1 question for each reading (total 3 questions)

Progress report

Population geography I: Surplus populations

James A. Tyner Kent State University, USA

Abstract The subject of ‘population’ is undergoing a renaissance in geography; this is seen, for example, in the voluminous studies addressing ‘marginalized’ populations, including but not limited to refugees, internally displaced persons, and children. In short, scholarship has focused on those lives rendered ‘wasted’, ‘precarious’, or ‘superfluous’. Population geographers have made substantial contributions; however, more can be done. In this and the next two progress reports, I suggest that population geographers reflect more deeply on the spatiality and survivability of vulnerable populations. More specifically, population geographers should con- sider the politics of fertility, mortality, and mobility from the standpoint of a layered demographic question: within any given place, who lives, who dies, and who decides? In this first report, I resituate the concept ‘surplus population’ within the broader domain of population geography. In subsequent reports, I consider more closely population geography’s association with related subject areas (i.e. biopolitics and necropolitics). I maintain that, by addressing vulnerability and survivability, we join others in geography and allied fields who are writing about ‘populations’ not as biological, pre-given entities, but instead as political subjects at risk of premature death.

Keywords abandoned lives, disposable lives, surplus populations, survivability

I Introduction

The coordinates of population geography are

fairly well established, if not always agreed upon.

At a most basic level, population geography is

concerned with fertility, mortality, and migration

– though certainly not in that order (Bailey, 2005;

Gober and Tyner, 2004; James, 1954; White

et al., 1989). Two dominant trends, one episte-

mological and the other topical, are readily

observable. On the one hand, population geogra-

phy has been largely grounded in an empiricist

epistemology. Population geography, as Bailey

(2005: 73) explains, has been dominated by

‘measures of and depictions of population con-

centration and dispersion; the relative size and

proximity of urban areas within a population;

density and overpopulation; [and] the decompo-

sition of population characteristics, including

flows of population’. To this end, population

geographers continue to make important contri-

butions to the scientific study of demographic

events. On the other hand, population geography

has a long, productive relationship with the sub-

ject of migration (Collyer et al., 2012; Smith and

King, 2012), as population geographers continue

to make significant strides in the understanding

of human spatial mobility at a variety of scales.

Corresponding author: Department of Geography, Kent State University, 413 McGilvrey Hall Kent, OH 44242, USA. Email: [email protected]

Progress in Human Geography 37(5) 701–711

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Parallel to these two strengths, however, has

been the repeated – some might say ‘tired’ – call

for a (re)theorized population geography (Findlay

and Boyle, 2007; Findlay and Graham, 1991;

Graham, 2000, 2004; Graham and Boyle,

2001; Tyner, 2009; White and Jackson,

1995). White and Jackson (1995: 111), for

example, argue that population geography has

‘paid insufficient attention to recent philoso-

phical and methodological discussions that

make their mark elsewhere in human geogra-

phy, and in the rest of the social sciences’. Such

calls have sparked some flurry of activity – for

example, population geography’s engagement

with the work of Michel Foucault (Legg,

2005; Philo, 2001, 2005a; Tyner, 2009). Ironi-

cally, many of these debates over a (re)theor-

ized population geography often coalesce

around renewed interests in the study of migra-

tion. Environmental issues, such as climate

change (Bailey, 2010) and deforestation (Carr,

2009), for instance, are frequently contextua-

lized within the study of migration. So too are

discussions of ‘other’ populations – for exam-

ple, that of ‘illegal’ migrants (Anderson and

Ruhs, 2010), detention (Kahn, 1996; Silverman

and Massa, 2012), ‘transit’ migrants (Collyer

et al., 2012), domestic workers (Yeoh and

Huang, 2010), and migrant sex workers (Tyner,

2004). Indeed, even the recent call to bridge

children’s geographies with population geogra-

phy emphasizes the theme of spatial mobility

(Holt and Costello, 2011; see also McKendrick,

2001). Most of these studies highlight that, at a

certain level, the field has engaged with many

of the pressing issues of our time and demon-

strate ever more so the continued salience of

population geography both to the field of geo-

graphy and beyond.

