Interventions on the state of sovereignty at the border

Jones, Reece; Johnson, Corey; Brown, Wendy; Popescu, Gabriel; Pallister‐Wilkins, Polly; Mountz, Alison; Gilbert, Emily

doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.02.006

Cited by 93 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…4 This catalogue of suffering seems to stand in stark contrast to the growth of the 'humanitarian border' (Walters, 2011) where practices of border control and border policing elide with or use humanitarian concerns for life in the policing of mobility (Pallister-Wilkins, 2015a, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c. Academic work focusing on the growth of the humanitarian border has shown how humanitarian concerns for saving lives and providing basic relief for life seekers as they encounter violent borders (Jones, 2016) works to expand borders and borderwork (Jones et al, 2017). However, hotspots seem to show how borderwork appears to shrink humanitarian imagination (Lester and Dussart, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hotspots and the geographies of humanitarianism

Pallister‐Wilkins

2018

Environ Plan D

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140

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This article focuses on the humanitarian geographies of the hotspots. It argues that hotspots are humanitarian in both idea and practice by raising two fundamental questions that form the basis for the article: what is humanitarianism, and who is it for? The article understands humanitarianism as a logic of government that is more expansive than the mainstream ideal that emerged in the 20th-century. Instead humanitarianism is understood as concerning logics developed to both effectively manage disaster and to secure (in both senses of the word) imminently mobile populations for the maintenance of liberal order alongside and through the securing of life. The article takes an expansive view of humanitarian government to consider genealogies of caring and population security logics in the establishment of modern, western and liberal states. The article unsettles some of the traditional geographical understandings of humanitarianism as care for distant strangers and considers the ways compassion is rationalised by the hotspot approach. This critical reading of humanitarianism and the hotspots offers empirical weight to what has been called 'humanitarianism as liberal diagnostic', through which humanitarianism is deployed to secure both life and a liberal political order across multiple scales. KeywordsHotspots, humanitarianism, mobility, care, control, disasterOn 25 November 2016, in Moria 'hotspot' camp on Lesbos, a woman and child were killed in a fire after a gas canister attached to a hot plate exploded inside their small nylon tent. They were using the hot plate to try and keep warm. As a result of the accident, two people died and many more were injured. . . Later that month, three young men died in Moria camp and a fourth was taken to hospital in a critical condition. Survivors and friends reported that the deceased had no pre-existing medical conditions. To keep warm, the men had been burning cardboard, plastic and scraps of wood in the tents they shared. (MSF, 2017: 12)

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hotspots and the geographies of humanitarianism

Pallister‐Wilkins

2018

Environ Plan D

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140

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“…Then in May 2016, the Greek authorities cleared the space. Idomeni offers us a microcosm of the politics and violence of im/mobility that have become intimately entwined with humanitarian attempts to offer some relief (see Jones et al, 2017;Pallister-Wilkins, 2017). Idomeni, however, is just one site in a large network of dispersed transit spaces, holding places and migration corridors that have been produced by borderworkers and humanitarian responders over the last decade and more, as migrants continue to confront and challenge Europe's exclusive border regime that sees them concomitantly in need of care (see Albahari, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Garelli and Tazzioli have shown how the enactment of categories of vulnerability and ethics of protection in migration control has come to produce particular types of border spaces in Italy (2017). Meanwhile, I have termed the work of non-state actors and the use of categories of vulnerability in border practices as 'humanitarian borderwork' (Jones et al, 2017). Humanitarian borderwork, I argue, 're-orients border practices around the provisions for particular forms of life and introduces explicitly humanitarian actors into the borderwork assemblage' (Jones et al, 2017: 6).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Médecins Avec Frontières and the making of a humanitarian borderscape

Pallister‐Wilkins

2017

Environ Plan D

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This article makes the case for the consideration of a humanitarian borderscape. The article analyses the recent humanitarian responses to irregular migration in the Mediterranean, Aegean and Greece and argues that processes of im/mobility produce specific times, spaces and types of care. The argument transcends recent discussions on the shrinking and/or expanding of humanitarian spaces, suggesting instead that a focus on the specific setting of the border and the dynamics of mobility are more useful to understanding humanitarian responses to mobility and immobility. In addition, the article contributes to the emerging literature on borderscapes by offering an interpretive analysis of the creation of a particular humanitarian borderscape made up of specific features and activities, which are undertaken by a multiplicity of actors in multiple places. Building on a consideration of this multiplicity, the article focuses specifically on the work of Médecins Sans Frontières.

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“…Furthermore, this paper is written from a place of urgency. States are increasingly intensifying securitization and militarization of borders (Jones and Johnson ; Bauder ; Jones et al ) and this is no less true at the Canada‐US border (Gilbert , 210). Since the inauguration of President Donald Trump, there has also been an expanded definition of what “counts as criminal activity” (Paik , 4) through which migrants have been criminalized.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sanctuary Inter/rupted : Borders, illegalization, and unbelonging

Fakhrashrafi

Kirk

Gilbert

2019

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

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Key Messages Sanctuary Inter/rupted, a group exhibit by Way Past Kennedy Road, explored issues of internal borders, illegalization, and unbelonging in Toronto. We focus on how artists in the Sanctuary Inter/rupted exhibit unsettled whitewashing logics of belonging and contested the limits of liberal sanctuary city movements. We expand the ways that racial justice is understood and practiced in sanctuary city movement organizing.

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Interventions on the state of sovereignty at the border

Cited by 93 publications

References 20 publications

Hotspots and the geographies of humanitarianism

Hotspots and the geographies of humanitarianism

Médecins Avec Frontières and the making of a humanitarian borderscape

Sanctuary Inter/rupted : Borders, illegalization, and unbelonging

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