Reflecting on this week’s readings, I find myself grappling with complex themes of global migration, border politics, and the human consequences of stringent asylum policies. These readings, while situated in different contexts, collectively underscore a stark reality: the ways in which global policies on migration and asylum-seeking are deeply embedded in systems of power and control, often leading to human suffering.
Harsha Walia’s essay delves into the intricate dynamics of border-crafting and its implications for global migration. Her examination of the border as not merely a physical barrier but a tool of social and economic segregation is particularly thought-provoking. This perspective unsettles the often-simplistic narrative around migration, highlighting how borders are instruments of a global apartheid that perpetuate inequalities and limit mobility based on race, class, and nationality.
The This American Life episode, on the other hand, brings a human face to these issues, depicting the harrowing experiences of asylum seekers under the Remain in Mexico policy. The personal story of David and his son being kidnapped underscores the immediate dangers faced by individuals caught in these political crosshairs. It’s a stark reminder of how policy decisions in one country can reverberate, causing ripples of despair and danger miles away.
Reflecting on the hypocrisy often exhibited in global migration politics, as highlighted in Walia’s essay and the podcast, and to put things into context of how I see the issue, I find a striking parallel in Pakistan’s treatment of Afghan refugees. While some Pakistani elites criticise Western countries for their stringent migration policies, they simultaneously support the deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, attributing issues like inflation, drug trafficking, and crime to these displaced individuals.
This contradiction echoes Walia’s discussion of border-crafting as a mechanism of social control and exclusion. The deportation of nearly a million Afghan refugees from Pakistan, many of whom have been born and raised there, reflects a disturbing trend of using migrants as scapegoats for broader societal issues. It also showcases the arbitrary nature of borders – these individuals, despite having lived their entire lives in Pakistan, are seen as outsiders and held responsible for problems largely out of their control.
The situation in Pakistan resonates with the narratives presented in the podcast, where the harsh realities of the US’s Remain in Mexico policy are brought to light. In both contexts, we see how migration policies are often influenced by nationalist rhetoric and the shifting of blame onto the most vulnerable – the migrants themselves. This pattern of behaviour underscores a broader issue in global migration politics: the tendency of states to prioritise nationalist agendas over human rights and to frame migrants as threats to social stability.
Furthermore, these examples challenge the idea of the nation-state as an inherent protector of rights and provider of security. The expulsion of Afghan refugees, many of whom consider Pakistan their home, reveals the fragility of their belonging and the contingent nature of their rights and security based on nationality.
This reflection raises new questions: How do the experiences of migrants and refugees challenge the notion of nation-states as safe havens for their citizens? How can global policies be reimagined to prioritise human dignity and safety over territorial and political interests? How can we reconceptualize borders in a way that upholds human rights and freedom of movement, while still addressing legitimate concerns of nation-states?
Harsha Walia’s piece has really resonated with me, pinpointing connections between systemic challenges that I felt and observed but didn’t know how to articulate. When she writes, “In fact, mass displacement and immobility represent the outcome of the actual displacement crises of capitalism, conquest, and climate change” and that “the heart of border craft is the mass production and social organization of difference” a few threads of political theory linked together in a powerful way, particularly in the interwoven realities of “racial capitalism” and “racial citizenship” which she says “rely on the dispossession and immobility of migrants to maintain state power and capitalist extractions.”
(Interestingly, I read a different piece on migration for another class this week about how many Western nations fully rely on migrant labour for low-wage, precarious or care-taking roles, even if that “extraction” of migrants as labourers leaves vacuums in a community all for the sake of (hoped!) capital accumulation that can send resources to their loved ones, all while expecting them to live a fractured existence. To be a woman and to be a “migrant” is to face double discrimination, often further compounded by the discrimination of social and economic class and gender-based violence as well. Which tracks with all that we’ve read this week too…)
I also am thinking about how much borders categories and classifications of “migrants” so profoundly dehumanize people as part of the systemic legal and social categorization of “other.” A children’s book that I really love – which was written for refugee youth – is called “My Name Is Not Refugee” by Kate Milner and I thought of it a lot when listening to the podcast episode and reading through the articles.
So many migrants become statistics and labels. Numbers or stereotypes. Not Darwin, Not Elwin, No David: just “migrants”
or “The climate migrant.”
or “the illegal”
or “the terrorist”
or “the criminal”
or “the bogus refugee”
or “the swarm”
or “the undeserving”
or “the diseased”
or “the foreigner”
As Viet Thanh Nguyễn writes, refugees are essentially a classification of the “other” – invisible and hyper-visible all at once, unwanted, “ignored and forgotten until they turn into a [perceived] menace.”
And this language and mistreatment is internalized. In their piece about the self-perception of Syrian refugee women in Lebanon, Angela Gissi speaks to the ways that these negative representations of refugees shape negative interpretations of the women labelled as such and “affect their wellbeing and constrain their abilities to move forward and build a dignified existence in exile.”
Harsha Walia really powerfully connects the system of borders as external forces to the same harmful behaviour inside borders, suggesting that “borders” as a construct are actually about race, class, and control. She writes, “Borders rely on and reproduce the idea of a homogeneous body politic, emphasizing difference not only from those migrants deemed deviant and undesirable but also from those alienated and minoritized citizens who are essentially stateless within the nation-state. From the sweatshop floor and the refugee camp to the reservation and the gated community, borders are the scaffolding for ordering regimes that simultaneously manufacture and discipline surplus populations while parasitically extracting land, labour, and life itself. Classifications such as “migrant” or “refugee” do not represent social groups as much as they symbolize state-regulated relations of difference and state-manufactured conditions of vulnerability. While the rich from wealthy states enjoy borderless mobility —as global investors, bankers, ex-pats, or hipster tourists—racialized poor people are subjected to discursive and material criminalization and illegalization.” (Woof.)