In this and the next two progress reports, I

call population geographers to reflect more

directly on the spatiality and survivability of

‘vulnerable’ populations (Findlay, 2005; Hogan

and Marandola, 2005; Philo, 2001, 2005b) within

the context, broadly conceived, of biopolitics and

necropolitics (Coleman and Grove, 2009; Espo-

sito, 2008; Foucault, 1990; Hinchliffe and Bing-

ham, 2008; Legg, 2005; McIntyre and Nast,

2011; Mbembe, 2003; Mitchell, 2009; Nast,

2011; Rose, 2007). Biopolitics, for example, may

be understood as the political negotiation of life;

how life, its existence and vitality, is linked to the

regulation and contestation of who has priority to

live and flourish, and who might be left to wither

and die. In particular, I am drawn to governmen-

tal policies and practices that impinge on fertility,

mortality, and mobility, those regulations that

impinge on the materiality of life and death from

the standpoint of a layered demographic ques-

tion: within any given place, who lives, who dies,

and who decides?

Consider the following trends. Two-thirds of

America’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007

went to the top 1% of US households; indeed, the inflation-adjusted income of the top 1% of households grew more than 10 times faster than

the income of the bottom 90% of households. The last time such a disproportionate share of

income gain went to the top 1% and such a small proportion went to the bottom 90% was in the 1920s – just prior to the Great Depression.

Whereas the bottom 90% of US households ‘increased’ by US$1,206 (adjusted for inflation),

the top 1% rose by US$520,127. The increase for the top 0.1% of households was even more spec- tacular, growing by US$3,455,384 during the

same period (Feller and Stone, no date). So

remarkable has been this growth among the

super-rich that the United States’ income equal-

ity gap is 39th in the world (at time of writing).

Indeed, the gap between the rich and the poor

was less pronounced in many countries of the

so-called Third World, including Burundi, Mali,

Tunisia, Tanzania, and even strife-torn Pakistan. 1

As the income chasm continues to widen, pov-

erty is deepening in the United States. In 2008,

39.8 million people lived in poverty, up from

37.3 million in 2007; the 2008 poverty rate

(13.2%) was the highest since 1997; and over 15 million Americans lived in ‘extreme’ poverty,

702 Progress in Human Geography 37(5)

defined as having an income less than half of the

poverty line or, in other words, earning less than

US$10,000 a year for a family of four. 2

More-

over, such income inequalities have come at a

steep price. While the United States ranks first

in the world both in gross domestic product and

in health expenditures, the country is 18th in the

world in the percentage of children in poverty,

22nd in the world in low birthweight rates, and

25th in the world in infant mortality. 3

The

National Center for Children in Poverty calcu-

lated that approximately 21% of all children in the United States lived in poor households –

defined as income below 100% of the federal poverty level which, in 2010, was set at

US$22,050 for a family of four. Of these chil-

dren, more than one-third lived in households

in which neither parent was employed. 4

Poverty translates directly into prospects for

life and death. In 2008, an estimated 17 million

households – 14.6% of all households – were food insecure; moreover, about one-third of

these households exhibited very low food secu-

rity. Consequently, these households relied

extensively on government programs, such as

the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

(SNAP; formerly known as the Food Stamps

Program), the Special Supplemental Nutrition

Program for Women, Infants, and Children

(WIC), and the National School Lunch Pro-

gram. 5

In fact, for impoverished households,

these social programs literally meant the differ-

ence between life and death. Income inequality

and poverty are themselves unequally distrib-

uted throughout the American body-politic. A

recent study released by the Pew Research

Center found that the median wealth of white

households was 20 times that of African-

American households, and 18 times that of

Hispanic households. In addition, the dispari-

ties are increasing for America’s non-white

population. From 2005 to 2009, for instance,

inflation-adjusted median wealth fell by 66% among Hispanic households and 53% among African-American households, compared with

just 16% among white households.6 These fig- ures speak directly to life and death; a ‘white’

male infant born in the United States in 2009

has a life-expectancy of 76.2 years, whereas

an African-American male infant has a life-

expectancy of just 70.9 years. 7

Although these data are subject to debate,

and limited to the United States, they do, as a

whole, point to a rather bleak picture – but a pic-

ture that brings into focus the continued impor-

tance and relevance of population geography.

