On Expo 2010's hinterlands, 'extrastatecraft' and migrant workers

The Shanghai Expo Bureau eventually obtained permission from the BIE to leave four pavilions along the central axis on permanent display and, after that, to reopen five foreign pavilions that were donated to the city. These developments shed light on the afterlife of expos. The fact that buildings such as the Saudi Arabian and Spanish pavilions in Shanghai have joined the Eiffel Tower and the Seattle Space Needle as structures that survived the expos that spawned them is interesting enough. But what concerns me is a deeper problem: one that involves the jurisdiction that the BIE enjoys over the organization of expos and how this interacts with the powers of the host nation, in this case China. I approach this as an instance of what architect Keller Easterling (2008) calls ‘extrastatecraft’: a situation in which international institutions, multinational corporations and transnational networks operate in parallel to, or in partnership with, states to create protocols, management styles and governmental norms that produce and programme physical space around the world.