Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2023
This article aims to show how race, gender, class, and other identity markers intersect to oppres... more This article aims to show how race, gender, class, and other identity markers intersect to oppress, control and discipline poor and illegalized single migrant mothers and pregnant women from the Global South. The article draws on evidence from three ethnographic studies conducted between 2008 and 2017 to shed light on the predicaments of mothers and pregnant women excluded from the welfare safety-net, who were flying under the radar due to the fear of deportation. It shows how (cr)immigration controls render women vulnerable to victimization and harm. The second part of the article addresses imprisonment and punishment, treatment by the criminal justice system, and separation from children placed in foster care. The evidence strongly suggests that controls in Britain disrupt the core principles of reproductive justice, including reproductive autonomy and health, and to parent children in a safe and healthy environment without fear of retaliation from the government. This is being termed as racist-gendered state violence.
Since the late 1990s, the government has used outsourced electronic monitoring (also known as tag... more Since the late 1990s, the government has used outsourced electronic monitoring (also known as tagging) in England and Wales for criminal sentencing and punishment. Under the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004, s36, the use of this technology extended to immigration controls, and individuals deemed as ‘high risk’ of harm, reoffending or absconding can be fitted with an ankle device and subjected to curfew. The tagging of migrants is not authorised by the criminal court and therefore not considered a punitive sanction. It is managed by the immigration system and treated as an administrative matter. Nevertheless, people who are tagged experience it as imprisonment and punishment. Drawing on data from an eighteen-month ethnographic research project, this article examines the impact of electronic monitoring on people seeking asylum, who completed their sentences for immigration offences. It uncovers the psychological effects and mental health impacts of such technol...
This chapter connects India’s colonial past and nationalist present, and uncovers time and its re... more This chapter connects India’s colonial past and nationalist present, and uncovers time and its relation to migrants, border crossers and internal ‘others’. First and foremost, the chapter highlights the proliferation and militarisation of external (Indo-Bangladesh) borders. The Indian Border Security Force have maintained the policy of shoot to kill against undocumented people and also those living in the borderlands, and chapter argues that deliberate state sanctioned killings violently stops migrant time, erases their past and steals their futures. The chapter then explores the tide of Hindu nationalism engulfing India and the implosion of border/ing. The anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and xenophobic discourses have led to polices and practices that are designed to exclude, illegalise and push undocumented people in existential immobility where there is no forward movement of time, and the present is erratic and future uncertain. This is done via the creation of the National Register...
This article develops an analysis of contemporary immigration raids in Britain, arguing that they... more This article develops an analysis of contemporary immigration raids in Britain, arguing that they operate ideologically as well as institutionally to sustain the material and political conditions of what is a vastly unequal form of social order (that is also a form of racial order). It suggests that immigration raids are located within and develop understandings of a racial state in contemporary Britain. Drawing on ethnographic work at a migrant charity organization, it explains the raid process and its impact on individuals and families. Raids are rationalized as facilitating removal and more broadly operate as part of attempts to generate fear and encourage people to leave “voluntarily.” However, this is not achieved in many cases, and this article suggests that the real purpose of raids is to dominate and oppress illegalized migrants and those who may be vulnerable to immigration control, as well as reproducing the justification for immigration enforcement. Raids can be understoo...
Since the events of 9/11 in the US in 2001 and, four years later, the 7/7 London bombings in the ... more Since the events of 9/11 in the US in 2001 and, four years later, the 7/7 London bombings in the UK, warnings of terrorist attacks are high on the public agenda in many western countries. Politicians and tabloid press in the UK have continued to make direct and indirect connections between asylum seekers, terrorism and crime. This has increasingly resulted in harsh policy responses to restrict the movement of ‘third‐world ’ nationals, criminalisation of immigration and asylum policy, and making the violation of immigration laws punishable through criminal courts. This paper largely highlights the narratives of five asylum seekers who committed ‘crime ’ by breaching immigration laws and were consequently treated as ‘dangerous criminals ’ by the state authorities. More importantly it shows how these individuals experienced this treatment. The aim of this paper is to give voice to the victims of state abuse, claim space for victim agency, gather victim testimonies, challenge official e...
This chapter connects India’s colonial past and nationalist present, and uncovers time and its re... more This chapter connects India’s colonial past and nationalist present, and uncovers time and its relation to migrants, border crossers and internal ‘others’. First and foremost, the chapter highlights the proliferation and militarisation of external (Indo-Bangladesh) borders. The Indian Border Security Force has maintained the policy of shoot to kill against undocumented people and also those living in the borderlands, and the chapter argues that deliberate state-sanctioned killings violently stops migrant time, erases their past and steals their futures. The chapter then explores Hindu nationalism in India and the exacerbations of borders. The anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and xenophobic discourses have led to polices and practices that are designed to exclude, illegalise and push undocumented people in existential immobility where there is no forward movement of time, and the present is erratic and future uncertain. This is done via the creation of the National Register of Citizens and asking people to furnish legacy documents to prove their connection to India. The analysis shows the ways in which this exercise was discriminatory, time wasting and marred with inconsistencies/errors—a form of bureaucratic violence—and it ended up excluding nearly 2 million people. These internal ‘others’ are at risk of detention or detainable. Some have died in detention and few have ended their lives due to the fear of banishment—and their time has been stopped due to latent consequence of bordering policies and practices. The chapter ends by highlighting the emerging resistance movement against the citizenship regimes and calls for greater support and cooperation from transnational activists.
Former asylum seeker detainee and journalist Behrouz Boochani (author of No Friend but the Mounta... more Former asylum seeker detainee and journalist Behrouz Boochani (author of No Friend but the Mountains) and his collaborator Omid Tofighian speak about the experience of indefinite incarceration on Australia’s Manus Island and the psychological toll of waiting. They compare this form of detention to prison and the existential impact to torture. This Kyriarchal System, they argue, strips the individual of identity and humanity and they explain how such a system can perhaps be questioned better through the poetic fiction that Boochani has used in his path-breaking narrative than through appeal to dry rational facts and figures.
