Search Results

Introduction: Before the Law

in Postcolonial Asylum: Seeking Sanctuary Before the Law

For years, postcolonial studies as a discipline has used diaspora theory to describe minoritarian agency. Defined by an anti-nationalist politics and the alloying effect of post-independence ... More

For years, postcolonial studies as a discipline has used diaspora theory to describe minoritarian agency. Defined by an anti-nationalist politics and the alloying effect of post-independence commonwealth immigration, postcolonial critics and authors such as Paul Gilroy, Hanif Kureishi, Stuart Hall, and Wilson Harris have rejected a form of root-less/route-oriented to a concept of ‘arborescent’ belonging. This book explores the place of the asylum seeker before the law and considers what Vikki Squire says is the ‘dislocation of a territorial order of governance and belonging’, whereby the anxieties caused by European integration and/or globalisation are assuaged by exclusionary asylum politics. Drawing on documents from personal letters and gifts to photographs, legal correspondence and newspaper clippings, the book focuses on asylum seekers and the asylum regimes of Australia and the United Kingdom.Less

Post-9/11 Policing: Back to the Future

Jenna M. Loyd and Alison Mountz

in Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention in the United States

This concluding chapter maps changes to detention and border enforcement policy immediately before and after September 11, 2001. It counters much contemporary scholarship that places 9/11 as a ... More

This concluding chapter maps changes to detention and border enforcement policy immediately before and after September 11, 2001. It counters much contemporary scholarship that places 9/11 as a significant turning point in the securitization and criminalization of migrants and asylum seekers. While not denying the seismic securitization that followed the attacks, this chapter places these changes in historical context to show that the continued cycle of racialized and geopoliticized exclusions that had already been well rehearsed in U.S. border enforcement and immigration law and detention and deterrence policies and practices.Less

Coda

Jenna M. Loyd and Alison Mountz

in Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention in the United States

The coda reflects on contemporary migration crises in order to consider how nearly four decades of commitment to deterrence and criminalization have led to a robust policing and detention ... More

The coda reflects on contemporary migration crises in order to consider how nearly four decades of commitment to deterrence and criminalization have led to a robust policing and detention infrastructure that harms already vulnerable groups of people and resists oversight and reform. Over two million people were deported during President Obama’s time in office. As a result, hundreds of thousands were separated from their families, and most struggled to repay debts from migration and make a living in economies that have undergone privatization and deregulation. This final essay reflects on the recurrence of crises during the Obama administration by examining the arrivals of Central American youth and the new round of crises presented in the opening months of the Donald Trump administration. The coda concludes with a discussion of contemporary enforcement efforts in the Caribbean, noting that history continues with Haitians as a seemingly permanent exception.Less

Onshore Expansion: Consolidating Deterrence through Criminalization and Expulsion

Jenna M. Loyd and Alison Mountz

in Boats, Borders, and Bases: Race, the Cold War, and the Rise of Migration Detention in the United States

Chapter 6 explores how political crises over migration and crime dovetailed with each other to cement detention into the landscape materially and discursively. Criminal legislation passed from the ... More

Chapter 6 explores how political crises over migration and crime dovetailed with each other to cement detention into the landscape materially and discursively. Criminal legislation passed from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s repeated the pattern established earlier in Boats, Borders, and Bases: asylum seekers are detained, followed by executive orders and congressional legislation authorizing these practices. Like previous efforts to deter asylum seekers and other unauthorized migrants, criminalization established far-reaching legal and institutional bases for expanding enforcement and detention. As with earlier treatment of “undesirable” Cubans and “bogus” Haitian asylum seekers, the figure of the criminal alien was consolidated through its juxtaposition with notions of legal, good, and contributing refugees and immigrants. As migration and criminal justice policy became more closely entwined, the basis for expanding detention shifted more explicitly from deterrence to a more robust tool of punishment and expulsion.Less

Lost Chapters and Invisible Wars: Hip-Hop and Cambodian American Critique

Cathy J. Schlund-Vials

in War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work

This chapter focuses on Khmer American rapper Prach Ly, who was identified by both AsiaWeek and Newsweek as Cambodia’s “first MC.” As a practice and a movement born out of civil rights and people of ... More

This chapter focuses on Khmer American rapper Prach Ly, who was identified by both AsiaWeek and Newsweek as Cambodia’s “first MC.” As a practice and a movement born out of civil rights and people of color movements, hip-hop provides Cambodian American artists such as Ly an established, persuasive vocabulary of resistance and revision. The chapter assesses the issue of Cambodian American critique, which encompasses both in-country and country of asylum politics. It investigates the progressive politics and unadulterated critiques at work in Ly’s Dalama: Memoirs of an Invisible War, his most overtly political album to date.Less