Anne McNevin

Political Belonging in a Neoliberal Era: The Struggle of the Sans-Papiers

This article argues that political belonging should be understood in the context of diverse spatial imaginaries which encompass but are not confined to the state. Engin Isins approach to citizenship provides a theoretical grounding for this claim. By way of demonstration, the article focuses on the spatially reconfigured practices of the neoliberal state in relation to irregular migration. It shows how the policing of irregular migration sustains a logic of political belonging based on connections between state, citizen and territory. This logic is simultaneously compromised by transnational state practices including the exploitation of irregular migrant labour. Irregular migrants are contesting their positioning within these multidimensional statist frameworks that posit them as outsiders even while they are integrated into local sites of a global political economy. The struggle of the Sans-Papiers, a collective of irregular migrants in France, provides an example in this context. Their claims to entitlement also mobilize multiple dimensions of political belonging and provide insight into transitions in political community, identity and practice.

The liberal paradox and the politics of asylum in Australia

This article interprets the politics of asylum in Australia in light of what James Hollifield calls ‘the liberal paradox’; that is, the trend amongst contemporary states towards greater transnational open-ness in the economic arena alongside growing pressure for domestic political closure. It begins with an outline of Australias recent history of economic reform and of the discourse of globalisation that has been employed to legitimise the changes wrought by this transition. Focusing on the period from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, the article provides an account of anxieties associated with these changes and an analysis of government strategies to secure the support of disaffected sections of the electorate. Asylum policy is analysed in this context. The article shows how the policing of asylum seekers constitutes performances of political closure designed to assuage those made vulnerable by Australias neoliberal economic trajectory. It argues that these politics of asylum are indicative of the tensions between transnational engagement and territorial closure faced by neoliberal states more generally.

Ambivalence and Citizenship: Theorising the Political Claims of Irregular Migrants

Irregular migration gives rise to political claims that test the limits of political community and the expression of human rights in an increasingly interconnected world. This article provides a theorisation of the political claims of irregular migrants that starts with the notion of ambivalence. I argue that the ambivalence present in such claims can be understood as a political resource that is generative of new political relations across the terrain of human mobility and border control. In order to discern the generative quality of ambivalence, I argue in addition for an approach to theory production that is grounded in concrete migrant struggles. The argument is made via a critique of two theoretical perspectives that are influential amongst scholars working at the intersection of Migration Studies and Political and International Theory: the work of Giorgio Agamben and the ‘Autonomy of Migration’. An approach that avoids the reductive accounts of power evident in both perspectives provides a better starting point from which to assess the transformative potential of irregular migrants’ political claims.

Beyond territoriality: Rethinking human mobility, border security and geopolitical space from the Indonesian island of Bintan

The key contention of this article is that contemporary practices of border security threaten to outrun the explanatory capacity of the spatial (territorial) and subject (citizen/migrant) registers habitually employed to think through human mobility. This represents a political problem as much as an empirical one. First, it implies that migration scholarship deploying categories of analysis informed by prevailing registers offers a limited perspective on contemporary techniques of migration governance; second, it suggests that such scholarship obscures the operation of power that works to enforce profoundly unequal hierarchies of mobility and represent them as politically neutral. In this article, I propose that resisting reversion to problematic categories of analysis offers the potential to think of human mobility without the state and territory as its foremost container concepts. I contend that such an approach – ‘beyond territoriality’ – is a crucial step on the way to negotiating the normative dimensions of border politics. The case is developed empirically via a grounded investigation of the mundane yet symptomatic practices of border security on the Indonesian island of Bintan.

Border Policing and Sovereign Terrain: The Spatial Framing of Unwanted Migration in Melbourne and Australia

This paper investigates the spatial frames that are mobilised in the discourse and practice of border policing in the Australian context and the ideological content in which those frames are embedded. On the one hand, a deterritorialised frame positions unwanted migrants as a global threat from beyond. On the other, a territorialised frame enables the possibility of sovereign territorial defence. Neither of these frames, I contend, adequately captures contemporary techniques of border policing which increasingly open borders to global market ideology in the very act of their defence. Nor do they capture the strategic opportunities that exist across different places and scales to resist sovereign logics of control. The paper drills down to the level of the city and the experience of asylum seekers in Melbourne in order to further highlight the limits of simplistic spatial frames. I show that both in local sites and at territorys edges, border policing is indicative of a new terrain of sovereign practice. Accordingly, I present an analytical and normative case for a multidimensional approach to spatial framing. I argue for theoretical openness to spatial metaphors that assist in the tasks of empirically investigating and politically unsettling technologies of contemporary border control. Este artículo investiga los marcos espaciales que se han puesto en marcha en el planteamiento y la práctica de vigilancia de la frontera en el contexto australiano y contenido ideológico, en los que se han incluido aquellos marcos. Por un lado, un marco de desterritorialización sitúa a los migrantes indeseados más allá de una amenaza global. Por el otro, un marco territorializado habilita la posibilidad de una defensa de soberanía territorial. Ninguno de esos marcos, yo sostengo, capta adecuadamente las técnicas contemporáneas de la vigilancia de frontera, que progresivamente abre fronteras a la ideología del mercado global al mismo momento de su defensa. Tampoco captan las oportunidades estratégicas que existen a través de lugares y escalas diferentes, para resistir las lógicas soberanas de control. El artículo va hasta el nivel de la ciudad y la experiencia de los buscadores de asilo en Melbourne, para resaltar más aún los límites de los marcos espaciales simplistas. Demuestro que tanto en los sitios locales, como en los bordes del territorio, la vigilancia de frontera es un indicativo de una práctica soberana de un nuevo terreno. Por consiguiente, presento un caso analítico y normativo para un enfoque multidimensional, a una enmarcación espacial. Yo sostengo una apertura teórica, a las metáforas espaciales que colaboran con las tareas de la investigación empírica y las tecnologías políticamente desestabilizantes del control de frontera contemporáneo.

