo-Foucauldian approach to make legible

the diverse ways that neoliberal rationalities, or technologies of rule, are

deployed in order to effect government at a distance to transform andproduce subjects and spaces. As valuable as political economy approach to

neoliberalism is for asking why?, it is limited to capture the how? of

power realignments that the concept of neoliberal governmentality might

allow

STATE OF ECONOMY ANDECONOMY OF THE STATE

[T]he intellectual instrument, the type of calculation or form of rationality that

made possible the self-limitation of governmental reason was not the law.What is it, starting from the middle of the eighteenth century? Obviously, it ispolitical economy.47(Michel Foucault).

46 Thomas Lemke, Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique, Paper presented at theRethinking Marxism Conference, University of Amherst (MA), September 21-24, 2000:9.

47Michel Foucault. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-

1979, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pg.13.

17


18/49

Foucault made a distinction between liberalism, in which the state

guaranteed and respected markets role in society, and neoliberalism, where

market became a measure, truth, and logic of society.48According to

Rudnyckyj, governmentality is a specifically modern practice of politics that

acts on action. It involves the application of knowledge toward a population

in order to achieve effects that are deemed simultaneously beneficial for an

individual, a collectivity, and a state49 It refers to how a multiplicity of

technologies, discourses, and practices rationalize relational power.50

With neoliberal governmentality, the state, through a variety of its

technologies, preoccupies itself with governing through distance, appearingoutside of decision making, as well as through the guidance of the

individuals pursuit of her or his own interest.51 Neoliberal governmentality

refers to de-statization of the state, in which the state does not lose its

influence but transforms itself and increasingly creates an appearance of

governance in partnership with non-state actors, as well as by fostering the

production of self-regulating bodies.52 Neoliberal governmentality is also a

useful concept because it does not imply the enforcement of socialhomogeneity, but rather it cultivates and optimizes differences.53 For

example, it allows asking how various government technologies become an

instrument not only to manage migrant flows, but also to capitalize on

discourses of generosity (the right to be in Ireland is a gift of the state54),

tolerance, integration, and interculturalism in order to facilitate effective

48 Thomas Lemke, (2001). 'The birth of bio-politics': Michel Foucault's lecture at the Collgede France on neo-liberal governmentality. Economy and Society 30 (2), 198.49

Rudnyckyj, Daromir. 2004. Technologies of Servitude: Governmentality and IndonesianTransnational Labor MigrationAnthropological Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 3, pg.41050 Traub-Werner, Marion, 2007, Free Trade: A Governmentality Approach, Environmentand Planning A, vol. 39, pg.144251 Traub-Werner, 2007: 1444-1446 is quoting Rose, 1999 and Dean, 1999.52 Silvia Posocco, 2008, Globalisation, governmentality and failure through the prism ofPetn, Guatemala London School of Economics, Gender Institute, New Working PaperSeries, 23: 9.53 Lemke 2001: 200.54 Mark Maguire. Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 15th January, 2009.

18


19/49

governmentality. The common criticism of a governmentality approach,

though, is that it usually has very little empirical or specific analysis to

substantiate theoretical claims about just how exactly neoliberal subjects are

constituted and ruled.55 This paper, while aware of these limitations,

suggest that neoliberal governmentality is a useful concept in understanding

Irish politics of immigration and labor unionism, where the economy at its

broadest sense, often indirectly, takes a central role in (self)governance of

the individual and becomes a national purpose as well.

Rather than seeing the nation-state as weakened or irrelevant against

the global financial or political forces, the role of the nation-state should be

analyzed by examining how it transforms itself and to what end. If we take

the premise that in neoliberalism, it is the market form which serves as the

organizing principles for the state and society56 it becomes necessary to

analyze various actors, not only capital, as reproducing market logic. Thus,

instead of understanding the labor unions and various civil society players

as outside market logic we can trace how they are instrumental to the

marketization of society and production of good workers and/or citizens.

Such an articulation calls for examination of how the effects of

consensus, unity and beneficence are created, even if, quite clearly, there

are always competing and conflicting interests at work. The state it is not

simply unified in its service for capital, but operates through various,

sometimes competing, rationalities. According to Foucault, The state is

nothing else but the mobile effect of a regime of multiple

governmentalities.57

55 Katharyne Mitchell. 2006. Neoliberal governmentality in the European Union: education,training, and technologies of citizenship. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,vol.24, pg.390.56 Lemke 2000:9.57Michel Foucault. 2008.The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pg.77.

