ABSTRACT
This chapter positions the recruitment of occupations other than productive labour integral to different parts of the global production processes, including finance and non-tangible goods (e.g. knowledge and intellectual property) as ‘agents’ of capitalism within a spectrum: the global elites, or transnational corporate class at one end, small and medium enterprise migrant entrepreneurs at the other; the legions of skilled professionals servicing the global market economy and its GVC production systems somewhere in between. This approach provides a basis for focusing on the role of migration in supporting the growth in these occupations as a feature of the post-1970s global market economy for countries such as Australia. Control over the circulation of these non-productive occupational forms occurs to a significant extent through migration policies. The final section connects the growth in small and medium enterprise with the fragmentation and deindustrialisation of production emergent in advanced global market economies.