Question:
Xenophobic and populist perspectives on immigration and borders feel like they’re on the rise and seen as increasingly acceptable. How can we actively work against these violent and harmful movements and work towards the world-making and homemaking that Harsha Walia speaks of, characterized by inclusion and care?
And how do we do this within the bordered systems within our communities too, that continue to other the racialized poor?
In recent years there is a theme that emerged around the treatment of migrants, particularly women, and the systemic violence embedded within immigration control and detention systems. I feel very strongly about the politicization of migration,and the suffering of migrant women, and how policies perpetuate violence against them.
The article “There Is No Migrant Crisis” argues against the racist framing of migration as a crisis, suggesting instead a systemic failure to address the humanitarian needs and rights of migrants. I like how it emphasizes the constructed nature of this “crisis,” which serves to justify increasingly militarized borders and the dehumanization of migrants. In contrast, the reading from “Journal of Women in Culture and Society” provides a deep dive into the lived experiences of women confined in a detention center, highlighting the intersectional violence they struggled with: gender, race, class, and legal status experienced by migrant women. This violence is not only a continuation of the hardships they face in their countries of origin but is exacerbated by the policies and practices of immigration and border control in their destination countries, particularly in the global North.
I am always shocked at the normalization of violence and detention in the management of migration, with a specific focus on the gendered and racialized dimensions of this violence. The systemic nature of this issue raises critical questions about the role of immigration policies in perpetuating inequality and oppression.
I think that current approaches to migration are not only inadequate but actively harmful, particularly to the most vulnerable migrants. The insights offered by the readings unsettle any complacent acceptance of the status quo and demand a reconsideration of how societies manage migration. They invite us to question the ethical implications of enforcing borders in ways that dehumanize and endanger people who are often fleeing violence and poverty.
Connecting these insights to current events, such as the treatment of migrants at various international borders, and to other readings and films that explore migration from a human rights perspective, can enrich the discussion. For example, the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Mediterranean crisis.
How can we reconceptualize borders in a way that prioritizes human dignity and rights over territorial integrity?
The podcast this week was wild. When one of the interviewees states that when she was about to be sexually assaulted, that she would hope/ask that her attacker would put on a condom so she doesn’t get pregnant, this highlighted to me how normalized violence is within certain asylum and border spaces, and the victims have become so conditioned to the violence. It’s also quite interesting to me that Mexico hasn’t asked the UN for support with these asylum camps, which begs the question, whose lives matter, and whose lives are visible or worth enough to matter to governments. When the one officer in San Francisco quotes, “Tell me all the horrible things that have happened to you, you have an hour and I will decide if you can stay.” To me, this highlights how asylum seekers need to perform a persona of victimhood, and to relive potentially horrifying things that may have happened to them in order to convince someone that they can stay. Moreover, the time restriction of one hour adds another dimension of emotional and physical labour that asylum seekers may feel stressed to explain their full story; which poses the question about what is allowed to be said, how are asylum seekers able to structure and narratively communicate stories and lived experiences. The reality is, they aren’t fully able to. They almost acting like contestants on American Idol hoping that an asylum officers hits their golden buzzer and allows them to stay. Also, asylum seekers may then be forced to strategically prioritize certain stories over others, or condense moments in order to fit everything in. This also begs the questions, what forms and acts of violence are convincing enough? And also, who deserves a chance to be convinced, and what is the threshold for someone to become convinced. It was also quite disheartening when the MPP rules required asylum seekers to gather evidence and document of the violence perpetrated against them, along with proof that the government will not help them. This again replicates and assumes that asylum seekers ar not being truthful, or are intentionally attempting to be deceitful.
The Esposito et Al. piece brought up an interesting point about heteronormativity and and heteronormative relationships, and how Women can be pressured into these relationships in order for her rights to be recognized, while also potentially becoming dependent on the man. It was interesting how Desiree’s partner became jealous about her potential autonomy that he began to beat her so that she would maintain subservient to him. This highlights how patriarchy and heteronormativity and dimensions closely connected to asylum and borders, along with how these systems replicate bad actors such as police who assume that these Women are acting in bad faith, and sexualize them even further by dehumanizing them and assuming they are here under false pretences.
How do we create a system of movement which allows individuals to transcend borders while combatting stigma’s related to false assumptions of bad intentions?
Also, might a Queer person or Queer couple feel forced to perform as something they are not when trying to cross a border, or have to perform as an extended stereotype of their sexual identity?
This week’s readings helped me think of a topic that is not often discussed enough, and an issue that I, myself, haven’t focused much on before. Starting with the podcast, listening to the stories of those who are seeking refuge and the officers’ experiences, and the US government’s disregard for their lives made me so angry. It was refreshing to have the podcast cover and unfold the experiences of the officers as well, but what struck me the most was the details of the people — who are fighting for their lives and safety, often with children, and being put through a treatment without dignity and safety. The camps with horrible conditions, the policy loopholes that violates human rights, and the dangers that the immigrants face, including kidnapping and being returned to the dangerous situations that they were seeking to escape from.
Esposito, Ornelas, Scirocchi, and Arcidiacono’s “Voices from the Inside: Lived Experiences of Women Confined in a Detention Center” shed light on the importance of hearing and understanding women’s voices, especially because there is a tendency to silence and homogenize the experiences of migrants. It highlights the oppression and resistance, and how patriarchy also plays a role in this.
Walia’s piece sheds light on the impact of borders and migration from personal experience, and how it perpetuate inequalities and injustices and the violence that migrants and refugees face. It was such a relevant piece to read after the podcast, as it critiques oppressive systems and calls for solidarity among social movements, and celebrates the resilience of migrants and refugees, for them to have agency.