As a social relationship of submission whose scope goes beyond those directly affected, torture i... more As a social relationship of submission whose scope goes beyond those directly affected, torture is still an ongoing practice, widespread everywhere, and this is also due to several processes typical of the neo-liberal era – starting from the policies aimed at the security armoring of society. The essay, which examines the causes and dimensions of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of migrants, shows how this global phenomenon today has a close link with the worsening conditions of migration, the global war on immigrants, the tightening of migration policies, the stigmatization of immigrants, the rise of institutional racism, the illegalization of migrations, all elements that favor the production of contexts, environments and situations permeable to torture.
The past five decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in immigration controls. The external cont... more The past five decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in immigration controls. The external controls have expanded, but at the same time, there has been a proliferation of internal control measures. The British state has increasingly resorted to using penal machinery to punish people who violate immigration laws. Individuals can now be prosecuted under the criminal law and receive custodial sentences for immigration crimes. This article draws upon narratives, interviews and experiences of asylum seekers who were imprisoned for such crimes, in order to understand how their trauma is exacerbated and ways in which injuries are strategically and deliberately inflicted by the state and built within legal and policy frameworks. It draws attention to the racist nature of the crimmigration system and production of violence.
International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2015
Since the events of 9/11 in the US in 2001 and, four years later, the 7/7 London bombings in the ... more Since the events of 9/11 in the US in 2001 and, four years later, the 7/7 London bombings in the UK, warnings of terrorist attacks are high on the public agenda in many western countries. Politicians and tabloid press in the UK have continued to make direct and indirect connections between asylum seekers, terrorism and crime. This has increasingly resulted in harsh policy responses to restrict the movement of ‘third-world’ nationals, criminalisation of immigration and asylum policy, and making the violation of immigration laws punishable through criminal courts. This paper largely highlights the narratives of five asylum seekers who committed ‘crime’ by breaching immigration laws and were consequently treated as ‘dangerous criminals’ by the state authorities. More importantly it shows how these individuals experienced this treatment. The aim of this paper is to give voice to the victims of state abuse, claim space for victim agency, gather victim testimonies, challenge official expl...
The India-Bangladesh border is the fifth longest border in the world. It is 4,096.7 km long and r... more The India-Bangladesh border is the fifth longest border in the world. It is 4,096.7 km long and runs through five densely populated states in India. It is also the longest border India has with any of its neighbours. The nature of the border has created its own specific issues for bordering practices, as people cross borders informally and for variety of reasons (such as trade, farming, kinship, tourism to list a few). The response to unauthorised mobilities is always in terms of the need for more guards and physical presence, along with inhumane border control tactics and the use of force. Importantly, India’s borders and approach to the idea of security is mired in the colonial past, but also the communal and gendered ways in which the boundaries of the nation-state are represented in postcolonial India. These intersections of communal and gendered patterns are also evident in the media reporting of Muslim people and Bangladeshi migrants in India; nevertheless, it has not received...
In this chapter, we wish to advance the knowledge of the workings of Britain’s hostile border reg... more In this chapter, we wish to advance the knowledge of the workings of Britain’s hostile border regime by unpacking the financial dynamics involved. To do so, we will primarily focus on one aspect: the privatisation and expansion of Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs). We argue that, not only these spaces by their very nature coercive and violent, but they also benefit from migrant misery as a business model. Therefore, the attention on outsourcing of migration control helps us understand the profits attached to the forced confinement of racialised and criminalised bodies, profits that are generated through human suffering, while simultaneously diminishing accountability and unmediated (often hidden) state-corporate violence. Moreover, once we scratch the surface of bordered profiteering we find that a double standard exists: whilst successive governments decry migrant labour in the UK, the same governments are more than willing to engage with multi-national corporations and thus becom...
Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2023
This article aims to show how race, gender, class, and other identity markers intersect to oppres... more This article aims to show how race, gender, class, and other identity markers intersect to oppress, control and discipline poor and illegalized single migrant mothers and pregnant women from the Global South. The article draws on evidence from three ethnographic studies conducted between 2008 and 2017 to shed light on the predicaments of mothers and pregnant women excluded from the welfare safety-net, who were flying under the radar due to the fear of deportation. It shows how (cr)immigration controls render women vulnerable to victimization and harm. The second part of the article addresses imprisonment and punishment, treatment by the criminal justice system, and separation from children placed in foster care. The evidence strongly suggests that controls in Britain disrupt the core principles of reproductive justice, including reproductive autonomy and health, and to parent children in a safe and healthy environment without fear of retaliation from the government. This is being termed as racist-gendered state violence.
Since the late 1990s, the government has used outsourced electronic monitoring (also known as tag... more Since the late 1990s, the government has used outsourced electronic monitoring (also known as tagging) in England and Wales for criminal sentencing and punishment. Under the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004, s36, the use of this technology extended to immigration controls, and individuals deemed as ‘high risk’ of harm, reoffending or absconding can be fitted with an ankle device and subjected to curfew. The tagging of migrants is not authorised by the criminal court and therefore not considered a punitive sanction. It is managed by the immigration system and treated as an administrative matter. Nevertheless, people who are tagged experience it as imprisonment and punishment. Drawing on data from an eighteen-month ethnographic research project, this article examines the impact of electronic monitoring on people seeking asylum, who completed their sentences for immigration offences. It uncovers the psychological effects and mental health impacts of such technol...
