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128 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 6 Immigrant Regime of Production The State, Political Mobilization, and Religious and Business Networks among Brazilians in South Florida JOSÉ CLAÚDIO SOUZA ALVES In this chapter, I use the concept of immigrant regime of production to understand the political economy of Brazilian immigration to the United States. In particular, drawing from research among Brazilians in South Florida, I explore how the interaction between, on the one hand, the demands and needs of the Brazilian and American state apparatuses and, on the other, the “micro-physics” of immigrant networks facilitates the formation of an abundant, malleable, and cheap transnational labor force. After defining what I mean by an immigrant regime of production, I discuss the convergence of interests reflected in immigration policies in Brazil and the United States. I then characterize the dynamics of religious and business networks among immigrants, taking care to analyze their operation within the framework of these converging political interests. I am also interested in assessing the role that these networks may play in the political organization and mobilization of Brazilian immigrants. I focus on these two networks because they represent the most visible markers of presence for Brazilians in Pompano Beach and Deerfield Beach, the two cities outside of Miami-Dade County in which they have concentrated. I argue that while business and religious networks allow a certain degree of political mobilization around local issues, like easy access to driver’s licenses for immigrants, as well as national matters, like immigration reform, they ultimately do not challenge the transnational capitalist logic that compels Brazilians to migrate to the United States and to become incorporated into the American economy in a subordinate position. Moreover, often these two networks intersect to facilitate the extraction of surplus value from the Brazilian population in South Florida. This chapter, thus, complements Manuel Vásquez’s discussion on interpersonal immigrant networks in chapter  by focusing on larger, more institutionalized networks and their interactions with the state and the global economy. IMMIGRANT REGIME OF PRODUCTION 129 Immigrant Regime of Production In order to examine the interactions between religious and business networks, on the one hand, and the state and global economy, on the other, I depart from Karl Marx’s holistic conception of mode of production. As he writes in “The German Ideology,” “mode of production must not be considered simply as being the reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce.” In other words, a mode of production is not simply defined by ownership of the means of production, but by the social and cultural arrangements that enable production. Following Michel Foucault, I see these sociocultural arrangements as organized in regimes of practice, “systems of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation” of power. Regimes of production function like crisscrossing and flexible yet hierarchical clusters of networks that allow domination and resistance, that is, the “action of men upon men.” At stake is the ability to harness the energies and capabilities of the body—in this case, the bodies of immigrants. For Brazilian immigrants in Broward County, intertwining religious and business networks provide the infra-structure of a regime of production that exploits them while simultaneously allowing them to navigate the challenges of a new destination. My second point of departure is the fact this local immigrant regime of production is embedded within a new global regime of capitalist accumulation. This regime is characterized by the rapid and mostly unregulated movement of capital and goods and a controlled flow of labor. As the United States positions itself as the hegemonic power in a polycentric world system, it has come to rely increasingly on the cheap labor of immigrants to be competitive vis-à-vis emerging economic centers like India and China, which have much lower labor costs. Latin American immigrants come to work in the service, construction, and agricultural sectors, all of which buttress the accelerated expansion of knowledge-based, technology-intensive sectors of the economy that give the United States the competitive edge over growing economies in Asia. For its part, in the effort to insert itself in the global economy, Brazil has implemented neo-liberal policies that...

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