Majken Pedersen, University of Copenhagen The Naked Labour of Europe

Being a combination of functional integration¹ and capitalism the European project is based on the assumption that the economic exchange has an immanent logic that must be allowed to expand freely, i.e. without constraints in the form of national laws, rules, and regulations positively or negatively discriminating particular products and other factors of production. Deregulation of national control over markets will supposedly support the orbit of capitalism while capitalism on its part will facilitate the European integration process through its expansionary and deterritorializing tendency - or as Marx put it, its drive to 'annihilate space by time' (in Brenner 1999: 42). The integration process is accelerated by the impulsion of capitalism to abolish all territorial limits to the accumulation process in its pursuit for cheaper raw materials, new markets for its products, new ideas, new opportunities for investment, and skilled labour (ibid.; Deleuze & Guttari 1999: 454). In itself capitalism is conceived as being impervious to nationality, ideology, etc., making decisions purely on the basis of the 'neutral' costs of production.

The Common market is expected to achieve 'a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living and closer relations between the States belonging to it' (EEC² Treaty, Article 2). It is considered a necessary precondition to the attainment of this aim that there should be freedom of movement for the four factors of production; goods, capital, services, and labour. Discrimination of the grounds of nationality of any of the factors of production is therefore considered 'unnatural' and a basic obstacle to international freedom of movement, which is to ensure a rational distribution of labour (Cf. ECSC³ Treaty, Article 2).⁴ In relation to labour the idea is of course that freedom of movement of workers makes it possible to for supply and demand in the labour market to meet across frontiers;⁵ one place of production should not be hampered by shortage of labour, when at the same time people in another region are unemployed through a lack of jobs.⁶ Thus the flow of labour cannot be determined by territoriality but must become free labour - or as Deleuze and Guttari (1999: 454) call it, 'naked labour'. This naked labour presupposes that the object of the integration process is not the individual in his or her totality (i.e. as a citizen) (O'Keeffe 2000: 20) but labour - the commodity.⁷

Territoriality and Social Security.

Although it can be questioned whether the nation state approaches the individual in its totality (O'Keeffe 2000: 20), it has tied the individual or multiple parts of the individual into a web of social technologies connecting the individual - including the commodified individual, labour - to a specific territory and thereby creating a population. Hence controlling the access to national territories and domestic labour markets 'constitute an essential attribute of sovereignty' (Romero in Ireland 1995: 233). One of the most important social technologies to control this access has been social security. National legislators have therefore often used territorial elements to define and organize social security schemes (Cornelissen 1996: 441). Consequently, social protection is usually confined to individuals either living (the Beveridge and Nordic models) or working (the Bismarchian model) within a particular territory. Rights and benefits are guaranteed to those who have resided or worked for a certain period of time in a specific territory confined within national borders. This control of populations within territorial domains also means that the social responsibility of a state does not extent to all persons regardless of where they live or work, nor to all risks or eventualities that may arise. Rather, states can limit their social responsibility by: 1) demarcating the extent of national schemes by employing territorial elements such as residing or working in that territory; 2) specifying whether, and, if so, to what extent, benefits can be granted to persons living in another territory; 3) determining whether, and, if so, to what extent the cost of health care spend in another state is refundable; 4) confining the entitlements for benefits to circumstances occurring within its own territory whereas circumstances taking place in the territory of another state falls under the responsibility of that state (ibid.).

Social protection systems are in this way delimited by territories, while they simultaneously help defining that territory and the population belonging to it.⁸ Historically social policy have therefore had an essential role in the process of nation-building by bridging the gap between state and population.⁹ However, in a market-building process establishing 'as complete a freedom of movement for workers as possible, which forms part of the 'foundations' of the Community' (ECJ¹⁰ Case 75/63, my italics; Cf. Regulation No 1612/68), these cornerstones of nation-building are transformed into obstacles for the cornerstone of market-building. The complete freedom of movement of workers means that workers who are nationals of one member state have the right to seek employment, work, reside, and remain within the territory of another member state.¹¹ The member states are therefore obliged to open up their territories for each others nationals. Consequently, whereas territoriality and freedom of movement can exist simultaneously within the same territory, a conflict of territories arise when they figures in different territories that have to work together; in that case they mutually exclude each other.

Dissolving territoriality.

