Performing Border Externalisation: Media Deterrence Campaigns and Neoliberal Belonging

Paynter, Eleanor; Riva, Sara

doi:10.1080/14650045.2023.2234826

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Who is included and excluded from these categories? Gendered and racialized discourses are often circulated to mobilize fear (Paynter & Riva, 2023;Williams, 2020). In the USA, race plays a crucial role in this imagination since innocence is only attributed to white women (Kanjere, 2019;Schinkel, 2019;Simson, 2018).…”

Section: Migrant Women As Innocent and Dangerousmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

Parsons,

Riva

2024

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Media and political discourse in the USA often depict migration as an invasion and people who cross borders as criminals dangerous to the nation. Through ethnographic fieldwork conducted in two places on the USA-Mexico Southern border, we want to analyze how invasion narratives influence practices on-the-ground. We first explore how these narratives inform the views of a border militia who see themselves as protectors of the nation and understand people who cross borders as threats. We then argue that migrant women’s presence in areas where the militia operates disrupts the dominant narrative that defines migrants as dangerous, as militia members come to understand migrant women as victims of the Cartel. Despite their innocence, to maintain the narrative’s consistency, militia members still consider migrant women criminals for crossing the border “illegally.” Finally, we move on to explore the materiality of these xenophobic discourses by examining how migrant women are mistreated at a family immigration detention center. Using the militias as an example, we highlight why political narratives circulate and have meaning for individuals and how discourses have material consequences.

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Section: Migrant Women As Innocent and Dangerousmentioning

confidence: 99%

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

Parsons,

Riva

2024

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Disciplining subjectivity in Australian migrant deterrence campaigns

Zeweri

2024

Journal of Refugee Studies

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This article examines public information campaigns designed to deter asylum seekers from entering Australia via boat. Through analysing the institutional context and content of a graphic novel that was circulated within Afghan Hazara communities in 2014, I show that certain Australian public information campaigns mobilize an ethos of cultural sensitivity rooted in ethnographic data-gathering projects that reinscribe migrants as ignorant and socially deviant subjects. Such campaigns both situate Australia as an impossible destination and render migration a dangerous, futile act that will bring further misfortune to migrants’ families. The Australian case shows that in contexts where cultural sensitivity and externalized border control simultaneously guide migration policy, cultural knowledge becomes weaponized not only to keep migrants immobile but also to discipline migrant subjectivity and ultimately exclude them from pathways to refuge.

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Deterrence for whom? Public information campaigns as border internalization in Australia

Coddington

2024

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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Public information campaigns, advertising conducted by destination countries to dissuade migrants and asylum seekers from leaving their countries of origin, have primarily been studied as examples of border externalization and deterrence. Australian campaigns such “No way: you will not make Australia home” plastered across billboards, radio advertisements, graphic novels, street theater, and feature films have been deployed throughout the Asia-Pacific region since the late 1990s, targeting would-be migrants from Afghanistan to Vietnam. However, in contrast to public information campaigns in other parts of the world, Australia has consistently deployed information campaigns not only externally, but also to internal audiences, including migrant diaspora communities and the wider Australian public. In this paper, I explore deterrence messaging as a form of border internalization: why were these campaigns deployed domestically? Through interviews with former campaign producers, it became clear that domestic deterrence campaigns were beneficial in multiple ways: border internalization contributed towards externalized enforcement, took advantage of existing relationships and ties, gained earned media, and contributed towards swaying domestic public opinion. Yet in addition to these stated goals, I argue that the border internalization strategies here also reflect wider understandings of national belonging anchored in the racialized colonial context of Australia.

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Performing Border Externalisation: Media Deterrence Campaigns and Neoliberal Belonging

Cited by 3 publications

References 50 publications

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

Innocence and danger at the border: migrants, “Bad” mothers, and the nation’s protectors

Disciplining subjectivity in Australian migrant deterrence campaigns

Deterrence for whom? Public information campaigns as border internalization in Australia

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