One’s likelihood to escape premature death is

deeply, irrevocably spatial. For example, the

work of Danny Dorling and Amy Glasmeier,

among others, has empirically demonstrated

how ‘social exclusion, geographic isolation,

rigid class-based institutions and political cro-

nyism’ contribute to poverty’s persistence and

hence, to premature death (Glasmeier et al.,

2008: 10; see also Day et al., 2008; Dorling and

Thomas, 2004; Glasmeier, 2005). Likewise, the

contributions to a recently themed issue of Anti-

pode (guest edited by Heidi Nast, 2011) bring to

light the salience of population geography. In an

introduction to that issue, McIntyre and Nast

(2011) call for:

[a] reexamination of Marx’s notion of surplus

populations in light of contemporary capitalism

and a world marked by tremendous global shifts

in fertility rates, almost unprecedented rates of

outmigration to hegemonic nation-states and

enclaves, heightened levels of investment in (and

hyper-exploitation of) formerly colonized

nations, and massive degradation of the environ-

ment. (McIntyre and Nast, 2011: 1465)

Such global flux requires that we apply and

expand the insights of population geography

to consider those ‘unwanted’ populations that

occupy the bottom rungs of the inequality pyra-

mid. To achieve this goal, we need to find ways

of addressing how certain groups are considered

expendable, for today many lives have been ren-

dered disposable, wasted, or precarious. In this

initial report, I argue that population geography

Tyner 703

may benefit by engaging with Marx’s concept

of surplus population; Marx’s writings, I main-

tain, provide a powerful theoretical avenue from

which to explore ‘vulnerability’ and, I would

add, ‘survivability’ (cf. Heynen, 2006; Mitchell

and Heynen, 2009), both of which are insepar-

able from two of population geography’s long-

standing concerns: biological reproduction and

mortality. In addressing vulnerability and sur-

vivability, we join others in geography and

allied fields who are writing about biopolitics,

biosecurity, and reproductive politics. In sub-

sequent reports, I consider more closely popu-

lation geography’s association with these other

subject areas; in this report, I provide a frame-

work for a reconfigured (surplus) population

geography.

II (Surplus) Populations

It is somewhat curious that population geogra-

phers have not engaged in any sustained way

with the writings of Karl Marx that deal with

population issues (but see Jones, 1986; Rossini,

1984). For, whether one agrees or disagrees

with his analysis of capitalism, Marx’s theory

of population provides a salient counterpoint

to Thomas Malthus – an individual who figures

prominently in our research and teaching of

population geography (Robbins, 1998). Malthus

argued, in part, that, because populations grow

exponentially whereas agricultural production

increases geometrically, resource scarcity and

overpopulation would result. Marx countered

by arguing that capitalism reveals its own ‘law

of population’; that ‘every particular historical

mode of production has its own special laws

of population’ (Marx, 1990: 784; see also

Harvey, 1974). 8

In Capital, Volume I, Marx argued that:

it is capitalist accumulation itself that constantly

produces, and produces indeed in direct relation

with its own energy and extent, a relatively redun-

dant working population, i.e. a population which

is superfluous to capital’s average requirements

for its own valorization, and is therefore a surplus

population. (Marx, 1990: 782)

Marx’s statement has received considerable

empirical attention over the years, and these

debates need not detain us at this point (cf.

McIntyre, 2011; McIntyre and Nast, 2011; Nast,

2011). What is most relevant for my present

purposes is not the particularities regarding the

accumulation of capital, debates over rates of

growth, and the growth of a surplus population;

rather, it is the concept ‘surplus population’ that

is important. For it is through the concept of sur-

plus population that we see (1) that population

geographers have written extensively on the

subject, but (2) this engagement has been some-

what scattered and unfocused.

