ABSTRACT
It is widely acknowledged that the processes associated with “globalization” have had at least some effect on the sovereignty of national states to control their own economic, political, and social fortunes (Hirst and Thompson 1996). There is however considerably less agreement as to the extent and precise nature of these changes. This chapter has two aims: the first is to explore the relationship between the national state and the regulation of trans-state (labor) migration given the alleged threat of “globalization” to individual state sovereignty. The second aim is to investigate the way in which the national state (still) regulates migration through a particular geographic mechanism which I shall call a “spatial vent.” These two aims are accomplished through a study of Maghrebin (Algerian, Moroccan, and Tunisian) immigrant labor in the Paris automobile industry from 1970 to 1990. The time-frame examined here is significant in so far as this period has been associated with the decline or “hollowing out” of the “Fordist” state, and the transition to more “post-Fordist” or “neo-Schumpeterian” forms of governance (see e.g. Jessop 1994).
