ABSTRACT

This article explores the potential for exploitation of jurisdictional ambiguity presented by Foreign-Trade Zones (FTZs) in the United States as extraterritorial spaces within national territory. Nearly half a million people work in hundreds of U.S. FTZs. Transnational corporations are increasingly, with states’ assistance, operating in rural FTZs and asserting extrajudicial authority to create totalising environments of power and labour relations within the zones. Ethnographic examples are provided from research on how variously situated interviewees make sense of the web of local, state, national and international jurisdictions they navigate daily in FTZs in Kentucky and South Carolina. Fear, silencing and contingency are among the technologies of control workers experience in FTZs along with the daily physical disciplining of bodies leaving U.S. territory while still on U.S. soil. FTZs illustrate the extent to which U.S. economic activity is global, contradicting the economic nationalist and isolationist rhetoric of the recent Trump administration. That contradiction is foregrounded for workers in rural factories utilising Foreign-Trade Zones, who may be uncertain of the applicability of U.S. legal protections in the workplace.

摘要

本文探讨了利用美国对外贸易区 (FTZ) 作为国家领土内的域外空间所呈现的管辖权歧义的可能性。近 50 万人在数百个美国自由贸易区工作。跨国公司越来越多地在国家的帮助下，在农村自贸区开展业务，并行使法外权力，在区内创造全面的权力和劳资关系环境。人种学的例子来自关于不同处境的受访者如何理解他们每天在肯塔基州和南卡罗来纳州的自由贸易区浏览的地方、州、国家和国际司法管辖区网络的研究。恐惧、沉默和应急是控制工作人员在自贸区体验的技术以及离开美国的身体的日常身体纪律 领土，而仍然在美国领土上。自由贸易区说明了美国经济活动的全球性程度，与最近特朗普政府的经济民族主义和孤立主义言论相矛盾。对于利用外贸区的农村工厂的工人来说，这种矛盾是突出的，他们可能不确定美国法律保护在工作场所的适用性。