So what is meant by the concept ‘surplus

population’? A good starting point is Marx’s

own definition. Again, turning to Capital, Vol-

ume I, Marx (1990: 794) wrote that the ‘relative

surplus population exists in all kinds of forms’

and that every ‘worker belongs to it during the

time when he [sic] is only partially employed

or wholly unemployed’. In other words, any

population geography study that has addressed

unemployment has, indirectly, been writing a

(surplus) population geography. But for Marx

it is not the fact of surplus populations, but

rather the processes by which these populations

come into existence (cf. Merrill, 2011).

Marx (1990: 794 passim) classified surplus

populations into three categories: floating,

latent, and stagnant. The floating population

consists of those workers cycling in-and-out of

the labor force; the latent population includes

those with insecure employment; and the stag-

nant population is composed of those workers

who are only rarely employed. It is the stagnant

population, in particular, that forms the massive

ranks of the ‘inexhaustible reservoir of disposable

labor-power’ (p. 796). To these three categories

of surplus populations Marx adds a fourth: the

lumpenproletariat. 9

Distinguished morally from

the working-class proletariat, this ‘lowest

704 Progress in Human Geography 37(5)

sediment’ of society includes vagabonds, crim-

inals, and prostitutes (p. 797); those able to work

– but do not (e.g. paupers); and those unable to

work because of particular incapacities (p. 797).

This latter subset was composed of ‘people who

have lived beyond the worker’s average life-

span; and the victims of industry, whose number

increases with the growth of dangerous machin-

ery, or mines, chemical works, etc., the mutilated,

the sickly, the widows, etc.’ (p. 797). The point,

again, is not necessarily to agree or disagree with

Marx’s analysis; rather, the point is that Marx’s

work addresses the economic vagaries of life

within capitalist society, a project in keeping with

many population geographers’ concerns to

explain the creation and migration of economi-

cally ‘vulnerable populations’.

How do surplus populations come into exis-

tence? This is a crucial question – one that has

garnered considerable attention – both within

and beyond geography – in recent years. Fun-

damentally, a Marxist perspective begins from

the standpoint of ‘primitive accumulation’,

itself a term subject to much debate (Glassman,

2006; Hall, 2011; Harvey, 2003; Li, 2009;

Neocleous, 2011; McIntyre, 2011). In general,

however, following Marx, this entails the

historical process of separating workers from

the means of production; this primitive accu-

mulation may be accomplished via the usur-

pation of common property, enclosures of

‘common’ land, and the destruction of domes-

tic, artisanal production. An important and

growing body of empirical case studies – within

population geography and beyond – is addressing

these practices of displacement and dispossession

that are part-and-parcel of ongoing processes of

primitive accumulation (Hall, 2011; Li, 2009;

Rigg, 2007).

McIntyre (2011: 1498–1500) describes such

processes in ways that speak to the traditional

scholarly strengths of population geography.

Imagine, for example, the stalwart assumption

of an isomorphic plain in which space is fric-

tionless and labor is perfectly mobile. Presume

also (as Marx does initially) that all labor is

abstract; in other words, there is no possibility

of mismatch between skills because all laborers

are substitutable and there are no hierarchies

around ‘race’, ethnicity, sex, gender, sexual

orientation, and so on. In short, all people are

equal and space is rendered inconsequential.

In such a world, the unequal distribution

between employment and unemployment could

be readily resolved. People would migrate from

areas of high unemployment to areas of low

unemployment. Indeed, such an understanding

is embedded both in structural models of migra-

tion and neoclassical accounts of supply and

demand.

But what happens when such conditions do

not obtain? We know that space is not friction-

less (McIntyre, 2011: 1499), but is highly varie-

gated and intensely regulated, predicated in part

on the continued defense of the sovereign state,

as seen in the regulation of immigration (e.g.

Bauder, 2006; Merrill, 2011; Tirman, 2004).