This chapter connects India’s colonial past and nationalist present, and uncovers time and its re... more This chapter connects India’s colonial past and nationalist present, and uncovers time and its relation to migrants, border crossers and internal ‘others’. First and foremost, the chapter highlights the proliferation and militarisation of external (Indo-Bangladesh) borders. The Indian Border Security Force have maintained the policy of shoot to kill against undocumented people and also those living in the borderlands, and chapter argues that deliberate state sanctioned killings violently stops migrant time, erases their past and steals their futures. The chapter then explores the tide of Hindu nationalism engulfing India and the implosion of border/ing. The anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and xenophobic discourses have led to polices and practices that are designed to exclude, illegalise and push undocumented people in existential immobility where there is no forward movement of time, and the present is erratic and future uncertain. This is done via the creation of the National Register...
This article develops an analysis of contemporary immigration raids in Britain, arguing that they... more This article develops an analysis of contemporary immigration raids in Britain, arguing that they operate ideologically as well as institutionally to sustain the material and political conditions of what is a vastly unequal form of social order (that is also a form of racial order). It suggests that immigration raids are located within and develop understandings of a racial state in contemporary Britain. Drawing on ethnographic work at a migrant charity organization, it explains the raid process and its impact on individuals and families. Raids are rationalized as facilitating removal and more broadly operate as part of attempts to generate fear and encourage people to leave “voluntarily.” However, this is not achieved in many cases, and this article suggests that the real purpose of raids is to dominate and oppress illegalized migrants and those who may be vulnerable to immigration control, as well as reproducing the justification for immigration enforcement. Raids can be understoo...
Since the events of 9/11 in the US in 2001 and, four years later, the 7/7 London bombings in the ... more Since the events of 9/11 in the US in 2001 and, four years later, the 7/7 London bombings in the UK, warnings of terrorist attacks are high on the public agenda in many western countries. Politicians and tabloid press in the UK have continued to make direct and indirect connections between asylum seekers, terrorism and crime. This has increasingly resulted in harsh policy responses to restrict the movement of ‘third‐world ’ nationals, criminalisation of immigration and asylum policy, and making the violation of immigration laws punishable through criminal courts. This paper largely highlights the narratives of five asylum seekers who committed ‘crime ’ by breaching immigration laws and were consequently treated as ‘dangerous criminals ’ by the state authorities. More importantly it shows how these individuals experienced this treatment. The aim of this paper is to give voice to the victims of state abuse, claim space for victim agency, gather victim testimonies, challenge official e...
This chapter connects India’s colonial past and nationalist present, and uncovers time and its re... more This chapter connects India’s colonial past and nationalist present, and uncovers time and its relation to migrants, border crossers and internal ‘others’. First and foremost, the chapter highlights the proliferation and militarisation of external (Indo-Bangladesh) borders. The Indian Border Security Force has maintained the policy of shoot to kill against undocumented people and also those living in the borderlands, and the chapter argues that deliberate state-sanctioned killings violently stops migrant time, erases their past and steals their futures. The chapter then explores Hindu nationalism in India and the exacerbations of borders. The anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and xenophobic discourses have led to polices and practices that are designed to exclude, illegalise and push undocumented people in existential immobility where there is no forward movement of time, and the present is erratic and future uncertain. This is done via the creation of the National Register of Citizens and asking people to furnish legacy documents to prove their connection to India. The analysis shows the ways in which this exercise was discriminatory, time wasting and marred with inconsistencies/errors—a form of bureaucratic violence—and it ended up excluding nearly 2 million people. These internal ‘others’ are at risk of detention or detainable. Some have died in detention and few have ended their lives due to the fear of banishment—and their time has been stopped due to latent consequence of bordering policies and practices. The chapter ends by highlighting the emerging resistance movement against the citizenship regimes and calls for greater support and cooperation from transnational activists.
Former asylum seeker detainee and journalist Behrouz Boochani (author of No Friend but the Mounta... more Former asylum seeker detainee and journalist Behrouz Boochani (author of No Friend but the Mountains) and his collaborator Omid Tofighian speak about the experience of indefinite incarceration on Australia’s Manus Island and the psychological toll of waiting. They compare this form of detention to prison and the existential impact to torture. This Kyriarchal System, they argue, strips the individual of identity and humanity and they explain how such a system can perhaps be questioned better through the poetic fiction that Boochani has used in his path-breaking narrative than through appeal to dry rational facts and figures.
As a social relationship of submission whose scope goes beyond those directly affected, torture i... more As a social relationship of submission whose scope goes beyond those directly affected, torture is still an ongoing practice, widespread everywhere, and this is also due to several processes typical of the neo-liberal era – starting from the policies aimed at the security armoring of society. The essay, which examines the causes and dimensions of torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of migrants, shows how this global phenomenon today has a close link with the worsening conditions of migration, the global war on immigrants, the tightening of migration policies, the stigmatization of immigrants, the rise of institutional racism, the illegalization of migrations, all elements that favor the production of contexts, environments and situations permeable to torture.
The past five decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in immigration controls. The external cont... more The past five decades have witnessed a dramatic growth in immigration controls. The external controls have expanded, but at the same time, there has been a proliferation of internal control measures. The British state has increasingly resorted to using penal machinery to punish people who violate immigration laws. Individuals can now be prosecuted under the criminal law and receive custodial sentences for immigration crimes. This article draws upon narratives, interviews and experiences of asylum seekers who were imprisoned for such crimes, in order to understand how their trauma is exacerbated and ways in which injuries are strategically and deliberately inflicted by the state and built within legal and policy frameworks. It draws attention to the racist nature of the crimmigration system and production of violence.