Shehadeh and Nguyen’s pieces were particularly touching to heart, because of their personal, powerful and emotional sharing of their experiences. Shehadeh’s piece explores family history and personal identity as a Palestinian refugee, and ongoing struggle for recognition and justice for Palestinian refugee, which is such a relevant topic today. Nguyen’s piece also reflects on personal experience and issues surrounding refugees and displacement. The sentiment on both pieces surrounding identity made me think more broadly about the intersectionality between immigrant/refugee status and identity.
My mother never discloses that she is Korean — in fact, my grandparents had hid their Korean nationality from each other until my grandfather proposed to my grandmother, and it was by coincidence that they were both Korean. My grandmother’s parents escaped South Korea due to the rise of nationalism and militarism, and any communist/socialist sympathizers were being persecuted. In Japan, the only Korean-speaking school were North Korean schools, so my grandmother attended North Korean school to learn and keep the language. Because of the discrimination she had faced growing up, she hid her Korean identity in her adulthood. My grandfather’s family came to Japan to escape poverty and danger, only to find out that there would be even more discrimination and poverty in Japan, especially towards Korean immigrants, thus leading to my grandfather to disguise his identity. Drawing from both their experiences, they made a conscious effort to raise their children (my mother and her two younger brothers) as Japanese, so they never learned the Korean language and made them hide their nationality via Japanese ailiases. However, they were never considered Japanese legally, and the term Zainichi (residing in Japan) is used for ethnically Korean immigrants, without voting rights, access to social welfare, etc. My mother, when she married, gave up her Korean nationality to become a Japanese citizen, for a better future for me and my sister. So, reading about personal stories made me deeply reflect on the effects of dislocation on identity, and I ponder, “How can we ensure balance the need for safety, to grant safety, while ensuring that their identities and cultures are still continued and celebrated?”
Reflecting on the readings from this week, I recalled my early education on borders and territories. At the time, I had no idea the privilege I had in abstractly considering borders, when many individuals are subject to violence upheld by them. I remember being taught that for a ‘state’ to be recognized it needs to be ‘sovereign’ and for a state to be ‘sovereign’ it needs to ‘have distinguished borders and the means to protect them’. Given my experiences, and the lessons I have learned since, I hate that this is what I was taught but shouldn’t be surprised given the colonial state I reside in. I think this is partially why Walia’s article particularly resonated with me. Walia argues that borders maintain hoarded concentrations of wealth accrued from colonial domination while ensuring mobility for some and containment for most. The stories told both in the American Life podcast about the US, as well as Esposito’s research in Italy exemplified this.
We are shown how entrenched this rhetoric is in the American immigration system through the podcasts’ an analysis of the border officers working at the southern US border. Each asylum officer described their responsibility to weed out the ‘fakers’. This shows as Walia describes “the idea of a homogeneous body politic, emphasizing difference not only from those migrants deemed deviant and undesirable”. The border officers believe that they are protecting their country, and are being patriotic, only because they have internalized the othering of migrants and people seeking asylum. Later in the podcast, we hear about how some of the border officers are experiencing ptsd and extreme guilt for carrying out their duty to ‘protect’ the US border. This is similar to our discussion a few weeks ago about soldiers who experience PTSD when deployed. Both systems (though they are obviously very much so the same system) operate on a false narrative of protection and patriotism, and when the façade wears away, the individuals responsible for carrying out these policies may stay in those positions longer because they themselves are struggling to make ends meet. The reliance on disenfranchised people to disenfranchise other people makes it all possible. This can also be seen in the ways that Australia leveraged Nauru’s requirement for financial assistance (caused by colonialism) to establish an Offsite Detention Center. Amnesty International reported that refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru, most of whom had been held there for three years, routinely faced neglect by health workers and other service providers who had been hired by the Australian government, as well as frequent unpunished assaults by local Nauruans.
Another theme I recognized across this weeks readings were the lack of access to information. In this US, it was the shady dealings of implementing the MPP, and not making the *very specific* requirements for asylum accessible to those seeking asylum. Similarly, in Espocito’s discussion about Najwa, they were handed papers to sign in a language that was not accessible to them. The manufactured precarity of migration is the strongest tool for colonial states to leverage to ensure the exclusivity of their citizenzry. This system conveniently erases the violence of capitalism, colonialism, genocide, slavery, and indentureship—the interlocking unfreedoms that create the conditions that make the border possible and cause human suffering.
Espocito’s discussion of migration as a choice or an expression of agency to be powerful. Particularly because it reminded me of advocate and refugee Behrouz Boochani, who highlighted in his book “No Friend but the Mountains” that boat migration is the last option for many asylum seekers, however, many choose to leave on a boat journey as dying at sea is more tolerable than their fate in their origin country, I wonder what it would look like for government administrations to acknowledge and honour asylum seekers as human beings with agency and courage, rather than as a threat, ‘free-loader’, or statistic?
Some other questions that come to mind when considering these:
“Do you ever think about structural violence and get stuck in a cycle?” I said this to my friend this week and she laughed at me….. But also:
How can we reject the politicization of migration that fuels harmful rhetoric of patriotism that others migrants and asylum seekers?
Is demanding much needed transparency and clarity in migration processes a helpful step? Or does it further accept and normalize the current (problematic) status quo?
I don’t know where to being with this week’s material. The Out Crowd, for instance, taught me the privileges and delicacy of citizenship. The countries we roam through and our spaces within them in relation to others. How we we can be home in one, welcomed in one, and a “nuisance” in others.
I can only imagine the heightened risks of gender-based violence that women often face and we got to read some of these. I also want to acknowledge men and boys are also vulnerable to exploitation, physical harm, and other forms of abuse along their journey like the fear the men felt of being taken and how that little boy was told they might take his organs. It makes me terribly sad to reflect on how the one lady cross border in Mexico had accepted her fate and simply asked for a condom for the next time she’s sexually assaulted. She was so certain she would be. It is deeply distressing to witness how the normalization of sexual violence has become a grim reality for many women fleeing persecution and seeking safety across borders. The fact that she felt resigned to her fate.
