Urban Politics and the Production of Capital Mobility in the United States

Abstract

In the quest to explain changing urban political economic conditions over the past thirty years urban researchers have naturalized capital mobility, to the point where challenging the mobility of capital appears either impossible, undesirable, or both. In this paper I aim to denaturalize capital mobility and to repoliticize the relationship between capital and place through a critical legal geographic investigation of corporate mobility rights in the United States. The overall goal is to help urban researchers to think critically about the politics of capital mobility and to ensure that the legal principles enabling capital mobility remain open to challenge from alternative political perspectives.