The point of departure for transforming the European labour force into naked labour is therefore this principle of territoriality connecting individuals to national social security and hence to self-enclosed territories. The emancipation of labour is found in the EEC non-discrimination principle expressed in general terms in Article 7: 'Within the scope of application of this Treaty, and without prejudice to any special provisions contained therein, any discrimination on grounds of nationality shall be prohibited.' This principle of non-discrimination creates fissures in social security opening up for Community access to the core of national government's control over populations. In extricating the element of labour from social security systems, the integration process cuts of the relation of labour from other elements such as social rights, citizenship, territory, and nation state. Whereas these elements previously, in the 20th century, were interior to labour they have now become its exteriority by way of the fissures generated by the principle of non-discrimination which thereby come to control the relations between labour and these other elements.¹²

The principle of territoriality figures in this sense as the territory for the strategies of the Community to reterritorialize labour. Hence, deterritorialized labour is a consequence of the principle of territoriality itself being problematizised as an obstacle to freedom of movement and of this territoriality being taken as an object for integration. Consequently, national social security systems, in an integrated Europe, are not cancelled but change form. They no longer serve as one of the prime means of protecting national identity and defining citizenship. Rather, they become the material for the establishment of an integrated European market that exceeds them, without, however, eliminating them.¹³ That is to say, freedom of movement change the territoriality of welfare without changing its territory.

Social security without territoriality.

The Court has established that regulations based on provisions on social security and free movement of workers have a limited objective: 'Article 51 of the Treaty [of Rome] provides for the coordination, not harmonization of the legislation of the Member States and leaves in being differences between the Member States' social security systems, and consequently, in the rights of persons working in the Member States. It follows that substantive and procedural differences between the social security systems of the Member States, and hence in the rights of persons working in Member States are unaffected by Article 51 of the Treaty' (Case 313/86). Meaning, as long as the legislation of member states is not based on discrimination against other nationals, these regulations do not affect the freedom of the member states to determine the rules of their own social security systems. And the Commission must accept that '[t]hese choices are in general 'neutral' in relation to the European dimension' (Commission 2000: 3). According to the Court, Community regulation does not aim to transform the particular features of the different systems, nor does diversity of systems 'in itself lead to discrimination' (ECJ Case 313/86). Thus the integration process does not abolish the particularity of social security systems (Cornelissen 1996: 444), but the internal market proceeds by way of heterogeneous practices of welfare (i.e. local forms of power), and by virtue of the freedom of the member states to organize their social protection systems.

Labour mobility is translated into these particular practices in such a way that they realize the free flow of labour in their particular way, while the internal market (in the form of the principle of non-discrimination) introduces an entirely new way of organizing and relating to welfare, social rights, and citizenship. Thus it is not a question of 'an order issued centrally being executed locally' (Rose 1999: 48). A regulation still have to fitted into and find its place in local practices and be interpreted by a variety of agents. This means that although, social security systems are deterritorialized they maintain their function as modifications of the deterritorializing internal market,¹⁴ but they also provide the latter with reterritorialization, i.e. they are space for the concrete realization of the internal labour market (Deleuze & Guttari 1999; Rose 1999: 51).

Nevertheless, as the flows of labour exceed their conjunctions with a specific territory, they attain a level of deterritorialization that the member states cannot reclaim; not only because free labour means free from territoriality but also because the apparatus established to facilitate labour mobility makes heterogeneous systems resonate together by virtue of subordination. That is to say, the Community institutes a new legal order which the member states complies to by limiting their own sovereign rights within designated fields (Streyger 1995: 13; ECJ Case 26/62). It is only within the hierarchical legal order where Community law has supremacy that a vertical order of social security systems and their particularities can be recognized. It is within this vertical hierarchized aggregate that the free flow of labour is realized by linking the general notion of freedom of movement to the particular social security systems and thereby linking one territory to another.

Dressing labour.

Although the free worker is stripped from territoriality and nationality, s/he is not left entirely naked since freedom of movement confers rights to the individual. When free movement becomes an active right in this way, the entire historical figure of ourselves in the world is transformed, in so far as the individual as labour is located in a territory entirely different from where its other rights are located. The scope of rights to free movement is certainly closely linked to the notion of labour as a factor of production in the liberalization designed to create a common market (O'Keeffe 2000; Wheatherill, & Beaumont 1995: 548). They can be viewed as contributions to market integration, but the fact of conferral of rights in individuals also locates them in more general sphere of social policy. Community provisions on social security do not exist in isolation. They are part of the general package of rights to which a migrant worker may lay claim.¹⁵ What was first evoked as a norm to establish a common market is reversed so that it becomes a demand that the individual can make of its national state and/or the European Union (Cf. Rose 1996: 59). That is, the few - but important - persons who exercise their freedom of movement but run into obstacles can insist that these obstacles are removed. In fact, these demands are the conditions of further deterritorialization. The migrant worker becomes, in a sense, the political subject of the Community in that s/he is granted the ability to transgress and hence abolish borders by virtue of the rights conferred to her/him.

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Notes.