International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2015
Since the events of 9/11 in the US in 2001 and, four years later, the 7/7 London bombings in the ... more Since the events of 9/11 in the US in 2001 and, four years later, the 7/7 London bombings in the UK, warnings of terrorist attacks are high on the public agenda in many western countries. Politicians and tabloid press in the UK have continued to make direct and indirect connections between asylum seekers, terrorism and crime. This has increasingly resulted in harsh policy responses to restrict the movement of ‘third-world’ nationals, criminalisation of immigration and asylum policy, and making the violation of immigration laws punishable through criminal courts. This paper largely highlights the narratives of five asylum seekers who committed ‘crime’ by breaching immigration laws and were consequently treated as ‘dangerous criminals’ by the state authorities. More importantly it shows how these individuals experienced this treatment. The aim of this paper is to give voice to the victims of state abuse, claim space for victim agency, gather victim testimonies, challenge official expl...
The India-Bangladesh border is the fifth longest border in the world. It is 4,096.7 km long and r... more The India-Bangladesh border is the fifth longest border in the world. It is 4,096.7 km long and runs through five densely populated states in India. It is also the longest border India has with any of its neighbours. The nature of the border has created its own specific issues for bordering practices, as people cross borders informally and for variety of reasons (such as trade, farming, kinship, tourism to list a few). The response to unauthorised mobilities is always in terms of the need for more guards and physical presence, along with inhumane border control tactics and the use of force. Importantly, India’s borders and approach to the idea of security is mired in the colonial past, but also the communal and gendered ways in which the boundaries of the nation-state are represented in postcolonial India. These intersections of communal and gendered patterns are also evident in the media reporting of Muslim people and Bangladeshi migrants in India; nevertheless, it has not received...
In this chapter, we wish to advance the knowledge of the workings of Britain’s hostile border reg... more In this chapter, we wish to advance the knowledge of the workings of Britain’s hostile border regime by unpacking the financial dynamics involved. To do so, we will primarily focus on one aspect: the privatisation and expansion of Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs). We argue that, not only these spaces by their very nature coercive and violent, but they also benefit from migrant misery as a business model. Therefore, the attention on outsourcing of migration control helps us understand the profits attached to the forced confinement of racialised and criminalised bodies, profits that are generated through human suffering, while simultaneously diminishing accountability and unmediated (often hidden) state-corporate violence. Moreover, once we scratch the surface of bordered profiteering we find that a double standard exists: whilst successive governments decry migrant labour in the UK, the same governments are more than willing to engage with multi-national corporations and thus becom...
This book draws together empirical contributions which focus on conceptualising the lived realiti... more This book draws together empirical contributions which focus on conceptualising the lived realities of time and temporality in migrant lives and journeys. This book uncovers the ways in which human existence is often overshadowed by legislative interpretations of legal and illegalised. It unearths the consequences of uncertainty and unknowing for people whose futures often lay in the hands of states, smugglers, traffickers and employers that pay little attention to the significance of individuals’ time and thus, by default, their very human existence. Overall, the collection draws perspectives from several disciplines and locations to advance knowledge on how temporal exclusion relates to social and personal processes of exclusion. It begins by conceptualising what we understand by ‘time’ and looks at how temporality and lived realities of time combine for people during and after processes of migration. As the book develops, focus is trained on temporality and survival during encampment, border transgression, everyday borders and hostility, detention, deportation and the temporal impacts of border deaths. This book both conceptualises and realises the lived experiences of time with regard to those who are afforded minimal autonomy over their own time: people living in and between borders.
This book examines connections between racism, violence, and social harms, along with the parts ... more This book examines connections between racism, violence, and social harms, along with the parts played by media actors and institutions in sustaining these phenomena. The chapters present instances of racism from numerous countries in connection with state violence, media coverage of harms and violence against racialised others, including Roma, Palestinians, Indigenous Australians, Maori, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Muslim peoples, Black people in Portugal, Middle-Eastern people in Australia, and asylum seekers. The chapters analyse ideology while paying attention to history and global context, tracing intersectional dynamics including nexuses of racism, class, and gender. They focus on various aspects of violence, including state, colonial and imperialist violence and ideological violence. The book is necessarily interdisciplinary, but explicitly anti-racist and attentive to resistances. It traverses criminology, sociology, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, media studies, history, and cognate fields.
Media, Crime and Racism draws together contributions from scholars at the leading edge of their f... more Media, Crime and Racism draws together contributions from scholars at the leading edge of their field across three continents to present contemporary and longstanding debates exploring the roles played by media and the state in racialising crime and criminalising racialised minorities. Comprised of empirically rich accounts and theoretically informed analysis, this dynamic text offers readers a critical and in-depth examination of contemporary social and criminal justice issues as they pertain to racialised minorities and the media. Chapters demonstrate the myriad ways in which racialised ‘others’ experience demonisation, exclusion, racist abuse and violence licensed – and often induced – by the state and the media. Together, they also offer original and nuanced analysis of how these processes can be experienced differently dependent on geography, political context and local resistance. This collection critically reflects on a number of globally significant topics including the vilification of Muslim minorities, the portrayal of the refugee ‘crisis’ and the representations and resistance of Indigenous and Black communities. This volume demonstrates that processes of racialisation and criminalisation in media and the state cannot be understood without reference to how they are underscored and inflected by gender and power. Above all, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the resistance of racialised minorities in localised contexts across the globe: against racialisation and criminalisation and in pursuit of racial justice.