The securitization of borders, rather than providing safety and security, often exacerbates the risks faced by individuals, exposing them to exploitation, trafficking, and other forms of abuse. I understand the “need” to have borders, I do, but I don’t understand the need to be treating people in such a manner, with racism, suspicion, and discrimination – this othering to the point of dehumanization and knowingly!
Besides, the decision to cross the border, particularly for children who are unaccompanied or separated from their families, is that not evidence enough of a desperate search for safety and security clearly one that must be amid perilous conditions in their home countries? I took a course on child rights over the summer and this was a big component of it. They don’t even see them as children, because if they did they would not place them in detention facilities. They are even referred to as “unaccompanied alien children.” This is a violation of human rights laws and I cannot understand on what grounds American have a moral superiority complex, no offence. But, God is it not deluded. To then go in and destroy whole countries because America somehow cares about the rights of the civilians there when it cannot care of the people on its border. Truly perplexing, the disconnect between America’s professed values and actual actions. How can a nation that claims to champion democracy and human rights justify such inhumane treatment of asylum seekers?
Further, the inherent dehumanization and militarization of border enforcement contributes to a culture of impunity and systemic violence that as we heard has a profound psychological effect and of course ethical consequences for them. I am beginning to see them too as victims of a much larger system for those trying to resist. Oh my God the sheer danger asylum seekers who were rejected were sent back to and must live in. That is if they even made it that far. I think of that father and his little boy, and the one father and his 2 kids and how the border guard was involved in their kidnapping, and I wonder why.
Next, the Walia reading, the partition of India and Pakistan with its devastating consequences and lasting scars passed down to each of us whether we grew in the country or overseas, serves as a poignant backdrop to the broader discussion on the securitization of borders. I for one, live 40-ish minutes from the Indian border. We would feel unsafe even driving near the area which comprises of farmland when visiting my friends. The criminalization and demonization of marginalized communities. This coupled with the rhetoric of crisis and security always seems to provide justification for increasingly repressive and militarized border policies. We never seem to question it back home.
Growing up in Lahore also exposed me to the struggles of marginalized communities, including refugees and migrants seeking sanctuary from persecution and violence. The city’s history as a refuge for those fleeing political turmoil and religious persecution. I cannot say they fare any better in Pakistan, that would be a lie. My late grandfather would tell us the story of a Sikh doctor in our ancestral village who saved his eye as a child and during partition when my grandfather was about 15ish and he was already a prominent head in the village, the Sikh doctor came to him and said “Samad I saved your eye, today I ask you save my and my families life. He even entrusted my grandfather with some belongings as my grandfather assigned a handful of trusted men to escort him and his loved ones safely to what would be the border between us. Years later he learned those men had killed him, he had sent that man to his death, unknowingly but it lived with him and he felt the need to share it with each of his children. I don’t know about the others in my family, but the guilt eats at me every now and then.
Additionally, as a migrant myself, I’ve often grappled with questions of belonging and identity, navigating the tension between my cultural heritage and the cultures of the places I’ve lived. Nguyen’s reflections on the fluidity and complexity of refugee identity reminded me that identity is not fixed. When he says he cannot remember many things I think it speaks of the immense sacrifices and hardships that refugees face when forced to flee their homes. The decision to leave his sister behind, only to be separated from her for three decades, is heartbreaking. I cannot stand my siblings but I would die at the very minimum on the inside if I weren’t to see them for that long. His gratitude for not remembering much, speaks to the overwhelming nature of the memories refugees must have to live with. I don’t even want to touch on their experiences in America, what they went through on the journey there was enough.
I wonder how can we reshape our understanding of borders to foster greater compassion for all individuals, regardless of their nationality or immigration status? Life is so unfair.
Whenever borders are brought up, I think back to my neck of the woods in Latin America. Quechua one of the indigenous languages of my country is spoken as far south as Chile and as far north as Ecuador and this points out the arbitrary nature of borders. We have people that share a cultural and indigenous tradition and yet, they are separated by an invisible line imposed by Western colonization. In a way artificial borders have created the migrant crisis as many of this lands are the product of many historic damages that have been caused by imperialism and the continued deprivation of resources in regions outside the Western world. This is further aggravated by how the West has fabricated their perception of people trickling into their region which is reflected in the pieces from The Displaced: Refugee writers on refugee lives. Refugee, migrant, humanitarian migrant, internally displaced, or any word used to describe any group of people are enveloped by layers of narratives that they have little control over. The creation of the ‘good’ refugee does not take away the category of ‘other’ is simply creates a space where the ‘other’ can breathe more comfortably. How can the ‘others’ find meaningful resistance and dialogue when they are exercising in processes that were meant to perpetuate narratives that creates ‘others’.
The podcast for this week was particularly difficult for me to process for many reasons from the geographical closeness, to the similarity in experiences, to the shared language. There are many things that I would want to touch upon from this podcast but, I want to hold on to a small excerpt in the podcast children crossing alone. A glimpse at a better future has led more than 400,000 Mexican and Central American youths to cross the border, a journey that unroots them from their family, their lands, their language, and so much more. Their journey does not end once they cross the border as many of them do not have the means to make it through the day to day so these children have to find work. Typically, the boys will find themselves in construction jobs whilst the girls find themselves in farms or doing domestic labor. Working jobs that have been suffering sharp declines in American workers as the hours are long and the labor is highly taxing to the body and incredibly dangerous. These children work to make it through their day to day but also to be able to send money back home because 200 dollars a month can be the difference for their siblings back home to study and have food on the table. When the toxic and pervasive narratives of what migrants and refugees are, how can the reality and experiences of these children be a turning point for the discussion of this narrative.
