Mobilità, turnover e lavoro/ Migrations, Turnover and Work

In this paper we argue that the turnover of labour and the mobility of workers across borders and labour markets are historically inter-related phenomena: both in the case when employers use racialised workforces to manage high levels of turnover, and in the case when migrants produces high levels of turnover and requires a continuous substitution with new sources of labour. Differently from those who continue to counter exit and voice, we suggest that the passage from individual escape to the struggle for better working conditions is rather quite fluid. In our paper we will focus in particular on two case studies: the first is that of labour turnover in situation of slave labour in North America, the second during the first years of the XX century at the Ford factory. These two case studies, respectively based on forms of unfree and free labour, are crucial on the one hand to illustrate the various ways in which the international mobility of labour is managed from above and on the other to illuminate the autonomous spaces and times of migrants’ mobility.