International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2020
In December 2019, the government of India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) and in ... more In December 2019, the government of India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) and in doing so, changed the 64-year-old law prohibiting ‘illegal’ migrants from becoming citizens. A provision of the CAA created a category of ‘persecuted minorities’ that included six religious communities (i.e., Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian), who had migrated from the neighbouring Muslim countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The CAA was strongly criticised by non-government organisations, lawyers, activists and academics for excluding Muslims and other minorities. The CAA was deemed unconstitutional and discriminatory. Further, these changes to the law occurred at a time at which anti-Muslim hate was at an all-time high and politicians belonging to the hard-right Hindu nationalist government (led by the Bhartiya Janata Party [BJP]) were engaging in aggressive dog-whistle tactics to incite communal violence (Human Rights Watch, 2019). The language of ‘infiltrators’ was increasingly used to garner public support to broaden practices and delegitimise Muslim citizenship. Following the enactment of the CAA, a wave of protests occurred across Indian cities in which people from all faiths participated. Stories of deaths, police brutality and arrests became the main feature of every news outlet. It was during this period, while still deeply upset at the situation in my birth country, that I began to reflect on the toxic residues of colonialism and ponder complex questions related to citizenship, identity and belonging. In doing so, I stumbled upon this monograph.
On 12 June 2019, the newly (re)elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has pursued the p... more On 12 June 2019, the newly (re)elected Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has pursued the politics of Hindu nationalism, voted in favour of Israel barring a Palestinian human rights group from UN bodies due to its alleged ties with Hamas. The Palestinian-Lebanese organisation, Shahed, was eventually denied the status of an “observer” by the UN Economic and Social Council. India itself has a long history of supporting Palestine and has viewed the British Mandate rule and the consolidation of Zionism from an anti-imperialist position. However, this position has been erased. Modi has built close ties with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a sinister economic relationship has emerged between the two countries – turning India into Israel’s largest defence customer. According to the Stockholm International Peace Institute database, between 2016 and 2018 India bought 48% of Israeli arms. Of course, such investment legitimises (if not finances) the brutal occupation of Palestinian territories. While still reeling from the news of Modi’s landslide election victory and feeling deeply ashamed of my birth country’s involvement with the Israeli state’s arms industry, I started reading and reviewing this text.
Towards the end of May 2018, a 20-year-old woman called Claudia Patricia Gómez Gonzáles, a Guatem... more Towards the end of May 2018, a 20-year-old woman called Claudia Patricia Gómez Gonzáles, a Guatemalan national belonging to the Maya-Mam indigenous group, was shot dead by a border patrol officer in Texas. Claudia came from a poverty stricken village in the western region of Quetzaltenango, and she had travelled to the US to go to school. Her ambition, hopes and dreams of realising a better life were brutally ended by Customs and Border Protection agent. After the incident, reports emerged that the officer was placed on administrative leave. However, violence towards migrants is not confined to any one single individual misadventure. Far more disturbingly, it is systemic and operates as a structural, historical and routinized set of practices and official policies, designed to force the racialized ‘other’ out. While the image of Claudia and video of her grieving mother was still fresh in my mind, I started reading Tanya Golash-Boza’s edited collection titled Forced Out, Fenced In: Immigration Tales from the Field.
The BBC Panorama investigation into Brook House may well lead to another official review tasked w... more The BBC Panorama investigation into Brook House may well lead to another official review tasked with answering a familiar question: how can detention be sustained while ensuring that those confined are suitably protected? But we are skeptical of the purpose of these rather expensive and time-consuming reviews. The problem lies with the way the system is managed – in which the private companies outsourced by the Home Office profit by expanding their capacity to detain people.
On 31st March 2017, a 17-year-old unaccompanied Kurdish asylum seeker was brutally attacked in Croydon, London by a group of approximately thirty men and women and left unconscious, with a fractured skull and blood clot in brain. The attack was strongly condemned by leaders across the mainstream political parties and refugee organisations, such as the Refugee Council. Several media outlets covered the story, and some claimed that hate crimes were a direct consequence of growing anti-immigration backlash triggered by the Brexit vote. The emerging critical reports on Brexit have also confirmed this link, highlighting the legitimisation of racism and rise in hate crimes. However, attacks on asylum seekers are not new. While extreme cases like this attract media attention, other hate incidents go largely unreported, unnoticed and unrecorded. British criminologists have not addressed this particular issue in sufficient depth, nor explored the strategies that can be introduced to tackle crimes and prevent those seeking asylum from becoming victimised. In this post, I will discuss some of the reasons as to why and how asylum seekers become victims of hate crimes and outline the problems in putting a stop to them and protecting the victims.
Who's profiting from the misery of the detainees? This article questions the issue of privatisati... more Who's profiting from the misery of the detainees? This article questions the issue of privatisation in Immigration Removal Centres.
KEY NOTE SPEAKERS: Professor Shahram Khosravi and Dr Alpa Parmar
The current socio-political c... more KEY NOTE SPEAKERS: Professor Shahram Khosravi and Dr Alpa Parmar
The current socio-political context is characterised by Brexit and Europe's shoring up of borders in response to irregular migration via the Mediterranean, hyper-criminalisation of migrants, growth of corporate involvement in the management of migration, travel bans, rise of right-wing populism, racisms and xenophobic sentiments across much of the West, and rapid erosion of rights. At the same time, there are constantly new modes of solidarity and resistance emerging, which are also subject to state responses and controls. This event aims to bring together scholars at various stages of their careers, third sector workers, and people with direct experience of immigration controls and borders to examine the theme of border harms from different substantive angles and theoretical perspectives. The idea of border harms encompasses the variety of ways that bordering practices produce harm and are interconnected with race and racisms. We therefore invite proposals on any of the following broad areas: • The policing of migration • Refugees and asylum seekers
There are many ways to understand how the state regulates and controls those within its domain al... more There are many ways to understand how the state regulates and controls those within its domain along and between the lines of race and mental health. Whilst these two categories cannot be disentangled from the myriad other ways in which we are called upon by the state, reading race and mental health together may allow us to revisit the ways the state positions many of us along the axes of atavistic and civilized, fragility and strength, capability and incapacity, malice and disinterest, redeemable and irredeemable. A close and creative analysis of these logics, their contemporary and historic manifestations, and forms of resistance to these such logics may help us to imagine the possibilities for a different type of future world. These will be the themes of this two-day symposium.