Reflecting on this week’s readings, I find myself grappling with complex themes of global migration, border politics, and the human consequences of stringent asylum policies. These readings, while situated in different contexts, collectively underscore a stark reality: the ways in which global policies on migration and asylum-seeking are deeply embedded in systems of power and control, often leading to human suffering.
Harsha Walia’s essay delves into the intricate dynamics of border-crafting and its implications for global migration. Her examination of the border as not merely a physical barrier but a tool of social and economic segregation is particularly thought-provoking. This perspective unsettles the often-simplistic narrative around migration, highlighting how borders are instruments of a global apartheid that perpetuate inequalities and limit mobility based on race, class, and nationality.
The This American Life episode, on the other hand, brings a human face to these issues, depicting the harrowing experiences of asylum seekers under the Remain in Mexico policy. The personal story of David and his son being kidnapped underscores the immediate dangers faced by individuals caught in these political crosshairs. It’s a stark reminder of how policy decisions in one country can reverberate, causing ripples of despair and danger miles away.
Reflecting on the hypocrisy often exhibited in global migration politics, as highlighted in Walia’s essay and the podcast, and to put things into context of how I see the issue, I find a striking parallel in Pakistan’s treatment of Afghan refugees. While some Pakistani elites criticise Western countries for their stringent migration policies, they simultaneously support the deportation of Afghan refugees from Pakistan, attributing issues like inflation, drug trafficking, and crime to these displaced individuals.
This contradiction echoes Walia’s discussion of border-crafting as a mechanism of social control and exclusion. The deportation of nearly a million Afghan refugees from Pakistan, many of whom have been born and raised there, reflects a disturbing trend of using migrants as scapegoats for broader societal issues. It also showcases the arbitrary nature of borders – these individuals, despite having lived their entire lives in Pakistan, are seen as outsiders and held responsible for problems largely out of their control.
The situation in Pakistan resonates with the narratives presented in the podcast, where the harsh realities of the US’s Remain in Mexico policy are brought to light. In both contexts, we see how migration policies are often influenced by nationalist rhetoric and the shifting of blame onto the most vulnerable – the migrants themselves. This pattern of behaviour underscores a broader issue in global migration politics: the tendency of states to prioritise nationalist agendas over human rights and to frame migrants as threats to social stability.
Furthermore, these examples challenge the idea of the nation-state as an inherent protector of rights and provider of security. The expulsion of Afghan refugees, many of whom consider Pakistan their home, reveals the fragility of their belonging and the contingent nature of their rights and security based on nationality.
This reflection raises new questions: How do the experiences of migrants and refugees challenge the notion of nation-states as safe havens for their citizens? How can global policies be reimagined to prioritise human dignity and safety over territorial and political interests? How can we reconceptualize borders in a way that upholds human rights and freedom of movement, while still addressing legitimate concerns of nation-states?
Harsha Walia’s piece has really resonated with me, pinpointing connections between systemic challenges that I felt and observed but didn’t know how to articulate. When she writes, “In fact, mass displacement and immobility represent the outcome of the actual displacement crises of capitalism, conquest, and climate change” and that “the heart of border craft is the mass production and social organization of difference” a few threads of political theory linked together in a powerful way, particularly in the interwoven realities of “racial capitalism” and “racial citizenship” which she says “rely on the dispossession and immobility of migrants to maintain state power and capitalist extractions.”
(Interestingly, I read a different piece on migration for another class this week about how many Western nations fully rely on migrant labour for low-wage, precarious or care-taking roles, even if that “extraction” of migrants as labourers leaves vacuums in a community all for the sake of (hoped!) capital accumulation that can send resources to their loved ones, all while expecting them to live a fractured existence. To be a woman and to be a “migrant” is to face double discrimination, often further compounded by the discrimination of social and economic class and gender-based violence as well. Which tracks with all that we’ve read this week too…)
I also am thinking about how much borders categories and classifications of “migrants” so profoundly dehumanize people as part of the systemic legal and social categorization of “other.” A children’s book that I really love – which was written for refugee youth – is called “My Name Is Not Refugee” by Kate Milner and I thought of it a lot when listening to the podcast episode and reading through the articles.
So many migrants become statistics and labels. Numbers or stereotypes. Not Darwin, Not Elwin, No David: just “migrants”
or “The climate migrant.”
or “the illegal”
or “the terrorist”
or “the criminal”
or “the bogus refugee”
or “the swarm”
or “the undeserving”
or “the diseased”
or “the foreigner”
As Viet Thanh Nguyễn writes, refugees are essentially a classification of the “other” – invisible and hyper-visible all at once, unwanted, “ignored and forgotten until they turn into a [perceived] menace.”
And this language and mistreatment is internalized. In their piece about the self-perception of Syrian refugee women in Lebanon, Angela Gissi speaks to the ways that these negative representations of refugees shape negative interpretations of the women labelled as such and “affect their wellbeing and constrain their abilities to move forward and build a dignified existence in exile.”
Harsha Walia really powerfully connects the system of borders as external forces to the same harmful behaviour inside borders, suggesting that “borders” as a construct are actually about race, class, and control. She writes, “Borders rely on and reproduce the idea of a homogeneous body politic, emphasizing difference not only from those migrants deemed deviant and undesirable but also from those alienated and minoritized citizens who are essentially stateless within the nation-state. From the sweatshop floor and the refugee camp to the reservation and the gated community, borders are the scaffolding for ordering regimes that simultaneously manufacture and discipline surplus populations while parasitically extracting land, labour, and life itself. Classifications such as “migrant” or “refugee” do not represent social groups as much as they symbolize state-regulated relations of difference and state-manufactured conditions of vulnerability. While the rich from wealthy states enjoy borderless mobility —as global investors, bankers, ex-pats, or hipster tourists—racialized poor people are subjected to discursive and material criminalization and illegalization.” (Woof.)
