Futile Borders: Why Borders Fail and How Borders Function in the Incomplete Project of Settler Colonialism
The session recording will be archived on the site until June 25th, 2023
This session was streamed but not recorded
Date: 3/23/2023
Time: 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM
Room: Directors Row H, Sheraton, Plaza Building, Lobby Level
Type: Paper,
Theme: Toward More Just Geographies
Curated Track: Legal Geography Specialty Group Curated Track
Sponsor Group(s):
Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group, Legal Geography Specialty Group, Political Geography Specialty Group
Organizer(s):
Shoukia van Beek University of Victoria
Alisa Hartsell Texas State University
Chair(s):
Shoukia van Beek University of Victoria
Description:
Although the border is at the forefront of North American politics, it is rarely theorized as a powerful tool in the ongoing violent work of settler colonialism. Certainly, the legal reach of the state is extended externally and outwards in order to preserve imperial power while regulating and restricting immigration and mobility through racialized strategies of interdiction, deterrence, and deportation (Amilhat Szary and Giraut, 2015). However, that legal reach is also extended internally and inwards. Settler state violence and legal-spatial violence permeate borders through border enforcement practices of surveillance and detention (Burridge et al., 2017; Fakhrashrafi et al., 2019) and also through attempts to map over Indigenous lands and nations by creating colonial certainty over jurisdiction and national membership (Curley et al., 2022; Luna-Firebaugh, 2002; Miner, 2015; Pratt and Templeman, 2018; Simpson, 2014; Tauli-Corpuz, 2020). While the law is often presented as a means of addressing harm through reform, it is through law, legal decision-making, and formal processes, policies, and practices that legal-spatial border violence is enacted and sustained (Basaran, 2010; Bauder and Breen, 2022; Kreichauf, 2021; Lightfoot, 2021; Nath, 2021; Pasternak, 2014). Colonial connections between sovereignty, territory, and authority are articulated in particular ways at and through borders and the legal structures that help to form, manage, and control borders and mobility weaponize state violence and operate to assert settler legal authority.
Bibliography
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Basaran, T (2010) Security, Law and Borders: At the Limits of Liberties. New York: Routledge.
Bauder, H., & Breen, R. (2022). Indigenous Perspectives of Immigration Policy in a Settler Country. Journal of International Migration and Integration. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-022-00951-4
Burridge, A, Gill, N, Kocher, A (2017) Polymorphic borders. Territory, Politics, Governance 5(3): 239–251.
Curley, A., Gupta, P., Lookabaugh, L., Neubert, C., & Smith, S. (2022). Decolonization is a Political Project: Overcoming Impasses between Indigenous Sovereignty and Abolition. Antipode, 54(4), 1043–1062. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12830
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Fakhrashrafi, M., Kirk, J. P., & Gilbert, E. (2019). Sanctuary Inter/Rupted: Borders, Illegalization, and Unbelonging: Sanctuary Inter/Rupted. The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe Canadien, 63(1), 84–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12510
Lightfoot, S. R. (2021). Decolonizing self-determination: Haudenosaunee passports and negotiated sovereignty. European Journal of International Relations, 27(4), 971–994. https://doi.org/10.1177/13540 661211024713
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Nath, N. (2021). Curated Hostilities and the Story of Abdoul Abdi: Relational Securitization in the Settler Colonial Racial State. Citizenship Studies, 25(2), 292–315. https://doi.org/10.1080/13621025.2020.1859187
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Pratt, A. C., & Templeman, J. (2018). Jurisdiction, Sovereignties and Akwesasne: Shiprider and the Re-Crafting of Canada-US Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement. Canadian Journal of Law and Society, 33(3), 335–357.
Simpson, A. (2014). Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Duke University Press.
Tauli-Corpuz, V. (2020, March). There Should Be No Borders for Indigenous Peoples: Victoria Tauli-Corpuz. Cultural Survival Quarterly Magazine. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/there-should-be-no-borders-indigenous-peoples-victoria
Presentations (if applicable) and Session Agenda:
Fantasia Painter |
Our Lands, Your Lines: How Inter and Intra National Borders Try and Fail to Contain Indigenous Land |
Elyse Hatch-Rivera |
The Right to Secure: The 100 Mile Border and the Making of a Carceral Geography |
Gabriella Subia Smith, University of California - Berkeley |
The Evolution of Colorado's Third District |
Danielle Purifoy, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill |
Setting [Futile] Boundaries: Black Municipalities in the White Settler State |
Non-Presenting Participants
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Futile Borders: Why Borders Fail and How Borders Function in the Incomplete Project of Settler Colonialism
Description
Type: Paper,
Date: 3/23/2023
Time: 8:30 AM - 9:50 AM
Room: Directors Row H, Sheraton, Plaza Building, Lobby Level
Contact the Primary Organizer
Shoukia van Beek University of Victoria
shoukia.vanbeek@gmail.com
Session Sponsored By