Whilst the first day is dedicated to engaging with policy and legal frameworks for understanding the interaction between the state (predominantly policing institutions) and civilians at the intersection of race, gender and mental health, the second day aims to examine ‘the state’ more broadly. Using a range of disciplinary perspectives from the humanities, arts and social sciences, the second day aims to critically examine the field of tension at the interface of the state logics of race and mental health. Both calls are open to any discipline, though the first may perhaps speak more to law, social science, criminology and politics while the second may speak more to the humanities. For particularly outstanding contributions and some plenary talks, there may be a possibility of reimbursement for travel to London. Call 1: Policing at the intersection of race, gender & mental health Papers should examine issues in policing at the intersection of race and mental health, and where relevant, gender and migrant status. These foci are not exclusive, but they will be important for focusing the conversations. The focus of the paper will be on legal, policy and social-scientific analysis; however, papers from other disciplines will be considered. Activists and advocates are welcome to submit contributions, and these must not necessarily take the form of academic papers.
Potential paper topics include:
• Contemporary issues or cases in law, policy and advocacy • Analysis of patterns, structures and logics of policing at this intersection • Empirical study of policing at the intersection of race, gender and mental health • Race, psychiatry and criminology • Race, mental health and criminal justice • Institutional racism, mental health and state violence • Review of policing programmes and structures
Call 2: Imagining state encounters of race and mental health: Law, literature and the image
Proposals for this call should not be exclusively law or policy oriented. The approaches may include but are not limited to the medical humanities, critical race theory, literary or cultural criticism, visual arts and psychoanalysis. Topics may include (non- exhaustive): • Creative ways of exploring the role of the state in engaging with people at the intersection of race and mental health • analysis of photographs, film or music to engage with state logics the intersection of race and mental health • connections between the state logics at the intersection of race and mental health with colonialism, empire and exploitation • interdisciplinary approaches to analysing state logics at the intersection of race and mental health and exclusion based on gender, sexuality, religion, disability and migration status • Exploration of utopian or dystopian futures To submit a proposal, email an abstract of 500 words max. to Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones (e.bruce-jones@bbk.ac.uk) for Call 1 or Dr Monish Bhatia (m.bhatia@bbk.ac.uk) for Call 2 by Friday, 16th February. Early submissions may be confirmed prior to this deadline.
Within the contemporary moment, we detect the (re)emergence of official narratives that serve to ... more Within the contemporary moment, we detect the (re)emergence of official narratives that serve to situate social problems within a logic of pathological, maladjusted and/or culturally unassimilable minority groups to legitimise state-enabled (and sanctioned) violence. Simultaneously, across the globe, the oft-communicated advance of right-wing populism necessitates political reactions, often exerted through penal apparatus, which disproportionately affect, yet paradoxically legitimise, the state's harmful incursion into the lives of minorities. Emergent processes of criminalisation are deliberately concealed, hidden away and perennially denied. Moreover, the recent intensification of systemic state-enabled violence against LGBTQ, racialised and religiously defined bodies are now met with an academic 'strategic silence' (Matheisen, 2004) or are empirically argued away (Harris 2009, Cohen 2001). This silence is now giving way to 'dangerous criminologies' located within the criminogenic and pathologising tendencies of realist(s) interpretations which uncritically serve to reaffirm the cultural and societal incompatibility of minority groups as (an)other. Despite the advances of critical counter-narratives to assuage such tendencies, we are again in the midst of State orchestrated and hegemonic narratives which serve to attribute contemporary social problems to the non-citizen and failed-citizen (Anderson 2013). This issue of the European Group journal welcomes papers and articles that reposition and centralise the 'crime' and criminal justice concerns of minority individuals, groups and 'communities' back onto the political and activist agenda. Furthermore, we also welcome contributions which appraise and challenge contemporary theoretical and conceptual thinking which simplistically serves to 'other' and impede minority perspectives (Phillips and Bowling, 2003).
In the past year, both sides of the Atlantic have seen a rehabilitation of ethno-nationalism and the ratcheting up of violent immigration controls. Most recently, the election of Donald Trump has shifted the issue of borders to the fore of political debate in the West. But by the end of 2016 European nations had enforced their own 'travel bans' and built a wall in Calais, continuing to wreak death and destitution in the shadows of 'fortress Europe'; facts now often obscured by the spectacle of the Trump administration. Importantly, the racism that has been rendered (in)visible by such events is part of a much longer struggle around multiculturalism, citizenship and belonging. In the UK, immigration now occupies prime position in debates on both the left and the right, and practices of 'everyday' bordering have seeped into schools, universities, hospitals and housing. At the same time, new modes of resistance have emerged in response to contemporary state racisms: Black Lives Matter, anti-raids networks, and mass demonstrations in response to Trump's 'Muslim ban' have sought to challenge not only the violence of the state but, at times, the very notion of the border itself. This conference seeks to bring together activists and researchers from across disciplines to discuss the changing landscape of racism and its relationship to borders, as well as the many expressions of resistance within which we find hope. This conference also aims to reassert Scotland's place in these global shifts, challenging assumptions of Scottish exceptionalism, and taking seriously Scotland's role in historical and contemporary racisms. !
Final Conference
(De)Othering: Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-... more Final Conference
(De)Othering: Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and ‘internal Others’ in Portuguese and European mediascapes
November 18 and 19, 2021, 09h00
Online (1st day) || Online + CIUL | Centro de Informação Urbana de Lisboa (2nd day ) Overview
The project’s Final conference aims to present its field work in dialogue with members of its consultants, advisory board, and other stakeholders. Its team will thus discuss findings and published insights with activists, journalists, artists, early career scholars and intellectuals from the five case studies: Portugal, Italy, Germany, France and the UK. In this conference, organised with the collaboration of ITM (the Inter-Tematic research group on Migrations at CES), the first day – entirely online – is dedicated to the internationalisation of the project's research, and the second – mixed format: hosted by the CIUL Lisboa and also accessible online – is dedicated to Portugal.