Question:
Xenophobic and populist perspectives on immigration and borders feel like they’re on the rise and seen as increasingly acceptable. How can we actively work against these violent and harmful movements and work towards the world-making and homemaking that Harsha Walia speaks of, characterized by inclusion and care?
And how do we do this within the bordered systems within our communities too, that continue to other the racialized poor?
In recent years there is a theme that emerged around the treatment of migrants, particularly women, and the systemic violence embedded within immigration control and detention systems. I feel very strongly about the politicization of migration,and the suffering of migrant women, and how policies perpetuate violence against them.
The article “There Is No Migrant Crisis” argues against the racist framing of migration as a crisis, suggesting instead a systemic failure to address the humanitarian needs and rights of migrants. I like how it emphasizes the constructed nature of this “crisis,” which serves to justify increasingly militarized borders and the dehumanization of migrants. In contrast, the reading from “Journal of Women in Culture and Society” provides a deep dive into the lived experiences of women confined in a detention center, highlighting the intersectional violence they struggled with: gender, race, class, and legal status experienced by migrant women. This violence is not only a continuation of the hardships they face in their countries of origin but is exacerbated by the policies and practices of immigration and border control in their destination countries, particularly in the global North.
I am always shocked at the normalization of violence and detention in the management of migration, with a specific focus on the gendered and racialized dimensions of this violence. The systemic nature of this issue raises critical questions about the role of immigration policies in perpetuating inequality and oppression.
I think that current approaches to migration are not only inadequate but actively harmful, particularly to the most vulnerable migrants. The insights offered by the readings unsettle any complacent acceptance of the status quo and demand a reconsideration of how societies manage migration. They invite us to question the ethical implications of enforcing borders in ways that dehumanize and endanger people who are often fleeing violence and poverty.
Connecting these insights to current events, such as the treatment of migrants at various international borders, and to other readings and films that explore migration from a human rights perspective, can enrich the discussion. For example, the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Mediterranean crisis.
How can we reconceptualize borders in a way that prioritizes human dignity and rights over territorial integrity?
The podcast this week was wild. When one of the interviewees states that when she was about to be sexually assaulted, that she would hope/ask that her attacker would put on a condom so she doesn’t get pregnant, this highlighted to me how normalized violence is within certain asylum and border spaces, and the victims have become so conditioned to the violence. It’s also quite interesting to me that Mexico hasn’t asked the UN for support with these asylum camps, which begs the question, whose lives matter, and whose lives are visible or worth enough to matter to governments. When the one officer in San Francisco quotes, “Tell me all the horrible things that have happened to you, you have an hour and I will decide if you can stay.” To me, this highlights how asylum seekers need to perform a persona of victimhood, and to relive potentially horrifying things that may have happened to them in order to convince someone that they can stay. Moreover, the time restriction of one hour adds another dimension of emotional and physical labour that asylum seekers may feel stressed to explain their full story; which poses the question about what is allowed to be said, how are asylum seekers able to structure and narratively communicate stories and lived experiences. The reality is, they aren’t fully able to. They almost acting like contestants on American Idol hoping that an asylum officers hits their golden buzzer and allows them to stay. Also, asylum seekers may then be forced to strategically prioritize certain stories over others, or condense moments in order to fit everything in. This also begs the questions, what forms and acts of violence are convincing enough? And also, who deserves a chance to be convinced, and what is the threshold for someone to become convinced. It was also quite disheartening when the MPP rules required asylum seekers to gather evidence and document of the violence perpetrated against them, along with proof that the government will not help them. This again replicates and assumes that asylum seekers ar not being truthful, or are intentionally attempting to be deceitful.
The Esposito et Al. piece brought up an interesting point about heteronormativity and and heteronormative relationships, and how Women can be pressured into these relationships in order for her rights to be recognized, while also potentially becoming dependent on the man. It was interesting how Desiree’s partner became jealous about her potential autonomy that he began to beat her so that she would maintain subservient to him. This highlights how patriarchy and heteronormativity and dimensions closely connected to asylum and borders, along with how these systems replicate bad actors such as police who assume that these Women are acting in bad faith, and sexualize them even further by dehumanizing them and assuming they are here under false pretences.
How do we create a system of movement which allows individuals to transcend borders while combatting stigma’s related to false assumptions of bad intentions?
Also, might a Queer person or Queer couple feel forced to perform as something they are not when trying to cross a border, or have to perform as an extended stereotype of their sexual identity?
This week’s readings helped me think of a topic that is not often discussed enough, and an issue that I, myself, haven’t focused much on before. Starting with the podcast, listening to the stories of those who are seeking refuge and the officers’ experiences, and the US government’s disregard for their lives made me so angry. It was refreshing to have the podcast cover and unfold the experiences of the officers as well, but what struck me the most was the details of the people — who are fighting for their lives and safety, often with children, and being put through a treatment without dignity and safety. The camps with horrible conditions, the policy loopholes that violates human rights, and the dangers that the immigrants face, including kidnapping and being returned to the dangerous situations that they were seeking to escape from.
Esposito, Ornelas, Scirocchi, and Arcidiacono’s “Voices from the Inside: Lived Experiences of Women Confined in a Detention Center” shed light on the importance of hearing and understanding women’s voices, especially because there is a tendency to silence and homogenize the experiences of migrants. It highlights the oppression and resistance, and how patriarchy also plays a role in this.
Walia’s piece sheds light on the impact of borders and migration from personal experience, and how it perpetuate inequalities and injustices and the violence that migrants and refugees face. It was such a relevant piece to read after the podcast, as it critiques oppressive systems and calls for solidarity among social movements, and celebrates the resilience of migrants and refugees, for them to have agency.
