Entanglements: Volkswagen de MĂŠxico and Global Capitalism

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of global capitalism. It examines the multilayered presence of Volkswagen de México to grapple with the double-edged sword of transnational economic dependencies. Car manufacturing in Mexico has created jobs for a number of college graduates, middle class status, modes of relationality and care, and even the possibility to migrate to Germany. At the same time global car production relies on a large number of low-wage and uncertain jobs, on mechanisms that make labor cheap and discipline the labor force, as well as on land and water dispossession. While Volkswagen de México is a medium of inclusivity into 21st century global capitalism, it has also created contentious relations on the ground: among those who celebrate the presence of the factory, those who oppose it, those who have been violently excluded, and among unionized and non-unionized workers. To elucidate this complex and convoluted landscape of social relations, this study examines how transnational car production intersects with processes of nation-state formation, local ideas about status, and personal aspirations, as well as the conjunctures between global transformations, manufacturing, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. This dissertation shows how Volkswagen’s car economy has endured through forms of domination, subjugation and accommodation, and traces its not-always-predictable effects on the ground. Thereby it offers a nuanced and textured account of how global capitalism is constituted trans-locally.Ph.D.2020-01-04 00:00:0