Moreover, Doty (2011: 599) shows how states

have, by imposing ‘restrictions meant to make

unauthorised border crossings difficult and dan-

gerous’ attempted to halt migration. Meanwhile,

the recent militarization of borders (Dunn, 1996)

has contributed to what Joseph Nevins (2008) has

described as a ‘shifting geography of migrant

fatalities’ (see also Mitchell, 2007). Regulating

mobility has, likewise, resulted in the discursive

construction of surplus migrant population cate-

gories: ‘unauthorized’, ‘undocumented’, ‘irregu-

lar’, ‘illegal’ (cf. Khalid, 2010). The work of

Anderson and Ruhs (2010), Drever and Blue

(2011), Merrill (2011), Mountz (2004), and Salt

and Stein (1997) is, here, notable to the degree

that it highlights the processes by which surplus

‘populations’ come into existence in the service

of the state.

Other population processes and practices,

including the operations of various ‘state migra-

tory apparatuses’ (Lindio-McGovern, 2004;

Tyner, 2004; see also Rodriguez, 2010) and

social networks (Blue and Drever, 2011; Croes

Tyner 705

and Hooimeijer, 2010) feature prominently in

the variegated geographies of dispossession –

topics that population geographers continue

to address. Lastly, we know that labor is

never truly abstract, but rather is segmented

into, for example, skilled or unskilled migra-

tion – another body of scholarship that is rich

within the subfield of population geography

(Ho, 2011; Khoo et al., 2011; Riemsdijk,

2012; Scott, 2004). In short, embedded

within the concept of ‘surplus population’ are

concerns that have, arguably, surprisingly,

shaped much of the scholarship within popu-

lation geography. To round out this report, I

consider more closely two concepts that have

emerged within the rubric of surplus popula-

tions, these being the ideas of ‘abandonment’

and ‘disposability’.

III Abandoned women, disposable women

Throughout history, in a range of geographic

settings, the poor and destitute have been mar-

ginalized; so too have been prostitutes, the

homeless, and runaways (cf. Watts, 2011). In

the late 19th century, in the United States, for

example, numerous categories – idiots, lunatics,

inebriates, paupers, tramps, vagrants, the aged,

the sick, the feebleminded, the disabled,

orphans, and criminals – were constructed in the

service of the state as a means of providing or

declining social assistance (Dear and Wolch,

1987). Membership in one or the other often

meant the difference between (assisted) life or

(accelerated) death. While certain populations

in a place were frequently considered to be part

of an undifferentiated whole, a moral division

tied to economic success persisted and affected

(state) policy responses. Those who were

able-bodied but out-of-work, for instance, were

typically castigated as morally corrupt and unde-

serving of assistance, while lunatics, widows,

orphans, and the sick were deemed unfortunate

and worthy only of philanthropic aid.

In many societies, including the United

States, the egregious laws and punitive mea-

sures of the late 19th century remain in place,

albeit in different guises. Those persons deemed

outside of ‘respectable’ society – the lumpen-

proletariat – continue to be marginalized and

represented as unworthy of assistance. Indeed,

as Wacquant (2009) writes, these:

castaway categories – unemployed youth left

adrift, the beggars and the homeless, aimless

nomads and drug addicts, postcolonial immi-

grants without documents or support – have

become salient in public space, their presence

undesirable and their doings intolerable, because

they are the living and threatening incarnation

of the generalized social insecurity produced by

the erosion of stable and homogenous wage work

and by the decomposition of the solidarities of

class and culture. (Wacquant, 2009: 4. Emphasis

in original)

To address those who have been excluded from

society, a number of geographers – including

population geographers – have turned to the the-

oretical insights of Giorgio Agamben and, in

particular, his formulation of homo sacer (Doty,

2011; Ek, 2006; Minca, 2006; Mitchell, 2009;

Rajaram and Grundy-Warr, 2004; Tyner,

2012). For Agamben, homo sacer – an obscure

figure of ancient Roman law – is one who can

be killed with impunity, one whose death con-

stitutes neither homicide nor sacrifice. Homini

sacri, accordingly, are situated outside both

human and divine law; they are ‘included’ in

society only through their ‘exclusion’. They

constitute, in Agamben’s (1998: 73) terminol-

ogy, ‘bare life’.

