‘Does Skill Make Us Human?’ Work Futures Annual Lecture with Professor Natasha Iskander

‘Does Skill Make Us Human? Skill and Political Personhood Around the World’

Professor Natasha Iskander (New York University)

Organised by the Work Futures Research Group and co-sponsored by Migration Mobilities Bristol, Centre of Law at Work and the WEOPP Seminar Series.

Skill – and especially the distinction between “skilled” and “unskilled” – is generally defined as a measure of ability and training, but in fact, the concept of skill is deeply political. In this talk, Natasha Iskander explores the politics of skill and its relationship to the definition of political personhood. Drawing on her book, Does Skill Make Us Human? Migrant Workers in 21st Century Qatar and Beyond, Iskander show how definitions of skill are used to limit freedom, narrow political rights, and threaten the basic bodily integrity of those workers defined as unskilled. She highlights how the politics of skill shapes the political rights and working conditions of workers around the globe, taking us from the experiences of migrant workers in Qatar who built the 2022 World Cup structures through to the status of workers in the United States under a Trump presidency.

NB This is a HYBRID event. Please register here for both in-person and online attendance. If you would like to attend online you will receive a Zoom link once you have registered.

Speaker:

Natasha N. Iskander, James Weldon Johnson Professor of Urban Planning and Public Service, conducts research on the relationship between migration and economic development. She looks at the ways that immigration and the movement of people across borders can provide the basis for the creation of new knowledge and of new pathways for political change. She has published widely on these questions, looking specifically at immigration, skill, economic development, infrastructure, and worker rights, with more than 40 articles and book chapters on these topics. Her first book, Creative State: Forty Years of Migration and Development Policy in Morocco and Mexico (Cornell University Press, ILR imprint, 2010), looked at the ways that migrant workers transformed the economic development policies of their countries of origin. It received the International Studies Association – Distinguished Book Award in Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Track and was a Social Science Research Council—Featured Publication. Her most recent book, Does Skill Make Us Human?: Migrant Workers in 21st Century Qatar and Beyond (Princeton University Press, 2021), examines the use of skill categories to define political personhood, in ways that have become increasingly salient with the hardening borders and the pressures of climate change. It received the 2022 American Sociological Association — Sociology of Development Best Book Award, the 2022 American Sociological Association — Labor and Labor Movements Best Book Award, and the 2022 American Collegiate Schools of Planning John Friedmann Book Award.

Details:

4:30pm – 5:45pm – Lecture and Q&A (in person and online)

5:45pm -6:45pm – Drinks reception

Venue: 4.10 in the Education Building (Helen Wodehouse Building, 35 Berkeley Square).

If you have questions please email: Dr Devika Narayan (devika.narayan[at]bristol.ac.uk)