Global Ideologies and Urban Landscapes: Introduction to the Special Issue

This article introduces the central problematic behind this special edition: the intersection of language and space as reflected in the interplay of global ideologies and urban landscapes. We aim to illuminate and problematise the production of ideologies as both discursive and spatial phenomena by grounding our analyses in cities of the global North and South. We outline our reasons for this focus in relation to the prominence of space in contemporary social theory and in relation to more everyday local-global conditions. Specifically, we point to the declining availability of conventional ‘public spaces’ as sites of ideological dissent; the proliferation of ideologically embedded metaphors and neologisms that narrow the diverse potentials of spatial transformation; the constraints that disciplinary boundaries place on socio-spatial inquiry; and the normative drive to build heterogeneous futures other than those set out by elites as universally ‘global’. We outline the contributions to this special edition in relation to these key themes. Este artículo introduce la problemática que constituye el tema principal de esta edición especial. La interacción de las ideologías de la globalización y el espacio urbano se reflejan en los cruces del lenguaje y el espacio. Con el fin de ilustrar y afianzar esta problemática, se analizara la creación de ideologías en ciudades globalizadas del norte y del sur como un fenómeno espacial y de discurso. A continuación enumeramos las razones de este enfoque con relación a la importancia del espacio en la teoría social contemporánea y su relación cada vez mayor con las condiciones locales-globales del diario vivir. Señalamos específicamente el deterioro de la disponibilidad de ‘espacios públicoś como lugares para el disentimiento de ideologías; la proliferación de metáforas y neologismos enquistados que disminuyen el potencial diverso de la transformación de los espacios; las restricciones generadas por límites disciplinarios en la búsqueda socio-espacial; y, la tendencia normativa que busca construir futuros heterogéneos que difieran de los establecidos por las elites como globalmente ‘universales’. Los temas mencionados anteriormente, son claves para esta edición especial.

Learning to live with irregular migration: towards a more ambitious debate on the politics of ‘the problem’

Abstract What might be gained by learning to live with ‘the problem’ of irregular migration, rather than attempting to solve it? This article engages two senses of ‘the problem’ at stake: first, the ongoing nature of displacement and migration and second, the contested justice claims that sit behind different policy perspectives. The second sense of the problem (its political dimension) is rarely addressed explicitly in public debate. Yet direct engagement with the political dimension offers the potential to unlock debate from a polarised impasse. To make this argument, I first diagnose debate on irregular migration in terms of three archetypal positions and examine their implicit justice claims. I then argue for a more ambitious debate that pushes contending justice claims to their logical extensions. Debate of this kind requires a more coherent defence of justice claims, whether they are based in communitarian, cosmopolitan, anti-capitalist or hybrid values with respect to citizenship and political community. The article concludes with an illustration of how this approach can generate momentum for less circular, more sustainable and politically achievable policy responses. The argument is made with reference to illustrative examples from Australia and Europe but holds for a variety of contexts where ‘the problem’ is framed in similar ways.

Confessions of a Failed Feminist IR Scholar

In 2001, Sandra Whitworth commented that while critical and feminist theories of International Relations had made an important contribution to the discipline by opening up what counts as the subject matter of international relations (IR), those same theories “have been almost completely silent on theorizing about or thinking through the political implications of conducting research on so-called marginalized communities.” Whitworth hoped to contribute to discussion about “what happens” when feminist IR theorists “go out into the world and actually talk to the people they study.”1 Five years earlier and writing from an interdisciplinary feminist perspective, Diane Wolf expressed her own dilemmas about aspects of the research process that she experienced whilst conducting fieldwork in Java.2 She encouraged others to write about “the secrets of fieldwork, things that people don’t talk about”3 particularly in relation to research that crossed national, cultural, gender, and class boundaries in the dynamic between researcher and research subject. A recent volume devoted to methodological issues attempts to fill the gap in “scholarly work that discusses how IR feminist research is conducted”4 and includes insightful reflections upon fieldwork in particular.5 Notwithstanding these efforts and the increasing recognition of feminist approaches to IR in general, sustained analysis of feminist methodologies in practice remain few in number within the discipline.