'Thrown Away Like a Piece of Cloth': Fashion Production and the European Refugee Crisis

This essay aims to create a dialogue between analyses of recent immigration and refugee movements and those of the urban garment industry by first historicising the relationship between fashion production and the European refugee 'crisis', and then focusing on the plight of Syrian refugees working in the Turkish garment industry, including factories that produce clothing for European high street brands. In doing so, this essay argues that it is important for us, namely, consumers, producers and researchers of fashion to grasp how the critical, conceptual and intellectual capacities, aspirations, and strategic and tactical choices of migrant and refugee workers remain a threat to capital/borders and thus are capable of reinventing fashion and relations of production in a way that facilitates the abolition of classes/borders and the expansion of the creative powers of all human beings in their relationship with fashion objects.