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Politics of Borders. Critique. The primary task of critique will not be to evaluate whether its objects - social conditions, practices, forms of knowledge, power, and discourse good or bad, valued highly or demeaned, but to bring into relief the very framework of evaluation itself. .
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Critique • The primary task of critique will not be to evaluate whether its objects - social conditions, practices, forms of knowledge, power, and discourse good or bad, valued highly or demeaned, but to bring into relief the very framework of evaluation itself.
Doors and Walls “Doors are atrocious things. If there was no door made, walls could very potently, clearly and loudly send their message of exclusion. They could purely and fully mean dead-ends and remain as such for eternity... But doors take away such forceful meaning from walls. (They soften up/hide the brutal function of walls) Immediately after seeing a door, necessity of a wall emerges.But do we in a same way feel the necessity of a door when we see a wall? I believe doors are nothing but futile hopes: if they are left open they negate the function of a wall, if they are closed forever they negate their own use.“ Ahmad Shamlou
What is a Border? • A continuous line demarcating the territory and sovereign authority of the state, enclosing its domain. It corresponds most closely with the historical spatiality of political power. W. Walters • It was during 16th century that frontier (border) acquired the meaning of boundaries of a space that has been associated with state. (Neocleous)
What is a Border? • Borders are geopolitical edges of a territory designating and separating a polity,a sovereignty from another. Then borders functions in two ways: A) Designation, B) separation. Borders constitute or designate what is inside,i.e. the Swedish territory, the Swedish people , Also at the same time designates the outside in an act of separation: “over there is not Sweden, it is Denmark.”
What is a Border? • As such a border, and act of bordering is a productive process, that produces nationality, national identity. However it does so with the cost of ‘othering’ or excluding the other. • This ‘other’ of borders, more than often is different, in terms of color, religion, culture.
Border as Frame • Google ‘Border’ and Gerhard Nordström • J. Butler: “The frame functions not only as a boundary to the image, but as structuring the image itself. If the image in turn structures how we register reality, then it is bound up with the interpretive scene in which we operate.” • Borders make normal’s (S.Ahmed)
Where is Border? • Borders are fixed at the edge of the geographical limits of a sovereignty? • Borders are not fixed and are not only territorially drawn, they inevitably are inscribed “inside” as well as “outside” of any given national state.
Where is Border? • The idea of de-bordering ( a borderless world) central to the idea of globalization has been followed by a re-bordering process. • “Borders have been transported into the middle of political space and everyday life.” in this sense borders follow people in everyday life.
Where is border? • De-localization of borders: Policing and controlling function of borders operates, now, away from the geographical border. E.g. • (The US) Enhanced Border Security and Visa Reform Act of 2002: Greater effort is made to schedule policing and identification functions well before the traveller arrives at the border, as well as arrival at the borders. • Remote Controlling of EU Borders (Guiraudon and Lahav): Moving the locus of control activities away from the borders of the territory, and, in some cases, even beyond the formal apparatus of the state. E.g. The EU and Turkey deal.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25398872
Border materialized on the body of a truck • UK carrier liability laws: Airlines, railway, shipping companies, and road transportation companies– can be fined up to £2000 for each improperly documented passenger they transport into the national territory. As a result the task of border policing/controlling is now carried out by a network of individuals ranging from truck drivers, airport officials at the check-in desks of airlines, carriers personal to the border officials.
… • UK immigration service instruction on “securitization of trucks” (2004): regulating the surface of truck, the inner material, installation of CO2 detectors, even training the truck driver to carry out inspection procedures after each stop.
… • As the result the truck and its entire route way is turned into a dispersed, mobile border. The UK border, per example, is extended and carried outside its territorial limits. This shows the desire on the part of Western governments to intercept refugees before they have an opportunity to activate human rights claims within the territory.
Dialectic of violence • Bribery, rape, extortion ect. Are common practices of border guards.(Hagan 2008) • Current Border regime foster smuggling (Khosravi 2010) • In the process of criminalizing migration, human smugglers become scapegoats. They are held responsible for all migrant deaths at borders. The authorities represent human smugglers as criminals. The vast majority of migrant deaths, usually by drowning, in the sea along Spanish–African borders happen in relation to interception activities by Spanish border guards (Carling 2007). • 700 per year die at the borders of EU
Dialectic of violence/ What does border (regime) produce? • “Good work ethic” or cheap labor: Confiscation of passport, dependency on working visa, threat of police. • “Good wives”;who do not challenge patriarchal families. • Human with no rights • Border also ‘educates’ and hide violence, by attributing violence to geographical origin and denying its normal existence within borders e.g. Canada immigration guide
Sexuality of Border • Borders are not only radicalized; but also gendered and sexualized, beyond trafficking for sex industry • The rape of border crossers; • Rape as a mechanism of border control, On the Mexico–USA border, rape has been routinely used by the state in its efforts to militarize the border. (Falcón 2001) • Rape as ‘tariff’ of border crossing • Rape as the price of border crossing, and documentation
Sexuality of Border • Given the vulnerability of the undocumented, sexual abuse doesn’t stop at the border: Undocumented Burmese women in Thailand are recurrently raped by gangs who say that they will avoid arrest since the women are ‘illegal migrants’ (The Irrawaddy, 20 October 2008). - Rape of female asylum seekers by immigration officers; In Sweden, an officer at the Migration Board visited several female applicants outside working time, had pictures of them on his cell phone, and asked them for sexual services in exchange for assistance in their asylum process (Swedish Radio, 21 January 2008).
Sexuality of Border • Rape at the border is not intended to keep migrant women out but rather to keep them in their places in terms of the racial and gender hierarchy (Carpenter, 2006) As such border produces “rape-able” bodies • Heterosexual borders; • In many states same-sex couples are essentially excluded from reunification policies, since they cannot use their relationships as a basis for legal immigration.
Invisible Borders • Border and border control is no longer spatially fixed, it is everywhere in the city and throughout the social fabric of everyday life. - The undocumented inhibits the border in his/her body. Just as the border is a non existence place, an invisible line, they live an invisible life as well.
Invisible Borders • Border and rejection of border control exist : in all everyday activities that are ‘illegalized’, from housing and work to physical mobility. Undocumented immigrants lack not only the right to healthcare, education, police protection and work, but also the right to social relations and freedom of movement in public spaces. • Border and its institutions of control, detention and deportation, sanction the body of the migrant, through the condition of “deportability”.
Invisible Borders • Deportability (De-Genova ): Constant risk of deportation, not the act of deportation itself , but the fear of deportation, being reported, which in turn imposes a forced immobility on the undocumented. • Inner city borders
Border is the body of the foreigner • The Swedish REVA project is an illustrating example. The project operated as an internal border control in the Stockholm subway system to arrest undocumented migrants. The radicalized profile of a so-called illegal migrant reminded many Swedes (born in Sweden or Swedish citizen since long time ago) that the state still does not recognize them as real Swedes. (khosravi)