Activity within the research project «(De)Othering | Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and 'internal Others' in Portuguese and European mediascapes» (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029997)
Jimmy Mubenga, a healthy 42 year old man from Angola, died on 12th October 2010 whilst being held... more Jimmy Mubenga, a healthy 42 year old man from Angola, died on 12th October 2010 whilst being held in custody by three G4S detention officers. The coroner who ruled on the death of Mubenga criticised the “pervasive racism” in the firms contracted to carry out Home Office Removal Orders. The violence during forced removals continues to operate under the pretext of ‘reasonable force’ and companies are offered new highly lucrative government contracts to meet the desired ends. Cases like that of Mubenga may be an unintended consequence of the practice of target driven deportation, but they still serve the state’s ultimate deterrent goal. For each publicised case of death, injury or humiliation encourages many others non-citizens facing deportation to leave passively in order to avoid a similar fate (Gibney, 2013). Despite the obvious risks they run, my research shows that asylum seekers actively and ferociously resist deportation attempts, and because of this have endured physical violence, becoming labelled as disruptive and even a ‘dangerous criminal’. The resistance attempt often has a knock on negative effect on their asylum claims. In this paper I will draw upon asylum seeker’s own stories which highlight their on-going trauma, and suffering, how they are victims of state sanctioned violence, and the ways in which they have successfully resisted reversed the forced removal attempts against all the odds. In doing so, I try to combine victim resistance perspectives with criminological research to designate a range of current state sanctioned activities as criminal.
Presentation to the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control (2012) at the Uni... more Presentation to the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control (2012) at the University of Nicosia, Cyprus.
Presentation to the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control Conference (2010)... more Presentation to the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control Conference (2010) at the Universitie de Savoie, Chambery, France.
Presentation to the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control Conference, UCLAN... more Presentation to the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control Conference, UCLAN, 2009.
Borders, race, and global mediascapes: deconstructing violence in politics and representations ed... more Borders, race, and global mediascapes: deconstructing violence in politics and representations edited by Gaia Giuliani, Sofia José Santos, and Monish Bhatia This special focus aims to critically examine violence in politics and media representations of migrants, refugees, and so-called "internal Others" (racialized citizens) in Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, India, the United States, and Australia, while mapping out their interconnections with particular narratives in the field of crime and security. The focus addresses how they (re)produce narratives of moral panic and securitization through specific constructions of Otherness which articulate representations of gender, race, age, and religion; and how these constructions provide the symbolic material for the legitimization of institutional as well as epistemic violence against these groups.
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of the CAA created a category of ‘persecuted minorities’ that included six religious communities (i.e., Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi and Christian), who had migrated from the neighbouring Muslim countries of Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The CAA was strongly criticised by non-government organisations, lawyers, activists and academics for excluding Muslims and other minorities. The CAA was deemed unconstitutional and discriminatory. Further, these changes to the law occurred at a time at which anti-Muslim hate was at an all-time high and politicians belonging to the hard-right Hindu nationalist government (led by the Bhartiya Janata Party [BJP]) were engaging in aggressive dog-whistle tactics to incite communal violence (Human Rights Watch, 2019). The language of ‘infiltrators’ was increasingly used to garner public support to broaden practices and delegitimise Muslim citizenship.
Following the enactment of the CAA, a wave of protests occurred across Indian cities in which people from all faiths participated. Stories of deaths, police brutality and arrests became the main feature of
every news outlet. It was during this period, while still deeply upset at the situation in my birth country, that I began to reflect on the toxic residues of colonialism and ponder complex questions related to citizenship, identity and belonging. In doing so, I stumbled upon this monograph.
and the consolidation of Zionism from an anti-imperialist position. However, this position has been erased. Modi has built close ties with the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a sinister economic relationship has emerged between the two countries – turning India into Israel’s largest defence customer. According to the Stockholm International Peace Institute database, between 2016 and 2018
India bought 48% of Israeli arms. Of course, such investment legitimises (if not finances) the brutal occupation of Palestinian territories. While still reeling from the news of Modi’s landslide election victory and feeling deeply ashamed of my birth country’s involvement with the Israeli state’s arms industry, I started reading and reviewing this text.
On 31st March 2017, a 17-year-old unaccompanied Kurdish asylum seeker was brutally attacked in Croydon, London by a group of approximately thirty men and women and left unconscious, with a fractured skull and blood clot in brain. The attack was strongly condemned by leaders across the mainstream political parties and refugee organisations, such as the Refugee Council. Several media outlets covered the story, and some claimed that hate crimes were a direct consequence of growing anti-immigration backlash triggered by the Brexit vote. The emerging critical reports on Brexit have also confirmed this link, highlighting the legitimisation of racism and rise in hate crimes. However, attacks on asylum seekers are not new. While extreme cases like this attract media attention, other hate incidents go largely unreported, unnoticed and unrecorded. British criminologists have not addressed this particular issue in sufficient depth, nor explored the strategies that can be introduced to tackle crimes and prevent those seeking asylum from becoming victimised. In this post, I will discuss some of the reasons as to why and how asylum seekers become victims of hate crimes and outline the problems in putting a stop to them and protecting the victims.
