Roxanne Lynn Doty

Bare Life: Border-Crossing Deaths and Spaces of Moral Alibi

This paper examines the US border control strategy of ‘prevention through deterrence’ as an instance of biopolitics that has resulted in an alarming increase in migrant deaths over the past sixteen years. I argue that this policy renders unauthorized migrants as ‘bare life’, individuals whose deaths are deemed of little consequence. Geographic space has been an essential aspect of this policy, both for its presumed (though not realized) deterrent power and in the fact that it provides a moral alibi that enables policy makers to deny responsibility for the deaths. This study contributes to recent conversations on biopower and bare life by (1) highlighting the fact that biopower as it pertains to the constitution of ‘the population’ is far from being solely a local or national phenomenon, but rather is inherently connected to drawing distinctions between the national and the international and by (2) arguing for the significance of race in this process.

The Criminalization of Immigrants as a Racial Project

Contemporary policy responses to unauthorized immigration, we argue, reinforce racialized anxieties by (a) focusing attention on physically distinctive and economically marginalized minorities who are defined as the nation’s immigration“threat,” (b) creating new spaces of enforcement within which racial anxieties flourish and become institutionalized; and thereby (c) racializing immigrant bodies. We examine three federal enforcement policies: (a) the physical border buildup that began in the 1990s, (b) partnerships with local police, and (c) Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) initiatives to enhance interior enforcement. The result has been the construction of a landscape of institutionalized racial violence embedded in our current immigration regime.

Immigration and national identity: constructing the nation

Prompted by the integration of Europe, Derrida recently posed the following questions. ‘Indeed, to what concept, to what real individual, to what singular entity should this name be assigned today? Who will draw up its borders?’ While this question speaks of the political entity called Europe, it has much broader resonance. It echoes concerns about identity, boundaries, and the relationship between the inside and the outside of political entities, concerns that have not escaped the attention of critical International Relations scholars. Nor are these necessarily new concerns. The situation in post–World War II Britain prompted the same questions Derrida raises about Europe in 1992. To what real individuals, to what singular entity the terms ‘British’ and ‘Britain’ should be assigned was a question that prompted debate, political violence, and a series of increasingly restrictive and, some would suggest, racist immigration policies. The transformation of Britain from an empire to a nation–state was accompanied by a crisis of identity whereby early postwar proclamations that Britain ‘imposed no colour bar restrictions making it difficult for them when they come here’ and that ‘there must be freedom of movement within the British Empire and the Commonwealth’ were, rather quickly, to give way to exclusionary practices and a retreat to ‘little England’.

Desire all the way down

Alex Wendts Social Theory of International Politics demonstrates perhaps more long and hard thought about social theory and its implications for international relations theory than most international relations scholars have dared to venture into. He admirably attempts to do in an explicit manner what most scholars in the discipline do only implicitly and often accidentally: suggest a social theory to serve as the foundation for theorizing about international relations. However, there are problems with his approach, a hint of which can be found in the epigraph he has chosen: ‘No science can be more secure than the unconscious metaphysics, which tacitly it presupposes’. Because metaphysics cannot ultimately be proven or disproved, it is inherently insecure. The insecurity and instability of the metaphysical presuppositions present in Social Theory are not difficult to find, and what Wendt ends up demonstrating, despite his objective not to, is the absence of any secure, stable, and unambiguous metaphysical foundation upon which IR theory could be firmly anchored. Indeed, what Social Theory does illustrate is that there is no such ultimate centre within the discipline except the powerful desire to maintain the illusion of first principles and the essential nature of things. If I may paraphrase Wendt, this is a ‘desire all the way down’ in that it permeates his relentless quest for the essence of international relations. Two goals characterize this desire: on the one hand, to take a critical stance toward more conventional international relations theory such as neorealism and neoliberalism; on the other, to maintain unity, stability, and order within the discipline. Social Theory oscillates between these two goals and in doing so deconstructs the very foundations it seeks to lay.