19


20/49

However, what happens when the state care for the well being of

populations and individuals get differentiated to include and exclude various

internal and external others? Legal status, citizenship, ethnic origins, skin

color, and geopolitical alignments get utilized but are never fully managed

nor rationalized, therefore, creating possibilities for contestation. Insights

from someone dealing with different government bodies are instructive here

to illustrate the point. Catherine Cosgrave, Senior legal adviser from the

Immigrant Council of Ireland (an NGO which provides legal assistance to

immigrants and lobbies for policy changes) states:

The perspective of the Department of Enterprise [, Trade, and Employment]is to get people in. If they have employers saying we have jobs, our economy

needs them, etcetera, they are quick to respond to that and they want theprocedures to be there that will enable it all to function in the interest ofeconomy. []It is probably a bit more difficult when you dealing with theDepartment of Justice, not only in Ireland but in any country, where the lensthat they have is around security, border control, and clamping down onillegal immigration. And they are not necessarily willing to take arguments onboard that you have to make access easy. Its about making access noteasy.58

In addition, competing rationalities articulated by Cosgrave are not merely

expressions of the local but also are intertwined with pressures, interests,

and commitments to other supra/inter/trans-national bodies such as EU,

IOM, WTO, in what could be described as transnational governmentality.59

There are limits to the power of the nation-state. Although there appears to

be constant compromises made with exterior political and economic

bodies, the state is firmly loyal to the accommodation of foreign direct

investment even if it comes at the expense of local commitments such as

Social Partnership. For example, Noel Dowling, states that:

in this country, about 100,000 jobs depend on foreign direct investment,mostly American, in the important sectors of the economy because theyinfluence our exports hugely, companies like Pfizer, Intel and so on. They

58 Catharine Cosgrave. Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 14th January,200959 Ferguson, James and Akhil Gupta (2002). Spatializing states: Toward an ethnography ofneoliberal governmentality.American Ethnologist 29 (4), 988.

20


21/49

have their own organization called American Chambers of Commerce. Theywould lobby the government and say, well, if you keep enacting laws thatprotect workers here, particularly any kind of law that would require to dealwith trade unions, then we will pull out our investment altogether. So thats abig difficulty we have to fight in an open economy.60

So while there might be significant pressures to change the law, improve

working conditions, increase regulation by workers, NGOs, and elements

within the trade union movements, some economic actors appears to be de

facto exempt from any intervention. Overall, this scheme, particularly within

the private sector, seems to be a rule rather than exception. More

importantly, it calls for more examination how, through their discursive

practices, oppositional actors might, in fact, contribute to neoliberal

governmentality rather than challenge it.

ON THE NON-IDEOLOGICAL SPACE OF IRISH POLITICS61

Foucaults discussion of neo-liberal governmentality shows that the so-called

retreat of the state is in fact a prolongation of government, neo-liberalism

is not the end but a transformation of politics, that restructures the power

relations in society. What we observe today is not a diminishment or a

reduction of state sovereignty and planning capacities but a displacement

from formal to informal techniques of government and the appearance of

new actors on the scene of government (e.g. NGOs), that indicatefundamental transformations in statehood and a new relation between state

and civil society actors. (Thomas Lemke)62

The above quote captures the processes that have been taking place

in Ireland. The non-state actors such as NGOs are exemplary of the shift to

governmental forms of power. However, the gap in theorizing such non-

state actors is precisely in the lack of emphasis on labor unions and their

role in transforming earlier forms of political engagement. In this section Iexamine the neoliberal rationalities internalized by the unions themselves. I

60 Noel Dowling. Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 13th January, 2009.61 I am borrowing the term from Antoniades, Andreas. 2007. Examining facets of thehegemonic: The globalization discourse in Greece and Ireland. Review of international

political economy. 14:2, pg. 314.62Thomas Lemke, Foucault, Governmentality, and Critique, Paper presented at theRethinking Marxism Conference, University of Amherst (MA), September 21-24, 2000: 11..

21


22/49

argue that the discourses and practices of the labor unions have helped

create non-ideological political spaces, which are underpinned by neoliberal

rationalities.

The most significant space to consider is the one produced by Social

Partnership. Social Partnership a form of negotiated governance63 - was

established and, ironically, advocated by the unions as a defense against

neoliberal policies of deregulation, privatization and union marginalization.