The current socio-political context is characterised by Brexit and Europe's shoring up of borders in response to irregular migration via the Mediterranean, hyper-criminalisation of migrants, growth of corporate involvement in the management of migration, travel bans, rise of right-wing populism, racisms and xenophobic sentiments across much of the West, and rapid erosion of rights. At the same time, there are constantly new modes of solidarity and resistance emerging, which are also subject to state responses and controls. This event aims to bring together scholars at various stages of their careers, third sector workers, and people with direct experience of immigration controls and borders to examine the theme of border harms from different substantive angles and theoretical perspectives. The idea of border harms encompasses the variety of ways that bordering practices produce harm and are interconnected with race and racisms. We therefore invite proposals on any of the following broad areas: • The policing of migration • Refugees and asylum seekers
Whilst the first day is dedicated to engaging with policy and legal frameworks for understanding the interaction between the state (predominantly policing institutions) and civilians at the intersection of race, gender and mental health, the second day aims to examine ‘the state’ more broadly. Using a range of disciplinary perspectives from the humanities, arts and social sciences, the second day aims to critically examine the field of tension at the interface of the state logics of race and mental health.
Both calls are open to any discipline, though the first may perhaps speak more to law, social science, criminology and politics while the second may speak more to the humanities. For particularly outstanding contributions and some plenary talks, there may be a possibility of reimbursement for travel to London.
Call 1: Policing at the intersection of race, gender & mental health
Papers should examine issues in policing at the intersection of race and mental health, and where relevant, gender and migrant status. These foci are not exclusive, but they will be important for focusing the conversations. The focus of the paper will be on legal, policy and social-scientific analysis; however, papers from other disciplines will be considered. Activists and advocates are welcome to submit contributions, and these must not necessarily take the form of academic papers.
Potential paper topics include:
• Contemporary issues or cases in law, policy and advocacy
• Analysis of patterns, structures and logics of policing at this intersection
• Empirical study of policing at the intersection of race, gender and mental health
• Race, psychiatry and criminology
• Race, mental health and criminal justice
• Institutional racism, mental health and state violence
• Review of policing programmes and structures
Call 2: Imagining state encounters of race and mental health: Law, literature and the image
Proposals for this call should not be exclusively law or policy oriented. The approaches may include but are not limited to the medical humanities, critical race theory, literary or cultural criticism, visual arts and psychoanalysis. Topics may include (non- exhaustive):
• Creative ways of exploring the role of the state in engaging with people at the intersection of race and mental health
• analysis of photographs, film or music to engage with state logics the intersection of race and mental health
• connections between the state logics at the intersection of race and mental health with colonialism, empire and exploitation
• interdisciplinary approaches to analysing state logics at the intersection of race and mental health and exclusion based on gender, sexuality, religion, disability and migration status
• Exploration of utopian or dystopian futures
To submit a proposal, email an abstract of 500 words max. to Dr Eddie Bruce-Jones (e.bruce-jones@bbk.ac.uk) for Call 1 or Dr Monish Bhatia (m.bhatia@bbk.ac.uk) for Call 2 by Friday, 16th February. Early submissions may be confirmed prior to this deadline.
http://www.egpress.org/tags/justice-power-and-resistance
Abertay University (Scotland)| 7th-8th September 2017
Abstract deadline: 15th Aug 2017
Registration: http://onlinestore.abertay.ac.uk/product-catalogue/conferences-and-events/tle-conference-2016/borders-racisms-and-resistance-conference-2017
In the past year, both sides of the Atlantic have seen a rehabilitation of ethno-nationalism and the ratcheting up of violent immigration controls. Most recently, the election of Donald Trump has shifted the issue of borders to the fore of political debate in the West. But by the end of 2016 European nations had enforced their own 'travel bans' and built a wall in Calais, continuing to wreak death and destitution in the shadows of 'fortress Europe'; facts now often obscured by the spectacle of the Trump administration. Importantly, the racism that has been rendered (in)visible by such events is part of a much longer struggle around multiculturalism, citizenship and belonging. In the UK, immigration now occupies prime position in debates on both the left and the right, and practices of 'everyday' bordering have seeped into schools, universities, hospitals and housing. At the same time, new modes of resistance have emerged in response to contemporary state racisms: Black Lives Matter, anti-raids networks, and mass demonstrations in response to Trump's 'Muslim ban' have sought to challenge not only the violence of the state but, at times, the very notion of the border itself. This conference seeks to bring together activists and researchers from across disciplines to discuss the changing landscape of racism and its relationship to borders, as well as the many expressions of resistance within which we find hope. This conference also aims to reassert Scotland's place in these global shifts, challenging assumptions of Scottish exceptionalism, and taking seriously Scotland's role in historical and contemporary racisms. !
(De)Othering: Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and ‘internal Others’ in Portuguese and European mediascapes
November 18 and 19, 2021, 09h00
Online (1st day) || Online + CIUL | Centro de Informação Urbana de Lisboa (2nd day )
Overview
The project’s Final conference aims to present its field work in dialogue with members of its consultants, advisory board, and other stakeholders. Its team will thus discuss findings and published insights with activists, journalists, artists, early career scholars and intellectuals from the five case studies: Portugal, Italy, Germany, France and the UK. In this conference, organised with the collaboration of ITM (the Inter-Tematic research group on Migrations at CES), the first day – entirely online – is dedicated to the internationalisation of the project's research, and the second – mixed format: hosted by the CIUL Lisboa and also accessible online – is dedicated to Portugal.
Day 1 - 18 November 2021 | From 09:00 (GMT)
To enter in the zoom room
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88605558713?pwd=SHBzRzFtZ0RLSk93VWVTQldLdDhwZz09
ID: 886 0555 8713 | Password: 193779
Day 2 – 19 November 2021 | From 09:30 (GMT)
CIUL – Centro de Informação Urbana de Lisboa + | Free registration, but mandatory > deothering@gmail.com
To enter in the zoom room
Online
zoom | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87392343510?pwd=cFp4emg3R09qaEY2blpjUHdYMWtNQT09
ID: 873 9234 3510 | Password: 368095
Activity within the research project «(De)Othering | Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and 'internal Others' in Portuguese and European mediascapes» (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-029997)