Labor and migration in contemporary Chile

This article analyzes the association between migration and labor in Chile, following the critique of commodity fetishism within the framework of the critique of political economy. For this purpose, formal and generalizing notions are displaced to obtain concrete and complex categories that evidence the social relations underlying the naturalized abstractions, and how value subordinates life. It is concluded that 1) behind such association racism articulates and naturalizes the dispossession, deproletarianization and super-exploitation to the point of inferiorizing racialized people, producing migrants as mere workers excluded from politics; and 2) that recognizing the latter is imperative to confront racism and the subordination of life to capital.