64 However, it appears that the Partnership not only was unable to resist the

neoliberalization of Ireland but in many ways was central to it. The

Partnership espouses ideals of competition, self-governance, individual self-

interest and ceding the control of the workplace to employers. Although

unions appears to be concerned with workers and are active in lobbying the

government for laws and regulations to protect wages, terms, and

conditions, overall, their influence is rather limited. As Allen suggests:

In Ireland, pressure for flexibility comes directly through Social Partnership

agreements. Whereas in the past workers were granted pay rises in response

to rising rates of inflation, today they must first show verifiable

improvements in productivity to get a pay rise. The remarkable fact about

Social Partnership is that there is little sharing between the partners. The

Irish workforce is expected to show continual improvements in productivity astheir unions effectively cede to management growing control over

organization of work.65

For example, an editorial on the Irish Business and Employer Confederations

website states: Unions must realise that you get nothing for nothing.66 The

statement illustrates prevailing neoliberal ideals of adherence to self-

governance, good conduct, and deservedness, which then are fairly

rewarded. The unions, however, cannot be seen as mere victims that obey

63 ODonnel, Rory. 2008. The partnership state: building the ship at sea, in Contesting thestate: Lessons from the Irish case, (eds) Maura Adshead et al. Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press. Pg.73.64 DArt, Daryl and Thomas Turner. 2005. Union recognition and partnership at work: a newlegitimacy for Irish trade unions? Industrial Relations Journal, 36:2, pg.12165 Allen, Kieran. 2007. The corporate takeover of Ireland. Dublin: Irish Academic Press. Pg.1166http://www.ibec.ie/ibec/press/presspublicationsdoclib3.nsf/wvPCICCC/1A52FAF1CB7250E48

0256A0B003180F6?OpenDocument

22


23/49

employer driven agendas. The choices they made entering Social Partnership

paid off with economic growth and prosperity. The other side of the bargain

was that it diminished workplace democracy, outsourced conflicts to ever-

higher levels of representational bureaucracy and legal arrangements,

decreased union recognition within workplaces, and accepted de facto non-

union workplace as a norm for foreign direct investment.67 According to

Higgins:

With the so-called Partnership there has been a significant drop-off in tradeunion internal life and activity, because all the negotiations were done at thesenior level, whereas previously you had negotiations at the shop stewardlevel, at the plant level, factory level. [Now] there is very minorityparticipation by the members.68

Thus, keeping this aspect of Social Partnership in mind, the labor, and

particularly migrant labor, organizing (or lack thereof ) needs to be situated.

Union leadership (the ICTU in particular) facilitated the creation of

workplaces governed by the neoliberal rationalities of self-regulation,

productivity, and micro-management. This was achieved through a

combination of political defeats and union leadership decisions as well as

technologies of governmentality. The ICTU pronounced a new stage of

industrial relations from the clenched fist of confrontation to the open hand

of co-operation.69 Allen provides numerous reasons for why this occurred.

He argues that high-level deals within the Partnership often were done

without the support of the union membership creating ever widening political

and material gap between leaders and rank and file membership. 70 The

trade-off to collective power came through various Partnership incentives

that gave more power to union leaders in larger nation-state decision making

processes; however, this was not necessarily in the interest of the workers.

The Partnership started with wage moderations, however, even when the

67 Allen, 62; DArt, and Turner, 2005:226; Maguire 2009, Higgins 2009.68 Higgins 2009.69 Quoted in Kieran, Allen, 2000, The Celtic Tiger: The myth of social partnership in Ireland,(Manchester: Manchester University Press): 111.70 Ibid, 111.

23


24/49

wages started to increase, the workers usually had very little say in terms of

job cuts or privatization of the public sector. More importantly, the

workplace militancy was pacified via the discourse of employer and

employee interest convergence in espousing competitiveness as the cure for

economic troubles. Workers were increasingly being convinced by

employers as well as union leadership to enter into gain-sharing schemes

tied to worker performance and productivity.71

Allen states that internal union democracy was diminished by creating

business unionism and utilizing three main tactics, in which the

Partnerships role was central. First, the discourse of national economy as all

workers priority was created, diminishing sectoral and workplace priorities.

Second, restructuring the labor movement and providing state monetary

assistance and changes in law for smaller unions to merge into ever-larger

entities created increasingly centralized and bureaucratic union political

structures. Third, the Industrial Relations Act institutionalized greater

powers of union leadership and created legal obstacles for workplace

militancy, political strikes, and cross-union solidarity.72

An interesting case of the Partnerships consensus and the interplay

between facilitating certain transnational governmentalities and resisting

others can be seen in certain nation-state and EU interactions. For example,

in anticipation of regulation from outside national borders that might

interfere in industrial relations, there is a statement:

The Government is also committed to ongoing dialogue with parties on

potential implications arising from European Court of Justice cases that mayimpact on the domestic workplace, with a view to pursuing the objectives setout above. The Government will continue to encourage the Court to haveregard to the particular industrial relations traditions and cultures of Member

71 Ibid, 119.72 Ibid, 114-116.

24


25/49

States and, in particular, the unique voluntarist nature of industrial relationsin Ireland.73

The excerpt above comes from Social Partnership document. The unions,

apparently, are actively involved and supportive of EU non-interference and

continuation of industrial relations as they are in Ireland. The rapidly

neoliberalizing EU, potentially, might even impose more on workers rights

and influence. However, since the workers in Ireland have very few rights

already, it appears that a call for non-interference would be largely

benefiting already privileged employers.

