Everything always begins with cleaning.It is the zero point — the threshold between the invisible and the visible. Cleaning isthe body’s first contact with the system of capital, the moment in which it crossesfrom the status of refugee into that of worker. In that passage, the body loses itsnarrative but gains a function. It becomes a medium through which the economybreathes. The first step of migration is isolation — the absence of language. In post-war contexts, migration from Bosnia and Herzegovina to Italy no longer represents ageographic transition but an epistemological shift — a restructuring of therelationship between body, labor, and space. Within this structure, the body is notonly the vehicle of labor but also the site where labor materializes. It issimultaneously biological, economic, and ideological. Italy becomes a horizon ofhope — of safety. Anđa, Boris, Zvonko, Tanja, Ivan, Nina, Marko, Zijada, and Semir— their names are not narrative placeholders but empirical evidence. Each of themoccupies a micro-space within a wider neoliberal choreography, where the economyunfolds through rhythms of repetition, obedience, and adaptation. Anđa works in awarehouse within a workers’ canteen. Boris works with machines. Zvonko kneadsbread while the city still sleeps. Tanja takes care of children with intellectualdisabilities. Zijada and Semir cross borders, shift jobs, and switch shifts. They allparticipate in the same movement — a movement that does not produce mobility,but the circulation of bodies. Theoretically, this is not migration but bioeconomy —the way capital structures life as a unit of labor. Michel Foucault would say that thebody has become a “territory of governance” — a locus of power where individualexperience is subjected to techniques of control and self-regulation. In this context,the working body is not merely an instrument of production but a product of thesystem itself. It is disciplined through repetition, through norms of productivity, andthrough the morality of cleanliness — “if you are clean, you might be noticed.”Cleaning thus becomes a paradigm of capitalist ethics: labor that erases, labor thatcreates order, labor that maintains hierarchy. The migrant body is a cartography ofpower. Its movements are the topography of the economy.The body is simultaneously subject and object — that which produces, and thatwhich is produced. Migration, in this framework, is not transition but duration. Thereis no arrival — only an endless state of adjustment. This is what Franco “Bifo”Berardi calls semiocapitalism — the moment when labor is no longer only a physicalact, but also an affective and semiotic activity. The migrant does not produce onlymaterial value, but also emotional value: patience, gratitude, discipline, silence. Thesystem capitalizes on these affects, transforming them into forms of obedience andmoral purity. Within this logic, Bosnia and Herzegovina is no longer their country.Spaces change, but structures remain the same. The state no longer functions as aborder but as an algorithm — a set of procedures that determine the rhythms ofmovement, the forms of residence, and the possibilities of labor. The “border” nowexists within the body — in its endurance, its speed, its functionality.
These micro-biographies reveal the global regime of labor in its most concrete form:as a choreography of exhaustion.The body is the most efficient mechanism of control because it teaches itselfobedience.The economies of movement are no longer bound to space but to rhythm. Eachgesture leaves a trace in the muscle; each shift shapes the perception of time. In thissense, labor has become the ontological framework of existence. It is no longer ameans of survival but the very form of life itself. At this point, migration becomes anepistemological apparatus. It does not speak of passage, but of structures of powerthat determine how the body may move, breathe, exist. Anđa, Boris, Zvonko, Tanja,Zijada, and Semir are not merely subjects of a narrative. Their bodies become thelanguage of the system — speaking of an economy sustained by fatigue, ofcommunities that persist despite borders, of a space that repeats itself but neverliberates. Everything always begins with cleaning — the most basic act that opensthe world, but also erases the presence of those who sustain it. Labor becomesprayer, the body becomes the state, and movement — the most precise form ofsilence.
These micro-biographies reveal the global regime of labor in its most concrete form:as a choreography of exhaustion.The body is the most efficient mechanism of control because it teaches itselfobedience.The economies of movement are no longer bound to space but to rhythm. Eachgesture leaves a trace in the muscle; each shift shapes the perception of time. In thissense, labor has become the ontological framework of existence. It is no longer ameans of survival but the very form of life itself. At this point, migration becomes anepistemological apparatus. It does not speak of passage, but of structures of powerthat determine how the body may move, breathe, exist. Anđa, Boris, Zvonko, Tanja,Zijada, and Semir are not merely subjects of a narrative. Their bodies become thelanguage of the system — speaking of an economy sustained by fatigue, ofcommunities that persist despite borders, of a space that repeats itself but neverliberates. Everything always begins with cleaning — the most basic act that opensthe world, but also erases the presence of those who sustain it. Labor becomesprayer, the body becomes the state, and movement — the most precise form ofsilence.