Shehadeh and Nguyen’s pieces were particularly touching to heart, because of their personal, powerful and emotional sharing of their experiences. Shehadeh’s piece explores family history and personal identity as a Palestinian refugee, and ongoing struggle for recognition and justice for Palestinian refugee, which is such a relevant topic today. Nguyen’s piece also reflects on personal experience and issues surrounding refugees and displacement. The sentiment on both pieces surrounding identity made me think more broadly about the intersectionality between immigrant/refugee status and identity.
My mother never discloses that she is Korean — in fact, my grandparents had hid their Korean nationality from each other until my grandfather proposed to my grandmother, and it was by coincidence that they were both Korean. My grandmother’s parents escaped South Korea due to the rise of nationalism and militarism, and any communist/socialist sympathizers were being persecuted. In Japan, the only Korean-speaking school were North Korean schools, so my grandmother attended North Korean school to learn and keep the language. Because of the discrimination she had faced growing up, she hid her Korean identity in her adulthood. My grandfather’s family came to Japan to escape poverty and danger, only to find out that there would be even more discrimination and poverty in Japan, especially towards Korean immigrants, thus leading to my grandfather to disguise his identity. Drawing from both their experiences, they made a conscious effort to raise their children (my mother and her two younger brothers) as Japanese, so they never learned the Korean language and made them hide their nationality via Japanese ailiases. However, they were never considered Japanese legally, and the term Zainichi (residing in Japan) is used for ethnically Korean immigrants, without voting rights, access to social welfare, etc. My mother, when she married, gave up her Korean nationality to become a Japanese citizen, for a better future for me and my sister. So, reading about personal stories made me deeply reflect on the effects of dislocation on identity, and I ponder, “How can we ensure balance the need for safety, to grant safety, while ensuring that their identities and cultures are still continued and celebrated?”
Reflecting on the readings from this week, I recalled my early education on borders and territories. At the time, I had no idea the privilege I had in abstractly considering borders, when many individuals are subject to violence upheld by them. I remember being taught that for a ‘state’ to be recognized it needs to be ‘sovereign’ and for a state to be ‘sovereign’ it needs to ‘have distinguished borders and the means to protect them’. Given my experiences, and the lessons I have learned since, I hate that this is what I was taught but shouldn’t be surprised given the colonial state I reside in. I think this is partially why Walia’s article particularly resonated with me. Walia argues that borders maintain hoarded concentrations of wealth accrued from colonial domination while ensuring mobility for some and containment for most. The stories told both in the American Life podcast about the US, as well as Esposito’s research in Italy exemplified this.
We are shown how entrenched this rhetoric is in the American immigration system through the podcasts’ an analysis of the border officers working at the southern US border. Each asylum officer described their responsibility to weed out the ‘fakers’. This shows as Walia describes “the idea of a homogeneous body politic, emphasizing difference not only from those migrants deemed deviant and undesirable”. The border officers believe that they are protecting their country, and are being patriotic, only because they have internalized the othering of migrants and people seeking asylum. Later in the podcast, we hear about how some of the border officers are experiencing ptsd and extreme guilt for carrying out their duty to ‘protect’ the US border. This is similar to our discussion a few weeks ago about soldiers who experience PTSD when deployed. Both systems (though they are obviously very much so the same system) operate on a false narrative of protection and patriotism, and when the façade wears away, the individuals responsible for carrying out these policies may stay in those positions longer because they themselves are struggling to make ends meet. The reliance on disenfranchised people to disenfranchise other people makes it all possible. This can also be seen in the ways that Australia leveraged Nauru’s requirement for financial assistance (caused by colonialism) to establish an Offsite Detention Center. Amnesty International reported that refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru, most of whom had been held there for three years, routinely faced neglect by health workers and other service providers who had been hired by the Australian government, as well as frequent unpunished assaults by local Nauruans.
Another theme I recognized across this weeks readings were the lack of access to information. In this US, it was the shady dealings of implementing the MPP, and not making the *very specific* requirements for asylum accessible to those seeking asylum. Similarly, in Espocito’s discussion about Najwa, they were handed papers to sign in a language that was not accessible to them. The manufactured precarity of migration is the strongest tool for colonial states to leverage to ensure the exclusivity of their citizenzry. This system conveniently erases the violence of capitalism, colonialism, genocide, slavery, and indentureship—the interlocking unfreedoms that create the conditions that make the border possible and cause human suffering.
Espocito’s discussion of migration as a choice or an expression of agency to be powerful. Particularly because it reminded me of advocate and refugee Behrouz Boochani, who highlighted in his book “No Friend but the Mountains” that boat migration is the last option for many asylum seekers, however, many choose to leave on a boat journey as dying at sea is more tolerable than their fate in their origin country, I wonder what it would look like for government administrations to acknowledge and honour asylum seekers as human beings with agency and courage, rather than as a threat, ‘free-loader’, or statistic?
Some other questions that come to mind when considering these:
“Do you ever think about structural violence and get stuck in a cycle?” I said this to my friend this week and she laughed at me….. But also:
How can we reject the politicization of migration that fuels harmful rhetoric of patriotism that others migrants and asylum seekers?
Is demanding much needed transparency and clarity in migration processes a helpful step? Or does it further accept and normalize the current (problematic) status quo?
I don’t know where to being with this week’s material. The Out Crowd, for instance, taught me the privileges and delicacy of citizenship. The countries we roam through and our spaces within them in relation to others. How we we can be home in one, welcomed in one, and a “nuisance” in others.
I can only imagine the heightened risks of gender-based violence that women often face and we got to read some of these. I also want to acknowledge men and boys are also vulnerable to exploitation, physical harm, and other forms of abuse along their journey like the fear the men felt of being taken and how that little boy was told they might take his organs. It makes me terribly sad to reflect on how the one lady cross border in Mexico had accepted her fate and simply asked for a condom for the next time she’s sexually assaulted. She was so certain she would be. It is deeply distressing to witness how the normalization of sexual violence has become a grim reality for many women fleeing persecution and seeking safety across borders. The fact that she felt resigned to her fate.