These developments taken in a larger political context do not appear

to be surprising. According to Antoniades in the 1990s Ireland Fianna Fail,

Fine Gael and the Progressive Democrats74 set as their main governmental

objective to do whatever was required in order for Ireland to remain

attractive to mobile capital investments75 However, the Labour Party within

this discourse emerged as even more motivated to strengthen Irelands

commitment to a strong market economy based on competition.76

Although Ireland did not have same political realignments as the US and UK,

it appears to share some of the major features of the 1990s Third Wayideology, which according to Upchurch:

seeks to justify and facilitate the negation of class conflict in the workplaceand to replace traditional adversarial industrial relations with consensus andconsultation. Worker voice is valued as a way of tapping creativity and

73 Government of Ireland, Towards 2016: Review and Transitional Agreement, 2008-2009,Dublin, Ireland, pg.33.74

All of these are conservative parties, although Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are by far themost influential political parties in Ireland having a majority in all government structures.Conservative here of course, not meant to suggest that non-conservative parties arefundamentally different they also have been responsible for creating and adhering toneoliberal consensus.75 Antoniades, Andreas. 2007. Examining facets of the hegemonic: The globalizationdiscourse in Greece and Ireland. Review of international political economy. 14:2, pg.314.76 Ibid, 314. However, Antoniades calls these developments to be contextualized within theEU politics which since the 1990s in particular advocated flexibility and market reforms toremain competitive globally.

25


26/49

innovation, but the role of trade unions is downplayed and multi-channelforms of representation, both direct and indirect, are emphasized instead.77

By 2008, in times of financial crisis, the language remains capital centered

and the states social spending is the only avenue that is need of serious

reform:

While Social Partnership has served to underpin competiveness and achievedifficult reforms in previous times of budgetary constraints, it is importantthatpartners continue to remain both relevant and responsive to economicand social conditions. The immediate challenges are now restraining fiscalstability, improving cost competitiveness, reforming delivery of publicservices and supporting the competitiveness of our exporting sectors.78

Another example of how conflict is transformed into a non-ideological space

through governmental rule involving immigrant labor is the case of Irish

Ferries. This is an illustration of the Partnerships responsiveness to

economic and social conditions. Irish Ferries, which is Irelands largest sea

shipping company, in 2005 announced that it will lay off its Irish staff,

register its ships in Cyprus, and will hire foreign workers (Latvians in

particular) for a mere fraction of the wages paid to Irish workers. ICTU

responded to this threat by calling for mass protests which accounted for

100,000 people, the largest protest in more than 20 years.79

While unionswere praised for not taking a xenophobic stance against the foreigner

workers by calling for equal pay and rights for all, in the end, according to

the Joe Higgins, the trade unions leadership sold out80 by coming into

agreement with the company. The Irish workers did get fired made

redundant in the name of competiveness81 - and got replaced by foreign

workers, although under the union negotiated minimum wage requirements.

77 Martin Upchurch. 2009. Partnership: New Labours Third Way? In Trade Unions in aNeoliberal World, eds. GaryDaniels and John McIIroy. New York: Routledge, Pg.246.78 The National Competitiveness Council, Annual Competitiveness Report: IrelandsCompetitiveness Challenge, Vol. 2, available athttp://www.competitiveness.ie/media/ncc090108_acc_2008.pdf, pg.2579Krings, Torben. 2007. Irish Ferries, labour migration and the spectre of displacement. InBest of Times? The Social impact of the Celtic Tiger, edited by Tony Fahey, Helen Russel andChristopher Whelan T. Dublin, Ireland: Institute of Public Administration.80Higgins, Joe. Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 10th January, 2009.81 Krings, pg.33.

26
http://www.competitiveness.ie/media/ncc090108_acc_2008.pdfhttp://www.competitiveness.ie/media/ncc090108_acc_2008.pdf


27/49

However, this case serves not as much to illustrate the race-to-the-

bottom thesis that critics of globalization often invoke as much as the

intricate relationship that the government, capital, and the unions have.

