https://doi.org/10.1177/0309816817738319 Capital & Class 1–8 © The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0309816817738319 journals.sagepub.com/home/cnc Superfluity and insecurity: Disciplining surplus populations in the Global North Victor L Shammas Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, Norway Abstract Capitalism in northern societies is entering an age of advanced precarity. On the one hand, postindustrial societies are confronted by growing surplus populations for whom there exist few positive functions in the market. These new ‘dangerous classes’ are increasingly subject to surveillance, discipline, and exclusion as the policing and penal instruments of the state are called upon to detect and contain risk. On the other hand, capitalism’s ‘insiders’ are increasingly consigned to a precarious life of hyperflexible labor and generalized insecurity. Confronted with a growing mass of ‘social detritus’, augmented by advances in automation and catalyzed by accelerating flows of capital, states in the Global North will increasingly be forced to mobilize the disciplinary instruments of policing and punishment to contain the swelling ranks of problem populations. Keywords neoliberalism, penal state, post-capitalism, precariat, precarity Societies in the North are entering an era that is increasingly likely to be characterized by the rise and consolidation of precarious life and labor. What confronts capitalism in the Euro-American world more than ever are the swelling ranks of the supernumerary sec- tions of humanity, those millions of people who serve no purpose in the market: ‘illiter- ate’ immigrants across Europe, deskilled ‘ex-cons’ in the United States, a ‘lost generation’ of unemployed youths, and expendable ex-proletarians wrought by the ‘robot economy’. Corresponding author: Victor L Shammas, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo, PO Box 1096 Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway. Email: v.l.shammas@sosgeo.uio.no 738319CNC 0 0 10.1177/0309816817738319Capital & ClassShammas research-article 2017 Article