The securitization of borders, rather than providing safety and security, often exacerbates the risks faced by individuals, exposing them to exploitation, trafficking, and other forms of abuse. I understand the “need” to have borders, I do, but I don’t understand the need to be treating people in such a manner, with racism, suspicion, and discrimination – this othering to the point of dehumanization and knowingly!
Besides, the decision to cross the border, particularly for children who are unaccompanied or separated from their families, is that not evidence enough of a desperate search for safety and security clearly one that must be amid perilous conditions in their home countries? I took a course on child rights over the summer and this was a big component of it. They don’t even see them as children, because if they did they would not place them in detention facilities. They are even referred to as “unaccompanied alien children.” This is a violation of human rights laws and I cannot understand on what grounds American have a moral superiority complex, no offence. But, God is it not deluded. To then go in and destroy whole countries because America somehow cares about the rights of the civilians there when it cannot care of the people on its border. Truly perplexing, the disconnect between America’s professed values and actual actions. How can a nation that claims to champion democracy and human rights justify such inhumane treatment of asylum seekers?
Further, the inherent dehumanization and militarization of border enforcement contributes to a culture of impunity and systemic violence that as we heard has a profound psychological effect and of course ethical consequences for them. I am beginning to see them too as victims of a much larger system for those trying to resist. Oh my God the sheer danger asylum seekers who were rejected were sent back to and must live in. That is if they even made it that far. I think of that father and his little boy, and the one father and his 2 kids and how the border guard was involved in their kidnapping, and I wonder why.
Next, the Walia reading, the partition of India and Pakistan with its devastating consequences and lasting scars passed down to each of us whether we grew in the country or overseas, serves as a poignant backdrop to the broader discussion on the securitization of borders. I for one, live 40-ish minutes from the Indian border. We would feel unsafe even driving near the area which comprises of farmland when visiting my friends. The criminalization and demonization of marginalized communities. This coupled with the rhetoric of crisis and security always seems to provide justification for increasingly repressive and militarized border policies. We never seem to question it back home.
Growing up in Lahore also exposed me to the struggles of marginalized communities, including refugees and migrants seeking sanctuary from persecution and violence. The city’s history as a refuge for those fleeing political turmoil and religious persecution. I cannot say they fare any better in Pakistan, that would be a lie. My late grandfather would tell us the story of a Sikh doctor in our ancestral village who saved his eye as a child and during partition when my grandfather was about 15ish and he was already a prominent head in the village, the Sikh doctor came to him and said “Samad I saved your eye, today I ask you save my and my families life. He even entrusted my grandfather with some belongings as my grandfather assigned a handful of trusted men to escort him and his loved ones safely to what would be the border between us. Years later he learned those men had killed him, he had sent that man to his death, unknowingly but it lived with him and he felt the need to share it with each of his children. I don’t know about the others in my family, but the guilt eats at me every now and then.
Additionally, as a migrant myself, I’ve often grappled with questions of belonging and identity, navigating the tension between my cultural heritage and the cultures of the places I’ve lived. Nguyen’s reflections on the fluidity and complexity of refugee identity reminded me that identity is not fixed. When he says he cannot remember many things I think it speaks of the immense sacrifices and hardships that refugees face when forced to flee their homes. The decision to leave his sister behind, only to be separated from her for three decades, is heartbreaking. I cannot stand my siblings but I would die at the very minimum on the inside if I weren’t to see them for that long. His gratitude for not remembering much, speaks to the overwhelming nature of the memories refugees must have to live with. I don’t even want to touch on their experiences in America, what they went through on the journey there was enough.
I wonder how can we reshape our understanding of borders to foster greater compassion for all individuals, regardless of their nationality or immigration status? Life is so unfair.
Whenever borders are brought up, I think back to my neck of the woods in Latin America. Quechua one of the indigenous languages of my country is spoken as far south as Chile and as far north as Ecuador and this points out the arbitrary nature of borders. We have people that share a cultural and indigenous tradition and yet, they are separated by an invisible line imposed by Western colonization. In a way artificial borders have created the migrant crisis as many of this lands are the product of many historic damages that have been caused by imperialism and the continued deprivation of resources in regions outside the Western world. This is further aggravated by how the West has fabricated their perception of people trickling into their region which is reflected in the pieces from The Displaced: Refugee writers on refugee lives. Refugee, migrant, humanitarian migrant, internally displaced, or any word used to describe any group of people are enveloped by layers of narratives that they have little control over. The creation of the ‘good’ refugee does not take away the category of ‘other’ is simply creates a space where the ‘other’ can breathe more comfortably. How can the ‘others’ find meaningful resistance and dialogue when they are exercising in processes that were meant to perpetuate narratives that creates ‘others’.
The podcast for this week was particularly difficult for me to process for many reasons from the geographical closeness, to the similarity in experiences, to the shared language. There are many things that I would want to touch upon from this podcast but, I want to hold on to a small excerpt in the podcast children crossing alone. A glimpse at a better future has led more than 400,000 Mexican and Central American youths to cross the border, a journey that unroots them from their family, their lands, their language, and so much more. Their journey does not end once they cross the border as many of them do not have the means to make it through the day to day so these children have to find work. Typically, the boys will find themselves in construction jobs whilst the girls find themselves in farms or doing domestic labor. Working jobs that have been suffering sharp declines in American workers as the hours are long and the labor is highly taxing to the body and incredibly dangerous. These children work to make it through their day to day but also to be able to send money back home because 200 dollars a month can be the difference for their siblings back home to study and have food on the table. When the toxic and pervasive narratives of what migrants and refugees are, how can the reality and experiences of these children be a turning point for the discussion of this narrative.