Even if the appearance of conflict (mobilized public, demonstrations, and

angry statements on behalf of unions) might give an impression of politics,

the Irish Ferries case works as an example of neoliberal governmentality at

work and the submersion of the social under the economic: the sacred ideals

of competitiveness and compromise must prevail by any means. The union

leadership was able to navigate conflicting interests by fulfilling everyones

expectations. It responded to exploitation and evoked confrontation with

government and business in order to justify itself to their worker

constituency and acted pragmatically as a Social Partner by accepting the

superiority of capital and free market laws.

The rhetoric that is articulated in such disputes on the part of

defenders is that global forces from the outside are so powerful that the only

way to adjust or win in such situations is to compromise, be flexible, and

realistic. However, as Saskia Sassen articulates, the global is not simplyalways present outside the national borders and natural:

The global economy cannot be taken simply as given, whether what is givenis a set of markets or a function of the power of multinational corporations.

To the contrary, the global economy is something that has to be activelyimplemented, reproduced, serviced, and financed. It requires that a vastarray of highly specialized functions be carried out, that infrastructures besecured, the legislative environment be made and kept hospitable.82

The last example of non-ideological space that unions are complicit within is

their inability to challenge Irelands voluntarist model of industrial

relationships. Irelands Social Partnership agreement Towards 2016

among numerous economic and social policies prioritize commitments to

82 Sassen, Saskia. 2000. Spatialities and temporalities of the global: Elements for atheorization, in Public culture: Globalization, ed. Arjun Appadurai, Durham, NC: DukeUniversity Press, pg.216.

27


28/49

maintain industrial relations peace and stability and Irelands

competitiveness in a globalised world and the enhancement of the countrys

productive capacity through greater innovation in the workplace.83 Ireland

adheres to voluntarist model in which conflicts between employer and

employees are negotiated on a voluntary basis. This includes the recognition

of the union itself. While employee rights for free association are protected

under free speech laws, the employer is under no legal obligation to

recognize the union in a system of voluntary collective bargaining there is

no obligation on the other party to engage in bargaining.84 Social

Partnership was supposed to facilitate dialogue and foster union growth, in

reality, though, it had the opposite effects on union recognition and actually

resulted in increasing hostility towards the organizing efforts.85

As this section demonstrated, it is important to situate the creation of

consensus. Such consensus, or its appearance, was achieved by utilizing

local and transnational technologies of governmentality, including

rationalities employed by the Partnership and the unions, public

mobilizations, and legal measures. Concepts such as competitiveness,

growth, and innovation were not forced upon but presumably internalized bymajor political actors and the population at large. The immigrants, although

only those with desirable characteristics, were promoted as self-governing

subjects that would be not a drain on Irish society, but an asset.

PRODUCTIVE IMMIGRANT BODIES AS NEOLIBERAL SUBJECTS

[Social Partnership commits to] deepening capabilities, achieving higher

social and economic participation rates and more successfully handlingdiversity, including immigration.86 (Government of Ireland).

83 Government of Ireland, Towards 2016: Review and Transitional Agreement, 2008-2009,Dublin, Ireland, pg.13.84 Ibid, 29.85 DArt and Turner, 2005: 134.86 Government of Ireland, pg.8

28


29/49

Endless improvements in economic productivity and self-management are

some of the central facets of the neoliberalism. How Ireland markets its

population through its government sponsored Industrial Development

Agency can serve as an instructive example here. Among numerous graphs,

tables, and descriptions one can find statistics on demographic trends and

advantages that Ireland offers through its young, productive, and educated

working population. One of the slogans pronounce: The characteristics that

define Ireland are embedded in its people, their business and their attitude

to work and life. Knowledge is in their nature.87 Marketing of quality

people, in addition to some of the lowest taxes in the world, geographic

advantages of being close to continental Europe, language and other extra

benefits, functions as attraction to foreign capital. Immigration policy

beneficial to capital then is just another assumed element within the larger

biopolitical scheme.

Migration management becomes a crucial element of biopolitics.

Not only does it sort, evaluate, and discipline immigrants, but also regulates

conduct of the local population which identifies itself against the

immigrant others. Even if some migrants are overrepresented as draining,problematic, and insufficiently self-governing, the vast majority of

immigrants are primarily workers. The ideal workers, if they properly

conduct themselves, remain invisible, unless they are needed to enter the

field of representation to illustrate Irelands integration successes and

states generosity. However, the discursive conflation of immigrants as less

than workers (meaning non-deserving) becomes a site of contentious and

reactionary politics which obscure employer driven immigration to Ireland.

