Pettiness in Times of Globalisation
This was a truly disturbing incident that I came across a few months ago, wherein several illegal workers were tricked by Byron Burgers to assemble in a closed room on the pretence of a meeting, only to be detained within a few moments. This week’s topic explores the various entanglements and tensions between the local and the global, which reminded me of this gruesome incident, as it exposes the farce of global-minded businesses, with staff from all over the worlds, producing different cuisines, and yet, playing nasty games of “catching” illegal workers and sending them back to “their” countries. Even as these restaurant chains have an ambience of being displaced from a location due to their sense of ‘everywhereness’/omnipresence, this incident reveals their deep seated place-bound anxieties. Also, the process of ‘catching’ immigrants further turns the political questions of mobility into technical questions within a Neoliberal se-up.
Contributed by MayankaMukherji on 05/02/2017