In an especially salient article, Geraldine

Pratt underscores the exploitation and oppres-

sion of migrant workers and prostitutes through

the context of bare life (cf. Pratt, 2005; see also

Lee and Pratt, 2012). However, of greater sig-

nificance is Pratt’s reworking of homo sacer

from a feminist standpoint. As Pratt (2005)

identifies, despite the prominence of ‘public’

706 Progress in Human Geography 37(5)

and ‘private’ separations in Agamben’s work,

he makes little of gender. Yet, through a focus

on Filipina migrant domestic workers and mur-

dered female prostitutes in Vancouver, Canada,

Pratt (2005: 1058) argues that ‘it is often women

who are cast into bare life’. Rather than simply

acknowledging these women’s plight, Pratt

takes an additional, political step, to explore

how violence and abandonment are articulated

in democratic practice. Specifically, Pratt (p.

1058) demonstrates that the ineffectiveness of

legislative victories for domestic workers sug-

gests the violence of exclusion through non-

citizenship while the case of the murdered

women tells domestic workers that citizenship,

in fact, guarantees no protection. We are not all

susceptible to being rendered to bare life; rather,

survivability results from the violent intersec-

tionality of gender, ‘race’, and sexual orienta-

tion, to name but three.

A similar example is found in Mexico. The

streets of Ciudad Juárez represent a particu-

larly grim and tragic geography of human

loss. In the early 1990s, an average of three

women were murdered each year; however,

by 1993 the death toll skyrocketed, with an

average of two women being murdered each

month. By 2001, there was at least one

woman found dead every week; and by

2003 Amnesty International estimated that

approximately 400 women – at a minimum

– had been murdered during the previous

decade. And the killings continue. For over

a decade, Melissa Wright (1999, 2001,

2004, 2006, 2011) has written on femicide

in Ciudad Juárez. She notes that there is a

profound publicness to the femicide: most

victims have been young women, many

apparently abducted between home and work;

and most of the victim’s corpses were found

in public places. Wright locates the brutal

violence within the ongoing and uneven

industrialization of Mexico. Associated in

part with Mexico’s Border Industrialization

Program, multinational corporations

relocated to cities such as Ciudad Juárez to

take advantage of reductions in labor costs

through the (selective) employment of

women. These workers, in short, constituted

a highly vulnerable surplus population; and

it is the ‘temporariness’ of their employment

that, according to Wright, merits some atten-

tion. Multinational firms benefit from the hir-

ing of ‘temporary’ workers or, in other

words, from the deliberate promotion of high

labor turnover. For Wright, women represent

‘workers of declining value since their intrin-

sic value never appreciates into skill but

instead dissipates over time’ (1999: 455). She

concludes that women workers of the maqui-

ladoras personify ‘waste in the making’.

Beginning in 1995, in response to the contin-

ued death of young women, local community

organizers, including the feminist group ‘Ocho

de Marzo’, organized marches composed of

maquila workers, students, professionals, mid-

dle- and upper-class residents, labor activists,

and artists. These groups pressured local and fed-

eral politicians for action and demanded that the

police and the mayor dedicate more resources to

murder investigations. They also met with the

maquiladora association to discuss changes in

employment shifts that might help ensure

women’s safety and other security measures

(Wright, 2001a: 556). According to Wright (p.

557) it was crucial to establish a connection

between the murders and the organization of pro-

duction within the maquiladoras. She argues that

the ‘maquila system, which revolves around the

reproduction of disposable women, draws from

many of the same discourses that are utilized to

exculpate the maquila industry from the violence

against women that continues to pervade Ciudad

Juárez’ (p. 558); it is this connection, also, that

activists have made, arguing that the physical

violence was exacerbated by a social and eco-

nomic violence against women. The work of

Wright exemplifies what one possible (surplus)

population geography might look like – as well

as providing a model for more engaged

Tyner 707

community-level participation. Crucial to the tra-

gic story of Ciudad Juárez are processes of rural

migration, land displacement, labor force partic-

ipation, gendered divisions of labor, and, bluntly

put, mortality. What connects these fundamental

processes – so widely studied within population

geography – is that of ‘surplus population’ and

the ‘accumulation of capital’.