As such, panics over the immigrant reproduction, criminality, abuse of law,

trust, and generosity are utilized to mark particular migrant bodies as

suspect, beyond integration, and in need of either policing or expulsion.

Paradoxically, some immigrants, those that are seeking refugee status or

87IDA Ireland, Quality People, http://www.idaireland.com/home/index.aspx?id=33

29
http://www.idaireland.com/home/index.aspx?id=33http://www.idaireland.com/home/index.aspx?id=33


30/49

asylum, are put under scrutiny to distinguish whether they are not just mere

workers in disguise, as if economic and political can ever be truly

independent of each other. According to Lentin, constituting migrants as a

problem by successively calling asylum seekers bogus refugees,

economic migrants and illegal immigrants is leading to what Balibar

calls crisis racism in contemporary Ireland, where the state repeatedly

refuses to admit that its punitive migration policies lead to racism.88 While

the states role in facilitating racism is ambiguous and largely invisible, its

role in the commitment to social justice, anti-racism, and integration is

hyper-visible. Among various symbolic institutions and policy initiatives,

Social Partnership itself is an example where discourses of integration and

anti-racism appear to be high priority.

While there is variety of NGOs working on the issues of integration,

the state is an ultimate authority on how integration needs to be handled.

For example it was read as a strong message when the National

Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI) an

influential and widely respected advisory body to the government - was

dismantled by cutting 100% of its funding in December 2008. Despite theprotest from various NGOs, it became subsumed under the Ministry of

Integration. As a result, for example, the already long and complicated

process of filing an equality case now will take years to get through.89 The

case, however, points out to contradictions that neoliberal governmentality

does not operate within a unified logic. Contradictions are not outside

governmentality and the rational, but are rather constitutive of it. Re-

centering sovereign powers authority over (some) differences, points out

that there is no progressive, linear, and ever increasing governing through

distance, but rather, that governmentality is constituted by fluctuating,

contingent, and competing practices and rationalities.

88 Lentin and McVeigh, 2006: 75.89 Bill Abom. Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 13th January, 2009.

30


31/49

To illustrate competing rationalities at work, the work permit system

offers numerous insights into how nation-state, capital, and transnational

governmentality operate. The legal schemas that allowed immigrants to

enter Ireland have been drastically altered after the EU expansion of 2004.

Previously, the majority of the non-EU immigrant workers were coming under

a work permit arrangement. That arrangement was employer initiated: after

proving that no Irish or EU workers were found or qualified for the job, they

could hire foreigners with one year contracts which then could be renewed.

According to Gilmartin, The work permit system is a kind of indentured

labor. The employer holds the work permit, the employee cant move, that

system more than anything created conditions for exploitation. Some NGOs

and elements within labor unions perceived the work permit system as one

of the major problems in labor migration, and in fact, some slight changes

have been implemented recently. While the overall numbers of work permits

have been steadily declining since the EU expansion, the work permit system

remains a significant and important tool in migration management based on

biopolitical and neoliberal rationalities.

Unless the immigrant workers are required in certain approved areas

of labor shortage and making middle-income salaries, the need for work

permit system ceases to exist.90 All the labor needs for the low-wage work

were believed to be fulfilled by Eastern European workers. The high-skill

workers who make more than 60,000 Euros a year could come to Ireland

under the Green Card scheme, although contrary to the US, the employee

remains tied to the employer and has numerous restrictions in terms of

mobility.91 To prepare for anticipated abuse of the welfare system, a law

entitled the Habitual Residency Condition was introduced which aimed to

prevent claiming the social benefits unless providing documentation of90 Middle-income occupations, for example, in IT, health care, financial sectors making

between EUR 30,000 EUR 59,999.91 Catharine Cosgrave.

31


32/49

residency and employment of two years in Ireland. The government-initiated

2004 Citizenship Referendum effectively abolished the right for children born

in Ireland to get citizenship. The rallying point for this was to prevent

"citizenship tourism" in which the most visible abusers of the law were

African and Eastern European women.92 However, according to Maguire, an

often overlooked fact in the analysis of the referendum is the role that the

UK played in pressuring Ireland to change the law in fear of backdoor

immigration.93

In terms of the states biopolitical rationalities, white Eastern

European workers, as opposed to those more visibly marked from the global

South, were allowed entrance to alleviate ethno-national and racist anxieties

about social change and composition of the nation. This tendency,

admittedly, is not unique to Ireland this preference is part of the larger EU-

wide solution to immigration problem. Anecdotal examples about how

nation-state is not oblivious to ethnic difference can be seen in the handling

of so-called marriages of convenience that became of highest importance

to the state. State has been investigating anomalous marriages of Latvians

with Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis, which according to theDepartment of Justice, [.] was so statistically abnormal that they cannot

have occurred by chance.94 It illustrates not only racism of the state but

more significantly the workings of governmentality normalizing and

legitimizing surveillance of particular bodies and populations employing

statistical rationalities and knowledge discourses.

