Achille Mbembe, in Necropolitics, offers this thought in the concluding chapter:
"And so what is freedom if one cannot really break with this accident of being born somewhere -- the relation of flesh and bones, the double law of soil and blood? How can who we are, how we are perceived, and how others take us, come to be indicated, and so irrevocably, by this accident?" (185).
Both a beautiful and scathing critique, Necropolitics argues that sovereign powers sanction some lives at the expense (read: death) of precarious populations. As a Cameroonian Critical/Cultural theorist, Mbembe roots his analysis in an opposition to colonial logics, delineating the forms of control deployed by (neo)liberal democracies against racialized others. Aligned with a critique of liberal democracies, Mbembe positions Western "humanitarian efforts" in former colonies as merely a continued form of capitalist commodification and extraction.
The common adage "when helping hurts" emerges when discussing the ethics of development, let alone the history. The rise of development interventions in the Global South after WWII remained connected to Western ideals, pointing to "underdevelopment" as an inherent problem in non-western traditions, requiring Western solutions and aid. Escobar notes how the rising importance of development in the Global South justified the expansion of power and control amongst national rulers, as
"First and Third World elites accepted the price of massive impoverishment, of selling Third World resources to the most convenient bidder, or degrading their physical and human ecologies, or killing and torturing, of condemning their indigenous populations to near extinction; so important that many in the Third World began to think of themselves as inferior, underdeveloped, and ignorant..." (52).
Detailed in the passage above, Escobar clearly points to the epistemic and physical violence carried along with early development, likened to colonial violence. Top-down approaches, relying on Western ideals, like the prevailing neoliberal approach to development, continue to commodify land and people (a violence) -- as the West remains powerful and "superior." Through continual disruption and extraction, the West exploits the rest of the world.
Just like the violence of colonialism and neoliberalism, immigration at the southern U.S. border represents an added, intentional layer of violence facing (im)migrants aiming to leave (potentially unlivable) conditions at home. No individual makes this decision lightly. In 1994, the U.S. deployed a new strategy to combat "illegal immigration," known as Prevention Through Deterrence. "Prevention Through Deterrence" bares much of the southern border, leaving only dangerous crossing points open with less regulation by border patrol -- like the Sonora Desert, where death by exposure is common.
The Binational Migration Institute (BMI) aims to track border crossings, particularly working to identify the remains of unidentified crossers. From 1990-2020, BMI notes that women typically compose no more than 15% of annual crossers. However, women are 2.67 times more likely to die by exposure than men, rendering female bodies disproportionately represented amongst "Prevention Through Deterrence" victims. This fact adds to the other forms of violence facing women at the border, like family separation and various forms of assault.
Though deeply disturbing and disheartening, efforts to raise awareness to this policy persist. Anthropologist and founder of the Undocumented Migrant Project (UMP), Jason de Léon continues to bring awareness to the brutality of borders while rehumanizing the individuals who lost their lives to crossing -- to make lives recognizable, and grievable as lives, in Butler's words. Too often, an individual's recognition, their humanity, is conditioned on their racial or ethnic identity -- the random event of where they were born, instead of who they are. The above image is one installation done by the UMP.
Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019).
Jason de Léon, The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trial, (Oakland, California University Press, 2015).
Hi Jenny, thank you for bringing to light this topic! I greatly appreciate how you connected Escobar's arguments with the violence embedded in immigration processes at the southern US border and the emphasis on how the place you are born influences your "human status," I would say. Which made me reflect on how Western perspectives are denoted as the norm in global settings. Since migration policies are a legacy of colonialism, I would add that there are more reasons that the place you are born defines if you are allowed to enter and stay "legally" in a country. For instance, your skin color also determines which rights are your rights, which implies ethnicity and cultural background. I think many of these violent actions are also justified and rooted in racist narratives that denote the superiority of white above "others." Because nonwhite would mean primitive, lazy, and irrational, non-human, another layer to reflect is the differentiation by race, which I think is profoundly interiorized and normalized as a legacy of colonialism, which will determine if you are "less than human." Therefore, colonialism consequences are still perpetuating violence nowadays as they profoundly affect our world perception.
ReplyDeleteI found this article by Martinez that through examples of Mexican Americans legal status, argues how race is constructed as a concept within law interests and how racism plays a role in defining these policies. The narratives about "superior race" and "inferior races" shape these policies significantly. To conclude, as well as our nationality, our ways of being violent are also shaped by the notion of whiteness. Because of these stereotypes, if you look not Mexican (mix raced), you will be less likely to be in a violent situation even when you try to cross the border "illegally."
References:
Martinez, George A. (Associate Professor of Law) “The Legal Construction of Race: MexicanAmericans and Whiteness,” JSRI Occasional Paper #54, The Julian Samora Research Institute, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, 2000.
Hi Jenny,
ReplyDeleteI think this post was very good. I specifically want to comment on the part about underdevelopment. For awhile when I have been learning in classes the past few years we always seem to see a trend where first world countries deem other countries as underdeveloped. However, I like to think that America and world powers shouldn't be able to decide what is developed or not. Similar to missionaries going to third world countries to try and "educate" people because we deem them uneducated. I think this is seen quite often and some places are doing well without modern things such as wifi or computers. I feel if we looked into these places that we might even see people are happier in these societies than we are in America.
Wauren
Great post Jenny, thank you for sharing such and important story. This aspect of the United States is such an important thing that many citizens of the USA seem to be willfully ignorant about: these uncomfortable realities of the border and the amount of lives lost. The art piece and work by UMP seem to be particularly poignant and a good way to call more attention to this.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the location of birth and 'human status' that you mention and Maria responded to as well, I want to take it a step further with some first hand experiences and observations. I am half Chicano and a number of my family members on my Mexican-American side of the family still live along the border in and around Brownsville, Texas. We have a common phrase that ''we didn't cross the border, the border crossed us'', which actually is the truth for a good amount of my family; as far back as we know, they lived in the area of Matamoros and Brownsville (which is really just one city on two sides of a river/border). But in 1848 Mexico ceded many of it's Northern territories to the USA. And it just so happened to be that some of my ancestors resided on land that was now claimed by the USA while others resided on land mere kilometers away ''in Mexico''. My grandfathers side of the family was one of those families, while my grandmothers side of the family had to cross into the USA. All this brings me to my disheartening observations of certain family members on my grandfathers side of the family that are very Republican and anti-immigration. Even though they look the same and speak the same language as the Mexicans that they don't want to come in and ''steal their jobs'' they identify as different and superior. The right wing indoctrination of latinos in Texas is one of these extremely interesting and illogical phenomena that demonstrates how fluid national identity and race can be... And how brainwashing and fear tactics can work to incentive prejudice while still holding certain racial hierarchies in place. Even if you aren't necessarily a rich white republican man, you can be convinced of your acceptance (to a certain degree) into their special club because you are still better than those illegal aliens. It is a sad reality and example of an seemingly incoherent dualism that has a people actively ignore and move away from a part of themselves. It emphasizes the power of ''othering''. Additionally, the christian and catholic religion plays a more nuanced role in these politics of inclusion and exclusion too. There is much to go into in this line of thought but that is what i will leave it at now. Thanks again for opening this conversation.
One more thing I meant to mention as well is that many of these latino Americans are the very border patrol agents working on the southern border.
Delete