IV Conclusions

In a series of books, Giorgio Agamben (1998,

2002, 2005) expands upon the concept of

the ‘state of exception’, a conceptual advance-

ment that provides insight into the spatiality of

structural violence and, by extension, an under-

standing into the calculated valuation and man-

agement of life and death within contemporary

society (see also McIntyre and Nast, 2011, on

‘spatialities of exception’). This concept calls

attention to the paradox of sovereignty, namely

that the sovereign is both outside and inside the

juridical order. Given that the sovereign has the

legal power to suspend the validity of law,

the sovereign may also situate itself outside of

law. This produces a state of exception whereby

law may be suspended in the name of society’s

protection from internal or external threats.

Increasingly, these threats are embodied by (sur-

plus) populations – whether defined by ‘race’,

sex, gender, class, or national origin. As Mitchell

(2009: 244) writes, once defined as ‘at-risk’

populations, these lives constitute a biosecurity

threat to society and, accordingly, ‘individuals

and populations can be forcefully and, more

importantly, ‘justifiably’ removed from com-

monly held spaces and resources in a contempo-

rary liberal form of sovereign dispossession’.

Whether characterized as ‘bare life’ (Agam-

ben, 1998), ‘wasted lives’ (Bauman, 2004;

Neocleous, 2011), ‘humans-as-waste’ (Yates,

2011), ‘abandoned lives’ (Pratt, 2005), ‘disposa-

ble lives’ (Chang, 2000; Wright, 1999, 2004,

2006), ‘precarious lives’ (Butler, 2004), or any

of the other myriad terms currently being

introduced, the commonality is that some popula-

tions are legally relegated to the realm of surplus

and thus rendered expendable. As Evelyn

Ruppert (2011: 218) explains, ‘people are not

governed in relation to their individuality but as

members of populations. The embodied individ-

ual is of interest to governments insofar as the

individual can be identified, categorised and

recognized as a member of a population’.

Accordingly, we must critically interrogate those

calculated bodies that become the object – the

target – of governmental interference: surplus

populations.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are extended to Heidi Nast, Joshua Inwood,

and Chris Philo for critical and helpful comments

and suggestions on earlier drafts of this report.

Thanks also to Michael McIntyre, Heather Merrill,

Melissa Wright, Melissa Gilbert, and Nik Heynen for

discussions more broadly on the topics of ‘surplus

populations’ and ‘survivability’.

Notes

1. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/pub-

lications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2172rank.html.

2. World Hunger Education Service, ‘Hunger in America:

2011 United States Hunger and Poverty Facts’, http://

www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.

htm.

3. Center for Family Policy and Research, ‘The State of

Children and Families, 2011’, http://CFPR.missouri.

edu.

4. National Center for Children in Poverty, ‘Demographics

of Poor Children’, http://nccp.org/profiles/US_profile_

7.html.

5. World Hunger Education Service, ‘Hunger in America’.

6. Kochhar R, Fry R and Taylor P, ‘Twenty-to-One:

Wealth Gaps Rise to Record Highs Between Whites,

Blacks and Hispanics’, Pew Research Center, http://

www.pewresearch.org.

7. Kochanek KD, Xu JQ, Murphy SL. et al. ‘Deaths: Pre-

liminary Data for 2009’, National Vital Statistics

Reports, Volume 59, No. 4 (Hyattsville, MD: National

Center for Health Statistics, 2011), Table 6.

8. It would be interesting indeed to follow up this assertion

of Marx. To my knowledge, no (population) geographer –

708 Progress in Human Geography 37(5)

or any other social scientist – has undertaken such a

project.

9. As Denning (2010: 87) writes, Marx was no sympathi-

zer of the lumpenproletariat. Indeed, in his support of

the proletariat, the ‘legitimate’ moral working class,

Marx viewed the lumpenproletariat as an unproductive,

parasitic layer of society.

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