¹ The functionalist strategy rests upon the assumption that society (national as well as global) can be organized as a system and, like any system, it has systemic needs. Whatever meets those needs is functional for the system and occurs because it is functional. All functions are in this sense necessary for society (Mitrany 1971: 540). The assembly of functions (political, economic, social, cultural, scientific etc.) are separate and yet mutually interdependent in such a way that they form a systematic order. This emphasis on the functional value presupposes that it is possible to separate societal functions and social needs in general from any ideological connotations. This implies that social needs are generated by the system independently of social agents and will exist regardless of the prevailing ideology. Particular social agents have merely interpreted these objective needs to qualify their own particular interests and ends. In these interpretations the objective nature of social needs has been distorted in such a way that their universal character has been obscured. Instead they have been turned into points of differences and objects of conflicts that potentially can escalate into war. Once the needs of society have been separated from particular interests, they will be revealed for what they are, 'practical household tasks' (Mitrany in Cram 1996: 42). The detachment of social functions from particular interests are therefore not only possible but also necessary in order to establish an international system of peaceful cooperation.

² European Economic Community.

³ European Coal and Steel Community.

⁴ In so far as resources are redistributed towards the absolute advantages of each country, the production of goods will increase at a European scale. The profit of specialisation provides profit of trade. That is, if specialisation implies that one country produces more if its specialised goods than its national consumers can consume, and if another country does the same, then trade can secure increased consumption in both countries; compared to a situation where both countries have produce both goods they were good at and not so good at. This specialisation and division of labour will lead to economies of scale, skill enhancement, reduced transaction costs, diversification of choice and preservation of liberty. Thus a market with specialised economic structures comprised of separate, competing, but not necessarily unequal functions, will lead to exchanges and interdependencies between these functions. Consequently, market competition and specialisation erodes discriminatory practices by creating cross-cutting loyalties that break down tendencies towards national closure.

⁵ The emphasis on the mobility of workers makes the strategic function of European integration (and capitalism in general) differ significantly from e.g. mercantilism. In the economic constellation of mercantilism the floating of populations was problematic and hence evoked tactics to fix workers at their workplace by means of 'pressuring people to marry, providing housing, building cités ouvrières, practising that sly system of credit-slavery that Marx talks about, consisting in enforcing advance payment of rent while wages are paid only at the end of the month' (Foucault 1980: 202-3). In contrast, the European Community has, in the name of mobility, had action programmes for migrant workers (Council 1976).

⁶ Sundberg-Weitman (1977: 6 n. 8) points out, however, that the Treaty does not intend to stimulate masses of people to migrate. The objective was to abolish the obstacles that stood in the way of those wanting to migrate.

⁷ To Deleuze & Guttari (1999: 454) the deterritorializing power of capitalism consists in having the commodity as its object rather than ownership of the land or of the means of production.

⁸ From this perspective territories no longer appear as static platforms of social relations but rather as one of their constitutive relations (Brenner 1999: 40; Rose 1999: 31), and territories themselves appear as historical and particular. Thus, if territories have histories they can also be altered, transformed, re-scaled, and reconfigured. Brenner makes this point against state-centric approaches to globalization studies, where space is conceived as a static platform of social action without itself being socially constituted and transformed; and where state territoriality is perceived as a naturalized, or static unit of analysis (Brenner 1999: 45).

⁹ To Marshall, social integration is the main technology of welfare societies to become proper national communities: 'What matters is that there is a general enrichment of the concrete substance of civilised life, a general reduction of the risk and insecurity, an equalisation between the more and the less fortunate at all levels [...] Equalisation is not so much between classes as between individuals within a population which is now treated for this purpose as though it were one class' (Marshall in Walters 1994: 221; Walter's italics). Furthermore, 'social policy uses political power to supersede, supplement or modify operations of the economic system in order to achieve results which the economic system would not achieve on its own, and [...] in doing so it is guided by values other than those determined by open market forces' (Marshall 1975: 15).

¹⁰ European Court of Justice.

¹¹ Regulation 1612/68; Directive 68/360/EEC; Regulation 1251/70; Regulation 1408/71; Directive 75/35/EEC.

¹² For instance, a gradual accretion of rights of a concrete character to the status of migrant workers and free movement of persons in general (citizenship of the Union) brings with it a gradual transformation in the understanding of what is truly distinctive about nationality of one member state rather than another (Wheatherill & Beaumont 1995: 545). Furthermore, in order to comprehend the notion of 'Citizenship of the Union' as something distinct from and not interfering with the conventional notion of citizenship, Closa (1995) engages in an operation of separating the notion of citizenship from that of nationality.

¹³ Sassen (2000: 372) makes a similar point in relation to globalization and the nation state: 'while globalization leaves national territory basically unaltered, it is having pronounced effects on the exclusive territoriality of the nation state - that is, its effects are not on the boundaries of the national territory as such but on the institutional encasements of that national territory.' Brenner (1999: 53) also argues that the reterritorialization of the state caused by globalization does not cause the state's erosion, but it does imply that territoriality is being re-scaled to sub-national or sub-global levels: 'States continue to operate as essential sites of territorialization for social, political, and economic relations, even if the political geography of this territorialization process no longer converges predominantly or exclusively upon any single, self-enclosed geographical scale.'

¹⁴ Cf. Note 9.

¹⁵ The right to work, reside, and remain within the territory of a member state.