Extractive humanitarianism: unpaid labour and participatory detention in refugees governmentality

This chapter interrogates the political economy of labour and the modes of value extraction which are at play in refugee governmentality. It centres on “extractive humanitarianism”, which consists in humanitarian interventions which capitalise upon unpaid refugees’ labour and on the repeated extraction of data from refugees’ mobility and activities. The essay focuses on Cash Assistance Programmes for asylum seekers to data extraction activities in refugee camps and explores the labour economies at stake there. It opens with a literature review about how labour and value are analysed in refugee and migration studies, considering works that discuss the so called “migration industry”, states’ exploitation of migrants’ labour force, and the labour performed by humanitarian actors and volunteers. The chapter argues that cashless economies and data extraction processes enable considering two other labour activities which are key to the governing of refugees. First, refugees as debit card beneficiaries perform unpaid labour, as they produce data through their transactions which are key for the datafication of their mobility. Related to this, refugees are at the same time requested to perform free labour by producing data and providing feedback concerning their use of the debit cards. Second, techno-humanitarianism requires labour on the part of international organisations and humanitarian actors for populating databases, keeping them up to date and make data circulate. The chapter concludes by illustrating how extractive humanitarianism generates value not only through migrant detention and border security industry but also by capitalising on refugees’ activities and mobility.