92 Steve Garner. 2007. Babies, Bodies and Entitlement: Gendered Aspects of Access toCitizenship in the Republic of Ireland. Parliamentary Affairs, pg.6.93 The UK and Irelands immigration policies are often identical because of Common TravelArea agreement. Mark Maguire. Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 15th

January, 2009.94 Reilly, Catharine, Justice Dept gathers evidence on marriages of conveniences, MetroEireann, October 2008.

32


33/49

In terms of capital, the abundance of cheap labor which does not

require any extra bureaucratic resource drainage associated with work

permits was seen as a gift of the state in times of labor shortage and

economic growth. Uncomplicated labor supply and ease of investment

created a space which became a pull factor for capital, because capital is

inherently oriented towards the elimination of spatial barriers to its

circulation process.95Capital also operates under different logic than the

state when it comes to difference. According to national organizer for SIPTU,

Noel Dowling:

at the end of the day, to be fair, Ive seen very little overt racism among Irish

employers. But thats because they would exploit anybody regardless of the

color.96

In addition, the decision to open the labor market caused anxieties

among the unions, but was welcomed by the business elites, since the

destabilization of any stagnant labor relations and fueling of productivity

through competition enhances capital accumulation. The statement that

capitalism is blind to difference, as suggested by SIPTU organizer, is, clearly,

only partially true. While capital might not have sensitivities and loyalties of

the state in maintaining dominant social values, it nevertheless, will eagerly

exploit the differences. For example, according to Wright when emphasis

lies on cutting labor costs and enhancing worker productivity, corporate

decisionmakers often rank the human resources found in different places by

correlating certain identities, such as national and gendered ones, with labor

skills, innate abilities, and militancy, to name a few.97

95 The idea attributed to Marx and Harvey, in Brenner 1999: 433.96 At the same time, talking about employers long term visions in which Eastern Europeanlabor will move either to higher paying jobs or migrate back to their home countries theycontemplated about where they would get next wave of immigrants and they were talkingabout Thailand and Malaysia because, as they saw, those workers were even moreproductive and more compliant than the Eastern European workers. Noel Dowling.Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 13th January, 2009.97 Wright, Mellisa W., The politics of relocation: Gender, nationality, and value in a Mexicanmaquiladora. Environment and Planning A, 31: 1601.

33


34/49

Another example of the discourse of migrant as neoliberal subject is in

the attempt to create an amnesty for undocumented immigrants. The

unions and MRCI lobbied government to create a bridging visa for

undocumented immigrants. The language and reasoning behind this call is

illustrative of neoliberal governmentality. First, the term bridging visa was

used and not an amnesty not to encourage illegal behaviors and create a

pull factor for various, assumingly, unwanted immigrants. Second,

according to SIPTU representative, government should administer the

system where any worker who was [in Ireland], who came here legallyand

was legally employed for a period of time and who can argue that the reason

they have become undocumented is through no fault of their own, that those

people would be [] be given a second chance and would be made legal

again.98 The language employed to describe the problem and the solution is

suggestive of good neoliberal self-governing subject an innocent, law-

abiding worker who should receive the states gift of being made legal

again.

The union leaderships complicity in the neoliberal migration

management scheme is also evident in their handling of certain aspects ofEU enlargement. When Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU, Ireland,

following the UKs decision, imposed labor market restrictions, justifying it

with hard economic times and fulfilled labor market needs. While several

voices expressed injustice and legal complication for Romanian and

Bulgarian workers, ICTU supported the decision arguing that changes in labor

market regulations and protections of migrant workers have not been

implemented. The rhetoric of lack of regulation disguises leaderships

complicity in trade-offs made by participating in the Partnership. While ICTU

presents itself as not taking anti-immigration stance, a representative

explains ICTUs position as following:

98 Noel Dowling. (Italics mine).

34


35/49

we are in favor of a managed labor market. We have no difficulty per se withthe concept of work permits. We would have views on how it is applied etcetera, but we have no difficulty with concept of someone needingpermission to work here.99

The statement in itself is not surprising, but it is instructive on how union

leadership is able to adjust to certain concepts of rules, fairness, and

inevitability (as in case of Irish Ferries) and not others for example,

Romanian and Bulgarian workers expecting to be treated as equal and

entitled to benefits by being part of the EU.