Maladies of our souls: identity and voice in the writing of academic international relations

Drawing primarily, but not exclusively on the work of Julia Kristeva and Roland Barthes on language, writing, and ‘the subject’, I examine the issue of identity and writing in international relations. I argue that what has come to be labeled ‘critical’ or ‘radical’ constructivism rather insistently points in the direction of opening up spaces for discussing our own writing and exploring our own voices in what we write, though this has not been actively pursued. Sociologist Avery Gordon uses the phrase ‘making common cause’ to argue that our encounters with the social world ‘must strive to go beyond the fundamental alienation of turning social relations into just things we know and toward our own reckoning with how we are in these stories, with how they change us’. It seems to me that this is not possible without giving attention to the issue of voice, specifically the voice we use when we write about international relations. To speak of voice is to raise many interesting and important questions, to ponder our use of language, our locations within our stories and the discourses we create, and perhaps most importantly to give recognition to the presence of desire in language and in the writing of international national relations.

The Double-Writing of Statecraft: Exploring State Responses to Illegal Immigration

I am...concerned here with the limitations that conventional approaches encounter in seeking to understand state responses to immigration. I also want to examine the more interesting openings that have been created despite these limitations but that have not been pursued. Pursuing these openings I suggest an alternative understanding that places tension and contradiction at the very core of statecraft....This article...is not an attempt to explain illegal immigration in a causal sense but focuses on state responses to illegal immigration and how these responses can inform our understanding of statecraft. (EXCERPT)

The Bounds of 'Race' in International Relations

Two sets of observations motivate the concerns expressed in this chapter. The first involves the increasingly widespread incidents worldwide with racial overtones which have occurred in recent years. I will mention just a few. In 1988, in part due to the rapidly increasing ‘Third World’ immigrant population and the ensuing violence against them, racism became a national issue in Italy. In June 1991, the Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, suggested that French workingmen had had an overdose of polygamous North African welfare scroungers. In September 1992, former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing suggested that the country was facing an invasion of dark-skinned immigrants and suggested that the ‘right of blood’ be instilled into citizenship legislation. Conservative figures reported to Britain’s Home Office suggest that there were 7780 racially motivated attacks in 1992. Meanwhile, special committees of the European Parliament have twice looked at the increase in racist and xenophobic activity throughout Europe and concluded that it is getting worse.2 In May 1992, riots in south central Los Angeles provided the world with a stark and painful reminder that race remains a salient issue in the United States.

Securing borders: Patriotism, vigilantism and the Brutalization of the US American public

Purpose – This is an examination of how border policies become intertwined with patriotic expressions that result in an atmosphere conducive to border vigilantism. We analyze how vigilantes target sources of immigrant employment, demonstrate at public buildings in attempting to put pressure on public officials, and speak and rally at educational institutions in order to disseminate their message. Methodology – We use content analysis, broadly defined. Findings – Brutalization theory helps understand how a militarized border policy shapes an environment in which violence becomes an acceptable and appropriate response to undocumented migration. Value – This chapter provides insights on both recent vigilante activities along the border and also within the interior of the nation.

Crossroads of Death

The crossroads in this story wind through the desolate landscapes of the Sonoran Desert where the Mexico/U.S. border becomes at once an intensely violent inscription and almost an afterthought. Sometimes this border seems meaningless, part of our deterritorialized global “reality.” Sometimes the consequences are monumental, the difference between life and death. The official crossroads, represented by lines on the maps, have become impossible for some—for those whose names are destined for little white crosses, those who carry their dreams and lives on their backs, those who do not get cited in our academic journals. Those who are not us. I can still cross with relative ease. So can you. For an afternoon of shopping, cheap drink, trinkets, and souvenirs. Yes, it is different for us. For others, another story most of us will never read. They cannot cross where we can cross. But, there are many other ways, though infinitely more deadly. The deadliness of these other crossing points gives rise to this story and to the struggles I have in telling it in the way I think it should be told, with words worthy of the human beings who live it and those who die in it. Of course, I cannot claim that this story, which is ultimately my story, is the one others would tell were we to listen. I cannot pretend to know what their stories would be. For there are other unauthorized crossroads that snake through risky territory and these, too, must be considered.