Please join us for a webinar on April 25th, with professor Biao Xiang (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology): The reversed articulation model: Global geopolitical shift, social reproduction and migration from China.

The articulation model, proposed by Claude Meillassoux and others in the 1960s, suggested that labour migration from Africa to western Europe link pre-capitalist modes of social reproduction and the capitalist mode of material production. The value accumulated in the reproduction processes (raising a child to a worker) in the periphery is transferred to industrial production in the centre through labour migration. By “reversed articulation model” Biao Xiang refers to the migration from (semi-)periphery countries, or new economic centres such as China, to the West, that is accompanied by fund transfer from home to the destination. Examples include the movements of students, retirees, medical patients, would-be mothers, and “investment” migrants. Most of them migrate for purpose of social reproduction rather than to join productive labour force. Taking migration from China since the late 1990s as an example, during this talk Biao Xiang will discuss how the reversed articulation model of migration and value transfer is related to structural changes in social reproduction worldwide. The trajectory of the “rise” of China may not be as straightforward as it appears. Biao Xiang is the Director of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany, and Professor at the University of Oxford before that. Xiang’s research addresses various types of migration – internal and international, unskilled and highly skilled, emigration and return migration, and the places and people left behind – in China, India and other parts of Asia. Xiang is the winner of the 2008 Anthony Leeds Prize for his book Global

Bodyshopping and the 2012 William L. Holland Prize for his article ‘Predatory Princes’. His 2000 Chinese book (published in English as Transcending Boundaries, 2005) was reprinted in 2018 as a contemporary classic, and Self as Method (co-authored with Wu Qi) was ranked the Most Impactful Book 2020. His work has been translated into Japanese, French, Korean, Spanish, German and Italian. The discussion will be moderated by Marta Kindler, WSNSiR and CMR University of Warsaw. Language: English

Link to zoom webinar

Link to Youtube live streaming