When it came to EU enlargement, the influx of Eastern Europeans had,

admittedly speculative, benefits of whiteness and religion (Catholic Poles

and Lithuanians the two largest constituencies from the new EU) to the

state. For the capital, the benefits were far greater. Not only did the open

labor market lift bureaucratic obstacles, it also offered cheaper high-skilled,

as well as low-wage, highly-educated workers (in fact the educational level

of immigrant labor force is higher than that of native Irish) that were seen

as temporary, therefore willing to endure unfair labor conditions and lower

pay. Furthermore, according to a major study on role of ethnicity in labor

market, Eastern European and Chinese workers were found to be least likely

to join labor unions in comparison to workers from other parts of the

world.100 The explanation for such trends is that workers experiences with

post/socialism translate into skepticism for any collective bureaucratic

structures. SIPTU, after realizing the historical context, had to explain that

the trade union movement was absolutelyindependent and wasnt an

agency or an arm of government. Such union representation is quite

problematic in and of itself, as this discourse of independence is beingchallenged throughout this paper. However, there remains a need for more

99 David Joyce.100 O'Connell, Phillip, and McGinnity, Frances. 2008. Immigrants at work: Ethnicity andnationality in the Irish labor market. Dublin, Ireland: The Equality Authority; Economic andSocial Research Institute.

35


36/49


37/49

contingency and competing rationalities serve as productive assets in the

managing of the social body. Whether postsocialist Eastern Europeans, who

are often seen as temporary workers with willingness to endure hardships, or

workers from other regions of the world coming through the work permit

system and bringing their specific skills, migrants are increasingly

administered through legal means and public discourses for their willingness

to self-actualize while contributing to the economic needs of the nation to

which they are expected to feel grateful.

MIGRANT WORKERS, LABOR UNIONS, AND LIMITS OF SOLIDARITY

Greater labour mobility, whenever it comes, will be beneficial. Thecompetitive challenge that lower-cost workers, whether from the EU 10 orelsewhere, will pose for the pampered, inflexible workforces of the old EU 15will exist anyway. Those who would keep out workers from the east will findtheir efforts as vain as attempts to fend off globalisation.104(The Economist)

There appears to be wide consensus that Irish labor unions, while they

could have done more to prepare themselves to respond to immigration, at

least did not take an anti-immigration stance. The opening of the Irish labor

market, along with UK and Sweden, to the 10 new EU member states, largely

from Central and Eastern Europe, was officially welcomed by the trade

unions on May 1st 2004.105 Although unions might have had some anxiety and

resentment for not being properly consulted on the governments decision,

once the labor market was opened, the unions did not have any other choice

than to embrace immigrants and try to recruit them into their membership.

The rationale is that without a proactive stance, immigrants will be exploited

and as a consequence they will drive down wages and conditions, and

undermine the limited power that unions have. As a result, Irelands largest

general union, SIPTU106, hired several Eastern European organizers to try to

help bridge the cultural and language gaps, especially since the scale of

immigration after the EU expansion was enormously underestimated.107

104 When east meets west. Economist; 2/11/2006, Vol. 378 Issue 8464, p47-48105 Noel Dowling. Interview by author. Tape recording. Dublin, Ireland, 13th January, 2009.106 Service, Industrial, Professional, and Technical Union.107Noel Dowling. Interview by author.

37


38/49

Unions reacted to high-visibility cases of exploitation such as the

extreme working conditions and underpayment of Turkish workers in a large

construction company, GAMA, which was frequently winning massive state

contracts.108 The mushroom industry also became exposed as having some

of the harshest sweatshop conditions. The conditions were revealed through

the involvement of the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) which attempted

to organize mushroom pickers, which were almost exclusively Eastern

European women. They launched a legal and media campaign and drew

SIPTUs support, which ended up with governments interference and

promise to regulate the industry.109

However, as apparently positive as these developments are, they

prove to be largely inadequate to deal with the scale of the problem. They

also are not characteristic of union efforts and practices but rather

exceptional, in addition of being largely initiated by outsider organizations

such as MRCI. Unions are focusing on the industries and workplaces that are

already unionized; union presence is strongest in the public sector, which is

extremely underrepresented by immigrant workers. With the exception ofsome areas of the health sector, which has significant numbers of

immigrants, the public sector seems to be relatively closed to immigrant

labor. David Joyce, rep

The Right to Stay in Ireland is a Gift of the State

Documents

Transcript of The Right to Stay in Ireland is a Gift of the State