Bridled Labour and the Making of Migrants’ Route. Refugees’ Workers at the French-Italian Border.

This article challenges social theories that reproduce a containerization of migration into the nation state as a unit of analysis by tracing a genealogy of migrants’ passages. It does so by mobilising a twofold analytical lens. First, it demonstrates that the making of the migrants’ route exceeds geographies of state’s control as well as the representation of a linear channelling of mobility. Second, building on Moulier Boutang’s concept of ‘bridled labour’ it argues that it is essential to investigate jointly labour policies, asylum system and border controls, and to bring to the fore workers’ escapes and desertions. The article starts by retracing the making of migrants’ route from the Italian-Slovenian border to the French-Italian one, focusing on two overlapping migration movements: Italian workers and refugee workers from Yugoslavia. The piece moves on by analysing how labour policies, asylum regime and border controls are mutually entangled, and how they reverberate on the frontier. The last section focuses on the present migration context at the French-Italian border, highlighting continuities and differences with the past.